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The head of a New York payroll company was sentenced Friday to 6 1/2 years in federal prison for stealing $18 million from Sacramento County.

U.S. District Court Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr., who started his legal career as a prosecutor for the county, said Albert Cipoletti violated his position of trust as chief executive officer of Ingentra HR Services.

Sacramento County sent money to Ingentra to handle payroll taxes for special districts, but the company understated the amount in its filings to the Internal Revenue Service. From 2005 to 2010, the company handled payroll taxes for about 3,000 special-district employees.

Cipoletti and a co-defendant were accused of stealing $20 million altogether, with some money also coming from Stanley Works and Stanley Solutions Inc. and SanDisk Corp.

Cipoletti’s attorney, Joseph Wiseman, tried to argue that the judge shouldn’t consider the emotional impact of the crime on Sacramento County employees, saying it could improperly influence the judge.

Burrell seemed offended by the argument, saying judges hear emotional testimony all the time and make impartial and fair rulings. He allowed county Finance Director Julie Valverde to testify during the sentencing hearing.

Valverde told the court that Cipoletti’s crime has created great problems in a time of extreme duress as the county has also struggled with consecutive years of budget deficits. The county has been in discussions with the IRS about payment of the back taxes.

Valverde said her staff has spent long hours processing the payroll taxes since Ingentra’s wrongdoing was discovered.

“It has been especially agonizing for our staff,” she said. “I don’t want this kind of fiscal hardship hanging over my head. I don’t want the county’s image to suffer more because of the fraudulent activity of Mr. Cipoletti.”

Cipoletti’s sentencing marks “an important milestone for the county,” interim County Executive Steve Szalay said after the hearing.

He said his office is taking steps to ensure future fraud is avoided, including new rules that county supervisors will soon consider that would require contractors to provide information about their finances, experience and litigation history.

Cipoletti pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud last year, not long after federal investigators started their probe.

Burrell disagreed with some parts of the plea agreement, because it didn’t take into account the trust he said Cipoletti violated as the company’s owner.

Still, he ended up sentencing Cipoletti to the time expected under the plea agreement, attorneys for both sides said after the hearing. Both said they were satisfied with the sentence.

Burrell also ordered Cipoletti to pay the $20 million he owes, although it’s not clear when, if ever, he will be able to do that.

Cipoletti, 62, wore a gray business suit and declined to make a statement to the judge before his sentencing. He agreed to enter federal custody in Brooklyn, N.Y., in July. He hopes to be incarcerated in his home state of New York.

The other defendant in the case, Kerry Seaman, who was Ingentra’s controller, is scheduled for sentencing in July.

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By Gitte Laasby of the Journal Sentinel

A 25-year-old man suffered numerous gunshot wounds in a shooting shortly after 4 p.m. in the 5200 block of N. Teutonia Ave., Milwaukee police said.

The man is being treated and is expected to survive. Investigators are working to develop a motive and suspects.

In another shooting Sunday, a 20-year-old man was shot around 9 p.m. in the 3000 block of N. 35th St., according to police.

The victim was shot in a residence in circumstances that are still under investigation. He suffered minor injuries and was treated and released from the hospital.

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By Jesse Garza of the Journal Sentinel

A 22-year-old man accused of causing a head-on collision that injured two people while driving drunk the wrong way on I-43 was charged Wednesday.

Joel Julian-Jorge of Milwaukee was charged with multiple counts, including injury by intoxicated use of a vehicle causing great bodily harm, in connection with the crash, according to a criminal complaint.

Julian-Jorge had a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.15, almost twice the 0.08 level considered legal proof of drunken driving in Wisconsin, when the car he was driving early Monday slammed into a sport utility vehicle while heading east in the westbound lanes near Loomis Road.

A male passenger suffered life-threatening injuries in the crash and a man driving the SUV was also injured, according to the complaint.

Bail was set at $11,000 for Julian-Jorge, who was in the Milwaukee County Jail Wednesday under an immigration hold, according to jail records.

His immigration status was under investigation, according to the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.

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By Gina Barton of the Journal Sentinel

The four Milwaukee police officers suspended for failure to fully investigate the hit-and-run crash that killed Navy veteran Nicholas Rozanski last fall are Daniel Boeck, Eric Fjeld, Sean McCord and Troy Stofflet, according to internal affairs records.

Britney M. Wilkinson, 24, of Milwaukee, the driver of the car that collided with Rozanski’s moped, was allowed to plead no contest to two misdemeanors because Assistant District Attorney Mark Williams feared the substandard police work would make it difficult to prove a felony at trial. She was sentenced last month to a year in jail, with work and school release privileges, followed by up to two years of probation.

Wilkinson originally was charged with hit-and-run involving death and faced a maximum possible prison term of 25 years.

One officer was suspended for three days, another officer was suspended for two days, and two more officers were suspended for one day each, according to an earlier statement by Anne E. Schwartz, Milwaukee police spokeswoman. Schwartz did not immediately return messages Friday. A summary of the internal affairs investigation does not indicate the lengths of the suspensions received by each officer.

The crash occurred around 3 a.m. Sept. 11 near the intersection of S. 1st and W. Florida streets. After Rozanski, 35, was knocked from his moped, Wilkinson left the scene for between 20 and 45 minutes, according to a criminal complaint.

Wilkinson drove nearly four miles to a gas station, where she called her boyfriend. He picked her up and drove her back to the crash site. She told police she did not hit the moped, but rather hit two curbs as she swerved to avoid it and could not stop because she had two flat tires and her brakes were not working.

Fjeld and McCord let Wilkinson go home even though they did not believe her story, the summary says. They also did not conduct field sobriety tests, a breath test or a blood-alcohol test on Wilkinson even though she told them she’d had a couple of drinks.

The other two officers, Boeck and Stofflet, were the first to respond to the accident scene. Stofflet “did not activate the squad’s lights and siren and could not articulate why it took them 15 minutes to arrive,” the summary says. Boeck told Fjeld and McCord that Rozanski was in stable condition, although the firefighters and paramedics on the scene denied telling the police that, the summary says.

None of the officers was aware that Wilkinson was related to a Milwaukee police officer, the report says.

Detective Edwin Johnson, who interviewed Wilkinson at the jail, testified in November that he didn’t immediately inform her of her right to remain silent and her right to an attorney because he was conducting a “24-hour background investigation,” not a criminal interrogation. He was not disciplined.

Google has announced that it will be removing its uploaded videos on April 29. I made this little movie about the Black Dahlia case four years ago and at 21 minutes, its too long to upload anywhere else.