Shooting in front of GOP offices in Richmond, $32 million 'ghost student' fraud

All right, welcome into the DMV zone. I'm Marina Morocco. Let's get you behind the scenes of everything we're working on on this Friday. A busy day in the Fox 5 newsroom as we start with some breaking news out of Prince George's County. A man found dead by maintenance workers at a neighborhood park near Langley Park McCormick Elementary School in Hyattsville. Police say numerous shell casings discovered surrounding the victim who they have pronounced dead at that scene. As you can see, investigators there in that wooded area. Now, Maryland National Capital Park Police working to determine what led to this man's death. At this hour, no suspect in custody. This is now the third homicide for Prince George's County just today. It's three o'clock as we speak. Let's check in with former FBI agent Ken Gray with more. Clearly an issue here, not to say that any of these are connected, Ken, but the homicide team at Prince George's County is certainly working overtime with all these cases, including this last one, which is problematic just behind a school. Absolutely. A couple of hundred yards away from the school, close to a trailhead. So it could be connected with somebody that was out on the trail. But there's also homes in the area, so easily accessible from either the east or the west from the home areas through there. But still being a couple of hundred yards away from the elementary school makes it a little disconcerting there for the school itself. As you said, this is the third homicide today. There was also a deadly shooting in Landover and a deadly stabbing in College Park. So the police in that area are going to be very busy with three homicides just today alone. Yeah, well, we talk about this specific case here behind the elementary school. This is the Langley Park McCormick Elementary School. The shell casing surrounding the victim, including what police described as trauma to the upper body here. this paints the picture of extreme violence absolutely extreme violence early on in the investigation they have not even released the identity of the victim here or any of the details but uh nonetheless this is uh very early stages of the investigation the investigators will be looking to see if there's any cameras in the area that may have caught people going into or out of the woods. They'll be looking in the area for the victim's vehicle if it was in the area. They'll be looking for any possible eyewitnesses. I understand that there may have been the sounds of gunfire heard the night before, so that might place time of the death actually, or at the time of the shooting actually, the evening before instead of early morning hours. But the body was found at 11 a.m. Yeah, obviously we know that from police this victim is a man in his 20s, Hispanic. Not sure if that gives us really much more. But of course, we'll keep watch over Prince George's County as they continue to resolve these three homicide investigations there in the county. In the meantime, Ken, we're just getting into the newsroom that a woman was shot in front of the Republican Party offices in Richmond, Virginia. We understand at this hour no staff members appear to be injured, but the Republican Party says they have no indication the shooting was related to their offices. Clearly, based on the location, that too is something a few days ahead of the election here that they are probing. What can you tell us and what do we know about what happened in Richmond? So I do not have any additional details on this, but I can say that any type of act of violence near any offices for either party is concerning in that it might have something to do with somebody striking out at that party to affect local elections. But again, the little detail on this to be able to attribute it to any type of motive connected to the upcoming elections yeah usually and you know we talk about uh 2021 right on the eve of january 6th and obviously the pipe bombs that were placed outside of the dnc and the rnc is there security extra levels of security as a result we've seen a number of political violence incidents since that date have these committee headquarters have new protocols in place to affect safety and to make sure that they are not targets? Well, they had cameras on the outside of those areas, and yet they failed to detect the pipe bombs being placed in those areas in time to do anything about it. And so you would imagine that their protocols were increased. But I think the concern is not so much for the DNC and the RNC headquarters, but it's much more along the lines of the actual, either the polling stations or headquarters in the actual towns and cities where some of these are highly contested elections. Yeah, we pray that nothing goes down as this should be a free democratic process and unravels. And hopefully there is no relationship as to what happened there in Richmond. We'll keep tabs on that. Ken, we always appreciate it. Thank you for the insight. Anytime. Topic number two here is the Department of Justice says it has now uncovered a massive fraud scheme involving student loans, more than 830,000 suspicious financial aid accounts nationwide. Five people, one in Nebraska, four in New Jersey, now charged in the scam investigation known as Operation Ghostbusters, where prosecutors allege the suspects used stolen identities, created fake student accounts, and applied to colleges and universities across the country. Investigators say the scheme generated millions of dollars in fraudulent taxpayer-funded student loans and grants. Officials also say the operation became so sophisticated that suspects allegedly used artificial intelligence to complete most of these applications. Criminal defense attorney Joseph Tully to break down what investigators uncovered, who's now facing charges. $32 million in fraudulent loans here and all these cases that were affected. What do we know at this hour, Tully? Well, what I'm seeing is that we're probably seeing the tip of the iceberg. The DOJ is announcing up to $200 million worth of fraud. And from what I've seen so far in the five people indicted are about $3 million worth of fraud. So that's about 1.5% of the total that the DOJ is alleging. There's 40 open cases in different offices. We have three different cases filed. New Jersey, Virginia and Nebraska. And the mainly the target seems to be based on on Kenyan based networks in the U.S. OK, we look at, say, the time of the pandemic and all the PPE loan fraud cases that we saw. To your point, it looks as though this may be rampant and there may be so many more cases to be uncovered right now. What does that tell us at large about these systems in place and is it a place especially student loan applications where they need to clamp down and tighten up to make sure that this doesn't continue to happen i i don't think that you'd find any american uh who would say that the federal government doesn't need to get its act together at this point i mean yes the department of education needs to clamp down and maybe we should rethink uh giving the federal government responsibility for everybody's education. When you centralize things, you make yourself vulnerable to attacks like this. But I think that we have a perfect storm here. We have COVID in 2020, which made online enrollment much more common, much more easy to do, and thus kind of laid the groundwork to create these fictitious students or fictitious student loans. And then you have the fraud, sort of uh according to the doj expanding from 2021 to 2026 and yes the allegations are that the uh fraudsters were using ai to create not only uh fictitious students but you know fictitious assignments and to really create these these fraudulent student profiles so that they could then collect um school loans for them so i think this is the tip of the iceberg there's still according to the DOJ, 40 open cases in many different field offices. What we've seen here is the DOJ announcing the project Operation Ghostbusters, along with three so far publicly available cases that they've filed involving five different people. Right. And to your point, not only do they need to clamp down, but get with the times because artificial intelligence is playing a huge role in much of the fraud that we're seeing. Joseph Talley, We always appreciate that legal insight. Thank you. Topic number three here as time is now running out for Maryland voters who want to cast their ballots early. Early voting ends tonight at 8 p.m. just five days before Election Day. A new number shows turnout up 63 percent compared to the same period during the 2022 general election. Voters still have time to make their voices heard before the November 3rd midterms. We've got Maryland Matters reporter Brian Sears where do things stand. And to that point, anecdotally, you talk to people and they're saying they're going to the polling locations and it's jam-packed. And this is not something that's usual for midterms. It's usually a presidential where you see a larger voter turnout. So things shifting, especially across the DMV. Yeah, there definitely seems to be an uptick. You know, we're looking at, you know, if you look at like the first five days, you know, we're seeing Democrats up 81 percent over over in-person turnout four years ago. Unaffiliated voters are up 91 percent. And even Republicans are up 49 percent again over four years just strictly for in-person. And, you know, we're seeing that in some really interesting places, including Frederick County and Washington County, you know, places that are a little bit more rural. To that point, I mean, I think you can't even like go by historically what party voters usually do as it relates to early voting, because when you see this mass turnout here and the significant uptick, it seems as though the electorate is willing to make their voices heard. and that's great news for everybody, that they're performing on their civic duty. Can we look at polls to kind of guide us, seeing what we've seen in the past? Is this going to be one of those things we just have to wait to exit polling or wait for election night results? I think to some degree we are going to have to wait for results. I think what you're seeing in Maryland, you know, remember Maryland is a, the registration favors Democrats. In terms of major party registration, Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one. When you add in unaffiliateds, they're about 52, 53 percent of the total voting population of about 4.2 million people. And it's clear that, you know, as we are seeing nationally, there is an uptick in voter interest due to the midterms. Yeah, certainly. I know as it relates to redistricting, that is one of the things that for Maryland split basically along party lines when it comes to what polling is saying. And obviously, we've seen a huge push there from the Democratic Party, including the governor, for that vote yes on that question. Nonetheless, this could be one of those things where, again, we kind of even out in the middle. I think that the question three proposition is going to be really one to watch because there's been a number of polls that have been released in recent weeks that suggest that support for it still hasn't crossed the 50 percent line. there's a plurality of opposition and and a lot of folks who are watching it to see whether this could be one of those rare ballot questions that doesn't succeed yeah what do we know about data centers that's also driving out uh people to vote in especially in those rural counties that you talk about where maybe there aren't in fact moratoriums in place just yet but people are really strongly poised especially i mean and this is a really political one too when you look at democrats who are 80 90 percent of them anti-data centers yeah that's right and then one of those places. My colleague, Christine Condon, and I published a story this morning in Maryland Matters that specifically looked at Frederick County and the Frederick County Executives Race, which is a race that really, on paper, nobody should be talking about because the incumbent, Jessica Fitzwater, has such huge advantages in terms of money that she's raised and money that she spent. But we find that there is an outside group now that's come in and raised over a half million dollars and spent $400,000 attacking her opponent. And generally, when that sort of thing happens, it means that the race is tightening up. And we did see when we were out there and we went door to door with her, she was specifically going out and talking to Democrats and to unaffiliated voters who, as you said, overwhelming majorities do not want data centers not only in their communities, but anywhere in Maryland. Yeah, we'll see how that plays out at the ballot box. Always good talking to you. And I know you'll have much more of a wrap as we get closer to Election Day. Brian Sears with Maryland Matters. We appreciate it. Stay with us here on the DMV Zone. We'll be right back.