Illinois
Beanie Babies creator cries, pleads guilty
CHICAGO (AP) — The billionaire who created Beanie Babies broke down crying in court Wednesday as he pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion for hiding $25 million in income in secret Swiss bank accounts.
H. Ty Warner, 69, also apologized as he stood before a federal judge in Chicago, removing his designer tortoise-shell glasses and wiping away tears as he struggled to regain his composure.
“I have so much to be thankful for,” said the suburban Chicago businessman, his voice breaking as he cited his Illinois-based stuffed-toy company, TY Inc. “There is no excuse for my actions.”
The toy-maker’s 18-page plea deal says guidelines call for a prison term of around four years — a calculation that makes it likely he’ll serve time behind bars. It also requires he pay a $53 million civil penalty.
Beanie Babies first appeared in the ‘90s, triggering a craze for the plush toys fashioned into bears and other animals. An explosion of sales made Warner rich; Forbes recently put his net worth at $2.6 billion.
As an emotional Warner continued to apologize during Wednesday’s hearing, his head bowed over a courtroom podium, before Kocoras finally stopped him, telling him he could elaborate at his Jan. 15 sentencing.
Warner admitted he evaded paying $5 million in taxes due to the IRS over an 11-year period by setting up the secret accounts. At one point, he was concealing as much as $107 million, prosecutors said.
West Virginia
Teen murder suspect wants trial relocated
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — Attorneys for a 17-year-old West Virginia girl charged with the premeditated stabbing death of her former best friend say she can’t get a fair trial in Monongalia County, so they want it delayed and relocated.
Attorney Michael Benninger filed several motions in Shelia Eddy’s looming first-degree murder trial this week, including one that asks a judge to deny the use of a confession from her alleged accomplice, Rachel Shoaf.
Prosecutors say Eddy and Shoaf lured 16-year-old University High School honors student Skylar Neese out of her Star City home last summer, stabbed her for reasons that have never been clear and hid her body under some branches just across the state line in Pennsylvania.
Shoaf, who has said only that she and Eddy no longer wanted to be friends with Neese, confessed to the plot and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in May. But Benninger says she was under extreme mental distress when she named Eddy as her co-conspirator, and prosecutors should not be able to use her statements.
The court filings demand copies of all statements and evidence that Shoaf gave police, as well as her mental health records.
Benninger says Shoaf was sent to a mental health facility before she confessed, and that suggests her testimony is unreliable.
