This article explains that a person can still be arrested for OWI (Operating While Intoxicated) even if they are taken to the hospital after an accident or medical emergency. Some people think that going to the hospital might protect them from arrest, but the article makes it clear that this is not true. Police can continue their investigation at the hospital, and in many cases, the hospital is where the most important evidence is collected.

The process usually begins when police respond to a crash or when someone is found unconscious or acting impaired behind the wheel. 

If officers notice signs such as

1.  the smell of alcohol, 
2. slurred speech, 
3. bloodshot eyes, or 
4. if witnesses say the person was driving, this gives probable cause to continue the investigation. 

Under Wisconsin’s implied consent law, simply driving on public roads counts as giving consent to chemical tests such as blood draws. 

This same type of law exists in all 50 states.

The article also explains that hospitals often draw blood for medical treatment, not for police. However, with a search warrant, law enforcement can request those medical blood test results and use them as evidence in court. This is important because hospital blood tests are usually very accurate and can show a person’s blood alcohol concentration at the time of the incident.

In some situations, the police may even arrest someone while they are still in the hospital bed. Officers may wait until medical staff say the person is stable before transporting them to jail. If the person refuses a chemical test, the law can still punish them. 

Refusal can result in automatic license suspension and additional penalties, even if they are not found guilty of OWI later.

The article also mentions legal challenges. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Mitchell v. Wisconsin (2019) that unconscious drivers may be subject to blood draws without a warrant in emergency situations. However, courts still continue to review how consent is handled, especially to make sure police are not forcing or misleading people.

Overall, the key point is that going to the hospital does not prevent OWI charges. In fact, the hospital may make the case stronger because blood tests and observations are recorded clearly. This article serves as a reminder of the serious legal and personal consequences of driving while intoxicated.

Busted in the ER: Drivers Are Being Arrested for OWI Right from Their Hospital Beds

4 days ago

Yes — you can absolutely be arrested for OWI (Operating While Intoxicated) even if you’re in a hospital. Here’s how it typically plays out:

AI was utilized for research, writing, citation management, and editing.
The author has no affiliation with any companies mentioned.

🚨 How Hospital OWI Arrests Work

🚑 Police Respond to an Accident or Medical Call

If you were in a crash or found slumped over behind the wheel, officers may follow you to the hospital. Wisconsin law — like most states — allows OWI investigations to continue even during medical treatment.

🕵️ Probable Cause Comes First

Officers must have probable cause — such as the odor of alcohol, slurred speech, or witness reports that you were driving.

Under Wisconsin’s Implied Consent Law (Wis. Stat. § 343.305), by driving on state roads, you’ve already consented to a chemical test.

Police can request a blood draw even while you’re hospitalized.

If you’re unconscious, the law presumes consent in most cases — though this was limited by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in State v. Prado (2021), which ruled the incapacitated driver provision unconstitutional.

All 50 states have some form of implied consent law.

🧪 Medical Blood Draws Can Be Used as Evidence

Hospitals often draw blood for medical reasons, not law enforcement. However, with a warrant, police can obtain those lab results and use them in court.

🛏️ Formal Arrest Can Happen at the Hospital

If officers have probable cause, they can arrest you bedside — even while you’re in a hospital gown or connected to IVs. They’ll often wait until medical staff clear you for discharge before transporting you to jail.

🚫 Refusal = Separate Penalty

Refusing a chemical test in Wisconsin triggers automatic license suspension and can result in enhanced penalties, even if you’re not convicted of OWI.

⚖️ Constitutional Challenges

• The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Wisconsin’s law in Mitchell v. Wisconsin (2019), ruling that unconscious drivers may be subject to blood draws without a warrant under the exigent circumstances exception.
• However, courts continue to scrutinize how consent is obtained — especially in cases involving coercion or misleading statements by officers.

🧾 Key Takeaway

You can’t “avoid” an OWI arrest by ending up in the ER. In fact, the hospital is often where evidence is gathered — through blood alcohol tests and police interviews.

California members of transnational fraud ring arrested for $30 Million timeshare scam

 This article reports on a major federal criminal case in which more than 20 individuals were arrested across the United States for their involvement in a large-scale telemarketing fraud and money laundering scheme. The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that these arrests were made as part of Operation Silver Shores, which targeted a transnational criminal organization operating in both the United States and Latin America. The group is accused of stealing more than $30 million from mostly elderly people across the country.

The article explains that the accused individuals carried out their fraud by contacting victims through phone calls and emails. They pretended to be lawyers, government officials, or representatives from legal agencies. Many of the targeted victims were senior citizens who either owned or previously owned timeshare properties. The scammers told the victims that they qualified for financial settlements related to their timeshares. This false promise of compensation made victims believe that the callers were helping them, when in fact they were tricking them.

The scheme involved several organized and coordinated steps to move and hide the stolen money. The group created shell companies, fake business identities, and fraudulent bank accounts in order to transfer money without raising suspicion. They also used layered transfers, meaning that they moved money through multiple accounts and financial platforms to make it harder for investigators to trace the funds. Some of the money was transferred to accounts in the United States, while other funds were sent to foreign countries in Latin America. This shows that the organization was not only large but also global and well-structured.

The DOJ reported that at least 372 victims have been identified so far. The financial losses were described as devastating, especially because many of the victims were elderly and may not be able to recover financially. Some victims may have lost their retirement savings or life savings to the scheme. Federal investigators were able to recover over $1.5 million, but most of the stolen money is still unaccounted for and efforts to recover more funds are ongoing.

The article also lists the names, ages, and cities of several individuals who were arrested. These include people from California cities such as Berkeley, Marysville, Stockton, San Jose, Fresno, Bakersfield, and Fremont, as well as individuals from Texas and Florida. These arrests show that the criminal activity was spread across multiple states and involved many different participants.

Those who were arrested are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, which are serious federal crimes. Wire fraud involves using electronic communication, such as email or phone calls, to commit fraud. Money laundering involves hiding the source of illegally obtained money by passing it through complicated financial transactions. If found guilty, each defendant could face up to 30 years in prison and heavy fines for wire fraud. Money laundering charges could lead to an additional 20 years in prison and fines that could be as large as the amount of money stolen.

The article also notes that the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in court. This is an important part of the American legal system, which requires that guilt must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt before someone is convicted.

This case raises awareness about fraud and scams, especially those targeting the elderly. Many elderly people are trusting, and scammers take advantage of that trust. The article highlights the need for people to be cautious when receiving phone calls, emails, or messages about money, prizes, or legal settlements. It also emphasizes the need for families and communities to help protect vulnerable individuals, such as older adults, from being tricked or pressured into sending money.

Operation Silver Shores also shows the importance of cooperation between federal agencies and international law enforcement partners. Because the crime involved people and accounts in multiple countries, investigators had to work across borders to uncover the scheme.

In conclusion, this article illustrates a serious crime that caused significant financial harm to many innocent people. It also shows how modern scams can be complex and highly coordinated. The arrests represent an important step toward justice for the victims, but the emotional and financial damage may be long-lasting. The case serves as a strong reminder to stay alert and to question unexpected financial claims, no matter how professional or convincing they may seem.

ဒီဆောင်းပါးမှာ အမေရိကန်တောင်သူကြီးရုံး DOJ က ပြန်ကြားသလို၊ အမေရိကန်နိုင်ငံတစ်လွှားမှာ လူ ၂၀ကျော်ကို ဖမ်းဆီးခဲ့တယ်လို့ အကြောင်းပြထားပါတယ်။ သူတို့ဟာ Operation Silver Shores လို့ခေါ်တဲ့ တားဆီးရေး အလုပ်လုပ်ခြင်းအောက်မှာ ဖမ်းဆီးချုပ်ထားတာဖြစ်ပြီး ဒီအဖွဲ့ဟာ အမေရိကန်နဲ့ လက်တင်အမေရိက ကျောက်တောင်တချို့နိုင်ငံတွေထဲမှာ လုပ်ငန်းများပြားခဲ့တဲ့ ကမ္ဘာလုံးဆိုင်ရာ လိမ်ကြေးရုံးဖော်အဖွဲ့ တစ်ခုဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ ဒီအဖွဲ့က အထင်အရှား အသက်ကြီးသူတွေကို (elderly) ဆိုးရွယ်ချိုးဖောက်ပြီး သန်းများနှင့်ချီတဲ့ ငွေတွေကို ခိုးယူခဲ့တာလို့ ဆိုပါတယ်။ စုစုပေါင်း $30 million (၃၀ သန်းဒေါ်လာ) လောက်ပမာဏရှိပါတယ်။

ဆိုလိုတာက သူတို့ဟာ ဖုန်းနဲ့ Email တွေနဲ့ သတ်မှတ်ထားတဲ့ သက်ကြီးရွယ်အိုတွေကို ဆက်သွယ်ပြီး ပြည်နယ်အိုင်ယာနီ၊ ဥပဒေဝန်ထမ်း၊ တရားရုံးရှေ့နေ စတဲ့ ပုံစံတွေနဲ့ ချားယူပြောဆိုခဲ့ကြတာပါ။ အ victims များထဲက အများစုက timeshare property (ပိုင်ဆိုင်မှုပုံစံတစ်မျိုး) ပိုင်သူတွေ ဖြစ်ကြပြီး သူတို့ကို “သင်တို့ရဲ့ ပိုင်ဆိုင်မှုနဲ့ပတ်သက်ပြီး ဥပဒေနှောင့်နှေးမှု၊ စီစဉ်ငွေပြန်လာရမယ့် တရားလျှောက်မှုတွေရှိတယ်၊ အစိုးရက ငွေပြန်ပေးမယ့်အတွက် သင် processing fees ပေးဖို့လိုတယ်” လို့ သုံးနည်းလှည့်စားခဲ့ပါတယ်။

ဒီအဖွဲ့ဟာ shell companies (အမည်ရှိပေမယ့် အလုပ်မရှိတဲ့ ကုမ္ပဏီဂိုးသေများ)၊ fake business names နဲ့ bank accounts တို့အသုံးပြုပြီး victims တွေရဲ့ ငွေကို ခြောက်ထပ်နှင့်တချို့အကွဲအသွားနည်းနဲ့ လွှဲပြောင်းပြီး မူလမူကြမ်း ကိုဖုံးကွယ်ခဲ့ပါတယ်။ ငွေတွေကို အမေရိကန်၊ လက်တင်အမေရိက နဲ့ အခြားနိုင်ငံတွေရှိ သူတို့အဖွဲ့ဝင်ကောင်တာတွေထဲကို လှမ်းလှမ်းရွှမ်းရွှမ်း layered transfers လုပ်ပြီး ခြေရာရှင်းလင်းစေခဲ့ပါတယ်။

DOJ ပြောကြားချက်အရ 372 victims ထပ်မံတွေ့ရှိထားပြီး, နောက်ထပ်လူတွေလည်း ထပ်တွေ့နိုင်တယ်လို့ ယူဆနေကြပါတယ်။ အခုချိန်မှာ $1.5 million လောက်ကို ပြန်လည်ဖော်ထုတ်ရယူထားနိုင်ပြီး ကျန်ပိုင်းအကြောင်းကြားအနေအထားနဲ့ စုံစမ်းဆဲဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

ဖမ်းဆီးထားတဲ့လူတွေထဲက အများစုဟာ California, Texas, Florida စတဲ့ ပြည်နယ်တွေကနေ ဖမ်းဆီးထားတာပါ။ သူတို့ထဲမှာ Berkeley, Marysville, Stockton, San Jose, Fresno, Bakersfield, Fremont စတဲ့ မြို့တွေကနေ ချုပ်ထားသူတွေလည်း ပါပါတယ်။

သူတို့ကို စွဲချက်တင်ထားတဲ့ အမှုက wire fraud (မူကြမ်းစနစ်နဲ့ ခိုးယူခြင်း) နဲ့ money laundering (မူလအစစ်အမှန် ငွေကို ဖုံးကွယ်ပြောင်းလဲသုံးခြင်း) ပါ။ ဒီနှစ်ခုလုံးဟာ ပြင်းထန်တဲ့ ပုဒ်မတွေ ဖြစ်ပြီး ထင်ရှားတဲ့ ဖက်ဒရယ်ပြစ်မှုများ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ တစ်ယောက်ချင်းစီကို အပြစ်ကွာခြားမှုအပေါ်မူတည်ပြီး ကြားမများတဲ့ 30 နှစ်အထိ ဖျော်ဖြေရိုင်းစွပ်ခြင်း, နှင့် အများကြီးသော ဒေါ်လာ $250,000 ဒဏ်ကြေးတွေကိုချမှတ်နိုင်ပါတယ်။ Money laundering အမှုတွေက 20 နှစ်ထပ်တိုးနိုင်ပြီး ယင်းငွေတန်ဖိုးနှစ်ဆ ပြန်ကောက်နိုင်ပါတယ်။

သို့သော် သက်သေပြ မပြီးမချင်း, ဥပဒေအရ သူတို့အားလုံး “သက်သေမပြုမချင်း အပြစ်မရှိသူ” ဟု သတ်မှတ်ရပါသည်။ အမေရိကန် တရားရေးစနစ်က အကြောင်းပြချက်အရ “innocent until proven guilty” ဆိုတဲ့ စည်းမျဉ်းအတိုင်း ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

ဒီအမှုက အသက်ကြီးသူတွေထဲမှာ အန္တရာယ်တွေ ဘယ်လောက်များနေကြောင်း ကို ပြသပါတယ်။ အထူးသဖြင့် ဖုန်းခေါ်စကား၊ Email scam တွေဟာ ယနေ့အချိန်မှာ အလွန်နူးညံ့ပြီး ပြည်တွင်းနဲ့ ပြည်ပက စနစ်တကျလှုပ်ရှားလာ ပြီးသားဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ အိမ်ထောင်စုတွေကပါ သူတို့ရဲ့ အဖိုးအဖွားတွေ၊ မိဘတွေရဲ့ လုံခြုံမှု ကို ဂရုပြုဖို့လိုပါတယ်။

အောင်မြင်တဲ့ ဖမ်းဆီးမှုတွေဟာ နိုင်ငံအတွင်း၊ နိုင်ငံခြား တရားသမားများ အဖွဲ့အစည်းတွေ ပူးပေါင်းလုပ်ဆောင်ခြင်းအတွက် သက်သေအစစ်တစ်ခု ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ ဒါက တရားရုံးအဖွဲ့အစည်းတွေရဲ့ အလုပ်အကျိုးအမြတ် အရ အရေးကြီးပြီး အောင်မြင်မှုတစ်ခု လို့ ပြောနိုင်ပါတယ်။

အကျဉ်းချုပ်ရရင်—

✔ အဖွဲ့က အသက်ကြီးသူတွေကို Scam လုပ်ခဲ့သည်
✔ $30 million ချီသော ငွေဆုံးရှုံးမှုရှိသည်
✔ 372 victims အထက်ရှိသည်

https://local.newsbreak.com/the-hd-post-1600837/4307289373867-california-members-of-transnational-fraud-ring-arrested-for-30-million-timeshare-scam

CALIFORNIA – The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced October 21 that more than 20 members of a transnational criminal organization were arrested across the U.S., including in California, Texas, and Florida, on charges of wire fraud and money laundering.

“The indictment announced today exposes a telemarketing scam that deliberately targeted our vulnerable elderly citizens and yielded more than $30 million in devastating financial losses to victims across the country,” U.S. attorney Eric Grant said.

Court documents show that Operation Silver Shores, targeting a transnational fraud ring in the U.S. and Latin America, led to 15 arrests of individuals accused of stealing from mostly elderly Americans.

Members of the criminal ring contacted victims via phone and email, posing as attorneys and government officials.

Many victims, current or former timeshare owners, were told they were entitled to money from legal settlements related to their properties.

The group used multiple tactics to defraud victims.

They used a web of shell companies, fake business names, and accounts to launder money from victims. The defendants used layered transactions to move victims’ money to co-conspirators while obscuring its origin.

The defendants transferred fraud proceeds to accounts controlled by members in the U.S., Latin America, and beyond.

Investigators have identified over 372 victims

The group evaded banks’ anti-money laundering and KYC rules by misrepresenting the true purpose of their activities. They lied to banks about the nature of the transactions.

The defendants funneled funds through fintechs, crypto exchanges, and smaller banks with lax AML/KYC safeguards.

Authorities say the scheme has affected over 372 victims, with losses exceeding $30 million. So far, investigators have seized more than $1.5 million in victim funds and continue to recover additional assets.

Arrested individuals

The following were arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering:

• Piera Salgado Teleki, 34, of Berkeley, Calif.
• Maira Liset Chavez, 36, of Marysville, Calif.
• Sergio Madrigal Lacayo Jr., 39, of Stockton, Calif.
• Celina Martinez, 44, of San Jose, Calif.
• Ashley Molina, 32, of Amarillo, Texas.
• Carlos Zamora, 40, of Port Saint Lucie, Florida.
• Stephanie Alonzo, 42, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
• Ricardo Plascencia, 32, of Amarillo, Texas.
• Samuel Lopez, 45, of Amarillo, Texas.
• Veronica Puentes, 40, of Port Saint Lucie, Florida.

Additional California residents arrested face federal charges related to wire fraud and money laundering, along with other counts.

• Antonio Palafox Aguilar, 33, Fresno
• Felix Alejandro, 39, Bakersfield (currently at UPS Florence-High)
• Alejandro Cuarenta, 33, Bakersfield
• Jennifer Magana, 29, Fresno
• Anthony Chavez, 27, Fremont

Defendants face up to 30 years in prison

If convicted, the defendants face up to 30 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Money laundering convictions carry up to 20 years in prison and fines of $500,000 or twice the property value, whichever is higher.

The defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.