Wisconsin
Man who ordered ballots without consent found guilty of fraud and identity theft
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A jury convicted a Wisconsin man of election fraud and identity theft for requesting the ballots of Republican state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Democratic Racine Mayor Cory Mason without their consent.
Jurors in Racine County on Tuesday found Harry Wait guilty of two misdemeanor election fraud charges and one felony identity theft charge following a two-day trial. He was acquitted of a second count of identity theft.
Wait leads a group that makes false election claims, including that Wisconsin’s elections are riddled with fraud and that President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020 by about 21,000 votes.
Wait admitted in 2022 that he requested Vos’ and Mason’s ballots to try to prove that the state’s voter registration system is vulnerable to fraud. Wait told The Associated Press at the time that he wasn’t surprised he was charged.
“You got to expect to pay some costs sometimes when you are trying to work for the public good,” he said.
His efforts drew praise from Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson in 2022, who called Wait a “white hat hacker.”
After the verdict, Wait told WTMJ that he “would do it again.”
“I tested the system and the system failed,” he said.
A sentencing date has not been set. Wait’s attorney Joe Bugni did not respond to an email Wednesday asking whether he would appeal.
Wait, 71, faces up to six years in prison on the felony conviction and up to a year in jail on each of the misdemeanor convictions.
His conviction comes after a jury in 2024 found a former Milwaukee election official guilty of misconduct in office after she obtained three military absentee ballots using fake names and Social Security numbers in 2022. Like Wait, Kimberly Zapata argued that she was trying to expose vulnerabilities in the state’s election system.
Zapata was fined $3,000 and sentenced to one year probation.
Pennsylvania
Teens get probation after using AI to create fake nudes of classmates
LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) — Two teenage boys who used artificial intelligence to create fake nude photos of their classmates were put on probation Wednesday and placed in the custody of their parents.
The boys, who were 14 at the time, admitted earlier this month that they made 59 child sex abuse images. Prosecutors said they morphed photos of girls, many from Instagram, with virtual images of adults depicting nudity or sexual activity.
Some of the victims were their classmates at Lancaster Country Day School, west of Philadelphia. Police said in court documents that a woman reported that her daughter said a fellow student had been “taking photographs of students and using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to portray the female juvenile students as being nude.”
Wednesday’s disposition hearing before Lancaster County Common Pleas Court Judge Leonard Brown III was the juvenile court version of a sentencing hearing.
Along with probation, the boys were given 60 hours of community service each. If they don’t have any additional legal problems, Brown said the case could expunged after two years. They were also ordered not to have contact with the victims and must pay an unspecified amount of restitution.
As he imposed his sentence, Brown said he had not heard either boy apologize or take responsibility for their actions. If they were adults, he said, they probably would be headed for state prison.
During the proceedings, the boys declined several opportunities to comment to the judge. Afterwards, one of the boys refused to comment outside court.
“This has been a regrettable, long torturous process for everyone involved,” Heidi Freese, an attorney for one of the boys. “There were very interesting, underlying legal issues surrounding the charges in this case and those will be decided on a different day in a different case.”
Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday has said the case “exemplifies the dark side of modern technology and social media.”
“The conduct involved a weaponization of technology to victimize unsuspecting children who had photos online. It goes without saying that the impact on the victims is nothing short of devastation,” Sunday said in a release earlier this month.
The resolution of the Pennsylvania case comes days after three teenagers in Tennessee sued Elon Musk’s xAI, claiming the company’s Grok tools morphed their real photos into explicitly sexual images. The high school students are seeking class-action status to represent what the lawsuit says are thousands of people who were similarly victimized as minors.
The scandal in Pennsylvania in 2024 led to a student protest, the departure of school leaders and criminal charges against the two teenagers.
Nadeem Bezar, a Philadelphia lawyer who represents at least 10 of the victims, said Tuesday he expects to file a claim “against the school and anybody else we think has culpability in these deepfakes being created and disseminated.”
He said he has not yet seen the photos but expects the legal process to determine “exactly when and where and how the school knew, how the boys created these images, what platforms they used to create these images and how they were disseminated.”
Bezar said the girls’ reactions have varied, and for some it was traumatizing.
“You’re talking about teenage young women who are goal-driven, doing well in school, trying to do everything they can to just sort of fit in and find their way through life at that young age, where everything matters,” Bezar said.
As AI has become accessible and powerful, lawmakers across the country have passed laws aimed at barring deepfakes.
President Donald Trump signed the Take it Down Act last year, making it illegal to publish intimate images including deepfakes without consent, and requiring websites and social media sites to remove such material within 48 hours of being notified by a victim.
Forty-six states now have laws addressing deepfakes, with legislation introduced in the remaining four -- Alaska, Missouri, New Mexico and Ohio -- according to the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
New York
Former guard goes on trial in fatal beating of a prison inmate
UTICA, N.Y. (AP) — A former upstate New York prison guard on trial in the death of an inmate repeatedly stomped on the man’s head during a brutal beating by a group of guards, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday.
Jonah Levi, who has been charged with murder, was the first guard to go on trial after 10 were indicted last April in connection with death of Messiah Nantwi at Mid-State Correctional Facility on March 1, 2025 — a time when the state prison system was reeling from a wildcat strike.
Prosecutors said Nantwi, 22, suffered 69 separate body blows from guards who used their fists, boots and batons in a series of beatings. A witness testified Tuesday that Nantwi was bloodied and making noises in distress after being pummeled in his room.
Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick told jurors in his opening statement that investigators collected DNA evidence from boots taken from Levi and a second guard facing a top charge of second-degree murder.
“With utter depravity and recklessness, you will hear eyewitness testimony that Jonah Levi multiple times stomped Messiah Nantwi on the head. And pathetically, his brother officers did nothing,” said Fitzpatrick, the special prosecutor.
Nantwi died due to massive head trauma and other injuries to his body from the beatings, according to prosecutors.
Levi’s attorney, Lewis G. Spicer, told the jury that the use of force that morning was justified given Nantwi’s aggressive behavior. He said Levi did not use any force that resulted in Nantwi’s death.
“Mr. Levi was doing everything he was supposed to do,” Spicer said.
Nantwi’s death came several months after Robert Brooks was fatally beaten at a separate prison just across the road from Mid-State. Prisoner advocates say the two beatings illustrated a culture of violence by guards at New York prisons.
His death also came as New York prisons were struggling to function during a three-week wildcat strike by guards upset over working conditions, which forced the governor to send in National Guard troops.
Levi was part of an emergency response team called to Nantwi’s room to help National Guard members who sought backup after Nantwi was uncooperative with a bedside prisoner headcount.
Nicholas Mouzon, a National Guard member working that day, testified that Nantwi would not leave a shower area to be counted, repeatedly saying, “What if I don’t want to?” But Nantwi instantly calmed down once backup was called for, he said.
Several corrections officers who responded to the call began beating Nantwi in his room after he refused to be handcuffed and grabbed a guard’s vest, authorities said. The beatings intensified after Nantwi bit a guard’s hand, prosecutors claim.
“He’s dead because he protested cuffing up and because he tried to bite someone’s finger,” Fitzpatrick said.
Mouzon said he had a limited view from outside the room, but saw a guard standing on Nantwi’s calves and striking his feet with a baton. He later saw Nantwi being carried out.
“His eyes were closed. He was making — best way I can describe it — aggravated dog noises. He was growling,” Mouzon said.
Prosecutors say guards falsely claimed a makeshift knife had been recovered as part of a cover-up effort.
Lewis told the jury that prosecutors offered an “extremely sanitized” version of events. Nantwi, who was high on synthetic marijuana, was the initial aggressor, Spicer said.
“You’re going to hear him fighting back,” Spicer said.
While Brooks’ beating months earlier was captured on body cameras, video footage will likely play less of a role in this trial. Prosecutors say some guards involved in Nantwi’s death were not wearing mandated body cameras, or turned them off, or looked the other way.
Besides murder, Levi also has been charged with first-degree manslaughter, first-degree gang assault, second-degree gang assault, fifth-degree conspiracy and first-degree offering a false instrument for file.
Levi is first guard to face a jury in the case. More than half a dozen others have pleaded guilty to lesser charges related to the incident and the alleged cover-up.
Nantwi entered the state prison system in May 2024 and had been serving a five-year sentence for second-degree criminal possession of a weapon related to an exchange of gunfire with police officers in 2021. He was shot multiple times, while the officers were uninjured.
Prosecutors in Manhattan say Nantwi shot and killed Jaylen Duncan, 19, on a Harlem street in April 2023. The following evening, they say, he shot and killed Brandon Brunson, 36, at a Harlem smoke shop after an argument.
Man who ordered ballots without consent found guilty of fraud and identity theft
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A jury convicted a Wisconsin man of election fraud and identity theft for requesting the ballots of Republican state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Democratic Racine Mayor Cory Mason without their consent.
Jurors in Racine County on Tuesday found Harry Wait guilty of two misdemeanor election fraud charges and one felony identity theft charge following a two-day trial. He was acquitted of a second count of identity theft.
Wait leads a group that makes false election claims, including that Wisconsin’s elections are riddled with fraud and that President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020 by about 21,000 votes.
Wait admitted in 2022 that he requested Vos’ and Mason’s ballots to try to prove that the state’s voter registration system is vulnerable to fraud. Wait told The Associated Press at the time that he wasn’t surprised he was charged.
“You got to expect to pay some costs sometimes when you are trying to work for the public good,” he said.
His efforts drew praise from Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson in 2022, who called Wait a “white hat hacker.”
After the verdict, Wait told WTMJ that he “would do it again.”
“I tested the system and the system failed,” he said.
A sentencing date has not been set. Wait’s attorney Joe Bugni did not respond to an email Wednesday asking whether he would appeal.
Wait, 71, faces up to six years in prison on the felony conviction and up to a year in jail on each of the misdemeanor convictions.
His conviction comes after a jury in 2024 found a former Milwaukee election official guilty of misconduct in office after she obtained three military absentee ballots using fake names and Social Security numbers in 2022. Like Wait, Kimberly Zapata argued that she was trying to expose vulnerabilities in the state’s election system.
Zapata was fined $3,000 and sentenced to one year probation.
Pennsylvania
Teens get probation after using AI to create fake nudes of classmates
LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) — Two teenage boys who used artificial intelligence to create fake nude photos of their classmates were put on probation Wednesday and placed in the custody of their parents.
The boys, who were 14 at the time, admitted earlier this month that they made 59 child sex abuse images. Prosecutors said they morphed photos of girls, many from Instagram, with virtual images of adults depicting nudity or sexual activity.
Some of the victims were their classmates at Lancaster Country Day School, west of Philadelphia. Police said in court documents that a woman reported that her daughter said a fellow student had been “taking photographs of students and using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to portray the female juvenile students as being nude.”
Wednesday’s disposition hearing before Lancaster County Common Pleas Court Judge Leonard Brown III was the juvenile court version of a sentencing hearing.
Along with probation, the boys were given 60 hours of community service each. If they don’t have any additional legal problems, Brown said the case could expunged after two years. They were also ordered not to have contact with the victims and must pay an unspecified amount of restitution.
As he imposed his sentence, Brown said he had not heard either boy apologize or take responsibility for their actions. If they were adults, he said, they probably would be headed for state prison.
During the proceedings, the boys declined several opportunities to comment to the judge. Afterwards, one of the boys refused to comment outside court.
“This has been a regrettable, long torturous process for everyone involved,” Heidi Freese, an attorney for one of the boys. “There were very interesting, underlying legal issues surrounding the charges in this case and those will be decided on a different day in a different case.”
Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday has said the case “exemplifies the dark side of modern technology and social media.”
“The conduct involved a weaponization of technology to victimize unsuspecting children who had photos online. It goes without saying that the impact on the victims is nothing short of devastation,” Sunday said in a release earlier this month.
The resolution of the Pennsylvania case comes days after three teenagers in Tennessee sued Elon Musk’s xAI, claiming the company’s Grok tools morphed their real photos into explicitly sexual images. The high school students are seeking class-action status to represent what the lawsuit says are thousands of people who were similarly victimized as minors.
The scandal in Pennsylvania in 2024 led to a student protest, the departure of school leaders and criminal charges against the two teenagers.
Nadeem Bezar, a Philadelphia lawyer who represents at least 10 of the victims, said Tuesday he expects to file a claim “against the school and anybody else we think has culpability in these deepfakes being created and disseminated.”
He said he has not yet seen the photos but expects the legal process to determine “exactly when and where and how the school knew, how the boys created these images, what platforms they used to create these images and how they were disseminated.”
Bezar said the girls’ reactions have varied, and for some it was traumatizing.
“You’re talking about teenage young women who are goal-driven, doing well in school, trying to do everything they can to just sort of fit in and find their way through life at that young age, where everything matters,” Bezar said.
As AI has become accessible and powerful, lawmakers across the country have passed laws aimed at barring deepfakes.
President Donald Trump signed the Take it Down Act last year, making it illegal to publish intimate images including deepfakes without consent, and requiring websites and social media sites to remove such material within 48 hours of being notified by a victim.
Forty-six states now have laws addressing deepfakes, with legislation introduced in the remaining four -- Alaska, Missouri, New Mexico and Ohio -- according to the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
New York
Former guard goes on trial in fatal beating of a prison inmate
UTICA, N.Y. (AP) — A former upstate New York prison guard on trial in the death of an inmate repeatedly stomped on the man’s head during a brutal beating by a group of guards, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday.
Jonah Levi, who has been charged with murder, was the first guard to go on trial after 10 were indicted last April in connection with death of Messiah Nantwi at Mid-State Correctional Facility on March 1, 2025 — a time when the state prison system was reeling from a wildcat strike.
Prosecutors said Nantwi, 22, suffered 69 separate body blows from guards who used their fists, boots and batons in a series of beatings. A witness testified Tuesday that Nantwi was bloodied and making noises in distress after being pummeled in his room.
Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick told jurors in his opening statement that investigators collected DNA evidence from boots taken from Levi and a second guard facing a top charge of second-degree murder.
“With utter depravity and recklessness, you will hear eyewitness testimony that Jonah Levi multiple times stomped Messiah Nantwi on the head. And pathetically, his brother officers did nothing,” said Fitzpatrick, the special prosecutor.
Nantwi died due to massive head trauma and other injuries to his body from the beatings, according to prosecutors.
Levi’s attorney, Lewis G. Spicer, told the jury that the use of force that morning was justified given Nantwi’s aggressive behavior. He said Levi did not use any force that resulted in Nantwi’s death.
“Mr. Levi was doing everything he was supposed to do,” Spicer said.
Nantwi’s death came several months after Robert Brooks was fatally beaten at a separate prison just across the road from Mid-State. Prisoner advocates say the two beatings illustrated a culture of violence by guards at New York prisons.
His death also came as New York prisons were struggling to function during a three-week wildcat strike by guards upset over working conditions, which forced the governor to send in National Guard troops.
Levi was part of an emergency response team called to Nantwi’s room to help National Guard members who sought backup after Nantwi was uncooperative with a bedside prisoner headcount.
Nicholas Mouzon, a National Guard member working that day, testified that Nantwi would not leave a shower area to be counted, repeatedly saying, “What if I don’t want to?” But Nantwi instantly calmed down once backup was called for, he said.
Several corrections officers who responded to the call began beating Nantwi in his room after he refused to be handcuffed and grabbed a guard’s vest, authorities said. The beatings intensified after Nantwi bit a guard’s hand, prosecutors claim.
“He’s dead because he protested cuffing up and because he tried to bite someone’s finger,” Fitzpatrick said.
Mouzon said he had a limited view from outside the room, but saw a guard standing on Nantwi’s calves and striking his feet with a baton. He later saw Nantwi being carried out.
“His eyes were closed. He was making — best way I can describe it — aggravated dog noises. He was growling,” Mouzon said.
Prosecutors say guards falsely claimed a makeshift knife had been recovered as part of a cover-up effort.
Lewis told the jury that prosecutors offered an “extremely sanitized” version of events. Nantwi, who was high on synthetic marijuana, was the initial aggressor, Spicer said.
“You’re going to hear him fighting back,” Spicer said.
While Brooks’ beating months earlier was captured on body cameras, video footage will likely play less of a role in this trial. Prosecutors say some guards involved in Nantwi’s death were not wearing mandated body cameras, or turned them off, or looked the other way.
Besides murder, Levi also has been charged with first-degree manslaughter, first-degree gang assault, second-degree gang assault, fifth-degree conspiracy and first-degree offering a false instrument for file.
Levi is first guard to face a jury in the case. More than half a dozen others have pleaded guilty to lesser charges related to the incident and the alleged cover-up.
Nantwi entered the state prison system in May 2024 and had been serving a five-year sentence for second-degree criminal possession of a weapon related to an exchange of gunfire with police officers in 2021. He was shot multiple times, while the officers were uninjured.
Prosecutors in Manhattan say Nantwi shot and killed Jaylen Duncan, 19, on a Harlem street in April 2023. The following evening, they say, he shot and killed Brandon Brunson, 36, at a Harlem smoke shop after an argument.
