Public Safety

The first court appearance was Thursday for a man accused of Alaska Permanent Fund dividend fraud.

Kenneth Wilson Comfort II, 49, was indicted by a Juneau grand jury last month on charges of unsworn falsification and second degree attempted theft.

He called into court today from on-board a ship near Mobile, Alabama. Comfort said he’d be back in Coopers Landing, Alaska in early April. His arraignment will be continued on April 19.

Both of the charges are felonies and specifically focus on Comfort’s alleged untruthful disclosure of his absences on his 2011 PFD application. He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $50,000 fine if convicted.

Comfort did not enter a plea on Thursday and he said that he planned to hire his own attorney in his case.

As much as eighteen months in prison for a man who tried to scam Juneau pharmacists out of narcotics.

Robert A. Biddinger, 44, turned himself into Unalaska police in January. A Juneau grand jury handed up a 44-count indictment against him and a companion on drug charges.

He changed his plea on two of the charges on Thursday. The other twenty felonies filed against him were dropped as part of an agreement with prosecutors.

Assistant District Attorney Angie Kemp says Donya Owens, 29, would say that she was calling in prescriptions on behalf of a dentist. She would also say that Biddinger would pick them up.

Kemp says the Foodland A & P pharmacist, who also works at Juneau Drug, got suspicious with placement of the prescriptions that included a cell phone as a return number. Biddinger picked up twenty vicodin at Safeway last August and another twenty at Foodland in September. According to Kemp, both Owens and Biddinger said they knew they “messed up” or “screwed up”. The pills were for personal use only, not resale.

Biddinger said nothing in court on Thursday besides answering routine questions, asking a few questions, and entering guilty pleas.

His sentencing is planned for May 8.

Owens’ next court appearance is April 26.

The state’s lawsuit against builders of the fast ferries has been shelved indefinitely.

Juneau Superior Court Judge Philip Pallenberg declared Thursday that “proceedings in this case will cease.” That was after he had a chance to research the law behind a motion to move the case out of state court and into federal bankruptcy court. However, the motion was not filed by the company currently in bankruptcy proceedings. Instead, it was filed by the remaining co-defendant in the state’s lawsuit over allegedly defective engines.

If the case is ever remanded back to state court, Judge Pallenberg says only then will he consider if he’ll sanction MTU Friedrichshafen and MTU Detroit Diesel for potential impropriety, or use of the motion as a delaying tactic.

Attorneys for the State and Alaska Marine Highway System got blindsided by a motion to remove the case out of state court. A hearing had been planned for Wednesday to compel MTU to provide witnesses for depositions.

The Alaska Marine Highway System believes that the engines for the fast ferries Fairweather and Chenega are defective. The vessel’s builders, Derecktor Shipyard of Connecticut, dropped out of the case when the company filed for bankruptcy protection in January.

Another telephone scam has hit Juneau. This one for check fraud.

According to Juneau police, a man has been making calls saying he’s pursuing a $10,000 federal judgment for check fraud. He claims to be from the householder’s bank.

JPD spokeswoman Cindee Brown-Mills says one Juneau woman told police that she called her bank and was told it was fraudulent.

“He was obviously trying to get money out of her,” Brown-Mills says. “He had some really interesting information about her, some old work history and things like that.”

Police and the Alaska office of the FBI say there’s been an increase in recent weeks in the number of telephone scams in the capital city, including the so-called “Grandma Scam.”

Con artists targeting senior citizens pose as a family member who’s been in a car accident, is stranded and calling for money.

“If it sounds fishy, it probably is,” Brown-Mills says.

She says is all these cases the caller sounds believable because he has personal information about the family, often easy to find in these days of the Internet, especially on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Brown-Mills says it’s hard for local police to investigate the scams, because they often cross state and even international lines, which is why they’re referred to the FBI.

If you get such a call, never give out personal information. It’s best to just hang up.

The state’s lawsuit against builders of the fast ferries took another unexpected turn on Wednesday.

The German-builder of the ferry’s engines submitted a last-minute motion to remove the entire case to federal bankruptcy court. That would effectively take the entire lawsuit, at least temporarily, out of the hands of state Superior Court Judge Philip Pallenberg.

The Alaska Marine Highway System believes that the engines for the fast ferries Fairweather and Chenega are defective. But the vessel’s builders, Derecktor Shipyard of Connecticut, filed for bankruptcy protection in January. For now, they are not a defendant in the state’s lawsuit. But the case can still proceed against the German company that built the ferries’ engines, MTU Friedrichshafen, and the U.S. company that has done maintenance, MTU Detroit Diesel.

Attorneys for the state and ferry system were not happy about the surprise filing. Judge Pallenberg even considered that such a motion by a non-debtor could constitute a willful violation of the automatic stay in the state case.

Wednesday afternoon’s hearing was originally planned to compel engine builder MTU to produce witnesses for planned depositions for an upcoming trial. State attorneys believe that MTU is purposely hindering the pre-trial process by releasing witnesses or making them unavailable. MTU says that’s not the case.

All the parties hope to review the law before the hearing is continued on Thursday morning. Meanwhile, Judge Pallenberg warned MTU to “release witnesses (from depositions) at its own peril.”

Another case of poaching against a member of the Duby family has come to an end in Juneau.

Jason W. Duby, 36, reached an agreement with prosecutors and changed his plea to guilty for bear baiting without a permit and hunting in a closed area. Another charge of taking a black bear without an appropriate permit was dropped.

For each of the remaining charges, Duby was sentenced to ten days in jail with all ten days suspended. That means no time to serve. He was also fined a total of $8,000 with $4,000 suspended. He was ordered to pay restitution totaling $1220. That includes the black bear that was taken. He also forfeits the hide and skull, a bow, and a trail camera. His hunting privileges are revoked for a year and he’ll be on probation for three years.

Duby, originally listed as from Clelum, Washington, called into Tuesday’s sentencing hearing from a charter boat off the coast of Hawaii where he’s apparently working as a sport fishing guide. The hearing paused briefly as Duby’s cellphone lost the connection. Most of his comments were “yep” and “yeah” in response to routine questions from Juneau District Court Judge Keith Levy. Later he said “I don’t need to say anything.”

Duby is one of the brothers of 37-year old Michael Patrick Duby, owner and operator of FishHunter Charters in Juneau, who was also convicted of hunting and fishing violations. For Jason Duby, investigators say he took a bear at a bait station behind Michael Duby’s house on Glacier Highway.