Crime

An appeal court in Alberta has nearly doubled the sentence for a man who cut off a woman’s finger and then forced her to eat her own severed digit, saying in a ruling that the original judge downplayed the victim’s suffering and terror.

Stephen Ralph Potts was convicted of aggravated assault after inviting an Indigenous woman to his home in the northern community of Chateh and attacking her in April 2024.

Court heard during trial that Potts, who is also Indigenous, punched the woman repeatedly in the face without warning or provocation, breaking bones. He then ordered her to splay out her fingers, saying he was going to cut off her finger.

Still seems light to me.

Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged suicide note was finally revealed — and the convicted pedophile appears to claim investigators “found nothing” on him.

“They investigated for month — found nothing!!!” read the barely legible note, released by a New York court order Wednesday in response to a New York Times petition.

Arrests made in Guelph human trafficking investigation

Guelph police have arrested and charged two men from Toronto as part of an ongoing human trafficking investigation.

According to police, the suspects were to have engaged in the trafficking and sexual exploitation of two youths from Guelph.

h/t Patti Jo

An alleged drug trafficker accused of obtaining confidential information from a Toronto police officer, which investigators say was used in an unsuccessful conspiracy to kill a senior corrections officer, was back in custody Tuesday morning after his bail was revoked.

The Crown asked for a Superior Court review of the decision to release Brian Da Costa on a $1.5 million bail in early March. Justice Rita Maxwell ordered his detention and vacated the lower court’s decision, which saw Da Costa released under house arrest supervised by three sureties.

The denial, “with prejudice,” by Judge Lewis Kaplan of a request for a new trial by the imprisoned crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried is yet another setback for the man who once bestrode American financial and political life like a colossus.Bankman-Fried is fighting for his freedom from behind bars at a federal prison in California after his conviction on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. He contends that new witnesses have emerged whose testimony could make a difference to the question of his guilt.

LOS ANGELES — A judge in Los Angeles has named two co-defendants alongside Ryan Wedding — the former Canadian Olympic snowboarder charged with leading a Sinaloa Cartel-linked cocaine trafficking and federal witness murder conspiracy — while pushing the proposed trial date to December 1, 2026, finding that the prosecution is so extraordinary in scale and complexity that it falls outside the bounds of normal federal trial preparation requirements.

The Toronto Police division whose officers’ alleged misuse of law-enforcement databases gave rise to a high-profile corruption probe has a documented history of data breaches.

In the eight years before the recent Project South takedown led to the arrests of several officers from 12 Division, unlawful database breaches prompted sanctions against four other constables from that division, according to a review of disciplinary records by The Globe and Mail.

A 28-year-old Toronto man accused of making 3D printed handguns is facing a number of charges in connection with a firearm manufacturing and trafficking probe, police say.

Toronto police said multiple 3D printed guns and components were seized following the suspect’s arrest in December 2025.

“These are fully functioning firearms that were not purchased through regulated channels and in many cases, are not traceable in the same way as traditional firearms,” Chief Superintendent Joe Matthews told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday morning.

On December 9, 2025, Brian Narciso, 28, was arrested and charged with multiple offences related to firearm manufacturing, trafficking, and unauthorized firearm possession. The charges include a new offence under Canadian law: possession of computer data for the purpose of manufacturing or trafficking firearms, contrary to section 102.1 of the Criminal Code.

The withdrawal of an appeal for a new trial from the convicted crypto-mogul Sam Bankman-Fried signals that his quest to exonerate himself from behind bars is a daunting one — even as he maintains his innocence and presses his appeal along other channels.The retrial request, formally known as a Rule 33 motion, was filed in February. Rule 33 motions allow for defendants to request a new trial based on newly discovered evidence or fundamental unfairness.