Today, a guy from Boston entered a guilty plea to the charge of attempting to prevent a victim to whom he had exposed himself from testifying against him in a federal court. At the time of the offence, the defendant was under federal supervision for sex trafficking and was on supervised release.
Mark Pinnock, who is 32 years old, entered a guilty plea to one count of intimidating a witness. The judge in charge of the case in the United States District Court, Nathaniel M. Gorton, set the date for the sentence hearing for January 5, 2023. In July of 2023, charges were brought against Pinnock.
Pinnock received a sentence of eight years in jail for a sex trafficking offence in 2014. He was released from prison in 2022 and was placed under the control of the federal government while working as an Amazon driver. In July of 2022, while Pinnock was on supervised release for the sex trafficking conviction he received in 2014, a victim complained to local law authorities that Pinnock showed his penis to her when he was delivering a package to the condominium complex where the victim worked as a custodian. The victim stated that the incident occurred while Pinnock was delivering the box. As a direct consequence of this, the United States Probation Office filed a petition to have Pinnock’s period of supervised release revoked, and the court set a date for a hearing to decide whether or not Pinnock committed the claimed crime.
Pinnock delegated his presence at the condominium complex to a fellow conspirator one week before the hearing was scheduled to begin. The co-conspirator advised the victim not to appear to court as he pretended to have something in his pocket and stood with his hand in his pocket. Pinnock also used a messaging programme that encrypts messages in order to send an anonymous message to the complex’s security officer. The message’s purpose was to “let the cleaning lady know” that if she went to court, immigration agents would arrest her for being in the country illegally. Finally, Pinnock made three separate phone calls to different immigration officials in the United States in an effort to have the victim arrested for illegally being present in the country. Pinnock lied to immigration officials in the calls that he made, claiming, among other things, that he had information indicating that the victim was linked with a gang.
If convicted of witness intimidation, the defendant faces a maximum of twenty years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to two hundred fifty thousand dollars. The United States Sentencing Guidelines and the statutes that govern the decision of a sentence in a criminal case are used by judges in federal district court to determine the appropriate sentence to impose on criminal defendants.
Today’s statement was delivered by Joshua S. Levy, who is acting as the United States Attorney, and Michael J. Krol, who is the Special Agent in Charge for Homeland Security Investigations in New England. The cooperation supplied by the Brockton Police Department was quite helpful in the inquiry. The prosecution of the case is being handled by Assistant United States Attorney Mackenzie A. Queenin of the Criminal Division.
