Alleged fraudster's federal trial delayed
Feb. 14—Aaron Wagner's attorneys were busy last week.
After gaining permission for a six-month delay of the federal trial of their client, who faces more than a dozen fraud charges, attorneys submitted a request for Wagner to travel to Scottsdale.
Last year at this time, City Council foiled Wagner's request for rezoning to allow "a swanky new dining experience" called Swags in the Entertainment District.
Wagner, a part-time Scottsdale resident who also planned to launch a Bottled Blonde in Gilbert, was bottled up — behind bars — for two weeks before being released with a GPS monitoring device.
On Oct. 24, the 42-year-old Wagner was arrested and booked into a Salt Lake City prison as a "federal detainee."
Wagner's business partner Michael Mains was arrested two weeks later.
Mains and Wagner face 16 charges of fraud and money laundering.
According to a charge filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office, Wagner "devised a scheme to defraud private investors in restaurant businesses."
In the complaint, FBI Agent Brad Simons said he investigated Wagner and his various companies. Simons said he found the Wags Capital founder used $2 million from an investor intended for a restaurant venture to help purchase an $8.3 million airplane.
According to the federal complaint, Wagner "would show off" his "lavish lifestyle (including personal jets, exotic vehicles, luxury vacations, etc.) to induce investors to believe that he was a successful businessman."
But, according to the court document, "many of these indicators of success were in fact financed by investor funds he had stolen from the very businesses they were meant to support."
Three weeks ago, U.S. Judge Ted Stewart granted a motion from Wagner defense attorneys Richard Van Wagoner to delay Wagner's trial — originally scheduled for Feb. 3 — by at least six months.
According to the defense attorneys' motion to delay the trial, "The discovery for 16 counts of alleged white-collar crime and forfeiture of millions of dollars in property is voluminous with 68 alleged victims and witnesses and includes extensive financial records, electronic records including correspondence, and extensive summaries of interviews conducted by law enforcement."
The delay was needed, the attorneys said, as "The case involves many financial and business records concerning many individuals, entities, and transactions."
Federal prosecutors agreed a delay was needed — and, two weeks later, did not oppose a travel request filed by Wagner's attorneys.
Wagner requested court approval to travel from Utah "to visit with his mother in Mesa and sister in Scottsdale."
His plan was to depart Salt Lake City Feb. 6 and return today, Feb. 9.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Survivors, families tour Pulse, but questions persist
Laly Santiago-Leon sat on the floor inside the Pulse nightclub, the exact spot where her close cousin died with his partner in one of the nation's worst mass shootings nine years ago. 'It helped with closure,' she said with tears on the ninth anniversary of the massacre. 'But there will never be closure, but an understanding.' Santiago-Leon was among more than 90 survivors and family members who visited the Pulse nightclub this week before it is torn down and replaced with a permanent memorial. Until this week, few people, other than the investigators, had gotten a chance to go inside the shuttered LGBTQ-friendly nightclub where a gunman killed 49 people and wounded 53 others on June 12, 2016. Orlando city officials invited survivors and the families of victims to see the building if they wanted, saying some thought it would help them in their 'journey of grief.' Some visited Pulse on the ninth anniversary of the massacre Thursday but chose not to go inside. Others visited the building looking for answers, as questions still persist — about law enforcement's handling of the case, the club's compliance with building codes and a private foundation's failed fundraising efforts to build a permanent memorial. How onePulse broke Orlando's heart On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, groups arrived via a shuttle bus. Black privacy screens and umbrellas shielded them from onlookers. They got to spend about 30 minutes inside the club and then were driven back to a hotel. The visits wrap up Saturday. Santiago-Leon called it a 'sacred space' that she wanted to touch before the building is demolished. Her cousin whom she considered as a brother — Daniel Wilson-Leon — died there with his partner, Jean Mendez Perez. She was told the couple were found on the dance floor 'in each other's arms.' 'It was hard,' she said about visiting the site. 'All the memories just came through. …But it was something that I wanted to do. … It was a way to say goodbye to that space.' Christine Leinonen walked around the dance floor where her son Christopher 'Drew' Leinonen and 19 others died in a hail of gunfire. 'I needed to see where my son took his last breath,' she said. 'It's as simple as that, and as painful as it is, it's nowhere near as painful as what my son experienced that night.' Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando: Remembering the victims of June 12, 2016 The gunman, Omar Mateen, opened fire during the club's Latin Night. Police shot and killed Mateen, who pledged allegiance to an Islamic State militant group, after a three-hour standoff. FBI investigators deemed the massacre a terrorist attack, the deadliest in the United States since 9/11. At the time, the rampage was the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The death toll was surpassed the following year when a gunman killed 60 people and injured 850 more in Las Vegas. The shuttered Pulse building has been cleaned, and the furniture removed. A makeshift memorial surrounds the former club with pictures of the victims and mourners, flowers and Puerto Rican and American flags. Handwritten messages are scrawled on the Pulse sign. One reads, 'Love wins.' Another says, 'Do Not Forget.' For some, it was too painful to go inside the building. Jorshua Hernandez, 31, was shot twice and still has a bullet lodged inside of him. As the horror unfolded, he waited for three hours on a bathroom floor bleeding from the gunshot wounds, along with other hostages, until police arrived. He said he didn't want to relive that day. 'It's for my mental health,' he said after lifting his T-shirt to show the long scar across his stomach and chest. 'I don't want to see the restroom. I don't want to see the bullet holes. I don't want to walk in and see where I was laying… I want to end this chapter of my life.' Hernandez said he wants new investigations, examining the city's code enforcement at Pulse and whether limited pathways to escape contributed to the death toll. City officials and the club owner said the building complied with code requirements and had sufficient exits. But Hernandez said windows and doors were blocked, preventing people from fleeing. The FBI met with families ahead of the visits, but Leinonen left dissatisfied with the agency, saying it didn't adequately answer questions. She said she's upset the FBI is closing the investigation and questioned whether the agency could have kept a closer eye on Mateen before the shooting. 'The 49 people are directly a result of the FBI failure,' she said. The FBI twice investigated the gunman before the attack but closed the case finding no criminal charges to pursue. Agents first scrutinized Mateen in 2013 after he boasted of connections to terrorists. He was questioned again in 2014 as part of a separate probe into a suicide bomber who attended his mosque and was a casual acquaintance. Mateen was put on a terrorist watchlist during the investigation, but he was removed when no criminal charges were filed as outlined by the agency's rules. In 2018, it was revealed that Mateen's father was a secret FBI informant for over a decade. U.S. Rep. Darren Soto said he'd like to see most of the FBI's files made public when the investigation is closed, with the exception of victim images and top-secret information related to national security. 'This tragedy remains in our hearts and our minds,' said Soto, a Democrat who represents Osceola County. 'We can continue to learn from it.' An FBI spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the status of the investigation and whether the agency's files will eventually be made public. Efforts to build a permanent memorial have been plagued with infighting. The onePulse Foundation, the nonprofit initially leading those efforts, dissolved in late 2023 without achieving its goal of building a remembrance and museum. The group planned a $45 million project that swelled to a price tag of $100 million. One of the group's founders was Barbara Poma, an owner of the Pulse nightclub. The foundation's failure to build a memorial outraged some victim families who questioned its spending decisions and operations. After onePulse collapsed, the city of Orlando purchased the property for $2 million and took over efforts to build a memorial. The city is planning a less ambitious $12 million memorial on the site. The nightclub building is expected to be razed later this year, and construction will start in the summer of 2026. The city hopes to complete the project by 2027. Early plans show a reflection pool where the club's dance floor stood. It also will include a pavilion, tribute wall and a garden. As families and survivors saw the inside of the club this week, a steady stream of people left flowers outside or just stood silently and reflected near the makeshift memorials. Some wiped tears from their eyes. Some wore Orlando United T-shirts. Jakob Strawn, 25, of Orlando, said he visits the Pulse club each year out of respect for the victims, still with a pain in his heart. The shooting happened when he was a high school student in Tampa, hitting him and others in his school's LGBTQ community hard. 'People do still remember,' he said, standing near a wall of flowers and memorials. 'I'm 25. When I look around here, I'm now older than some of these people were when they died. Nine years is not a very long time, and as long as I live in Orlando, I'll keep coming out here every year.'
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Handcuffed Senator Calls BS on ICE Barbie's Lies About Him
Senator Alex Padilla has called out Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's spin about the news conference chaos that landed him in handcuffs. Noem—nicknamed 'ICE Barbie' for her love of cosplaying as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent for immigration raids, among other bizarre publicity stunts—had claimed that Padilla had failed to identify himself and said he 'lunged' at the podium, after which he was forcibly removed and arrested. Not so, Padilla said in an interview with Pod Save America released Friday. 'Anybody who's seen the video knows I repeatedly introduced myself,' Padilla said. 'They knew who I was. I was not lunging at the secretary.' Padilla said that not only had he introduced himself, he was escorted in by FBI and National Guard personnel and was wearing a U.S. Senate polo. Video of the altercation backs up his claims. Padilla, 51, also refuted Noem's claim on Fox News that he 'burst' into the briefing room to interrupt her. Instead, Padilla said that he was escorted into Noem's briefing by an FBI agent and a National Guardsman, and that he initially stood quietly in the back. He claimed that Noem's rhetoric about demonstrations in Los Angeles eventually became 'too much' for him, so he walked forward and began asking a question to call her out. 'They claim that Donald Trump and Secretary Noem are here to 'liberate the people of Los Angeles' from the governor and from the mayor,' he said, referencing Noem's statement from the podium. 'That's when I spoke up, right? I had a question to ask. [I] want to call them out on their misinformation.' That is starkly different from how Noem described the ordeal on Thursday evening. 'This man burst into the room, started lunging towards the podium, interrupting me and elevating his voice, and was stopped,' she told Fox News. 'He did not identify himself and was removed from the room. So, as soon as he identified himself, appropriate actions were taken.' A clip shared by a Padilla staff member showed that 20 seconds passed between him identifying himself as a senator and Noem's security detail ordering him to lie on his stomach so he could be put in handcuffs. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return a request for comment from the Daily Beast regarding Padilla's latest remarks. Padilla alleged that the Trump administration has lied about what happened in the news conference encounter, just as it has inflated the severity of anti-ICE demonstrations in Los Angeles, his hometown. 'I'm not hearing anyone talk about being scared of the protests or the protesters,' he told Pod Save America, 'But I'm hearing, I personally know people, and I have a lot of friends, who are terrified about the impact ICE is having on communities.'
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Trump death threats emerge amid Los Angeles riots; Secret Service aware
The U.S. Secret Service confirmed Thursday that it is "aware" of threatening "Kill Trump" graffiti messages spray-painted around the city of Los Angeles during this week's riots. A spokesman for the protective agency would not confirm whether an investigation is underway but did say that it knows of the violent messaging directed at both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The messaging was seen in the city's downtown area amid civil unrest following Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests of criminal illegal immigrants. "Burn it all down," one said, with "Kill Trump" graffitied below it. Federal Officials Slam Democrats For 'Dangerous' Rhetoric As Ice Agents Face Violent Mobs In La, Nyc "Kill Trump," the other said, with "JD Vance" spray-painted below. Read On The Fox News App Last weekend, clashes between rioters and police erupted in Paramount, California, after ICE conducted arrest operations targeting illegal immigrants with criminal records. The riots quickly spread to Los Angeles, where the Los Angeles Police Department faced down bad actors of their own. Vehicles were set ablaze, property was covered with anti-ICE and anti-Trump graffiti, and stores were broken into and looted during the unrest. Los Angeles Business Owners 'Sick And Tired' Of 'Stupid' Anti-ice Rioters Looting Their Stores Trump activated the California National Guard and U.S. Marines. He has been in a legal battle with Gov. Gavin Newsom over control of the National Guard. Other federal law enforcement agencies have also turned their attention to the city amid the tension. FBI Director Kash Patel warned those who commit violence against police, saying "if you assault a law enforcement officer, you're going to jail—period." "It doesn't matter where you came from, how you got here, or what cause you claim to represent," Patel told Fox News Digital. "If local jurisdictions won't stand behind the men and women who wear the badge, the FBI will." Hundreds have been arrested since the riots began last weekend. The Trump administration, which says it has arrested criminal illegal immigrants who have been convicted of murder, sex crimes against children and battery, is continuing its ICE operations. "Murderers, pedophiles, and drug traffickers. These are the types of criminal illegal aliens that rioters are fighting to protect. How much longer will Governor Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass continue to prioritize these criminal illegal aliens over their own citizens?" Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement on Wednesday. "Secretary Noem has a message to the LA rioters: you will not stop us or slow us down. ICE will continue to enforce the law and arrest criminal illegal aliens," McLaughlin added. Fox News' Alexandra Koch and Cameron Arcand contributed to this report. Original article source: Trump death threats emerge amid Los Angeles riots; Secret Service aware
