Court Watch #109: Stop the (Comic) Presses

In partnership with

Welcome to Court Watch #109. We’re reliably told the government and corporate email filter systems weren't a huge fan of our headline and marked our last newsletter as suspicious. For the record, we thought it was both an amusing and a factually accurate title. Fear not, Zuck told us and every Bro with a Podcast that it wouldn’t happen again. But if you missed that issue because of the old tech censorship gods, you can check it out here.

This week’s issue features records involving a postal worker throwing absentee ballots in a dumpster, a comic publisher going belly up, an NBA player gambling update, a K Pop rapper wanting a name, two spider monkeys, and Cape Fear becomes even scarier. But first, given that Josh Allen and his Buffalo Bills might just be the game of the weekend to watch, we thought we’d check out the happenings in their home federal court, the Western District of New York to look for this week’s lede. But we didn’t expect we’d find something both interesting and purportedly involving the Bills. 

Cleaning a Conviction.

A former vice president of a small bank chain in Western New York who admitted to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in an investment scheme is in hot water again. 

Thirty-six-year-old Timothy Siverd from Rochester, NY, who was out on bond from his previous conviction is now facing three additional counts after law enforcement says he used a cleaning company to charge customers tens of thousands in made-up fees. Investigators believe Siverd allegedly stole the money as part of a plan to pay restitution to victims in his first case and perhaps avoid prison.

In April 2024, Siverd pled guilty to a single count of wire fraud following a real estate development scheme that involved no actual houses but left two victims without $396,511 in investments. Prosecutors said Siverd paid back some of his first victim’s money after the victim grew suspicious and demanded his money back by stealing from the second victim.

Siverd was set to be sentenced in August 2024 on the single count of wire fraud, but, according to court records, his defense attorney approached prosecutors with an offer for Siverd to pay the nearly four hundred thousand dollars back before sentencing. In a hearing, Siverd’s attorney reportedly said that Siverd would expand his cleaning business, ROC Scrubby, in order to ensure he could pay full restitution before sentencing. Siverd purportedly predicted that the business would double in size before August, according to the complaint. The judge on the case subsequently agreed to delay sentencing until February 10th, 2025.

Yet court records tell how Siverd’s story of his fortunately timed windfall began to unravel as several customers and two cleaners contacted law enforcement about ROC Scrubby and its shady owner, “Tim McQueen.” Law enforcement opened an investigation after an ROC Scrubby cleaner showed them a booking app with receipts of systemic overcharges reportedly issued by her boss “Tim McQueen.”

Soon after, a couple in their seventies, who had hired ROC Scrubby to clean their house while one partner was in the hospital, spoke with investigators about $38,000 in extra fees charged by the cleaners. According to the filing, the couple reached out to the company’s owner, who identified himself as “Tim Buttino” and assured them he would issue a full refund. 

The couple eventually received a check in the mail, which bounced. When they contacted the cleaning company again, the owner reportedly promised to send his assistant, “Amanda Reilly,” to go to the bank for a check. Law enforcement said there was no one in Rochester named “Amanda Reilly” and who matched the description of the cleaning company assistant.

As investigators unearthed records of extra fees allegedly logged by Tim Siverd, without an alias, and “Tim Buttino,” another former cleaner came forward with claims that Siverd had not paid her for thousands of dollars of labor. Court records state the former employee believed Siverd was wealthy and prominent because he “often spoke of being personal friends with one ‘J.A.,’ a high-profile member of the Buffalo Bills, and that they golfed together at Oak Hill Country Club.” Siverd also reportedly claimed to be close enough friends with the owners of Constellation Brands that he flew frequently on their private jet. A representative from the Buffalo Bills did not respond to multiple requests for comment about a certain high-profile quarterback with those initials on their roster and whether Siverd’s contentions were accurate. Constellation Brands was equally as unresponsive to a request for comment. 

Law enforcement estimated that Siverd allegedly imposed 1,331 extra charges, totaling $163,802.51. Siverd requested the court appoint and cover the costs of a lawyer. A judge, upon review of his financial affidavit, denied the request. Efforts to reach his original counsel did not return a reply.

The Docket Roundup

• In a previously unreported case, a U.S. Postal worker who threw away 2,150 pieces of mail including four absentee election ballots in a dumpster was sentenced to six months probation and a $350 fine.

• Friends, the U.S. Trustee Program put out a ‘man on the street’ video and it is phenomenal/exactly what you’d expect. And they did a mock creditor hearing with actors! (editor’s note: our first exclamation point in Court Watch’s history) Shoutout to the actor on the bottom right who has no lines but has to look interested for six minutes. We’ve all been there on Zooms. We love all of this landing page so much and we so appreciate the dozen automatic alert emails sent by DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs. Your comms strategy worked perfectly on us. 

• A man who was sentenced three years ago for threatening the Small Business Administration was charged this week for threatening the online casino, Stake.Us. 

• The ACLU essentially weighing in on President-elect Trump’s side was not the crossover event we expected in 2025. A Hatred of SLAPP makes for strange bedfellows. 

• The Commissioner of the Virgin Islands Sports, Parks, and Rec Department, Calvert White, was indicted alongside a co-conspirator for allegedly participating in a bribery scheme. Prosecutors say White accepted a bribe from a contractor to help arrange a $1.43 million government contract.

• Falling asleep in a car near the Secret Service agent unraveled a drug operation.

• The State Department designated Terrogram Collective as a terrorist organization. As our editor argues, this is a big deal. Writing for our publication partner Lawfare, “The Terrorgram designation may be a significant game changer for American citizens, who can now be designated as members of a terrorist group for acts that have been committed domestically, albeit with transnational connections. This has long been true for Americans drawn to groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, but the Terrorgram Collective designation represents the first time that such actions will affect white supremacist movements domestically.”

• An update to our story two weeks ago about the court-appointed interpreter who is accused of being part of the scam that the Justice Department was prosecuting, the name has been unsealed as part of a new indictment. 

• The Department of Justice may want to see if Matt Damon is around for a sequel, as they’re now the proud owners of two spider monkeys. We just hope that the new movie takes into account that Damon’s daughter Rosie is actually watching chicken eggs hatch, not peacock eggs as the movie purports. Attention to detail matters, Cameron Crowe. 

• A defendant from L.A. whose sentencing was set for this week in Virginia requested a delay amidst the fires.

• We broke the arrest of a New Mexico man who was charged for allegedly posting threats against President-elect Trump and Elon Musk on social media.

• Rough week for publishers of news sites covering the federal judiciary that are not Court Watch. 

• A co-conspirator of ex-NBA player Jontay Porter was charged this week for purportedly placing bets on his behalf as part of the gambling scheme.

• Channeling our inner Dubya: Fool CBP once, shame on you. Try to fool CBP twice, you can’t get fooled again.

• For NCITE, our editor sat down for a conversation with the U.S. Attorney for Western New York to talk terror cases, how the DOJ operates, and the Buffalo Bills.

• A Black musician from Boston won more than 2 million dollars in damages for a suit against the white supremacist group Patriot Front and its leader after its members purportedly assaulted him on the street during one of the group’s marches.

• Two Russian operators of cryptocurrency mixers ‘sinbad.io’ and ‘blender.io’ were arrested for purported money laundering. Prosecutors say the cryptocurrency mixers had a “no logs policy” that helped cybercriminals and state-sponsored hacking groups obscure stolen funds. A third defendant remains at large.

• The Justice Department released its reevaluation and report on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. According to DOJ, “This report lays bare new information and shows that the massacre was the result not of uncontrolled mob violence, but of a coordinated, military-style attack on Greenwood.” If you, like us, would like to go down a rabbit hole on this report, we found the FBI memos (basically 302s) from the investigation fascinating. Apologies that it’s behind the Ivory Tower academic paywall, drop our editor a line if you get stuck.

• An arrest for allegedly growing shrooms on an Air Force base.

• A man from North Carolina was arrested after he purportedly left comments on the Advanced Auto Parts’ website with threats to “hunt down” its “entire executive board.”

• A duck hunt trip in Canada ended in federal charges.

• “If somebody doesn’t like what I wrote — which happens quite a bit — I’m going to be holding the bag as a freelance journalist. I didn’t want to kick a hornet’s nest and not have anyone having my back,” our editor told Hanaa’ Tameez for Nieman Lab about our move to beehiiv.

• A twenty-four-year-old from Trenton pled guilty to making threats to kill white people in New Jersey.

• Here’s an exhibit from a case against Meta in which employees on its AI team weigh the copyright risks and then subsequently decide to use “libgen,” a website for pirated books and textbooks, to train its AI.

• KPop Star Jay Park asked a court to tell Google to turn over records about an anonymous YouTuber who Park’s attorneys say falsely associated him with the Chinese Mafia, drug trafficking, and a China-based cryptocurrency. In all fairness, we wouldn’t want to be associated with crypto either.

• Bad news for Superman and our childhood. Diamond Comic Distributors, the largest publisher of English-language comics, filed for bankruptcy. Thanks to bktroller.com for the alert.

• We covered the FBI’s arrest of a Tennessee man who allegedly discussed a plot to commit a mass shooting and wrote a hate-filled manifesto titled, “WHITEBOYSUMMER: 2025.”

• The Justice Department is suing KKR & Co. for submitting false information and low-balled estimates to avoid antitrust scrutiny. Prosecutors included communications between KKR executives in the filing, writing that one executive texted, “I’ve always been told less is more 😊,”  as a more senior executive replied, “I believe in less is more too….”

• Kristen Clark, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, released her farewell remarks to the Department and honored Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.

• An ex-Delta pilot is suing the airline and his old supervisor with claims that the supervisor lied to the FBI and prosecutors about a joke he made midflight, casting it instead as a threat and an attempt to take over the cockpit. According to the suit, the pilot was indicted and set to go to trial before a recording of the supervisor admitting to FBI agents that the pilot was joking came to light during discovery.

• The FBI wants to remove the malware PlugX from private computers.

• We published an update on the disgruntled Disney employee who hacked its menu system. The former employee agreed to plead guilty last week.

• The Justice Department published Special Counsel David Weiss’ final report to the Attorney General on his investigation into Hunter Biden.

• Color us surprised. A new lawsuit says that a crypto website, OKCoin, avoided implementing anti-money laundering policies and became a “magnet” and “get-away driver” for illicit activities.

• The ATF seized a package with weed, a Glock, and a machine-gun conversion device and then used an undercover agent to trick the two people who reportedly shipped it into paying them $200 to get it back.

• A former manager at American Distillation Inc. pled guilty to violating the Clean Water Act by discharging over 50,000 gallons of pollutants into the Cape Fear River in North Carolina over four years.

• We broke the story about a man from NC who had pledged support to ISIS and was arrested last month while trying to board a flight on his way to join the terror group.

• A Florida Postman was charged with allegedly threatening another Post Office Employee and then the entire branch after he was placed on suspension. He reportedly said, “Y’all lucky this ain’t a month ago or I’d shoot this place up.”

Thanks for reading. We have a final ask. Please recommend Court Watch to your friends, families, and colleagues. After the initial new subscriber burst from our move to beehiiv, the flow of new subscribers has become a trickle. For the first week in our two and half year history, we’ve actually retracted in our subscriber number from the week before(albeit by single digits). Some of that is a reflection that we might have overflooded folks’ inboxes with four emails this week and people had enough of sad news in their feed. We get that. It also is a byproduct of leaving Substack which had a (largely garbage but still) recommendation algorithm. But here’s the thing, we broke four, yes, four national stories in the last week about an ISIS arrest, a mass shooting plot, a threat to the President-elect, and a guy who could have gotten a lot of kids sick. We did it first before any of the big media guys.

But our ‘punch way above our weight’ media experiment only works if we grow both our free and paid subscribers.

Please help us do this by sharing Court Watch on your socials and social circles. And if you know anyone at Google News, tell them to make our stories show up in their search results. 

The gold standard of business news

Morning Brew is transforming the way working professionals consume business news.

They skip the jargon and lengthy stories, and instead serve up the news impacting your life and career with a hint of wit and humor. This way, you’ll actually enjoy reading the news—and the information sticks.

Best part? Morning Brew’s newsletter is completely free. Sign up in just 10 seconds and if you realize that you prefer long, dense, and boring business news—you can always go back to it.

Join 4.3 Million Readers Now