Former Grand Prix promoter back in custody

Julie Manganis, The Salem News, Beverly, Mass.
·2 min read

Apr. 13—IPSWICH — The North Shore man behind the failed 2016 Boston Grand Prix race is back in federal custody, after allegedly violating the terms of his release in a pending fraud case.

John F. Casey, 57, of Ipswich, was taken into custody on a warrant Monday after federal probation officers say they learned he had been seen at a New Hampshire gun range, apparently taking target practice, and that he had also again had contact with a woman who is a potential witness in the case against him.

During a brief hearing Monday afternoon, Casey's federal public defender conceded her client is on video at the gun range, the name and specific location of which was not identified in court.

"I think there may be more context that we would share at a detention hearing," said federal defender Jessica Thrall.

According to the terms of his pretrial release in the federal fraud case, Casey is not allowed to leave Massachusetts, not possess any firearms, and to have no contact with witnesses.

Last November, according to court documents, he was alleged to have violated the no-contact order by speaking with a woman on the witness list. He said he had not been given a copy of the witness list prior to speaking with her, and Judge Donald Cabell gave him the benefit of the doubt.

But on Monday, Cabell said he has concerns, calling the alleged new violations "very, very serious breaches," given that he had made sure Casey had a list of witnesses after the November hearing.

"If true, they merit revoking Mr. Casey's release and merit an order that he be detained pending trial," said Cabell.

Prosecutors are now asking the judge to do just that.

Thrall said she was not ready to go forward with the detention hearing on Monday and asked for additional time to prepare. Cabell scheduled another hearing for Wednesday afternoon.

Casey remains held at the Plymouth County House of Correction, which has an agreement to hold some federal detainees.

He was indicted by a federal grand jury last year on charges that include wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, money laundering and filing false tax returns.

Federal prosecutors allege that Casey failed to report some $1.2 million in income he took over the course of three tax years while running Boston Grand Prix. Other charges stem from an equipment leasing scheme and small business loans involving a Peabody ice rink he owned.

Courts reporter Julie Manganis can be reached at 978-338-2521, by email at jmanganis@salemnews.com or on Twitter at @SNJulieManganis.

Recommended Stories

  • EXPLAINER: The law and science behind the CDC’s eviction ban

    When the U.S. government enacted a ban on evictions, it did so through an unlikely agency: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC has said the policy, first enacted in September and recently extended through the end of June, helps stop the spread of the coronavirus by limiting the number of people who lose their housing and have to live in shared housing, homeless shelters or on the streets. Here’s a look at the moratorium, its rationale and what the research says about evictions and health.

  • U.S. consumer prices post biggest gain in over 8-1/2 years

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. consumer prices rose by the most in more than 8-1/2 years in March as increased vaccinations and massive fiscal stimulus unleashed pent-up demand, kicking off what most economists expect will be a brief period of higher inflation. The report from the Labor Department on Tuesday also showed a firming in underlying prices last month as strong demand bumps against supply constraints. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and many economists view higher inflation as transitory, with supply chains expected to adapt and become more efficient.

  • Officer who shot Daunte Wright was training new recruit at time of shooting

    48-year-old officer is 26-year veteran of the force, having got police license in 1995 aged 22

  • John Boehner reveals he voted for Trump despite attacking him for spreading lies about the election

    Boehner noted that the former president misled voters by spreading lies about the election even before it happened.

  • 'Liar's dividend': The more we learn about deepfakes, the more dangerous they become

    "If anything can be faked, including videos, then everything can be denied," deepfake expert Nina Shick told Insider.

  • Nike wants your lightly worn sneakers — to resell them at some US stores. Here’s why

    Nike said it has plans to expand the program.

  • The Truth About Philip and Fergie’s Bitter Feud

    Christopher Furlong - WPA Pool/Getty ImagesPrince Philip was often said to have vowed never to be in the same room as Sarah Ferguson, the ex-wife of his son Andrew, after photographs appeared in a newspaper in 1992 of Sarah topless and having her toes sucked by a lover in the South of France.Gyles Brandreth, Philip’s official biographer whose book The Final Portrait will be published later this month, has confirmed that long-standing rumor today in the second lengthy excerpt from his book.Even as a Corpse, Prince Philip Has to Take Second Place to the QueenPhilip, he said, declared “enough was enough” after the pictures appeared. He told Brandreth Fergie was “simply beyond the pale,” and resolved not to have anything more to do with her.At the time when the pictures were first published, Sarah was staying at the queen’s Scottish country estate of Balmoral. Philip put his resolution into immediate action, as Ferguson herself recalled to Brandreth, saying: “It was ridiculous. As soon as I came in through one door, he’d be falling over the corgis to get out of the other. It was very funny. Except, of course, it wasn’t.”Although the queen continued to receive Fergie even after her separation and subsequent divorce from Prince Andrew, Philip made it clear that he had no desire to ever see her again.Sarah plaintively told Brandreth: “Of course I want to see him. I am the mother of his granddaughters, after all.”Brandreth said when he raised this with Prince Philip, he just shrugged and said: “But the children come and stay,” adding, “I am not vindictive, but I don’t see the point.”He described Andrew and Sarah’s post-divorce arrangements which have seen them continue to share a home as “truly bizarre,” adding, “I don’t pretend to understand it.”Brandreth writes that Fergie and Philip held diametrically opposed views on “bottling up your feelings” which she believed was positively harmful.Brandreth writes that when her daughters were children she would tell them to stand in the middle of the extensive grounds of their home, Sunninghill Park, and scream.Brandreth wrote that Sarah then demonstrated, catching him by surprise as she let out a blood-curdling scream.He writes: “The prospect of encountering his former daughter-in-law screaming in the middle of Sunninghill Park could have been one of the reasons the Duke of Edinburgh decided to give her a wide berth after her separation from Prince Andrew. He regarded reticence as a virtue and self-control as a quality to be admired.”Philip did not sit down for the 2011 six-parter on the Oprah Winfrey Network Finding Sarah, in which Fergie wept on screen with a TV psychiatrist. He told Brandreth he was in favour of “self-awareness” but against “the endless introspection that seems to be so prevalent these days.” As reported on Monday, he regarded Harry and Meghan’s decision to do a similar interview as “madness.”Fergie, Brandreth reports, tried to repair relations with Philip but was constantly rebuffed.For Philip’s 80th birthday, she sent him “a handsome dinner service.” But even here, fate conspired against her, Brandreth writes: “It was supposed to have 12 settings, but it arrived with 13: the ‘sample’ had been included with the set. With Sarah, somehow, something always goes wrong.”Philip’s allegedly vow to never be in the same room as Fergie was broken only when they both attended the wedding of Prince Harry at Windsor Castle in May 2018.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Top Kremlin Mouthpiece Warns of ‘Inevitable’ War With U.S. Over Another Ukraine Land Grab

    ALEXEY NIKOLSKYAll-out cyberwarfare, nation-wide forced blackouts, and the targeted disruption of internet services—for one of the Kremlin’s top propagandists, all of those tactics are fair game in what she describes as a fated war-to-come against the U.S.“War [with the U.S.] is inevitable,” declared Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of the state-funded Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik, who believes the conflict will break out when, not if, Vladimir Putin moves to seize more territory from Ukraine.As Russia’s military buildup on Ukraine’s doorstep mounts, Kremlin loyalists have been urging for even more overt aggression and bloodshed in the campaign to annex Ukraine’s Donbas region. The only thing standing in the way, they say, is U.S. support for their beleaguered neighbor.NATO issued a statement on Wednesday demanding an end to Russia’s troop movements on the border with the disputed territory of Donbas in eastern Ukraine. It is the largest buildup of Russian troops since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The U.S. underlined the statement this week by deploying two warships to the Black Sea.On Tuesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov threatened retaliation. “We warn the United States that it will be better for them to stay far away from Crimea and our Black Sea coast. It will be for their own good,” he said.The escalation was foreshadowed on state television’s Sunday Evening With Vladimir Soloviev over the weekend. Simonyan explained that it was time for Russia to gear up for a showdown against the U.S., and prophesized a kind of war driven by hacking, the forced disruption of internet access, the shutting down of power supplies, and an all-out offensive on U.S. infrastructure.“I do not believe that this will be a large-scale hot war, like World War II, and I do not believe that there will be a long Cold War. It will be a war of the third type: the cyberwar,” said Simonyan.She warned that—in this theoretical battle—the U.S. would plot to cut off the electricity of entire Russian cities. In turn, she speculated, Moscow would be able to force a blackout in Florida or New York’s Harlem at the flip of a switch.“In conventional war, we could defeat Ukraine in two days,” Simonyan said, “but it will be another kind of war. We’ll do it, and then [the U.S.] will respond by turning off power to [the Russian city] Voronezh,” she said.The top RT editor asserted that “[Russia] needs to be ready for this war, which is unavoidable, and of course it will start in Ukraine,” arguing that the Kremlin is “invincible where conventional war is concerned, but forget about conventional war... it will be a war of infrastructures, and here we have many vulnerabilities.”Her solution consists of Stalin-type measures to eliminate “vulnerabilities” in the run-up to another escalation, emphasizing the need for a hack-proof, government-controlled internet. “We still don’t have a sovereign internet, but God willing, we will,” she said.She wholeheartedly endorsed a suggestion from Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist leader of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party, who argued that all of Russia’s opposition must be eliminated by May 1, 2021. With imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny on a hunger strike—and suffering from severe health ailments after being denied appropriate medical treatment—the Kremlin seems to be firmly set on that course.Simonyan argued that once Russia minimizes its vulnerabilities and renders Putin’s opposition powerless—which she argued could happen in a matter of months—the Kremlin will finally be ready to annex Ukraine’s eastern region.“I’ve been agitating and even demanding that we take Donbas. We need to patch up our vulnerabilities as fast as we can, and then we can do whatever we want,” she boldly proclaimed. The host, Vladimir Soloviev, wholeheartedly agreed: “We only lose if we do nothing.” He argued that by absorbing parts of Ukraine—or the entire country—Russia would be able to remove the zone of American influence further away from its borders.As one of the Kremlin’s most valued propagandists, Margarita Simonyan is notoriously close to the Russian president and has received multiple awards directly from Putin. After accepting one such award in 2019, Simonyan thanked Putin “for the most important reward in life… this honor to serve one’s Motherland.”Her “service” has involved RT and Sputnik-driven disinformation operations aimed at influencing the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which she often boasts about by pointing to the inclusion of her name in various U.S. intelligence reports.Russia’s recent cyberspace activities seem to serve as good practice for the “inevitable war” foreshadowed by Simonyan.Last year, six Russian intelligence officers were criminally charged by the U.S. for using the world’s most destructive malware to force blackouts in Ukraine and damage the critical infrastructure of multiple countries, which caused nearly $1 billion in losses. On Monday, hackers operating from Russia targeted France’s homeschooling platform.The Kremlin is prepared to intensify its offensive against the West, but fears of the retaliation that would follow. The idea of a bulletproof “sovereign internet”—completely under government control within Russian borders—is already on the books, with Moscow having introduced the idea as a preventative measure against retaliatory hacking attempts from other nations.Simonyan argued that Russia will surely be able to exploit the U.S.’s “catastrophic” educational standards, and referred to American military analysts and specialists as incompetent and stupid. She heartily laughed about news that more than 200,000 U.S. service members experienced hearing loss due to defective earplugs.“We can never come to any agreements with [Americans],” Simonyan said, arguing that instead, Russia can just as easily defeat the U.S. in a cyberspace war.She added, mockingly: “We don’t even need the nukes.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Rural schools have a teacher shortage. Why don’t people who live there, teach there?

    Rural schools have been having difficulty filling vacancies, a problem that has only been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

  • Subtle signs you have a blood clot, and what to do about it

    Blood clots have been reported in a small minority of people after receiving COVID-19 vaccines by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.

  • City manager 'relieved of his duties' after fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright

    Mayor Mike Elliott said Curt Boganey, a Brooklyn Center city manager who oversaw the police department, was fired after the killing of Daunte Wright.

  • Facebook took down the official page of the small French town of Bitche, then restored it after being called out

    The page was taken down on March 19, per local media, so officials created a new one named after the town's postal code: Mairie 57230.

  • Somaliland and Taiwan: Two territories with few friends but each other

    Taiwan and Somaliland are basically fully functioning territories but neither is recognised internationally.

  • Walker Kessler turns down UNC basketball coach Hubert Davis, says he’s transferring

    The freshman center announced where he’s going on Instagram.

  • Walker Kessler turns down UNC basketball coach Hubert Davis, says he’s transferring

    The freshman center announced where he’s going on Instagram.

  • Here's how CBS' 'The Talk' addressed Sharon Osbourne's accusations on television

    CBS' "The Talk" returned after a month-long hiatus following controversial statements made by Sharon Osbourne, who later departed the show.

  • Trump mocks Mitch McConnell for being 'helpless' to stop Biden packing out the Supreme Court

    Former President Donald Trump issued a new attack on Senate Minority Mitch McConnell after labeling him a "dumb son of a b---h" earlier this week."

  • Eric Shawn: US warns China over military incursion against Taiwan

    FOX News correspondent reports on new warnings from Washington after maneuver by Chinese Air Force on 'Your World'

  • Yellowstone reopens for season Friday. Here’s where visitors will need to wear masks

    Tourists will also need masks in some outdoor areas.

  • SC’s Nikki Haley says she won’t run for president in 2024 if Trump seeks reelection

    “I would not run if President Trump ran,” Nikki Haley told SC reporters on the campus of South Carolina State University.