Merrifield man charged with murder

A 20-year-old Fairfax man is facing murder charges in connection with the death of his roommate.

Fairfax County police have charged Jose Ivan Lopez Castro with murder after discovering his roommate stabbed to death in an apartment in the 9100 block of Barrick Street in the Merrifield area.

Police arrested Castro about 1 a.m. Wednesday.

According to police, officers responded to a report of a body with stab wounds about 5:15 p.m. Tuesday. The body, which was found in the apartment’s bathroom, was identified as Oscar Rivera, 38.

Police said Castro was transported to the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center, where he is being detained without bond.

Attorney information for Castro was unavailable as of Thursday afternoon.

Police said they think there was an altercation between two men prior to Rivera’s death.

Two convicted of illegally distributing oxycodone

Paul Boccone, 56, of Chantilly was convicted Aug. 3 of conspiring to distribute and distribution of oxycodone, health care fraud and payroll tax evasion for his role as the owner and president of Chantilly Specialists pain clinic, according to federal court documents.

Charles Brown Jr., 51, a nurse practitioner with Chantilly Specialists, also was convicted of conspiring to distribute and distribution of oxycodone.

According to court records, Boccone was the owner and president of Chantilly Specialists, a pain management clinic. Although not a trained or licensed medical practitioner, evidence at trial showed he treated patients and prescribed narcotics by either forging the signatures of medical practitioners, or encouraging medical practitioners to endorse prescriptions he wrote.

Brown was the lead nurse practitioner at the practice, and assisted Boccone by continuing to prescribe large amounts of narcotics to patients without medical need, court documents said. During the course of the conspiracy, evidence showed at least four Chantilly Specialists patients died of overdoses related to the drugs they obtained from the practice.

Both defendants will be sentenced on Nov. 9. Boccone faces a maximum sentence of 350 years in prison and Brown faces a maximum sentence of 160 years.

Parking lot attendants charged with stealing visitor fees

Three employees of Parking Management, Inc., were arrested Monday and charged with stealing at least $400,000 of visitor parking fees collected at the Smithsonian Institution’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly.

Freweyni Mebrathu, 45, of Sterling; Meseret Terefe, 36, of Silver Spring, Md.; and Genete Yigzu, 46, of Alexandria were charged in three separate criminal complaints with embezzling and stealing federal monies belonging to the Smithsonian Institution.

Each suspect faces a maximum of 10 years in prison, if convicted.

The accused were arrested by agents of the Smithsonian Office of Inspector General and Federal Bureau of Investigation after finishing their shifts at the Udvar-Hazy Center on Aug. 4.

The Udvar-Hazy Center is the annex of the National Air & Space Museum and is home to the Space Shuttle Discovery and other historic aircraft. Along with the Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., these two Smithsonian sites display the largest collection of aircraft and spacecraft in the world.

According to an affidavit filed in federal court, Mebrathu, Terefe and Yigzu began stealing parking fees in April 2009, shortly after PMI took over management of the Udvar-Hazy Center’s parking lot.

The individuals charged are booth attendants employed by Washington, D.C.-based PMI, which has a fixed-rate contract with the Smithsonian to operate the 2,000 vehicle parking lot. Visitors pay a $15 daily fee per vehicle to use the parking lot.

The affidavit states that closed-circuit television cameras captured Mebrathu, Terefe and Yigzu repeatedly unplug electronic vehicle counters located in each attendant’s booth as a way to manipulate accurate vehicle counts.

Terefe also was observed hiding a bundle of cash taken from the entrance fees in a side pocket of his red duffel bag, which he carried away from the parking facility at the end of his shift, according to the affidavit.

Court documents allege Mebrathu and Terefe, on some days, each stole more than $4,000 from the Smithsonian. Yigzu is accused of stealing as much as $1,185 on a single day. The documents allege a three-year loss to the Smithsonian of at least $400,000.

The investigation was initiated by the Smithsonian Office of the Inspector General and jointly investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant United States Attorney Jasmine Yoon and Special Assistant United States Attorney James McDonald are prosecuting the case on behalf of the United States.

Attorney information for the defendants was not available by Thursday afternoon.