Latest news with #MarinCounty
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Yahoo
Suspects impersonating FBI agents in elder scam arrested
MARIN COUNTY, Calif. - Authorities in Marin County have arrested two people whom they said impersonated FBI agents to scam senior citizens out of thousands in cash. The backstory The Marin County Sheriff's Office first learned about the scam on Feb. 18 when an elderly resident told deputies they were the victim of fraud by suspects alleging to be FBI agents. The suspects called the victim and said there was an active fraud investigation into their bank account, and that the only way to protect their money was to withdraw it and deposit it into a "safe federal bank account" through a courier. The victim only became suspicious when the fake FBI agents later tried to convince them to buy gold and give it to a courier. The victim complied. The victim then contacted a real FBI agent, who told them he was being scammed and to call the Marin County Sheriff's Office, their local law enforcement. Dig deeper The victim told deputies the courier who picked up $25,000 in cash was an Asian male, officials said. On May 8, San Francisco man Zian Hu was arrested at a home in Daly City on grand theft, elder abuse, and conspiracy charges. The 38-year-old suspect remains in the Marin County Jail on a $1 million bail, according to jail records. Officials said the bail enhancement was requested and granted because Marin County sheriff detectives believe Hu has a "connection with a larger criminal enterprise," and "access to illegally obtained cash." The second suspect, identified as 24-year-old Balraj Singh, was arrested Monday in San Rafael. Officials alleged the Torrance resident was involved in a similar "cash courier pick-up scam" and went to a home to pick up $50,000 in cash but was stopped by law enforcement before doing so. Singh is facing attempted grand theft charges, attempted elder abuse, and conspiracy. A bail enhancement was requested and granted for similar reasons to Hu's, and Singh was denied bail. He remains in the Marin County Jail, according to jail records. What we don't know Officials said it's unclear at this time if the pair were working together and said that at this time, there is no confirmed link between Hu and Singh. What you can do Officials are reminding residents that there is no legitimate situation where a company or law enforcement would request cash through a courier. "There is no reason to withdraw funds or purchase gift cards and provide them to unknown individuals," the Marin County Sheriff's Office said. "If you receive an email from a company that seems suspicious regarding a transaction, do not use the numbers provided on the email. Look up the company's phone number on their website." Fraud can occur from emails, texts, and phone calls, and if you are unsure if the messages from a business are real, ask a friend, family member, or call your local law enforcement agency, officials remind.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Yahoo
MCSO: SF man stole $25K from elderly Marin County resident in fake FBI agent scheme
(KRON) — A San Francisco man with ties to a large criminal organization helped scam an elderly Marin County resident out of $25,000, the Marin County Sheriff's Office said. In February, someone impersonating the FBI allegedly contacted the elderly resident over the phone, claiming that there was an active investigation involving the victim's bank account. During the conversation, the person allegedly talked the victim into withdrawing the money and having it deposited into a ''safe Federal bank account' via courier,' the Marin County Sheriff's Office said. Tangled bear cub rescued from soccer net at Lake Tahoe After the victim withdrew $25,000, 38-year-old Zian Hu of San Francisco allegedly showed up at the victim's house and collected the money. 'The fake FBI agents then attempted to convince the resident to purchase gold and provide it to a courier,' the MCSO said. 'At that point, the resident became suspicious and contacted a real FBI agent. The real FBI agent informed the resident that they were being scammed and directed them to contact local law enforcement.' The MCSO identified Hu as a suspect in the case and arrested him at a home in Daly City. Hu was booked into the Marin County Jail on felony charges of grand theft, elder abuse and conspiracy. 'Based on Hu's connection with a larger criminal enterprise, Detectives believe Hu has access to large amounts of illegally obtained cash,' the MCSO said. 'A bail enhancement from $50,000 to $1 million was requested and granted.' On May 12, MCSO detectives arrested 24-year-old Balraj Singh of Torrance for allegedly running a similar scam. 'Singh went to a victim's residence to pick up $50,000 in cash but was contacted by law enforcement before completing the theft,' the MCSO said. 'Singh was arrested and booked into the Marin County Jail for attempted grand theft, attempted elder abuse, and conspiracy.' Singh is also allegedly connected to a larger criminal organization and has access to large amounts of illegally obtained cash. Based on these accusations, Singh was denied bail. MCSO detectives are looking for possible accomplices in both cases. There is no confirmed connection between the cases at this time. 'The Marin County Sheriff's Office continues to notice an increase in scams targeting our elderly residents,' the MCSO said. 'While the specifics of each scam often varies, they often involve suspects arranging for couriers to pick up cash and/or gold.' $10M winning Scratcher ticket sold at Concord liquor store There is no legitimate situation where a company or law enforcement agent will request delivery of cash/currency by courier. There is no reason to withdraw funds or purchase gift cards and provide them to unknown individuals. If you receive an email from a company that seems suspicious regarding a transaction, do not use the numbers provided on the email. Look up the company's phone number on their website. Fraudulent/suspicious activity can come from emails, text messages, and phone calls. If you are not sure if the correspondence from a business is legitimate, ask a friend, family member, or call your local law enforcement agency. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CBS News
12-05-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Postal Service to return to town of Bolinas after more than 2 years
For more than two years, residents of the little Marin County town of Bolinas have had to go to great lengths to get their daily mail after the local post office shut down. But now, thanks to a grassroots effort, it looks like the Postal Service is coming back to Bolinas. There are some mailboxes on the street in Bolinas, but most people don't get delivery to their homes. That's why the closure of the local post office was such a big deal. "And as a result, for two years and three months, we've been having to drive to either Olema, which is a 40-minute-plus round-trip drive, or Stinson Beach to pick up our mail," said local activist John Borg. Everyone in town knows exactly how long it's been because of a sign on the main road into town listing "days without a Bolinas post office." It is updated every day by Borg and now reads "807." But now, at the top of the sign is a cause for hope: "We did it, Bolinas! New post office opening by fall 2025." Local activist John Borg updates the sign every day. A deal has been struck to reopen the facility in the same building it occupied for more than 60 years. "It essentially, on paper, is a done deal," Borg said. "But in this day and age, we're not going to spike the ball until the doors open." The problem started as a lease dispute between postal officials and the building owner and things got pretty heated. So, with no other commercial buildings in town that would work, the Postal Service packed up and left. "The Postal Service said, 'We're never moving back to that place.' And the owner said, 'We're never having the Postal Service back,'" Borg said. "And there wasn't really anyone that was in the middle to say, 'Hey, wait a minute. Let's work this out.'" Enter Kent Khtikian, the local retired attorney who became the unofficial negotiator for the town. He got the building owner to agree to take the post office back, but the Postal Service wasn't budging. "The people at the ultimate decision-making level had decided they weren't going to come back here at So Khtikian quietly got to work in a Godfatherly way. "To make a proposal to the post office that they couldn't refuse, right?" he said with a smile. "That's what it was. It was a proposal they couldn't refuse." He negotiated some very favorable lease rates at the same time the community was applying pressure, writing thousands of letters and holding rallies and monthly meetings. Suddenly, the idea of moving back didn't seem so bad after all. "We're a small town with no elected officials," Borg said. "Citizens were able to bring the two parties together. It was not initiated by the Postal Service. Not initiated by the building owner. We brought them together." And, now, in a few months, Bolinas will get its post office back. "We love our post office. It's an important part of our community," Borg said. "So, it's kind of crazy that it's back to where it started but we'll take it." The activists said they are astonished they were able to negotiate the deal in light of all the current upheaval at the Postal Service and the threatened cutbacks by the federal government. It will take some time to rebuild the facility, but as evidence that the town holds no hard feelings, they've already erected a sign thanking USPS for rebuilding their post office. Or is that just another part of an offer that can't be refused?
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
'We Did It, Bolinas!!!' Remote Northern California town gets its post office back
For more than two years, a big wooden sign in west Marin County has displayed a set of hand-painted numbers, dutifully changed each morning. "Days Without a Bolinas Post Office," the sign reads. The number Friday: 806. The sign has been a charming, if sad, reminder to the 1,200 or so residents of Bolinas of the loss of their beloved post office, which was booted from its downtown building amid a spat between the U.S. Postal Service and its longtime landlord. Late last month, though, Bolinas resident John Borg nailed a new message to the top of the sign — the wooden equivalent of a P.S. on a letter. It reads: "We Did It, Bolinas!!! New Post Office Opening by Fall 2025." The post office soon will move back into the unadorned wooden building on Brighton Avenue where it had operated for six decades. Read more: Dear USPS: This California town wants its post office back On April 17, the Postal Service signed a 10-year lease with landlord Gregg Welsh, of Ventura County, his attorney, Patrick Morris, said in an email. For the rural denizens of ZIP Code 94924, the reopening is a major victory — especially given President Trump's musings about privatizing the Postal Service, which lost $9.5 billion in the 2024 fiscal year and is cutting thousands of jobs. "For this to be approved during the massive federal cutbacks of the Trump administration, it's really somewhat astonishing for a lot of us," said Borg, 63, who helped lead a citizens' campaign to reopen the facility. "I think the past two years gave our town a taste of what potential privatization of the Postal Service could mean for other underserved and rural places throughout the country," he said. "That includes reduced retail operations, delays and inconvenience, increased prices ... [and] more focus on bigger communities that can deliver more profit." In Bolinas — a haven for poets, painters, writers and actors — residents got creative in their push to reopen the post office. They picketed with placards reading, "Real Mail Not Email!" They marched in local parades dressed as letter carriers, composed songs and wrote more than 2,000 letters in hand-painted envelopes that they sent to Postal Service officials. And they wrote scores of poems to be read at aloud rallies. Like this one, with emphasis by the author: They've closed the Bolinas Post Office down Forgetting our isolated, far away little town. The elders need their pensions and checks And wonder what on earth will be next. Most people in Bolinas, a town abutting Point Reyes National Seashore, do not get home mail delivery. Residents long relied upon daily trips to the post office for parcels, pension checks and mail-order prescriptions, not to mention a chance to catch up on the local gossip. Since the post office closed, their mail has been delivered to the smaller town of Olema — a 40-minute round-trip drive through the forest on Highway 1 — where the post office has repeatedly closed because of flooding. And sometimes it has been rerouted to nearby Stinson Beach. The relocations have been more than just an inconvenience for the town's elderly residents, many of whom cannot drive. There is little public transit, and 47% of the town's residents are 65 and older. Residents have reported problems getting mail-order prescriptions, lab results, healthcare coverage updates, paychecks and other packages. "It may seem like a little thing, but it really did impact our town greatly," said Borg, 63, a type 1 diabetic who had his insulin delivered through the mail before the closure. For the last two years, he has driven two hours round-trip to San Rafael each month to pick up his medication at a pharmacy. Rep. Jared Huffman, a San Rafael Democrat who lobbied former U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on behalf of Bolinas, called it "great news" that the post office was reopening. But, he said in an interview Friday, the process took too long. "They should not have had to experience all of this and to weather all of the bureaucracy and just bulls— that has prevented them from having a post office," Huffman said. The Bolinas post office shut down on March 3, 2023. Welsh, whose family trust owns the building, acquired it about 50 years ago. The Postal Service already was a tenant. According to a statement provided last year by Welsh through his attorney, Patrick Morris, the Postal Service for years violated its lease, which required it to maintain and repair the flooring at its own expense. The agency discovered asbestos in the floor tiles in 1998, according to the statement, but essentially kept it hidden from the landlord for more than two decades and did not post warning signs. Welsh and the Postal Service fought over who should pay for asbestos abatement and the repair of worn and broken floor tiles. The Postal Service lease, according to Welsh's statement, ended in January 2022, but USPS continued to occupy the building, sans lease, as a 'tenant at sufferance.' In February 2023, Welsh demanded the post office vacate the building within a month. Morris, the attorney, said in an email last week that, although the parties have signed a new lease, the Postal Service has not told Welsh when it expects to move back into the building. Morris said that, although most of the flooring appears to have been replaced and "an asbestos clearance was provided," the Postal Service has not provided his client details about the work. Kristina Uppal, a Bay Area-based spokeswoman for USPS, told The Times in an email that she could not provide details about lease negotiations but that postal services are expected to resume in Bolinas "early fall 2025 after all necessary construction is completed." Read more: How Trump cuts will hit your post office, mail deliveries On March 13, then-Postmaster DeJoy wrote in a letter to several members of Congress that the Postal Service would eliminate 10,000 positions within 30 days through a voluntary early retirement program and that it had eliminated about 30,000 positions since 2021. The letter said he had signed an agreement with the General Services Administration and members of billionaire Elon Musk's White House advisory group, the Department of Government Efficiency, to identify further cost savings. DeJoy resigned March 24. On Friday, the Postal Service's Board of Governors announced its selection of David Steiner, a board member for FedEx, a direct USPS competitor, to be the next postmaster general. Critics, including the National Assn. of Letter Carriers, the union representing some 295,000 mail carriers, said they feared his selection would hasten privatization of the independent agency. Huffman said that, during the fight over the Bolinas post office, he found the Postal Service — a onetime Cabinet-level department that has operated as an independent agency for half a century — to be unresponsive and, at times, "deeply unaccountable." But privatizing it, he said, "would make it even worse." Bolinas had had a post office since 1863. After the post office closed, there was no viable commercial real estate in town to which it could be relocated. And a 1971 water meter moratorium — put into place because Bolinas has a limited water supply — has effectively prohibited new development for the last 54 years. At one point, residents drafted a detailed proposal for a temporary facility — a mobile office trailer on a parking lot next to the fire station — and offered to raise $50,000 for its installation. They sent the plan to a supportive Huffman, who shipped it to DeJoy, to no avail. Kent Khtikian, a 39-year Bolinas resident, said his friends' and neighbors' hopes for a new post office dimmed after Trump returned to the White House in part because they live in ultra-liberal Marin County, where 81% of voters cast their ballots for Kamala Harris in the November presidential election compared with 17% who chose Trump. "It is certainly a relief to have the post office back," said Khtikian, a retired attorney who helped with the citizens' campaign. "While there are certainly much bigger problems in the world, it's an example of what can be done by people not giving up and not being discouraged and believing in their ability to be effective." Enzo Resta, a longtime resident and founder of the Bolinas Film Festival, compared the Bolinas post office to an Italian piazza — a place of serendipitous run-ins and "the poetry of community engagement." "It's quite beautiful to see all walks of life, all demographics, all age groups, all personal interests, all cultural interests be unified in coming together to say: This part of our community matters," Resta said. As of Friday, there's a new hand-painted sign in town. Affixed to the exterior wall of the still-closed post office, it reads: "Coming Fall 2025 Bolinas Post Office 94924. Hooray!" Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
CBS News
07-05-2025
- General
- CBS News
Crews remove 4,000 pounds of debris in cleanup of Richardson Bay
Shopping carts, an electric foot massager, a PlayStation, several outboard engines, and a floor lamp are among the many items found amid two tons of marine debris pulled last week from Richardson Bay in southern Marin County. "This is just the tip of the iceberg," says Keith Merkel, principal ecologist leading the project with the Richardson Bay Regional Agency, a local government agency dedicated to maintaining and improving Richardson Bay. "We have had divers working in the water here for years as part of our eelgrass restoration efforts, and we've seen that the Bay floor is littered in this kind of debris." The cleanup included 300 acres of the 700-acre Richardson Bay Eelgrass Protection Zone, which the RBRA designated in October. Eelgrass supports migratory fish, reduces erosion caused by storms, and sequesters carbon. It is a crucial part of the food chain for harbor porpoises and sea lions. In 2022, the RBRA estimated that there were more than 100 vessels in the Eelgrass Protection Zone. When anchors, chains, and other ground tackle scrape along the bottom of the Bay, they essentially act as a lawn mower for water plants, creating "crop circles" or barren areas where no eelgrass can grow, according to a statement from the RBRA. By February 2023, the Marin Housing Authority had unanimously approved a voucher program to relocate residents living in boats on Richardson Bay into long-term housing on the mainland. RBRA had a mandate from the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission to relocate all of the vessels off the anchorage by Oct. 15, 2026. Plans also included a buy-back program, offering up to $5,200 to people willing to remove or cede their vessels. Items pulled from Richardson Bay in Marin County during a cleanup. Officials said two tons of marine debris was recovered. Richardson Bay Regional Agency / Bay City News Service Will Reisman, spokesperson for the RBRA, said Tuesday that 13 boats remain on the Bay, but occupants from eight of those will soon be moved into housing by the end of the summer through the voucher program. Last week's cleanup was funded by a $2.8 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency aimed at restoring at least 15 acres of eelgrass over four years. It was awarded to the RBRA and its partners at San Francisco State University and Audubon California. According to Reisman, the debris pulled up last week was brought to an Army Corps of Engineers debris yard, with some items being recycled. Nearly all metals removed from the Bay are recycled, he said. "We are not accusing anyone of deliberately discarding items overboard," said RBRA executive director Brad Gross. "That said, the type and amount of debris littering the Bay floor and preventing the healthy recovery of eelgrass reinforces the fact that an environmentally sensitive area like Richardson Bay is no place for mariners to permanently reside on vessels at anchor." Surf scoters, Lesser and Greater Scaup, Western and Horned Grebes, double-crested cormorants and other birds will soon be the visible occupants of the 5-foot shallow bay, as they stop each year to forage and fuel up during their long migration north.
