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By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive, Patreon

SDNY COURTHOUSE, Oct 10 – While many or even most cases in the Magistrates Court of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York are sealed or have case numbers given only later, on October 10 Magistrate Judge Ona T. Wang past 7 pm was faced with alleged Violations of Supervised Release for a defendant, Elijah Ellis, whose lawyer from the underlying case could not be located, see below. Inner City Press was the only media in the Mag Court.

  There was a three defendant case, with the defendants bailed out - but with the case number given (19-cr-651) was listed even two hours later as "under seal." Particularly where bail is granted, and there is no inkling of cooperation, why is this still sealed?

    Near 7 pm a defendant was brought in by US Marshals and charged with the rare mix of embezzlement from a credit union and narcotics. The called him Mister Gagliardo and everyone seemed to know his (retained) defense counsel. 

Assistant US Attorneys Eli Mark and Daniel Richenthal agreed he could be bailed if he agreed to only get drugs from a legitimate doctor; Richenthal personally took his passport and gave it to pre-trial services.

  But even an hour later the case was not listed in PACER. This is the murky Mag Court -and murky SDNY and US Attorney, including on its partial prosecutions of UN corruption. 

Eliajah Ellis had been brought into the SDNY Magistrates Court in shackles for charges including marijuana.

 Meanwhile the U.S. Attorney's office is offering a 5K1 cooperator's leniency letter to a man, Alex Ardon, who admits murdering 56 people and is seeking a 20 year sentence for an emo rapper Michael Jones for the unlucky death by heroin and other drugs of the daughter of a hedge funder. It's come to this.

Inner City Press will stay on these cases.

SW