Amador County – Ione Police, Amador County Sheriff’s Department, a SWAT team and a negotiator helped to forge a peaceful solution to a four-hour standoff in Ione Monday, during which a man was barricaded inside a home with his two children.

Ione Police Chief Michael Johnson in a release Monday said the incident began at approximately 11 a.m. Monday, when the Ione Police responded to a residence in the 900 block of Shakeley Lane in Ione, regarding a felony warrant suspect.

Johnson dictated the release by phone, and it was prepared by Ione City Manager Kim Kerr.

Johnson said Ione police “determined that the suspect was in a residence,” and “set up a perimeter around the residence, and discovered through that the suspect had two children, an 11 year old and 12 year old, in the residence with him.”

Johnson said IPD “requested assistance from the Amador County Sheriff’s Office, Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT) and negotiators.”

Johnson said that at “about 3 p.m., the suspect surrendered peacefully through negotiations and released the children unharmed.

The Ione Police Department booked the suspect, Jeffrey Phillip Largent, 37 years of age and from Sacramento, into the Amador County Jail in Jackson on felony warrants and other miscellaneous charges.

Ione Police and the Sheriff’s SWAT team arrested Largent on a felony warrant after the standoff, which reportedly started when he barricaded the entry to the house, after authorities arrived with a warrant.

KCRA 3 TV in Sacramento showed a video of Largent later surrendering to about six camouflage-clad SWAT team members, one with a K-9, and a uniformed officer, after the end of the standoff.

The broadcast at about 7:45 p.m. Monday showed Largent walking out of the home with his hands raised in the air. Largent walked in the driveway of the home, in front of an Ione Police car. Largent turned around, hands still raised, then placed his hands on his head, and authorities advanced and took him into custody.

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Amador County – The Jackson Sewer Rate Committee earlier this month recommended beginning environmental work on alternatives to a discharge permit for the city wastewater treatment plant.

City Manager Mike Daly said the “Regional Water Quality Control Board is the driving force of all of this work to occur,” and the Jackson Sewer Rate Committee was formed to meet, and try to find cheaper alternatives. They meet when information comes available, and look at rate implications to find ways to fund those improvements.

Daly said the committee was formed from people who have been vocal about the issue, and are willing to come in to work and look for solutions. Members of the Jackson Sewer Rate Committee are Jackson City Council members Marilyn Lewis and Keith Sweet, and city residents Judy Jebian, Terry Watson, Joe Assereto, Thornton Consolo and Jack Georgette.

The committee has been meeting on Wednesday afternoons as needed, Daly said. They are looking for a solution for Jackson’s roughly 2,000 wastewater system customers.

The committee recommended that the city begin environmental work with alternatives, and the city council earlier this month agreed to look at some of the ideas.

One new idea is to build a dam, north of French Bar Road, between French Bar Road and Jackson Creek, to create a storage reservoir on vacant land. Daly said that was an alternative suggested by the public at a meeting, and it is something that would be looked into.

Another alternative that is still part of the mix is a regional project with Sutter Creek, Ione, and the Amador Water Agency. The AWA has money for a regional water reclamation study, and Daly said the key for the city’s participation in that study is getting some permit extensions from the Regional Board to relieve timing issues, associated with the discharge permit requirements coming due next year, for the city wastewater plant.

Daly said a regional project could take much more time, but it also could increase things that can be done by providing more options for Jackson. He said a “regional partnership might open up some additional grant opportunities not available to the city just going it alone.”

On July 12, 2010, the City Council looked at a study made by the company ECO:LOGIC, which has since been bought by Stantec.

The complete packet is available on the city’s website, usually the Friday before a meeting. Jackson City Council meets the second and fourth Monday of each month at 7 p.m.

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Amador County – The city of Ione last week received a “draft cease and desist order and connection restriction” for its wastewater treatment facility, pending a state board’s approval in April.

The order would halt new sewer connections to the city’s system beginning on Jan. 1, the date of the notice of public hearing on the matter, with a response period closing Jan. 31.

A Jan. 21 letter from the California Regional Water Quality Control Board and its Compliance and Enforcement Supervisor Wendy Wyels said “due to the city’s violations of waste discharge requirements” and a previous Cease and Desist order from 2003, the “Central Valley Water Board’s prosecution team is proposing that the Board issue” the order at its April meeting.

“The proposed order sets forth a scope and schedule to plan, design and construct improvements to address groundwater degradation and seepage of degraded groundwater into Sutter Creek,” Wyels said. “The proposed order also prohibits new connections to the wastewater treatment facility” owned and operated by the city of Ione.

Wyels said the order would prohibit new connections because “the city has not complied with” a 2003 cease & desist order. She said another reason was that “current wastewater flows exceed or threaten to exceed the treatment facility’s current disposal capacity.” A third reason was that “any increase in influent flows would increase the level of pollutants discharged into Sutter Creek via groundwater seepage.”

She said “the proposed order includes new flow limits to reflect the actual treatment and disposal capacity of the wastewater treatment facility.”

City Manager Kim Kerr said an isotope study of samples from Sutter Creek and ponds should show whether or not there is seepage coming from the city’s storage ponds that is getting into the creek. The Regional Board has declared it as seepage, while the city wants proof that it is seepage, through the test.

The positive finding of seepage from the wastewater pond would mean the city would need to get a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit. A negative result would not require that.

Kerr said a draft report of the isotope study was out but she had not seen it, and she hoped to have the report findings available for the Feb. 1 meeting Tuesday of the city council. She plans to update the council on the status of the isotope test. She said the Regional Board will tell the city what it needs to do in reaction to the isotope test results.

She will be scheduling a meeting with the Regional Board in the next two weeks to see if the city can answer the question about confirming whether or not there is seepage leaking from the pond.

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SAN DIEGO –The Sacramento office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced Monday the indictment of 10 people in Southern California for allegedly defrauding lenders of more that $20 million in a wide-ranging real estate scam.

U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner of the Sacramento office of the Department of Justice, announced the arrest of 10 people and who have been charged with a 56-count indictment with conspiracy to commit bank, mail and wire fraud, and with individual counts of mail fraud. Certain of the defendants were also charged with wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to launder money.

The indictment was returned Jan. 13 by a federal grand jury in Fresno and unsealed today. The 10 were arrested Sunday and Monday in San Diego, Ventura County, Bakersfield, and Monterey.

Wagner said David Marshall Crisp and Carlyle Lee Cole, two of the arrested people, were owners of Crisp, Cole & Associates, also known as Crisp & Cole Real Estate. They also controlled Tower Lending as an “in-house mortgage broker business.” The others arrested this week worked for one or both of those companies.

“The indictment alleges that, from approximately January 2004 to September 2007, the defendants perpetrated a scheme to defraud mortgage lenders by submitting fraudulent loan applications with material misrepresentations,” including the “borrower’s income, assets, employment status, and intent to use the home as” a primary residence.

The indictment alleges the defendants perpetrated the scheme by “flipping” the homes, that is, by “selling a single home on multiple occasions” to the co-defendants, straw buyers, or others “in order to artificially inflate the prices of the residences.” Wagner said the “defendants typically increased the loan amounts, and used close to 100 percent financing in order to extract the inflated equity amounts from the properties ,on each financing transaction.”

The real estate and lending firm generally brokered the sales and mortgage financing, “generating substantial commissions and fees for the defendants,” Wagner said. “The scheme involved more than $20 million in losses to lenders.”

Wagner said the extensive investigation by the FBI was assisted by the Department of Housing & Urban Development, and the Bakersfield Police Department. The law enforcement action was part of the federal Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force established by President Barack Obama.

The task force is “working to improve efforts across the federal executive branch, and with state and local partners, to investigate and prosecute significant financial crimes.”

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Amador County – Assemblywoman Alyson Huber received a “Legislator of the Year” award from the California Regional Council of Rural Counties for her work in the state Legislature last year in support of the state’s rural counties, and issues that affect them.

Huber, an El Dorado Hills Democrat who represents Amador County in Assembly District 10, was honored as one of two recipients for the annual Patti Mattingly Award for 2010. Assemblywoman Connie Conway, a Tulare Republican, was also selected to receive the 2010 Mattingly Award.

Huber assistant Jennifer Wonnacott announced receipt of the award in a e-mail last week, saying that the award is “given to a policymaker that that has demonstrated leadership on rural issues and an understanding of the unique challenges that rural communities face.”

Napa County Supervisor Diane Dillon, first vice chair of the executive committee of the Regional Council of Rural Counties, said “RCRC appreciates the important work” Huber has done “on behalf of her rural constituents.” Dillon said “residents of Amador County and the other rural portions of (Huber’s) district, should know that she served them well in a very difficult 2010 legislative session.”

The award was established in the memory of former Siskiyou County Supervisor Patti Mattingly, “for her tremendous courage, commitment, and ability to promote constructive solutions surrounding rural issues.” Recipients are selected by the RCRC Board of Directors.

Amador County District 2 Supervisor Richard Forster, a member of the RCRC executive committee, said RCRC applauds “Huber’s efforts this past year,” saying “she was instrumental in working with a number of other rural legislators to secure the passage, of an exemption for counties under 50,000 in population from experiencing deferrals in state payments to counties.” Forster said that had the exemption “not happened, small counties like Amador would have faced a severe financial crisis.”

Wonnacott said Huber’s other important actions in the 2010 California Legisature included “securing vital law enforcement money for several years for rural counties” and writing “Assembly Bill 580, which addressed septic tanks regulations being issued by the State Water Resources Control Board.”

RCRC is an association of 31 rural counties that advocates before the Legislature, Congress and state and federal government agencies on behalf of rural issues. The Council has its headquarters in Sacramento, and county supervisors make up its governing board, with a supervisor from each county serving on the RCRC board of directors.

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Amador County – The Ione Police Department, and members of the Amador County Sheriff’s Department SWAT team endured a two-hour standoff Monday at a home in Ione that ended peacefully, despite two children reportedly being held hostage.

Ione Police and the Sheriff’s SWAT team arrested Jeffery Phillip Largent, 37, on a felony warrant after the standoff, which reportedly started when he barricaded the entry to the house, after authorities arrived to try to arrest him, at about 11 a.m. Monday, Jan. 24.

KCRA 3 TV in Sacramento showed a video of Largent later surrendering to about six camouflage-clad SWAT team members, and a uniformed officer, after the end of the standoff. KCRA reported that Largent held his two children hostage in the home, and said the 37-year-old Largent was wanted on a felony warrant out of Sacramento.

Largent’s children, age 11 and 12, were able to leave the home safely, and then Largent came out on his own. KCRA video broadcast at about 7:45 p.m. Monday, showed Largent walking out of the home at which the standoff occurred, with his hands raised in the air. Largent walked in the driveway of the home, in front of an Ione Police car. Waiting for him were about six SWAT team members, wearing helmets and full assault gear, with guns drawn, and one of them had a K-9. Largent turned around, hands still raised, to face the home, then placed his hands on his head. SWAT team members then advanced on Largent and took him into custody.

Authorities were shown placing Largent into a police car, and Largent was later booked into the Amador County Jail.

A request for more information about the Ione standoff was made to the Ione Police Department, but was unanswered before airtime today.

Also Monday, Jan. 24, KTXL Fox 40 reported the discovery of the body of a 15-year-old boy in West Point, in Calaveras County. KTXL said: “A man hiking on his property on Jurs Road found the body, and the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Department said it was that of a 15-year-old boy. Deputies arrived around 2 p.m. Sunday afternoon, and say the case is being investigated as a homicide. The boy’s body is now at the medical examiner’s office for an autopsy.”

The Calaveras Sheriff’s Department had not returned a call requesting more information on the incident prior to airtime.

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