Federal Prison

Man who fled rape trial seized HOUSTON - A man who fled his trial a day before being convicted and sentenced in the repeated group sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl in southeastern Texas was captured Tuesday after being a fugitive for nearly two weeks, authorities said. Eric McGowen, 20, was arrested after being found in an apartment in northeast Houston, said Alfredo Perez, a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service. Information provided to the Gulf Coast Violent Offenders Task Force led officials to McGowen, said Perez.

A 29-year-old North Jersey man was sentenced Friday to 18 months in federal prison for smuggling more than $150,000 in cash on a flight from Philadelphia International Airport to the Dominican Republic. Juan Adames, 29, of Ridgefield Park, was a US Airways employee and was able to bypass screeners at the airport to board his flight in 2010, federal authorities said. He pleaded guilty in June to bulk cash smuggling and other charges. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations said the case identified a major vulnerability in the screening system that has since been fixed.

YOU CAN SAY a lot of things about former state Sen. Milton Street Sr. - he went to federal prison for not filing taxes; he owes more than $1 million in back taxes to the feds, New Jersey and Philadelphia - but you can't say the man doesn't hustle for a living. City Councilman Curtis Jones Jr . tweeted a picture Wednesday of Street selling campaign buttons emblazoned with President Obama 's image outside the Democratic National Convention, in Charlotte, N.C. Jones called Street a "friend and brother, taking advantage of an entrepreneurial opportunity.

A Philadelphia man was sentenced Wednesday to 18 months in federal prison for stealing government funds while he was running a nonprofit that was supposed to be helping Philadelphia youths. William Mackey attempted or helped to arrange approximately $157,000 in fraudulent checks and wire transfers and caused more than $180,000 in losses, federal prosecutors said. U.S. District Judge Legrome D. Davis also ordered Mackey to pay $142,000 in restitution and serve three years of supervised release.

RAPPER Beanie Sigel's new album, which debuted Tuesday, is called "This Time. " But this time is starting to look a lot like the last time after Sigel, 38, was arrested early Wednesday on drug and weapons charges. Sigel was arrested during a car stop on Interstate 95 in Tinicum Township, Delaware County, at 3:14 a.m., just two weeks before he was to report to federal prison in Ohio to serve two years on tax-evasion charges. According to State Police, Sigel, whose real name is Dwight Grant, was the passenger in a Ford Fusion driven by Gerald Andrews, of Philadelphia, whom police pulled over for swerving and following another car too closely.

INDIANAPOLIS - American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh and other Muslims housed at a special federal prison unit in Indiana have used the guise of religion to show defiance toward their captors, a prison security official testified Wednesday. Lindh, who is suing to overturn a policy preventing him and the other Muslims he's housed with from performing their five daily prayers as a group, once delivered an incendiary sermon in Arabic at the Terre Haute prison's Communication Management Unit despite a requirement that inmates speak English except for ritual prayers, security official Tim Coleman testified.

THE FORMER general manager of a now-defunct federal credit union that served low-income Hispanics in North Philadelphia failed to appear in federal court Tuesday for his arraignment and change of plea. Ignacio Morales, 40, of Fairhill, was charged by the U.S. Attorney on Aug. 7 with misusing and embezzling $2.3 million of Borinquen Federal Credit Union funds between June 2006 and June 2011, and related offenses. U.S. District Judge Barclay Surrick immediately issued a bench warrant for Morales' arrest.

INDIANAPOLIS - American-born Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh says a federal prison rule barring him and other Muslims from praying together daily is "absurd" and contends the U.S. is causing him to sin against his religion by prohibiting such gatherings in the name of security. Lindh testified Monday in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis during a trial in a civil lawsuit seeking to overturn the prison policy, which he argues violates a 1993 law barring the government from curtailing religious expression without showing it has a compelling interest.