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Briefs

Report: Grocery store helped foil coin plot

By Times wire
Published February 8, 2005

MIAMI - A plot to cash in 45,000 pounds of stolen nickels fell apart when a grocery store reported an unusually large deposit in one of its coin machines and a tip came in about bags of buried money, according to court documents.

Four men charged in the theft of the Federal Reserve shipment made an initial court appearance Monday, as the FBI searched for 896,000 missing nickels, or $44,800. A total of $135,200 was found buried behind a stable, and one of the men admitted cashing in $4,000, officials said. Two other men are still on the run.

The FBI said Ricardo Mendoza was driving the money truck for a contractor that had been hired by the Federal Reserve to transport 3.8-million nickels from a bank in New Jersey to a branch in New Orleans.

The truck was found empty in Florida in late December, a day after it was scheduled to arrive in Louisiana.

After the truck was discovered, the FBI alerted a company that puts coin machines in supermarkets to watch for large nickel deposits. A store in Miami called police on Jan. 15 to report a deposit by Juan Brito, who said he had been saving nickels for nearly a year, according to an FBI affidavit.

The group "decided to bury the nickels to avoid being caught" after Brito's chat with police, the affidavit said. Police then received a tip about the nickels that led them to the house where some of them were buried.

Federal authorities said they think Mendoza has fled to Mexico. Diosdado Cabrera, the owner of the home where the nickels were buried, also is missing.

JACKSONVILLE - Jimmy Jenkins, who was credited with turning around Edward Waters College, increasing its enrollment and it standards, resigned Monday after a plagiarism scandal cost the school its accreditation.

The executive committee of the board of trustees accepted the resignation Monday afternoon. The full board will meet today to consider the resignation and may appoint an interim president of the historically black college.

The college was accused of submitting a self-study to its accreditation group that had largely been plagiarized from Alabama A&M University. Any college that deliberately provides inaccurate information risks losing its accreditation, according to the policies of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

PENSACOLA - The federal government will spend $9-million to restore hurricane-damaged oyster reefs in four Gulf Coast states, including a $1.7-million grant for Florida, officials said Monday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also is awarding $4.3-million to Alabama, $1.5-million to Mississippi and $1.4-million to Louisiana. All four states sustained losses from Hurricane Ivan in September.

In Florida, reefs will be identified for restoration in the Escambia and East bay sections of the Pensacola Bay system, Choctawhatchee Bay, the West, North and East bay sections of St. Andrews Bay and Apalachicola Bay.

ORLANDO - A Disney hotel was where a girl between the ages of 9 and 12 was victimized in a sex attack that was photographed, videotaped and distributed on the Internet, officials said Monday.

Canadian investigators took the unusual step of releasing six photos to the public last week, digitally removing the girl's image, with hopes of identifying what they thought was a warm-climate hotel setting.

Tips came suggesting the room was a Disney property, and ultimately confirmed.

"Disney has been very cooperative," said Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office. "Now we're trying to narrow down the time frame and narrow down various aspects of the case."

[Last modified February 8, 2005, 00:21:16]