An Alabama woman who staged her own kidnapping in a bizarre case that captured national attention last summer pleaded guilty Thursday to charges of filing a false police report, her attorney said.

The woman, Carlee Russell, 26, was given two six-month suspended prison sentences, allowing her to avoid time behind bars if she successfully completes a 12-month probation period and 100 hours of community service. She must also pay $17,000 in restitution, her attorney, Emory Anthony, said in a telephone interview.

Ms. Russell’s name and photo dominated the news cycle in mid-2023 after she made a strange 911 call on July 13, reporting she had seen a stranded toddler on the side of a road in the city of Hoover, Ala. Shortly afterwards, she told a family member about the toddler on another call before that person heard Ms Russell screaming.

That was the last anyone heard from her before she was reported missing, prompting a statewide search. Two days after her disappearance, she showed up at her family’s home on foot and told investigators an elaborate story about her kidnapping and a harrowing escape through the woods.

But a police investigation soon poked holes in her account, turning up suspicious online searches that suggested she had planned her disappearance.

Before the end of that month, she confessed in a letter to the police, sent through her lawyer, Mr Anthony, that the whole ordeal was a lie perpetrated solely by herself. There was no child and there was no kidnapping.

The confession confused authorities involved in the search for Ms. Russell.

Hoover Police Chief Nicholas Derzis said Ms. Russell had wasted crucial law enforcement resources.

But her attorney said the sentence, a typical probation sentence for first-time offenders, was a fair outcome.

“I’m glad the judge didn’t try to make an example of her,” Mr Anthony said.

The Alabama attorney general’s office, which prosecuted the case, and other officials had hoped for a stiffer sentence.

“We are disappointed, but not surprised, that Ms. Russell did not receive the requested prison sentence for her crimes,” Katherine Robertson, the attorney general’s lead attorney, said in a statement.

Ms. Robertson added that the punishment imposed under current law is weak, and she expressed support for a proposed state law that would make falsely reporting an imminent danger to police a misdemeanor.

In Circuit Court in Jefferson County, Alabama, Judge David Carpenter told Ms. Russell on Thursday that putting her behind bars would be a waste of resources.

“While we are angry about what you did, we are not going to treat you any differently than any other person accused of crimes,” the judge said. WSFA 12, a local television station.

Ms. Russell, for her part, apologized to the community and law enforcement, attributing her mistake to poor mental health, the station reported.

“I can say with all my heart that I never had any malicious intent to hurt anyone,” she said in a statement.

Was Viktor Zelinger a gangster or a desperate refugee?

The answer, after a hearing Thursday in federal court in Brooklyn, appeared to be that he was both.

Mr Zelinger, 45, pleaded guilty to extortion, admitting that he had helped run an illegal gambling club and threatened debtors to make them pay.

When he was arrested in Switzerland in 2022, prosecutors said he led a ruthless gang linked to an Eastern European mafia group known as Thieves in Law that wreaked havoc in the Brighton Beach, Sheepshead Bay neighborhoods and Coney Island in Brooklyn.

The string of charges against him included directing an arson attack in May 2016 at a residential building on Voorhies Avenue where a high-stakes poker game was being held. The fire nearly killed two teenagers and injured a firefighter, prosecutors said.

The game competed with his own illegal gambling spot on Coney Island Avenue, where players received free alcohol, cocaine and massages, according to court documents. Months later, as investigators closed in, Mr. Zelinger left the country for good.

A grand jury indictment unsealed in October included charges against Mr. Zelinger and eight others; two other suspects were later added to the case. All were convicted or pleaded guilty to racketeering and related charges.

But Mr. Zelinger’s lawyer, Susan Kellman, painted a dramatically different story about his life, arguing that he was a devoted father whose life was turned upside down by illness and war.

In a motion filed last year, she wrote that after returning to his native Ukraine in 2016, he married a woman who was diagnosed with a brain tumor after the birth of the last of their three children.

When war broke out, it became impossible to find treatment and she died of her illness, Ms. Kellman wrote. Mr. Zelinger was subsequently displaced by fighting alongside his children, who were then ages 6, 4 and 2. The family lived in their car and traveled at night to avoid the fighting, eventually fleeing to Slovenia before heading to Switzerland, she wrote.

“If he is the boss or has ties to the Eastern European mafia, whatever that may be, then it would have seemed to me that he would have had a much easier time living abroad for his life and that of his family. fluid,” Ms. Kellman said. said during a hearing last year.

“But there was no one to help him.”

Once they settled in Switzerland, Mr. Zelinger received a phone call telling him to report to a local police station to register the children at school, according to his report. But it was a trap. When he arrived, he was arrested and the children were placed in an orphanage. But “miraculously,” in Ms. Kellman’s words, they were saved by the chief rabbi of Zurich, who arranged for them to be sent to their grandmother in Brooklyn.

Mr. Zelinger’s family was not present at Thursday’s hearing, which lasted 90 minutes as Judge Vera M. Scanlon dissected the complicated plea deal. Mr. Zelinger pleaded guilty to extortion, but admitted to having played a role in other crimes, allowing them to be taken into account in the judge’s sentencing decision. He wore prison khakis and a dark, closely cropped beard during the hearing and was assisted by a Russian interpreter.

The maximum sentence on the charges under federal sentencing guidelines would be 20 years. But the prosecutor in the case, Victor Zapana of the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, said Thursday that he and the defense had agreed to recommend a sentence of five to six years. That hearing is scheduled for July 18 before Judge Brian M. Cogan.

Mr. Zelinger, who moved to Brooklyn in 2001 and later became a citizen, will likely lose his U.S. citizenship and be deported once his sentence is completed.

One of two men accused of shooting 3,600 birds, including bald and golden eagles, in Montana in an illegal “killing spree” pleaded guilty to participating in a scheme to sell the dead birds on the black market, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

In a plea deal, Travis John Branson, 48, of Washington state, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, two counts of illegally trafficking bald and golden eagles, and one count of violating the Lacey Act, a federal law that regulates the sale of illegally acquired wildlife, the United States Attorney for the District of Montana said.

Mr. Branson faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the conspiracy and Lacey Act charges, prosecutors said.

In December, a grand jury indicted Mr. Branson and his co-defendant Simon Paul, 42, of Montana, on 15 counts, most of them for illegally trading in eagles. Prosecutors agreed to drop 11 of those charges against Mr. Branson, according to the plea deal.

Mr. Paul, who failed to appear at his arraignment, is still on the run, according to prosecutors. His sentencing will take place on July 31 in U.S. District Court in Montana, prosecutors said.

From January 2015 to March 2021, the two men routinely met on the prairies of the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana to hunt eagles that they would later sell, prosecutors said. Mr. Branson would travel from Washington state to meet Mr. Paul on the reservation, where he lived, prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, the men sold the eagles’ wings and tails and, on one occasion, a whole eagle. Prosecutors did not say how much money the men made from the sale, noting only that the bird parts were sold for “significant amounts of money.”

At one point, they devised a hunting strategy that involved putting out a deer carcass to attract the birds, according to the indictment, which also cited text messages between Mr. Branson and buyers.

In one message, Mr. Branson told a buyer he was “on a killing spree” to stock up on eagle tail feathers. In another, he wrote that he was “committing crimes,” according to the complaint.

He also appeared to acknowledge in a separate message that shipping the birds internationally was illegal, prosecutors said.

Mr. Branson’s public defender, Andrew J. Nelson, could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday evening. Messages left at a phone number and sent to an email address listed for Mr. Branson were immediately returned.

A lawyer listed in Mr. Paul’s lawsuits declined to comment.

The killing of bald eagles was seen as particularly egregious in a country where the bird is the national symbol and was once considered an endangered species.

It was unclear how many of the 3,600 bird complainants said the men killed were eagles. Clair J. Howard, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice, declined to comment.

In January 2013, a Montana cattle rancher returned to the United States from Kyrgyzstan to hide tissue from a Marco Polo argali sheep, one of the largest in the world, federal prosecutors said.

The worker took the tissue to Arthur Schubarth, 80, a farmer from Vaughn, Mont., who planned to use it to create a giant sheep hybrid that he could sell to shooting sanctuaries, according to prosecutors. They said Schubarth illegally used tissue from the animal, which is banned in Montana, to create the species for nearly a decade until 2021 — including in 2019, when he bought the testicles of a bighorn sheep to extract sperm.

His scheme was discovered by authorities after they learned he was using forged veterinary inspection certificates to transport sheep in and out of Montana, prosecutors said.

On Tuesday, Mr. Schubarth pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Montana to two wildlife crimes: conspiracy to violate the Lacey Act and substantive violation of the Lacey Act, which prohibits the trade in illegally captured wildlife, it said Ministry of Justice in one rack on Tuesday.

It was unclear exactly how authorities discovered Mr. Schubarth’s plot. The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks declined to comment, saying the investigation was still active. In a statement Tuesday, Ron Howell, the department’s chief enforcement officer, described the case as “complex.”

“The type of crime we have uncovered here could threaten the integrity of our wildlife in Montana,” Mr. Howell said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which also investigated the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

As part of the plan to create a giant sheep hybrid, an unknown livestock farmer returned to the United States from Kyrgyzstan in 2013 with tissue from the Marco Polo argali sheep, which was undeclared upon arrival, prosecutors said. The male Marco Polo argali sheep, native to the mountainous regions of Central Asia, can weigh more than 300 pounds and have horns that can be more than five feet wide, the Justice Department said.

Argali sheep are protected internationally, as well as in the United States, by the Endangered Species Act. According to the Department of Justice, they are banned in Montana to protect native sheep from disease and hybridization.

According to court documents, Mr. Schubarth contracted a laboratory in October 2015 to create cloned embryos using tissue from the Marco Polo argali sheep. About a year later, in November 2016, Mr. Schubarth received 165 cloned embryos, which he then implanted in ewes on his sprawling 215-acre farm, according to court documents.

In May 2017, one purely genetically male Marco Polo argali sheep was born, and Mr. Schubarth named it Montana Mountain King, prosecutors said. The following year, Mr. Schubarth began harvesting semen from Montana Mountain King, and was soon shipping straws of his semen to buyers across the country, court documents show.

Mr. Schubarth then teamed up with at least five other people across the country to try to create an even larger sheep hybrid — including in 2019, when he purchased the testicles of a bighorn sheep, according to prosecutors.

According to court documents, in July 2020, Mr. Schubarth agreed to sell 11 descendants of the Montana Mountain King to someone in Texas for $13,200. Mr. Schubarth and his co-conspirators were able to transport offspring of the Montana Mountain King across the country using forged veterinary inspection certificates that claimed the offspring were a legally permitted species, prosecutors said.

The co-conspirators who worked with Mr. Schubarth were not identified by prosecutors or in court documents. It was unclear Thursday whether they would also be charged.

Mr. Schubarth, who is expected to be sentenced on July 11, faces up to five years in prison for each offense, along with a fine of up to $250,000 and three years of supervised release, the Justice Department said.

A lawyer for Mr. Schubarth did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Todd Kim, assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, said in a statement Tuesday that Schubarth participated in a plot that could have harmed native wildlife in the United States.

“This was a bold plan to create huge hybrid sheep species that could be sold and hunted as trophies,” he said.

Actor Pierce Brosnan pleaded guilty Thursday to hiking in a restricted thermal area of ​​Yellowstone National Park in November and was ordered to pay a total of $1,500, according to U.S. District Court records in Wyoming.

As part of a plea deal, Mr. Brosnan, 70, who came to court by telephone and overturned a not-guilty plea he entered in January, was ordered to pay a $500 fine and donate $1,000 to Yellowstone Forever. , a nonprofit partner of the park, according to court documents.

Under the deal, another charge Mr. Brosnan faced, of violating closures and usage limits, was dismissed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephanie A. Hambrick, court records show.

Karl Knuchel, a lawyer for Mr. Brosnan, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.

Court documents do not detail exactly how Mr. Brosnan violated park rules when he visited Yellowstone on Nov. 1. The park, known for its hot springs and scenic views, requires visitors to stay on boardwalks or trails in thermal areas.

Water from the hot springs can cause severe or even fatal burns, and there is boiling water beneath the thin, fragile crust surrounding the springs. according to the park. More than 20 people have died from burns after entering or falling into Yellowstone hot springs, according to the park.

Mr. Brosnan has been cast to play Sheriff Gabriel Dove in “The Unholy Trinity,” a film still in production whose filming locations include Yellowstone Ranch in Livingston, Mont., according to IMDb. The film is about a man facing execution who orders his estranged son to kill the man who accused him of a crime he did not commit.

A jury found James Crumbley guilty of involuntary manslaughter late Thursday after about 11 hours of deliberation, holding him partly responsible for failing to prevent his son from carrying out Michigan’s deadliest school shooting.

Mr. Crumbley’s wife, Jennifer Crumbley, was convicted of identical charges last month in the same courtroom in Pontiac, Michigan, after a jury deliberated for about the same amount of time. The trials became a lightning rod for issues of parental responsibility at a time of high-profile gun violence by minors.

Each defendant’s parenting skills were closely monitored, as was the shooter’s access to a gun his father had purchased. Now two separate juries have taken the unusual step of holding a parent criminally responsible for a child’s heinous crimes.

Oakland County prosecutors charged the Crumbleys three days after the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting at Oxford High School, where their son, Ethan, who was 15 at the time, killed 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin; Tate Myre, 16; Justin Shilling, 17; and Hana St. Juliana, 14, and injured seven others.

“James Crumbley had the easiest and most striking opportunities to prevent the deaths of these four students,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said in his closing argument Wednesday. “And he did nothing.”

Mariell Lehman, Mr Crumbley’s lawyer, urged the jury to take into account how much Mr Crumbley could not have known until it was too late. “You have heard no testimony, and you have seen no evidence, that James had any knowledge that his son was a danger to anyone,” she said.

Mr Crumbley has been in prison since December 2021. He and his wife requested separate trials and unlike them, Mr. Crumbley chose not to testify in his own defense. Both will be convicted later and face up to 15 years in prison.

Their prosecution was seen as part of a national effort to hold some parents responsible for enabling deadly violence by their children. In recent months, parents in other states have pleaded guilty to charges of reckless endangerment or neglect after their children injured or killed others with weapons.

The witness lists in the two Crumbley trials were similar, but there were a few key differences in the evidence presented. During Ms. Crumbley’s trial, lawyers delved into her communications with her son, including months of text messages, as prosecutors tried to portray her as a distant and neglectful mother.

But in Mr. Crumbley’s case, testimony focused less on his parenting and more on the Sig Sauer pistol that prosecutors say he bought his son as an early Christmas present four days before the shooting.

Law enforcement officers who searched the Crumbleys’ home shortly after the attack testified this week that they found the gun storage case open on the parents’ bed, along with an empty box of ammunition. They said there was no indication the case had been closed.

In her closing argument Wednesday, Ms. Lehman said that Mr. Crumbley did not know before the shooting whether his son was aware of the gun’s hiding place. During her rebuttal, Ms. McDonald put on a pair of gloves, picked up the murder weapon and a cable lock and demonstrated for the jury that the gun could be locked in seconds.

Prosecutors also walked the jury through several entries in the shooter’s diary, including one that appeared to have been written the day before the shooting. “I have access to the weapon and ammunition,” the entry said. “I am now fully committed to this.”

It was not clear whether either of the shooter’s parents had seen the journal entries before the shooting. But they were called to school on the morning of November 30 after a teacher saw their son making violent drawings. Those drawings included an object resembling the gun Mr Crumbley had bought, and phrases such as ‘help me’ and ‘blood everywhere’.

Neither the Crumbleys nor school officials searched the teen’s backpack, which contained the gun.

Mr Crumbley, dressed in a gray suit and blue tie, appeared somber and shook his head slightly on Thursday evening as the jury’s four guilty verdicts – one for each charge of involuntary manslaughter – were announced. Sheriff’s Department officers then handcuffed him and led him out of the courtroom.

Prosecutors called 15 witnesses in Mr. Crumbley’s trial, including people who saw the shooting and law enforcement officers who investigated it. The defense called only one witness: Karen Crumbley, the defendant’s sister. She said she had never seen a reason to be overly concerned about her cousin until the shooting.

According to his lawyer, neither did Mr. Crumbley.

“He didn’t know,” Ms. Lehman told the jury. “He didn’t know what was going on with his son. He didn’t know what his son was planning to do.”

Ethan Crumbley pleaded guilty to 24 charges stemming from the shooting, including the first-degree murder of his four classmates. He was sentenced last year to life in prison without the possibility of parole and has not testified in any of the trials against his parents.