Crime Time

Dallas federal judge compares mortgage fraud defendant to drug dealers

A federal judge didn't spare any words last week while sentencing a Dallas businessman to a 22-year prison term for his role in two fraudulent schemes -- one involving mortgages and the other involving golf course property in Arkansas.

During the sentencing hearing, victims made emotional statements about how Charles Cooper Burgess, 52, betrayed their trust as he swindled about $355,000 from them.

Judge Barbara M.G. Lynn was clearly moved by the victims' comments.

She told Burgess, who pleaded guilty to the crimes, that the victims wanted her to “throw the book at him,” and she was eager to do that.

Judge Lynn added that she sees many dangerous people in her court, including drug dealers, but Burgess was in the “top five” of the worst defendants she has sentenced.

Read more here.

-- Bill Miller

Man used dead people's names to buy over Internet

Houston police have arrested a man who is accused of buying products over the Internet by using the names of dead people, including a soldier killed in Iraq.

Robert G. Stringer, 64, was arrested after accepting a pair of frozen desserts that cost $130 from an undercover police officer posing as a delivery man, police said. Stringer paid for the desserts with a counterfeit check with the name of a Wyoming man who is dead, police said. The name on the delivery was that of a U.S. Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2006, police said.

You can read the Houston Chronicle's report here.

-- Lance Murray

Fake officer makes off with $100

A Grapevine mother who believed she was talking to a Tarrant County probation officer had $100 stolen from her Wednesday night when she gave the man the cash to keep her son out of a jail.

The unidentified man told the 59-year-old woman that he had an arrest warrant for her 25-year-old son, but that she could pay $60 and that would take care of the warrant.

Her son was on probation, police said.

The woman told the man she only had a $100 bill. The suspect told the woman that he would take her bill, go down the street to a store, get change and then return to give her change.

Surprise! He never came back.

-- Domingo Ramirez Jr.