Click here for updates on this story

BALTIMORE COUNTY, Maryland (WJZ) — A Baltimore County couple was sentenced to prison time after being convicted of an insurance fraud and money laundering scheme that spanned 25 years, according to the Department of Justice.

Court documents show that James and Maureen Wilson, of Owings Mills, conspired to defraud insurance companies by opening more than 40 life insurance policies.

James was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and Maureen was sentenced to four years.

Maryland couple convicted of fraud

According to court documents, the Wilsons got more than $20 million from their scheme, which started in 1996 and continued through 2021. The Wilsons also defraudied several investors to get the money, which Maureen used to pay the premiums of the fraudulent policies.

To hide their scheme, the couple transferred the money through multiple bank accounts and trusts, according to court documents. The Wilsons also filed tax returns in 2018 and 2019, in which they failed to report the nearly $5.7 million and $2 million that they respectively made.

A judge ordered both James and Maureen Wilson to serve three years of probation following their prison sentences. They were also ordered to pay $16 million in restitution to the victims of their scheme and $2.7 million to the U.S.

The couple must also forfeit nearly $14.8 million.

Maryland fraud schemes

There have been several fraud schemes in Maryland recently, including one that targeted an 87-year-old woman and led to the arrest of two New York men. The elder fraud case in Harford County prompted a warning from law enforcement.

In June, AARP, Maryland’s Department of Aging and the Baltimore FBI launched a campaign to combat elder fraud.

According to the FBI, more than 3,200 Marylanders over 60 years old lost $80 million in scams in 2024. The FBI also said elder fraud was up 14% in 2023.

In another fraud case, four people, including three from New York and one from New Jersey, were charged for organizing fake marriages in a visa fraud scheme.

The group paired U.S. citizens with migrants seeking permanent residency.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

CNN

By Eric Bradner, CNN

(CNN) — Former Vice President Mike Pence says he thinks isolationists “may have lost some of their footing” in President Donald Trump’s administration, as he praised Trump’s tougher talk toward Russia’s Vladimir Putin and his decision to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities.

Pence, since his split with Trump after the 2020 election, has often criticized the president’s approach to Russia and his tepid support for Ukraine.

But he told CNN’s Kate Bolduan in an interview Thursday he hopes Trump is “starting to recognize” that Putin is not interested in a negotiated end to the war he started in Ukraine. And he praised Trump’s decision this week to reverse his administration’s pause on some weapons shipments to Ukraine, including air defense missiles.

“While I had concerns and expressed them in those first 100 days about the president’s kind of ongoing hope and desire for a negotiated settlement, I welcome his decisions this week and his rhetoric,” he said.

Pence said Trump’s sharper criticism of Putin and support for Ukraine could be the result of Trump tuning out those advocating isolationist policies after some criticized the United States’ direct military involvement in Israel’s efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“I think what may have changed is that some of the isolationist voices in and around this administration have recently condemned the president’s correct and courageous decision to launch a military assault against Iran,” Pence said. “I think they may have lost some of their footing with the president.”

Pence said that Trump “is not an isolationist.”

“His bias is to lead,” he said. “I think he understands that America is the leader of the free world.”

He also called on Trump to provide Ukraine with “offensive capability” in addition to air defense missiles and he urged Senate Majority Leader John Thune to bring a bipartisan Russia sanctions bill to the floor for a vote. Thune said Wednesday that the Senate could take up the legislation before the August recess..

GOP lawmakers are seeking not to get ahead of the White House on the measure, but Pence said he “spoke Trump fluently for four years” and noted that Trump said Tuesday he is “looking very strongly” at the bill. He suggested it could strengthen Trump’s hand against Putin.

“When I saw the other day that he said he’s strongly looking at it, I know what that means,” Pence said. “My hope is that the president will understand the value of the Senate acting, and they can put that on his desk.”

FEMA, tariffs, midterm elections

Pence broke with Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, who on Wednesday — in the wake of the disastrous flooding in Texas — reiterated her desire to “eliminate” the Federal Emergency Management Agency and remake the way it operates.

Noem, at a meeting of the FEMA Review Council, said disaster response should be led by state and local governments, rather than the federal agency.

“It has been slow to respond at the federal level,” said Noem, a former South Dakota governor. “It’s even been slower to get the resources to Americans in crisis, and that is why this entire agency needs to be eliminated as it exists today and remade into a responsive agency.”

Pence, who was governor of Indiana prior to serving as vice president alongside Trump for four years, said he takes Noem’s point that states play the primary role in disaster response. But he also said FEMA provides a “backstop of expertise and personnel and the ability to be on the ground, getting resources directly to the American people to help rebuild their lives.”

“I think making sure that the federal government is there, speeding those resources to hurting Americans, is important and should be continued,” Pence said.

The former vice president, a long-time critic of tariffs, also urged Congress to step in and assert its authority as Trump tacks steep fees on most goods entering the United States.

“I think it’s absolutely important that the Congress essentially reclaim, in the spirit of the separation of powers, its control over setting industrial policy, setting tax policy, setting tariff policy,” he said.

Pence paired his call for Congress to check the president on tariffs with praise for the far-reaching policy law Trump signed last week to make permanent the 2017 tax cuts, slash spending and impose work requirements on Medicaid and more.

As Democrats prepare to highlight cuts to Medicaid entering the 2026 midterm elections, Pence said he believes if Congress steps in on tariff policy, the GOP can also sell the new law to voters.

“I think that, combined with telling the story about how they extended those tax cuts, defunded Planned Parenthood, reformed Medicaid, rebuilt our military, is a winning message in 2026 and beyond,” he said.

The-CNN-Wire

™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

A top Ukrainian intelligence officer has been shot dead. Picture: Getty

By Danielle Desouza

A top Ukrainian intelligence officer has been shot dead in the Holosiivskyi district of Kyiv, in broad daylight.

Listen to this article Loading audio…

Ivan Voronich was part of the Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) and is thought to have been involved with missions aimed at embarrassing Vladimir Putin.

In a video from Ukraiinska Pravda, an assailant can be seen shooting Voronich several times before running away.

A post from Telegram channel New Military Columnist revealed: “The head of one of the departments of the Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) Special Operations Centre, Colonel Ivan Voronich, was killed in Kyiv. An unknown person fired from a pistol with a silencer, after which he disappeared.”

Police in the country said law enforcement officers discovered the body of a person with a fatal gunshot wound.

Read more: Children queuing for nutritional supplements killed in Israeli strike in Gaza, hospital says

Read more: Donald Trump compliments Liberian President’s ‘beautiful’ English – the country’s official language

Ukrainian intelligence officer accused of sabotage attacks in Russia shot dead in Kyiv

“The SBU and the National Police are taking measures to establish the circumstances of the crime and bring perpetrators to justice,” the SBU’s press service said.

The Kyiv Police said in a statement: “Police officers are establishing the circumstances of the shooting in the Holosiivskyi district of the capital.

“Arriving at the call, law enforcement officers discovered the body of a man with a gunshot wound.

Currently, investigative and operational teams from the district and main police departments, criminal investigation officers, dog handlers, and other services are working at the scene. All circumstances of the incident are being established.”

The shooting comes after several high-profile Russian officials have been killed, including Russian major general Mikhail Yevgenyevich Gudkov who was killed in a Ukrainian precision strike in July.

3 hours ago Share Save Aleks Phillips BBC News Share Save

Reuters CCTV footage shows the SBU officer heading outside shortly after 09:00 local time

A senior Ukrainian intelligence officer has been gunned down in broad daylight in Kyiv, officials have said. The agent of the domestic Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) was shot several times in a car park after being approached by an unidentified assailant who then fled the scene, footage circulated on social media shows. The spy agency did not identify the victim, though Ukrainian media outlets have named him as Colonel Ivan Voronych. The SBU is primarily concerned with internal security and counter-intelligence, akin to the UK’s MI5. But since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, it has also played a prominent role in assassinations and sabotage attacks deep inside Russia.

Sources within Ukraine’s security services have previously told the media – including the BBC – that they were behind the killing of the high-ranking Russian Gen Igor Kirillov in December 2024. Earlier this year, Gen Yaroslav Moskalik was killed in a car bomb attack in Moscow – an incident the Kremlin blamed on Kyiv. Ukraine’s security services have never officially admitted responsibility for the deaths. Neither the SBU nor the Kyiv police gave a possible motive for the shooting. The Ukrainian capital’s police force said in a statement that officers arrived at the scene to find a man’s body with a gunshot wound. It said officers were working to identify the assailant and that “measures are being taken to detain him”. The SBU said it was taking “a comprehensive set of measures to clarify all the circumstances of the crime and bring the perpetrators to justice”. CCTV footage – which has been verified by the news agency Reuters – shows a man in jeans and a dark T-shirt exiting a building in the southern Holosiivskyi district shortly after 09:00 local time (06:00 GMT) on Thursday. As he walks to a nearby car while holding a plastic bag and a holdall, another man can be seen running towards him.

Reuters The unidentified assailant can be seen running towards the victim before shooting him several times

(CNN) — An Israeli strike killed 15 people, including women and children, gathered outside a health center in the central Gazan city of Deir Al Balah on Thursday, according to medical staff and officials in the enclave.

The Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza said eight of those killed in the strike were children, with the youngest two years old, and the oldest aged 14. It said three women and four men were also killed.

In footage obtained by CNN, several children were seen lying motionless and others appeared injured amid the sound of screams. Another video showed several children, bloodied and lying motionless, being transported on a cart.

The Israeli military said it was targeting a Hamas militant who took part in the group’s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel.

“The (Israel Defense Forces) is aware of reports regarding a number of injured individuals in the area. The incident is under review. The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and operates to minimize harm as much as possible,” the Israeli military said in a statement to CNN.

The director general of Gaza’s health ministry said the strike hit near a medical center dispensing children’s formula to women.

Project HOPE, an American aid organization, said the strike occurred “directly in front” of one of its health clinics, where people were waiting to receive treatment for “malnutrition, infections, chronic illnesses, and more.”

The organization’s CEO Rabih Torbay told CNN the location of the clinic had been shared with the Israeli military. “It was a deconflicted site,” Torbay said.

“Project HOPE’s health clinics are a place of refuge in Gaza where people bring their small children, women access pregnancy and postpartum care, people receive treatment for malnutrition, and more,” he said in a statement.

“Yet, this morning, innocent families were mercilessly attacked as they stood in line waiting for the doors to open,” he continued. “Horrified and heartbroken cannot properly communicate how we feel anymore.”

Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, MSF’s deputy medical coordinator for Palestine, said this is not the first time health facilities have been targeted directly or indirectly. Speaking to CNN from Al Mawasi in southern Gaza, Mughaisib stressed that there has been no improvement in access to aid and medicine despite Israel’s partial lifting of the blockade on Gaza.

“Every day there is hundreds of people killed and injured when they are going (to the aid distribution points) to pick their food kits or parcels,” he said adding, “In the market you don’t find food. I mean, the bakeries are closed.”

Mughaisib told CNN Gaza’s population is “totally exhausted, broken, tired,” saying “hope is really a fragile word in Gaza.”

Israel has intensified its strikes and expanded a ground operation on parts of Gaza as negotiators in Doha continue talks to release hostages, establish a temporary truce and allow the entry of more humanitarian aid to the devastated strip.

Almost 3,000 Palestinians were killed over the past month in Gaza, according to the enclave’s health ministry.

Meanwhile, Hamas have continued conducting guerilla-style attacks against the Israeli military, killing more than 20 soldiers in different parts of the strip over the same period, including five soldiers killed this week in the northern city of Beit Hanoun.

On Thursday, a 20-year-old Israeli man was killed in an attack at the Gush Etzion junction south of Jerusalem, according to the Israeli military and medical services.

The IDF said two Palestinian “terrorists” had “conducted a combined shooting and stabbing attack” before being “eliminated.” Gush Etzion is a settlement cluster in the occupied West Bank.

A security source later told CNN that the two attackers were Palestinian Authority policemen with no prior records in Israel or prior arrests. CNN has reached out to the Palestinian Authority for comment.

The-CNN-Wire

™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.