Former ICE agent convicted on federal charges – $600K Fraud

Posted by deslava27 |

Former ICE agent convicted on federal charges – latimes.com. Frank Johnston, a top Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, had a valuable informant — or so he said. In reality, however, the informant was a fraud, prosecutors say.  Johnston was paid as much as $4,000 a month in consulting fees at the same time he was deceiving agents, attorneys and even a federal judge by claiming that the man was working as a confidential informant, according to prosecutors.

Johnston, who retired from ICE in 2009 after serving as assistant special agent-in-charge for the agency’s Los Angeles field office, remains free on bail pending a second trial on charges of fraud. In that case, he is accused of scheming to keep his wife on the ICE payroll for six years while she was essentially a stay-at-home mom, in effect stealing nearly $600,000 in taxpayer money, prosecutors say. His wife, Taryn Johnston, is also a defendant in that trial.

The consulting fees to the Johnstons stopped in mid-2007, when Frank Johnston failed to get another extension for Touma and the man surrendered to begin serving his sentence, prosecutors said.

“This defendant wasn’t a rookie … this is an experienced individual,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Lawrence Middleton told jurors. “He knew exactly what Mr. Touma was doing, or not doing.”

Johnston faces a statutory maximum sentence of 15 years in prison when he is sentenced Jan. 23, according to Assistant U.S. Atty. Joseph Akrotirianakis.