Security News

Saudi princess charged in O.C. human trafficking case

A woman whom Orange County authorities described as a Saudi royal princess was charged Wednesday with human trafficking for allegedly forcing a Kenyan woman to work as a domestic servant.

Meshael Alayban, 42, was taken into custody early Wednesday by police at her Irvine home in a gated community. Orange County prosecutors allege that Alayban forced the woman to work 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for only $220 a month. Authorities say she was unable to flee because Alayban kept the woman’s passport and documents.

Authorities said the woman left the home on Tuesday. She boarded a bus and eventually contacted police.

Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas on Wednesday charged Alayban with one felony count of human trafficking.

“The law of our nation and California does not tolerate people who deprive or violate the liberty of another and obtain forced labor or services,” Rackauckas said. “If any person is being enslaved, he or she should contact law enforcement.”

In addition to the Kenyan woman, police said officers found four other workers being held under similar circumstances at Alayban’s home. Detectives continue to investigate, but no charges have yet been filed in those cases.

Prosecutors requested that Alayban be held without bail because she was a flight risk. But a judge ordered she be held in lieu of $5 million. He also ordered her to surrender her passport, not to travel outside Orange County and to wear a monitor if released.

Orange County prosecutors identified Alayban as one of the wives of Saudi Prince Abdulrahman bin Nasser bin Abdulaziz al Saud. She could not be reached for comment, but in a statement to the Los Angeles Times, her attorney, Paul S. Meyer, said there was no physical abuse, no physical restraint and that the complaints were about hours worked and wages paid.

“We intend to fully investigate this matter, and expect that the truth will resolve it,” he said.

The servant, whose identity was not released by authorities, began working for the family in Saudi Arabia to help cover her young daughter’s medical care, officials said. The woman was contacted through an agency in Kenya to work for Alayban’s family in Saudi Arabia in March 2012. She was meant to work for two years and be paid $1,600 a month. She was told she’d work eight hours a day, five days a week and that her pay would rise after three months, authorities said.

Irvine police said that when the woman arrived in Saudi Arabia, Alayban took her passport. She accompanied Alayban and her family when they came to Irvine in May. Police said the servant came with four other women from the Philippines working under similar contracts.

She told detectives she was required to work excessive hours and paid only a fraction of the agreed-upon salary. When the woman complained about the working conditions and asked for her passport back so she could leave, Alayban refused to give it to her, police said.

The servant told authorities she was working for various Alayban family members living in four luxury apartments in a development off Jamboree Road, police said. She claimed she was not allowed to leave the complex without a member of the family present.

“We are gratified to have been able to help this victim find her freedom,” Irvine Police Chief David L. Maggard Jr. said.

The servant finally left the complex Tuesday, carrying a suitcase and a U.S. State Department pamphlet on human trafficking, officials said. The pamphlet had been given to her at a U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia, where she was issued a travel visa, Maggard said.

A woman on the bus noticed she was upset and began talking to her. That woman eventually helped her contact police.

When police arrived at Alayban’s home, they found the four other women. Police said they told detectives their travel documents had also been taken by Alayban.

Detectives were trying to retrieve the documents from a safe deposit box.

Charles Saatchi, a textbook case of ego strangling a man’s sense

Last month, as they ate lunch outside a fancy London restaurant, world famous art collector Charles Saatchi physically roughed up his wife, the TV chef Nigella Lawson. Unaware that a paparazzo was snapping away, Saatchi squeezed Lawson’s windpipe four times and shoved his finger up her nostril. Lawson, teary and fearful, dabbed at her eyes. Saatchi stalked out and got in their car, as she followed, sobbing.

Tabloids on both sides of the Atlantic went crazy. “Arti Choke,” blared the inimitable New York Post.

In Britain, even a deputy prime minister got into the act, first declaring the assault a “fleeting moment,” then backtracking after domestic abuse groups called him out.

I’d love to report this has been a teachable moment on how to recognize domestic violence, atone for it and prevent it. Instead, it’s a textbook case of denial, and what happens when a man’s ego strangles his common sense.

Lawson, 53, known to American audiences as cookbook author (“How to Be a Domestic Goddess”) and judge on ABC’s competitive cooking show “The Taste,” has a warm and casual approach to entertaining, at odds with her upbringing as the daughter of Margaret Thatcher‘s chancellor of the exchequer.

She is curvy and gorgeous and fun to watch, and while she may not be a celebrity invader on the level of, say, a Victoria Beckham, she is coming to Los Angeles for Season 2 of “The Taste,” which begins taping in September.

Saatchi, 70, is cofounder of the 1980s powerhouse ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi and an influential art collector. He created the famous “Labour Isn’t Working” campaign that helped put Thatcher in office, and was an early champion of young British artists like Damien Hirst, who put a shark in formaldehyde, and Tracey Emin, whose “My Bed,” consisted of an unmade bed with personal detritus strewn beside it.

Despite his high public profile, Saatchi is an admittedly reclusive control freak. In 2009, he charmed two Times of London reporters in person for more than two hours, then insisted they conduct the actual interview by email.

So given his extraordinary powers of manipulation, you’d think he’d handle the fallout from his bad behavior with something approaching finesse.

At nearly every turn, however, his spin, ranging from bizarre to creepy, has backfired.

He told the London Evening Standard, where he is a columnist, that what the world perceived as a husband attacking a wife was merely “a playful tiff.”

“Nigella’s tears,” he added helpfully, “were because we both hate arguing, not because she had been hurt.”

As for touching her nose, he told the Standard, he was simply helping her out. “Even domestic goddesses sometimes have a bit of snot in their nose. I was trying to fish it out.” (You can Google the photos for yourself. They are disturbing.)

And yet, according to news reports, Saatchi visited the local police station after the photographs were published, spent some hours in conversation with investigators and accepted a “police caution for assault,” given for minor offenses but which can be used against a defendant in future investigations.

In the ensuing weeks, it’s been all Nigella, all the time: Her wedding ring was off, she was looking at a new apartment, the movers had been spotted at her home. In photos, she appeared distraught, disheveled. Anonymous friends spoke of her distress, and his anger. Her public relations man was said to be insisting that Saatchi apologize, which sparked a great fight between the pair. Lawson issued no statements in her husband’s defense.

That, apparently, was the final straw for the thrice-married Saatchi.

On Sunday, he announced — not to his wife, but to the Daily Mail — that he would seek a divorce.

“I feel I have clearly been a disappointment to Nigella during the last year or so, and I am disappointed that she was advised to make no public comment to explain that I abhor violence of any kind against women, and have never abused her physically in any way. The row photographed at Scott’s restaurant could equally have been Nigella grasping my neck to hold my attention — as indeed she has done in the past…. I must stress my actions were not violent. We are instinctively tactile people.”

I was interested in how a domestic violence expert might react to this one-man pity party, so I called San Diego clinical psychologist David B. Wexler, author of “When Good Men Behave Badly.”

“Jaw-dropping,” said Wexler. “I hate to minimize the actual violence, but the response in some ways is worse.”

“Many people who cross a line in a moment of anger or distress are horrified, and apologize and ask themselves, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ ” Wexler said. “But he’s not even calling this an act of domestic violence. He is just gently applying his hands around her neck to emphasize his point, which, according to him, they do with some frequency? It’s absurd.”

I wish any married couple well, and if Saatchi and Lawson get back together, more power to them. I hope he gets some help for that temper, but first he has to get some help for that world-class denial.

The Telegraph reported Wednesday that Lawson has sought the services of Fiona Shackleton, the high-powered divorce attorney whose clients have included Paul McCartney, Madonna and Prince Charles.

There are also reports that she may arrive in California ahead of schedule to get some distance on her disintegrating private life.

So welcome to Los Angeles, Nigella. We’ve got paparazzi, and plenty of obnoxious, entitled men.

Except for the weather, you’ll probably feel right at home.

Buried body found in Menifee believed to be missing boy’s

The desperate search for missing 11-year-old Terry Smith ended tragically Wednesday when investigators found a buried body on the rural Menifee property where he lived with his family and arrested a teenage family member on suspicion of murder.

After days of scouring the brushy terrain for the boy, investigators early Wednesday found a slight body believed to be the youth’s in a shallow grave. The discovery put a stop to a search that ended up covering roughly 55 square miles near Lake Elsinore.

News that a body had been unearthed was a crushing blow to a tight-knit community and the roughly 1,000 searchers who’d been looking for Terry since his disappearance was announced Sunday.

“He was a very good kid, very nice and sweet, never did anything wrong,” said a sorrowful Dallal Harb, the owner of the Menifee Market, a convenience store near the Smith property. Harb, 31, said Terry attended the same school as her two sons, and she would sometimes pick him up after school and bring him to her store for a snack before sending him home.

Riverside County Sheriff’s Capt. John Hill, who announced the body had been found at an afternoon press conference, would not give the name of the arrested teenager, saying only that he was a family member. “This was a domestic issue within the residence,” he said.

During the search, investigators said one of the last people to see Terry was a 16-year-old stepbrother who lived at the house. The boy’s name was never officially released.

Investigators found the buried body near a tree not far from the beige-and-brown home where Terry lived with his mother, Shauna Smith. Hill said the body “fits the description of Terry Smith” but had not yet been positively identified.

Terry’s father lives out of state and has been contacted by investigators, who say they’ve ruled him out as a suspect.

Earlier in the week, searchers scoured the 2.5-acre property around the Smith home. Officials said Wednesday that Terry Smith’s family hadn’t stopped anyone from searching the property and had been cooperative from the start. A female volunteer searcher called the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department early Wednesday to say human remains had been spotted, according to Sgt. Lisa McConnell.

Before the body was found, investigators relied on statements from Terry Smith’s mother and older stepbrother to plan their search. Shauna Smith said she left him with the older boy while she went out for the night. The stepbrother told detectives that he went for a walk to a nearby market Saturday evening, found that his younger brother was following him and told him to go back home, according to Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy Alberto Martinez.

Harb, whose Menifee Market became a staging area for searchers, said Terry’s family called shortly after he disappeared, asking her if she’d seen the boy. She had not.

She noted that she’d reviewed surveillance footage from her store, within walking distance of the Smith home, and concluded that the stepbrother didn’t come to the market Saturday night.

“I’m completely blank,” she said as she stood near a gate separating her store from the Smith property, where green tents were erected under a tree Wednesday morning to shield detectives and their work.

“It just feels like a total dream,” she said. “I just want to wake up from this dream.”

Harb’s devastation was echoed throughout Menifee, a southwestern Riverside County town of about 80,000 residents that is intersected by Interstate 215.

“This has been a test of the strength of the fabric of this community,” said Menifee Mayor Scott Mann. “Menifee stepped up to the plate in a big way. I just can’t possibly imagine anything more could have been done from the residents of this community.”

The small, blond boy was said to have last been seen wearing blue basketball shorts and was described by his mother as a “high-functioning” autistic. Starting Sunday, search crews fanned across the Menifee area, aided by bloodhounds, helicopters and horseback riders. There were fears that without his autism medication Terry could become overly sensitive and afraid of people yelling his name.

Aiding the search team — which included Riverside County sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents — were scores of volunteers, many of them offering assistance after finding out about the case on a Facebook site. The boy’s lack of medication was only one of the worries; temperatures hovered near 100 degrees every day during the search in the sparsely populated area.

On Wednesday, hope for Terry turned to deep sadness. With word spreading among volunteers that a body had been found, dozens arrayed in a circle, bowing their heads and praying.

“We will find a way to remember him in our hearts,” said Jenny Smith, who taught Terry for part of the day when he was in 4th grade. Smith remembered him as a little hyper, suffering from attention issues, but otherwise not too different from her other students.

Michelle George, who lives near the Smith home, said her 8-year-old son rode the bus with Terry, who would walk to the bus stop alone in the mornings and walk back alone in the afternoon.

“When it was super cold he would sit in the car with us, and they’d sit and look at Digimon cards till the bus came,” George recalled, her voice somber.

George said she didn’t know that Terry had a stepbrother and only saw his mother once, when Shauna Smith walked her son to the bus stop on the first day of school.

14 Inland Empire residents indicted in federal sweep

A federal grand jury has indicted 14 Inland Empire residents in a sweep of people accused of stealing government benefits or lying on passport applications, federal prosecutors said.

Federal officials said Thursday that over the last two weeks, 13 indictments — including one that charges two people — have been issued.

Eleven of the 14 who were indicted are charged with theft of government property, allegedly taking and spending government benefits to which they weren’t entitled — including cases in which the person took payments issued to dead relatives, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Allegations also include lying about identities, Social Security numbers, military service or employment or marital status, prosecutors said.

The three others were charged with making false statements to the State Department in applying for a passport. They were accused of lying about their identities, dates and places of birth and Social Security numbers, prosecutors said.

The 11 people accused of stealing government property over $1,000 are: Audrey Owens, 60, of Upland; Sarah Rose, 57, of San Bernardino; Michele King, 42, of San Bernardino; James Cramer, 78, of Banning; Wilma Welsh, 82, of Perris; Zandria Rhone, 61, of Riverside; Thomas Fothergill, 73, of Perris; Martin Munoz Villa, 42, of Riverside; Josie Lee Anderson, 64, of San Bernardino; Walton Monagan, 70, of Hemet; and Editha Pagdilao, 66, of Redlands.

Those accused of passport fraud are Nelida Alcauter, 36, of Temecula; Maria Altemose, whose age was not disclosed by authorities, of Temecula; and Angela Alicia Sanker, 56, of San Bernardino.

Anderson, who is charged with theft of government property also faces charges for submitting a false statement to a government agency.

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