In brief: State says man faked injuries, name for drugs

A Spokane Valley man has been accused of faking on-the-job injuries and using the last names of Seattle Seahawks football players to get drugs.

Jeffory Leonard Mock Jr., 34, went to eight hospitals and urgent care clinics 17 times during a 14-month span, according to the Washington state Department of Labor and Industries. He claimed injuries to his back and buttocks from his work for moving and roofing companies. Four of the companies he listed on claim forms don’t exist.

He is suspected of filing workers’ compensation claims that used a first name starting with a “J” and then used the surname of a Seahawks player or other athletes and coaches. Among those last names: Sherman, Okung and Harvin. He also reached into Seahawks past and used Largent, Mora, Hollenbeck and Robinson, along with other NFL notables, such as Marino and Bledsoe. The scheme netted him Valium, hydrocodone and hydromorphone.

State investigators looked into the claims – including using a handwriting expert – after an employer surmised that Mock might be behind the scheme, according to a news release.

Staffers at the medical facilities pointed to pictures of Mock to make a suspect identification.

Senate passes bill to stow away e-cigarettes

OLYMPIA – Stores would have to keep their e-cigarettes behind glass with other nicotine and tobacco products under a bill that passed the state Senate on Tuesday.

Shoppers would need a store employee to get vaporizers, refill cartridges and vapor fluid from a display case behind the counter. All vapor products would be sold in child-resistant packaging that meets federal poison-control laws and come with a warning label to keep them away from children.

“Many of our children in schools are using vapor products in an inappropriate way,” said Rep. Bruce Dammeier, R-Puyallup, the bill’s prime sponsor. “There’s a better, more appropriate way to treat these products, and that’s to use vendor-assisted sales.”

Calls to the state’s Poison Control Center involving vapor products increased from just two in 2010 to 182 in 2014, the survey says. The center attributed this to a growing number of children accidentally swallowing vapor fluid.

The bill now goes to the House, which also has e-cigarette legislation pending.

Bank robber sentenced to 8 years in prison

A Coeur d’Alene man was sentenced to more than eight years in prison for a string of robberies in 2014 that started only days after he was released from prison.

Ricky A. Fisher, 35, was sentenced to 99 months in prison Tuesday after pleading guilty to three bank robberies, according to a news release from the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Idaho. He was released from prison May 6 after serving a 77-month sentence for a 2006 bank robbery in Hayden.

Fisher committed the first robbery at a Chase Bank in Ontario, Oregon, on May 9. He robbed a U.S. Bank in Ontario five days later and then a bank in Cottonwood, Idaho, on May 16. The robberies netted more than $5,000.

Fisher pleaded guilty to the robberies in December. Jennifer Balfe, 19, was previously sentenced to 27 months in prison for driving him to each of the banks he robbed.

Judges throw out child porn conviction

Washington appellate judges have thrown out an Ephrata man’s conviction on child pornography charges after ruling investigators improperly searched his computer in March 2009.

Michael Allen Budd was convicted and sentenced to 13 months in prison after a Grant County bench trail concluded in April 2013. Budd immediately appealed his conviction, saying that evidence collected from his computer by Lakewood Police Department Detective Kim Holmes should have been excluded because Holmes did not properly inform him he could call off the search.

Appellate judges George Fearing and Rob Lawrence-Berry agreed.

“A house is considered a castle and entitled to the greatest protection from government entry and roaming,” Fearing wrote.

But in his dissent, Judge Kevin Korsmo raises the possibility that Budd may have recognized the police did not have a search warrant and agreed to a consultation in his home in order to later have the case against him thrown out on constitutional issues.