By Steve Neavling

A Ponzi scheme suspect led FBI agents on a wild chase that ended in the frigid waters of a remote lake in Northern California. 

When agents tried to arrest Matthew Piercey, 44, near Redding on Monday morning, he fled in a car and headed up Interstate 5 before reaching Lake Shasta, a large reservoir north of Redding. Then Piercey swam into the lake with an underwater submersible device called a “Seascooter” and “spent some time out of sight underwater where law enforcement could only see bubbles,” federal officials said in court documents.

“He remained in the frigid water for approximately 25 minutes,” the complaint reads. 

When Piercey reemerged, authorities arrested him. 

 Piercey and his business partner Kenneth Winton were indicted by a grand jury last week. Piercey is accused of bilking investors out of $35 million between July 2015 and August. Authorities say he preyed on a megachurch where he was a member. 

Piercey faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. 

By Steve Neavling

A record 51 hate crime murders were reported in 2019, a more than two-fold increase over last year’s all-time high, according to FBI data released Monday. 

All forms of hate crimes also rose to 7,314, a 3% increase over last year, the FBI said in a news release. In all, there were 8,552 victims.

“When one individual is targeted by a hate crime, it hurts the whole community — that’s why people are feeling vulnerable and afraid,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement on the statistics’ release.

Included in the hate crime murders were the 22 people killed in an August 2019 shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, where the shooter said he was “targeting Mexicans.” 

Hate crimes are defined as those with “bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity.” 

More than 57% of the hate crimes were motivated by race/ethnicity/ancestry bias. Nearly 20% were motivated by religious bias, followed by 16.8% motivated by sexual-orientation bias, and 2.7% by gender identity bias. 

Of the known offenders, 52.5% were white and 23.9% were Black. Another 10% were Hispanic.