May 14, 2021
Laws gets 7 years, must pay $4M to victims Written by Geoffrey Plant on May 14, 2021
Former certified public accountant and investment broker Tom Laws has been sentenced to 81 months at a federal prison camp followed by three years’ probation, after pleading guilty in U.S. District Court last April to four counts of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft, stemming from a Ponzi scheme he ran out of his business in Silver City.
Laws was also ordered to pay $4,087,172.44 in restitution.
The offenses occurred from 2014 to 2018. Laws was indicted in mid- August 2019, and arrested at his office on Hudson Street later that month.
April 16, 2021
(Press Staff Photo by Geoffrey Plant)
A view of Gold Gulch Road, near one of the mineral exploration drilling sites proposed by Tucson-based Bronco Creek Exploration near McKnight Peak, in the Burro Mountains on the Gila National Forest west of White Signal.
A mineral exploration project in the Burro Mountains south of Silver City is unlikely to result in actual mining anytime soon, according to Silver City District Ranger Beth Ihle and representatives of the company that’s proposing to look for copper, gold, silver, lead and zinc underneath the southern part of the Gila National Forest.
“We had a lot of folks who interpreted this exploration project as a mine permit, but that’s not even a twinkle in the company’s eye right now,” Ihle said. “That’s a whole separate proposal.”
Hallelujah! 2020 in Review - Missing person, mysterious bodies highlighted year in crime
2020 was a year full of stories about shootings in Silver City, while human remains kept turning up in the forests of Grant County.
2020’s missing and dead
In late May, Silver City resident John Waters was reported missing by his wife, Amelia Waters; in August, Waters’ skull and only his skull was discovered by a hiker in the forest outside Pinos Altos. Authorities believed at the time that Waters may have been consumed by bears, but hadn’t determined a cause of death. Amelia Waters did not respond to an inquiry from the Daily Press last week regarding the current status of the investigation into the fate of her husband.
Feel-good Stories To Make You Smile
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Tiny discovery
After the devastating Australian bush fires at the start of the year, wildlife ecologists thought the tiny pygmy possums had been wiped out.
But there was good news! Weighing only seven grams, these unbelievably cute little darlings have been found again on Kangaroo Island in South Australia.
A special guest
When bride-to-be Kathryn was set to marry Tom Laws, there would be just one thing missing from her big day . . . her 91-year-old grandmother, Dot Bash.
Staff at the care home in Essex where Dot lives decided to help out by livestreaming the service to Dot and the residents!