VAN NUYS, CA– A 43-year-old Van Nuys, California, man was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Seattle to two years in prison for two federal felonies for his sexual assault of a young woman on a flight from London to Seattle, announced U.S. Attorney Brian T. Moran.  BABAK REZAPOUR was convicted on January 22, 2020, of abusive sexual contact in a special aircraft jurisdiction and abusive sexual contact with an incapacitated victim.  The jury deliberated about two and a half hours following a five-day jury trial.  At the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Robert S. Lasnik said the crime was “an evil act…. An awful, horrible,  nightmare situation.”

“This defendant not only assaulted this young woman on the plane, his history shows escalating assaults on women even before this incident,” said U.S. Attorney Brian Moran.  “I commend this brave victim who has endured the pain of describing this crime to first responders, investigators, and ultimately to the jury.”

According to records filed in the case and testimony at trial, REZAPOUR sexually assaulted the 20-year-old victim while she was incapacitated from medication and alcohol on a Norwegian Air flight from London to Seattle on January 10, 2018.  The victim had taken prescribed anti-anxiety and anti-nausea medication and drank a glass of wine.  The victim then accepted a second glass of wine purchased for her by REZAPOUR.  After drinking the second glass, the victim became unusually sleepy.  She awoke to find REZAPOUR sexually assaulting her.  REZAPOUR used his jacket to shield the activity from other passengers.  The victim fled to the back of the plane and reported the assault to flight attendants.

At trial, witnesses described seeing REZAPOUR move into the seat next to the victim, contradicting his statements to law enforcement that he had stayed in his aisle seat with an open seat between them.  In multiple statements to different investigators following the incident, REZAPOUR changed his description of what had occurred on the plane.  In addition to consistent statements from the victim and witnesses, prosecutors used DNA evidence to prove REZAPOUR’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.  An FBI DNA expert described how she discovered REZAPOUR’s DNA inside the victim’s underwear.

In sentencing documents, prosecutors describe how REZAPOUR’s criminal history shows a pattern of sexual assault.  REZAPOUR was charged in 2012 in a prostitution sting in California.  In 2017, just six months before the airplane assault, REZAPOUR was escorted out and banned from a North Carolina resort hotel after molesting a hotel worker who was cleaning the men’s locker room.  “These were not isolated incidents.  They can credibly be interpreted as a continuing course of conduct reflecting an ongoing urge to sexually assault strangers in increasingly serious attacks,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo.

Prosecutors asked for an above guidelines sentence, noting that sex assault crimes on aircraft are on the rise and need to be deterred.  According to the FBI, in 2014, 38 cases of in-flight sexual assaults were reported.  In 2017, that number increased to 63 reported cases.  In 2019, these assaults increased to 119 reported cases.

At the sentencing hearing the victim spoke to REZAPOUR saying “you saw me as an object and took from me whatever you wanted… You made me distrust every man in my life…. You made me feel less than what I was.”  After she spoke Judge Lasnik told her she should be proud of how strong she has been in working to recover from this sexual assault and hold REZAPOUR accountable.

REZAPOUR has been in custody since the jury verdict in January 2020.  He told the court he was begging for forgiveness, “I have a problem and I need help.”

REZAPOUR is required to register as a sex offender following his prison term.

The case was investigated by the Port of Seattle Police and the FBI.  The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Marie Dalton and Grady Leupold.

SAN BRUNO, CA  – James Calvert was sentenced today to 12 years in prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release for distribution and receipt of child [censored]ography, announced United States Attorney David L. Anderson and FBI Special Agent in Charge Craig D. Fair.  The sentence was handed down by the Honorable Susan Illston, U.S. District Judge.

Calvert, 27, of San Bruno, California, pleaded guilty to the charges on August 14, 2020.  According to the plea agreement, Calvert admitted that in May of 2019, he posted a video that depicted a prepubescent minor female performing oral sex on an adult male and a video of a prepubescent minor being raped by an adult male in the “Babyprn” group chat-room of Kik, an instant messaging application used on mobile telephones.

Calvert also admitted in the plea agreement that in December 2019, he encouraged a fifteen-year-old female victim to perform a sex act on camera and to send him a video of her performing that sex act to his Kik account.  Calvert admitted that he knew the victim was a minor when he encouraged her to send him the video.  The government pointed out in additional filed papers that Calvert engaged in the December 2019 conduct after he had been charged with the May 2019 offense and had been released under supervision.

Calvert was arraigned on August 13, 2020, on a Superseding Information charging him with one count of distribution of child [censored]ography, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252(a)(2) and (b)(2), and one count of receipt of child [censored]ography, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252(a)(2) and (b)(2).

In addition to the 12 year prison term, Judge Illston ordered Calvert to serve a lifetime term of supervised release, to begin after the prison term ends.  The defendant, who has been in custody since February of 2020, is presently serving his sentence.

Ajay Krishnamurthy and Barbara J. Valliere are the Assistant U.S. Attorneys who prosecuted the case with the assistance of Margoth Turcios.  The prosecution is the result of an investiga

BONITA, CA  – A Bonita husband and wife were sentenced in federal court today to 9 months and 15 months, respectively, in prison for using their charity to obtain donations from various companies – supposedly to give to the needy – and then selling those donations for a profit and failing to pay taxes on the profits.

According to plea agreements, Geraldine and Clayton Hill admitted they used lies and false promises to induce prominent companies to donate valuable goods to the Hills’ 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit organization, known as On Your Feet, Inc., also known as Family Resource Center.  Instead of using all the clothing and other donations to help the down-on-their luck get back on their feet, as their charity’s name suggested, or to provide resources for families, the Hills brazenly sold many donated goods  for cash to be resold at discount outlets, and pocketed the proceeds.  By preying on the generosity of others, they managed to get valuable goods at no cost and tax-free, which they resold for their personal benefit. What is more, the Hills used the tax-exempt charity as their personal bank account and evaded their own tax obligations, cheating the IRS by failing to pay over $50,000 in taxes on over a million dollars in ill-gotten gains from their fraud.

According to court documents, On Your Feet, Inc. claimed to “provid[e] assistance to low-income families and individuals in need to better their living conditions and quality of life.” Beginning at least as early as March 2009, however, the Hills conspired to fraudulently obtain charitable donations of clothing and other items from multiple companies by falsely promising and certifying that they would not to sell the merchandise for profit. The Hills violated those promises, knowingly reselling donated merchandise and using the proceeds from selling donated items to financially support themselves, their family members and other associates.

The Hills tricked multiple companies, including Forever 21, Feed the Children, Brooks Sports and Goods360, into donating millions of dollars of goods to their so-called charity.  For example, in soliciting donations from Forever 21, the Hills falsely claimed in their marketing materials that “[t]he merchandise is never sold by On Your Feet Incorporated and any merchandise impossible to sell is disposed of.” In an email on May 20, 2015, to Forever 21, Geraldine Hill explained that the “routine for processing donated items” included “cutting [the] inside label in half” and “defacing [the] inside label with permanent marker,” and falsely insisted that “we’ve never had a problem with any donations we have received that companies have been so kind to donate.”  In fact, Geraldine Hill knew at the time she sent that email to Forever 21 that her statement was a lie, because at least three years earlier, she had learned that Disney no longer wanted its donations to go to On Your Feet because the donated goods were appearing at local flea markets for sale.

In reliance on Ms. Hill’s false promises that the goods would not be re-sold, in June 2015, Forever 21 donated to On Your Feet approximately 161 pallets of clothing, which Forever 21 estimated had a retail value of $5.6 million. Immediately upon receiving the pallets from Forever 21, the Hills sold the donated goods to an operator of for-profit discount retailers. In September 2016, the Hills solicited additional donations from Forever 21 by promising to use them for a “Christmas Giveaway,” and in response, in October Forever 21 donated another 16 pallets of clothing with a retail value of $314,371. Once again, immediately upon receiving the pallets from Forever 21, the Hills sold donated goods to the same for-profit discount retailer. Based on the Hills’ series of false representations, Feed the Children and Forever 21 – just two of the Hills’ multiple victims – donated over $16 million in goods between 2010 and 2017.

With their repeated lies, between 2011 and 2016, the Hills personally received proceeds from the fraud totaling over $1.3 million. They spent the money on personal expenses including luxury retail purchases, vacations, entertainment, vehicles (including a $124,000 Mercedes), rent on a seven-bedroom, seven-bathroom home, and donations to their church. In their plea agreements, they admitted that they paid no taxes on their illegal gains.

The Hills further exploited their non-profit organization to cheat in other ways.  For example, they falsified pay stubs claiming that defendant Clayton Hill earned a salary of over $100,000 from On Your Feet (even though the organization had never issued paystubs or W2s to Hill, and Hill was not claiming income in any tax filing).  Armed with the phony pay stubs to demonstrate their income, the Hills applied to rent a seven-bedroom, seven-bathroom home that cost $6,000 per month.

In order to conceal their true income from the IRS and obstruct the IRS’s ability to monitor the charity’s tax-exempt status, the Hills filed false charitable tax returns. The charity’s tax returns falsely claimed that On Your Feet received less than $25,000 in gross receipts in tax year 2009, and less than $50,000 in tax years 2011-2015.  In reality, the organization had received millions of dollars in valuable in-kind donations, and hundreds of thousands of proceeds from the unauthorized sale of those donations.  By hiding the non-profit’s income, the Hills were able to hide their own income. As a result of the Hills’ fraudulent concealment of their income, they avoided paying $50,933 in tax years 2013 and 2014.

In addition to their prison sentences, the Hills were ordered to pay $50,933 in restitution to the IRS; a further restitution hearing related to the donor victims is scheduled for December 11, 2020.

“Geraldine and Clayton Hill abused the generosity of charitable donors and used their non-profit charity organization as their personal bank account,” said U.S. Attorney Robert Brewer “Although all tax evasion is serious, the conduct by the Hills is particularly offensive because they have undermined the faith of donors in charitable giving.” Brewer commended Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca Kanter and Trial Attorney Valerie Preiss of the Justice Department’s Tax Division, as well as agents from the IRS and FBI for their excellent work on this case.

“The Hills’ fraudulent scheme undermined legitimate charities with true intent to benefit low income families in order to satisfy their personal greed and an indulgent lifestyle,” said Suzanne Turner, Special Agent in Charge of FBI San Diego. “The FBI is hopeful that this sentence will send a message to anyone who would try to take advantage of the generosity of donors intending to help those in need.”

“Geraldine and Clayton Hill lied to unsuspecting donors about the direction of charitable contributions and engaged in tax fraud to cover their trail,” said Jim Lee, Chief of IRS Criminal Investigation. “Unfortunately, the donors were well-meaning organizations interested in helping the needy and this fraud prevented real people in need from receiving assistance. IRS Criminal Investigation works tirelessly to ensure that criminals like the Hills are brought to justice. In cases like these, not only do the needy of our communities suffer, but also taxpayers and the United States government.”