David Hittner

Mini-Madoff Sentenced to Ten Years For $7.8 Million Fraud

For ten years, a Houston attorney told friends and prospective investors he was involved in real estate investment. But the money collected merely fed a Ponzi scheme that federal prosecutors say cost more than 20 victims $7.8 million. On Friday, Davis was sentenced to ten years in prison after he pl ... More >>

Laura Pendergest-Holt: Stanford Financial CIO Pleads Guilty To Obstruction Charges

The chief investment officer of Allen Stanford's disgraced Ponzi-scheme firm has pleaded guilty to obstructing investigations of it, the U.S. Attorney's Office says. Laura Pendergest-Holt, 38, said she had hoped to stall an SEC investigation into Stanford International Bank (SIB), the Antiguan offs ... More >>

Allen Stanford Gets 110 Years, Despite Claiming Innocence

Why can't a visionary huckster financial genius whose only aim is to help the little people lead better lives get a break? Cricket-loving Allen Stanford, Houston's second-best scammer after Enron, had proclaimed his innocence through an ever-changing series of attorneys representing him, but for so ... More >>

Barry Walter Bujol Jr. Gets 20 Years For Trying To Help Al Qaeda

A Hempstead man got 20 years in prison today for trying to smuggle GPS devices and pre-paid phone cards to Al Qaeda. Former Prairie View A&M Barry student Walter Bujol Jr, 30, had been convicted in November after defending himself in the trial, which featured a boatload of incriminating evidence, ... More >>

Allen Stanford Guilty on 13 of 14 Counts

A federal jury has found Allen Stanford guilty on 13 of the 14 financial fraud counts he was facing, according to tweets from reporters at the federal courthouse. The verdict ends a long trial against the onetime kingpin Houston financier, who spent millions on cricket and Caribbean resorts but who ... More >>

Barry Walter Bujol Jr.: Hempstead Student Convicted of Helping Al Qaeda

Guilty, judge says​A 30-year-old Prairie View A&M student has been convicted of providing aid to Al Qaeda. Barry Walter Bujol Jr. had a four-day bench trial before U.S. District Judge David Hittner, who ruled this afternoon. Bujol offered no witnesses or defense to charges he had materially a ... More >>

Jerry Eversole: Ever-Smooth County Commissioner Skates Away

Jerry Eversole, free man​County Commissioner Jerry Eversole, who's ruled his little piece of Harris County forever, has escaped yet again from allegations of having a rather loose interpretation of ethics rules. A federal jury could not come to a decision on whether Eversole took $100,000 in ... More >>

Jerry Eversole Trial: Jury Deadlocked, So They Get Another Round of Final Arguments

Jerry Eversole: Getting his money's worth out of Rusty Hardin.​Jurors in the corruption trial of County Commissioner Jerry Eversole have told U.S. District Judge David Hittner they are deadlocked, so he has sentenced them to a second round of final arguments, according to media tweets from rep ... More >>

Allen Stanford: Now Officially Broke, Gets Good Attorneys

Allen Stanford's new lawyer​Allen Stanford, the much-put-upon onetime gazillionaire, has finally reached the end of his assembly line of attorneys representing him against massive criminal-fraud charges.Stanford had been going through the higher echelons of the Houston criminal defense bar for som ... More >>

Fishers of Men: Pastor And Associates Get Prison Time For Fraud

Go thou and defraudeth FEMA....​It was almost two years ago that we wrote about the Fishers of Men scandal, a church in southwest Houston whose pastor and associates were charged with various financial shenanigans.It sparked a comment war between defenders and accusers that lasted so long and got ... More >>

Jeff Henry Williamson Learns Not To Send Bomb Threats To The FBI From The Houston Public Library

Mess with the FBI at your own risk​Jeff Henry Williamson, who thought it was a good idea to use the Houston Public Library downtown to send threats about blowing up the FBI building, learned otherwise today.U.S. District Judge David Hittner sentenced Williamson to three and a half years in federal ... More >>

Kelsey Gloston, 19, Learns Her Lesson: Don't Piss Off Judge David Hittner

Anonymous commenters are pretty rough on Judge Hittner​U.S. District Judge David Hittner has been on the federal bench almost 25 years, and he's definitely earned a reputation for wanting things done his way.College student Kelsey Gloston didn't know that, though, so she was arrested and handcuffe ... More >>

Insurance Employees Plead Guilty To Living The High Life

​Two employees of The Hartford, which the rest of us call The Hartford Insurance Company, pleaded guilty today to charges that they let a Houston attorney entertain the hell out of them in return for helping him make a mint off lawsuits.Rachel Rossow and Frederick Prestage pleaded guilty to conspi ... More >>

Two Pastors And A Deacon Admit That Their Church Was One Hell Of A Scam

​Some blog items never die.Almost a year ago we wrote about the fraud charges filed against officials of the Fishers of Men Worship Center in Houston. To this day, barely a week goes by without someone throwing up another comment on the case, either defending the officials or saying they got what ... More >>

Three Hurricanes, Three Fraud Schemes

Wherever there's a hurricane, ma, I'll be there...Wherever a FEMA official's handing out a form to fill, I'll be the person scamming them...Wherever -- Well, we don't think the Tom Joad speech at the end of The Grapes of Wrath goes exactly like that, but it would if Phyllis Ann Taylor was saying it. ... More >>

Bacliff's 4th Street Players Gang Gets Hit With Federal Prison

As Hurricane Ike threatened the Upper Texas Coast, we went to press with the story of the 4th Street Players, a predominantly white Anglo street gang in the Galveston Bay town of Bacliff. Nine members of the gang, who wore red colors in emulation of LA's Blood gangs, had been arrested in May of last ... More >>

Forbidden Love In China, A Guilty Plea In Houston

Houstonian Gregory Blackard found love, or at least sex, in Beijing. He met a Chinese woman and had an intense, intimate, secret relationship for more than two years.The problem was that he was a contractor helping to build the new American Embassy there, and his high-level security clearance requir ... More >>

The Most Unimpressive Hacker Ever

Those wily IT guys.A computer tech who was a contract worker for the energy giant Calpine is going to federal prison for a year and a day because he hacked into an employee's computer and used it for nefarious purposes.Actually, not all that nefarious -- he used the financial information contained o ... More >>

Do As I Do, Not As I Say

Fastow plea deal contradicts the feds' policy

Make It S-T-O-P

The Texans go scoreless on tunes as well as turf

Letters

Best Court Ruling

U.S. District Judge David Hittner

Stale Mail at the Fed

Urine, tax returns, and credit card payments pile up at the federal building

He's an Out-of-Comptroller!

Former city tourism official accused of paying mom's nursing home bills out of agency funds

Shaka's Last Supper

He wouldn't eat it, so they did!

Bishop's Endgame

An early GOP force could be savoring party triumphs -- from prison

Good Times, Bad Times

A federal lawsuit accuses the county of upping the pressure for guilty pleas

Checkout Time at Hotel Six

Michael and the two Johns face the music

Burying the Hotel Hatchet

And the Sting Goes On

Round Three offers fresh lawyers, a new villain and the same old flicks

Has Robert Eckels Lost His Mind?

Or is the county judge just crazylike a fox?

The Devil, You Say?

The spooky self-destruction of asatanic-cult-memory trial

Betti's Blue Notes

Singing (and Stinging) in the rain

Betti's Last Stand

Why couldn't she just say no?

Going Through These Things Twice

tuck inside of Hotel Six with the Houston blues again

Summer Reruns at Hotel Six

Been there, done that, doing it again

Taken to the Woodshed

A federal judge rips three city attorneys and their bosses for how they handled the Barbra Piotrowski lawsuit

Sancho Panza Takes the Stand

Will John Castillo ever escape Ben Reyes's shadow?

Mysteries of Hotel Six

The government's case nears an end, but the questions continue

The Hotel Six Joker Turns Wild

A chance encounter and a federal feud endanger the sting

In Their Own Words

Judging by the idle chatter of Hotel Six politicos, the moral barometer at City Hall is in free fall

Take the Cash and Talk That Trash

The hotel six sting hits the little screen

The Insider

The Insider

The Insider

Alison Cook looks back at 1996: Year of the Rat

Letters

The Right Kind of People

Ken Schnitzer gets off -- with a little help from his friends

Moving Day

Out of the Soup

Yes, the city's settlement of a lawsuit was a good deal -- for Helen Huey