Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

August 16, 2012

Dispatches

From staff and news services

PORTLAND

New York man gets a year in prison for credit-card fraud

A New York man was sentenced in federal court Wednesday to a year in prison for conspiracy to commit credit-card fraud.

Kenny Deras, 25, of Bronx, N.Y., also was ordered to pay $101,610.29 in restitution and to three years of supervised release.

Deras, who pleaded guilty in April, had traveled with two others from New York to New Hampshire and Maine in 2011. They used counterfeit American Express cards to buy gift cards and other merchandise at a number of Walmart stores, according to a court document filed by the government. One of the stores was in Biddeford.

The two other defendants, Shaheem Shaw and Mark Daniel, already have been sentenced to seven months and 15 months, respectively. 

Final project on Jordan's Meats site set to begin in fall

Opechee Construction expects to break ground this fall on an estimated $18 million mixed-use development on Fore Street, according to the company's president.

Mark Woglom, president of the New Hampshire-based company, said he expects construction to begin in late October on the development bordered by Fore, India and Middle streets.

The project, with 180,000 square feet of office, residential and retail space, will take about 16 months, he said.

The Planning Board voted 4-0 Tuesday night to approve the project, said Barbara Barhydt, the city's development review manager.

Woglom said tenants already have committed to the project, but he would not say who or what types of businesses they were.

The project, which received a $650,000 tax break to help pay for utility work, will complete the redevelopment of the former Jordan's Meats site.

SACO

Man sentenced for tricking elderly woman out of $90K

A Saco man was sentenced to more than five years in prison for bilking an elderly York woman out of more than $90,000 for unneeded or substandard home improvement jobs and yard work, police said.

Billy Jack Adams, 34, was arrested Feb. 7 after police, working with the victim's family and a local bank, determined much of the work done at the woman's house was unnecessary or substandard, police Sgt. Thomas Cryan said in a press release. Adams also was convicted of forging a check that had been made payable to someone else so that he could get the money.

Adams also is being investigated for similar behavior in Haverhill, Mass., Cryan said.

Adams was sentenced Aug. 9 to six years on the felony theft charge and five years on the forgery charge, both sentences running concurrently, Cryan said.

LISBON

$10,000 reward offered for information on hit-and-run

Friends and relatives of a Lisbon man left bleeding and unresponsive on the side of the road by a hit-and-run driver have raised a $10,000 reward for information that leads to a conviction.

Reney Henry, an electrician at Bath Iron Works, was riding his bicycle on Route 136 last September when he was hit from behind. He was thrown from his bicycle and landed on his head.

Jasmin Turgeon, a Lisbon postal carrier, saw what happened and stopped. She told the Sun Journal that Henry, 52, flipped in the air. Turgeon described the hit-and-run car as a dark gray or silver sedan with tinted windows.

Henry suffered bleeding in his brain, a concussion and damage to his eye socket. He was hospitalized for a week.

BANGOR

'Prolific' northern Maine drug smuggler sentenced

A man described by prosecutors "as one of the most prolific drug smugglers in Maine" has been sentenced to eight years in federal prison on drug and money laundering charges.

Paul Corbin of the northern Maine community of St. David also was sentenced Tuesday in federal court in Bangor to four years of probation and ordered to forfeit more than $100,000 in cash along with guns and heavy equipment.

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