Gollum's SRU Treachery Revealed in Court Docs

[Herbert Spencer]

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking/...p?ID=12715

Liberian trip sought in diploma case
By Bill Morlin
Staff writer
December 10, 2007

Defense attorneys for four remaining defendants in a Spokane-based diploma mill case want to travel to Liberia to depose seven of that country’s high-ranking officials, including a Supreme Court justice.

U.S. taxpayers would pick up the as-yet-undetermined bill if the request is granted by U.S. District Court Judge Lonny Suko, who’s assigned the wire fraud and money laundering case.

Included on the list of Liberian officials to be deposed is that country’s former ambassador to the United States, Abdullah Dunbar, who was secretly videotaped accepting a cash bribe from a diploma-mill co-conspirator in a Washington, D.C., hotel room in 2005, court documents say.

Bribes allegedly made to Liberian politicians helped the accused Spokane operators of 125 bogus online “universities” obtain “Liberian Board of Education accreditation” for diplomas cranked out at a Hillyard print shop and mailed out with phony transcripts from the basement of a Post Falls office building, federal investigators say.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office had no immediate response Monday when asked if federal prosecutors would oppose the unusual travel request.

In new legal filings, attorney Phillip J. “Dutch” Wetzel, who represents defendant Dixie Randock, said the trip to Liberia is needed to “preserve testimony” from the Liberian officials whose testimony may be crucial to the defense case.

“Our request is to take depositions to preserve their testimony in case they can’t or won’t appear at the trial,’’ Wetzel said when reached Monday.

In federal criminal cases, attorneys must get a judge’s permission to depose witness “in order to preserve testimony for trial” if the court concludes it’s warranted “because of exceptional circumstances and in the interests of justice.”

The Liberian officials are beyond the reach of a U.S. District Court subpoena, so they would have to voluntarily agree to travel to Spokane to testify as defense witnesses at the trial of Randock and her husband, Steve, and co-defendants Heidi Lohran and Roberta Lynn Markistum.

“Our hope is still that they would agree to testify at trial, too,’’ Wetzel said.

A hearing date for the travel request hasn’t been set, but prosecutors and defense attorneys are scheduled to be back in U.S. District Court on Jan. 10 in Yakima for closing arguments on a pending defense motion to suppress evidence.

Indictments in the diploma mill case were returned in October 2005 after a 9-month multi-agency investigation called “Operation Gold Seal.”

The indictments charge the Randocks and six other defendants with conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud. The Randocks also were indicted on a charge of conspiring to launder more than $1 million they collected from selling the bogus degrees.

The jury trial is now scheduled for June in Spokane.

Wetzel declined to estimate how much it would cost to send him and other members of the defense team to Monrovia, Liberia, or whether the depositions would be videotaped.

Defense investigator Brian Breen, a retired Spokane police detective, made a court-authorized 16-day trip to Monrovia, Liberia, in late October to contact and interview various witnesses.

Now, based on Breen’s field work, Wetzel and defense attorneys Pete Schweda, Tim Trageser and Richard Wall say in court documents they want to depose Issac Roland, the former director general of Liberia’s National Commission of Higher Education and Ambassador Prince Porte, the former chargé d’affaires at the Liberian embassy in Washington, D.C.

Also on the list are Aaron B. Kollie, the former chief of mission at the Liberian Embassy in Washington, and Kabineh Ja’neh, associate justice with the Liberian Supreme Court.

Bill Morlin can be reached at (509) 459-5444 or e-mail: billm@spokesman.com

[Whatever]

threats against the Liberian government began and the LIberians began their doubletalk on the subject.

well, i remember the show, but it concurs in the statement the "university" was not properly approved. Otherwise put, threaten the French government all you want but they are highly unlikely to spin the status of Sorbonne...

So Ham, are you saying that France is a third-world country dependent on financial assistance from the US? Huh, you learn something new every day ;-)

[ham]

well, meanwhile they underwent a couple more of their bi-weekly revolutions in Liberia...