Former employee admits defrauding AccuWeather out of thousands of dollars
Updated Mar 04, 2021;
WILLIAMSPORT – A former employee benefits administrator for AccuWeather Inc. has admitted she defrauded the State College weather forecasting firm out of thousands of dollars.
Aira Nelson, 37, of West Chapel, Florida, on Thursday pleaded guilty in U.S. Middle District Court to a wire fraud charge.
The government claims her schemes netted $98,914 while assistant public defender Gerald Lord said he believes the amount is approximately $68,000.
The plea agreement requires her to make full restitution, the exact amount of which will be determined before she is sentenced.
Nelson admitted she used over a three-year period beginning in September 2015 her access to AccuWeather’s benefits, payroll and human resources information systems to establish fictitious Flexible Spending Accounts for herself, her husband and seven others.
A grand jury investigation determined Everettt Palmer Jr. had binged on meth days before he arrived at the prison and was on overdrive from the drug when he died, District Attorney Dave Sunday said.
Ex-Penn State Harrisburg student accuses the university of disabilities discrimination
Updated Feb 28, 2021;
WILLIAMSPORT – A former master’s degree student at Penn State Harrisburg accuses the university of discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Aaron Frazier, who has major depressive and generalized anxiety disorders, contends in a suit filed Thursday in U.S. Middle District Court that professors failed to accommodate his needs.
As a result, he says he got an “F” and dismissed from a practicum course in the applied clinical psychology program. Penn State does not comment on pending litigation.
Frazier enrolled in the master’s program at Penn State Harrisburg in the fall of 2017 after graduating magna cum laude from North Carolina at Greensboro.
Judge removes house arrest restriction on central Pa. cop charged in U.S. Capitol riot
Updated Feb 25, 2021;
Saying prosecutors didn’t make their case that he is a public threat, a federal judge Thursday ordered that a central Pennsylvania police officer charged in the U.S. Capitol riot doesn’t have to remain under house arrest with electronic monitoring while he awaits prosecution.
Those restrictions Magistrate Judge Robin Meriweather of the U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C, lifted from Joseph Fischer had lasted only two days.
They were imposed by a magistrate judge in U.S. Middle District Court in Harrisburg on Tuesday following a preliminary hearing on the riot charges against Fischer, who has been suspended from the North Cornwall Township police. Fischer, 54, of Jonestown, spent five days in Dauphin County Prison following his arrest by the FBI on Feb. 19.
Stephen King scores victory in âDark Towerâ copyright case
24-02-2021
23-08-2016
In a win for Stephen King, a US federal appeals court upheld an earlier ruling that a character in his “Dark Tower” novels did not copy traits of a protagonist in a comic book series.
The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit handed down the decision yesterday, February 23.
In doing so, it affirmed an earlier decision by Judge Harvey Schlesinger in 2019, who dismissed the lawsuit filed against the horror novelist by Benjamin DuBay at the US Middle District Court for the District of Florida.
In 2017, DuBay sued King and “The Dark Tower” publisher Simon & Schuster for allegedly ripping off “The Rook”, the titular character of a comic book series created by DuBay’s uncle in 1976.