IAPE Evidence Blog

Peo­ria Jour­nal Star, pjstar.com
BYLINE: ANDY KRAVETZ (akravetz@pjstar.com) of the Jour­nal Star
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Peo­ria, IL

PEORIA — A for­mer FBI agent was sen­tenced Tues­day to five months in prison for lying to his supe­ri­ors about $43,643 that came up miss­ing dur­ing a drug inves­ti­ga­tion two years ago.

Jerry Nau, who worked as a U.S. mar­shal and with the FBI since 1992, apol­o­gized for his actions, say­ing there wasn’t a sin­gle day he didn’t regret what happened.

“I worked my whole life to be a super­vi­sory spe­cial agent. Every­thing I have worked for is gone,” he said, tak­ing deep breaths and lean­ing on the lectern. “But I am not a quit­ter. I will rebuild myself.”

Nau, 44, a 1985 Lime­stone Com­mu­nity High School grad­u­ate, apol­o­gized to his for­mer col­leagues, more than two dozen of whom filled the rear of the courtroom.

“It is a sad day when an agent of the FBI may be sen­tenced to prison, but it would be even sad­der if law enforce­ment were not held account­able when they them­selves engage in crim­i­nal behav­ior,” said U.S. Dis­trict Judge James Shadid.

The sen­tence included a five-month period of home con­fine­ment and required resti­tu­tion of $43,645.

And in an unusual move, Sha­did ordered Nau taken into cus­tody imme­di­ately. White-collar offend­ers often are allowed to vol­un­tar­ily sur­ren­der a few weeks later, but not Nau, who removed his gold tie, said his good­byes and walked out with U.S. mar­shals behind him.

That said, fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors sent a clear message.

“(Nau) is not just a white-collar crim­i­nal who’s going to get to go home to cel­e­brate Christ­mas and then report to prison,” said Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney James War­den, a pros­e­cu­tor from Indi­ana assigned to the case given Nau’s ties to fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors in Peoria.

Defense attor­ney Jef­frey Flana­gan told Sha­did that Nau’s actions were an anom­aly. He pointed to his client’s com­plete lack of crim­i­nal his­tory and nearly 20 years of ser­vice to the United States as evi­dence Nau deserved probation.

But pros­e­cu­tors sought a prison term of about a year. Sha­did admit­ted his sen­tence would likely have detrac­tors on both sides but said it took into account the crime as well as Nau’s past.

Nau pleaded guilty in August to one count of mak­ing and using a false doc­u­ment. He faced up to five years in prison, though given his lack of any crim­i­nal his­tory, that was highly unlikely.

Nau’s plea agree­ment states he “pan­icked” and didn’t know what to do. Nau told offi­cials “he sim­ply hoped the money would turn up.”

He wasn’t charged with tak­ing the money and has said he didn’t. War­den told the judge Nau’s story about pan­ick­ing was “incredible.”

“What hap­pened is, he stole the money, and per­haps he planned to cover that decep­tion up with his own money,” he said.

The money was from the inves­ti­ga­tion of Adrian Robin­son, who was sen­tenced to life in prison last year. Nau tes­ti­fied at trial the money was in an evi­dence vault when, in fact, it was already missing.

The charge stemmed from a June 30, 2010, fax where Nau told his bosses the money was in the vault and sent them a receipt and forged the sig­na­tures of two other agents.

Andy Kravetz can be reached at 686‑3283 or akravetz@pjstar.com.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

Tampa Bay Times, tampabay.com
BYLINE: Lee Logan, Times Staff Writer
Link to Article

Pasco County, FL

NEW PORT RICHEY — The day after a 66-year-old woman was found dead in her New Port Richey home, a deputy returned to the scene and took the woman’s wal­let and check­book. He told the land­lord he wanted to safe­guard the items so no one would take the woman’s money or buy things in her name.

But he never entered the items into evi­dence, never men­tioned them in the report on the woman’s death in April. About two months later, when inter­nal affairs detec­tives asked Deputy Jason Boria about the wal­let and check­book, he insisted he never took them.

Then the detec­tives asked to search his patrol car.

Boria began stut­ter­ing and shook his head ‘no,’ accord­ing to a Pasco County Sheriff’s Office report released Thurs­day. Inves­ti­ga­tors had to remind him that the squad car was agency prop­erty before he gave up the keys.

“I feel like I should have some rep­re­sen­ta­tion,” he said, accord­ing to the report. “I’m start­ing to feel like I’ve done some­thing wrong.”

Inside the trunk, detec­tives found the check­book and wal­let, which was empty. They also found evi­dence that hadn’t been sub­mit­ted in other cases, includ­ing three traf­fic tick­ets, a mem­ory stick with pho­tographs from a domes­tic bat­tery inves­ti­ga­tion, a pre­scrip­tion for Oxy­codone and sur­veil­lance videos from three retail theft cases.

Boria also had 11 dri­ver licenses and a state-issued ID card that were wrapped in a rub­ber band. Deputies often con­fis­cate fake or expired licenses, but they are required to sub­mit them as evidence.

Boria, 35, resigned from the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office in August, amid an inves­ti­ga­tion into the woman’s wal­let and check­book. He had been with the agency more than five years. He received an $8,559 pay­out of unused vaca­tion time. The agency agreed not to chal­lenge an appli­ca­tion for unem­ploy­ment com­pen­sa­tion, though he has not filed one yet.

“A lot of times it’s in the best inter­est of both the Sheriff’s Office and the mem­ber to resign,” said sher­iff spokesman Kevin Doll.

A mes­sage left Thurs­day with Boria’s attor­ney was not returned.

Boria was dis­patched April 29 to the home of Claire Chan­dler, who had been bat­tling can­cer. She lived in rental in New Port Richey and had worked for Wal­mart 17 years. Accord­ing to her land­lord, Patri­cia Shotwell of Orange Park, Chan­dler had no fam­ily. She grew up in Cal­i­for­nia as a fos­ter child and left when she turned 18. She never married.

Neigh­bors noticed Chandler’s car hadn’t moved for sev­eral days. Her cell phone went straight to voice mail. Shotwell asked deputies to check on her. Chan­dler was found lying on her kitchen floor.

Boria filed a report on the death. Shotwell said the deputy returned the next day for the wal­let and check­book. He told her of a pre­vi­ous case where some­one had bought a $7,000 car using a dead person’s money and per­sonal information.

Later, when Shotwell read the death inves­ti­ga­tion report, there was no men­tion of the wal­let. “It gave me a really strange feel­ing,” she said. So she reported her con­cerns to the Sheriff’s Office.

In a series of inter­views, inves­ti­ga­tors gave Boria “ample oppor­tu­nity to explain the wal­let and check­book dis­crep­ancy,” the Sheriff’s Office report said. Dur­ing one inter­view, he told detec­tives “there was no chance he could have for­got­ten he took the items in question.”

Detec­tives found the items in a plas­tic box in the trunk of Boria’s patrol car. There was no cash in the wal­let, and Chandler’s credit union con­firmed there were no abnor­mal with­drawals from her account. Shotwell told detec­tives that Chan­dler tended to keep a “fair amount of cash” in her wal­let, though she didn’t look in it before giv­ing it to Boria.

The report says after the items were found, Boria said he sim­ply for­got to turn them in as evi­dence. He said he didn’t want to admit his mis­take and get in trouble.

“I took the check­book because I didn’t want it to get stolen,” he said, accord­ing to the report. “I didn’t want any­one to use it.”

Doll said deputies usu­ally remove pre­scrip­tion pills after a death inves­ti­ga­tion. They usu­ally defer to fam­ily mem­bers regard­ing other items.

“Gen­er­ally we don’t take too much, or even any­thing,” he said. “We want to turn it over to the fam­ily mem­bers as quick as pos­si­ble, so they’re respon­si­ble for it and not us.”

Boria had been rep­ri­manded in Sep­tem­ber 2010 for not pro­cess­ing evi­dence cor­rectly. He was sus­pended for a day then. He received another one-day sus­pen­sion back in Novem­ber 2009 when the agency deter­mined he vio­lated the agency poli­cies on con­flicts of interest.

The agency referred the most recent issue to the Pasco-Pinellas State Attorney’s Office to deter­mine whether any crim­i­nal charges should be filed. But pros­e­cu­tors deter­mined in August there was “insuf­fi­cient evi­dence of crim­i­nal intent.”

The Sheriff’s Office began writ­ing its inter­nal affairs report after pros­e­cu­tors declined to move for­ward with the case. Such reports are not released to the pub­lic until they are com­pleted. Doll said this report was delayed because the detec­tive and his super­vi­sor were on vaca­tion at dif­fer­ent times.

Lee Logan can be reached at llogan@sptimes.com or (727) 869‑6236.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org