Member of fake license plate ring pleads guilty

Authorities have announced pleas in a ring that they said made millions renting out fraudulently obtained Pennsylvania license plates.

Rafael Levi, 51, of Brooklyn, N.Y., entered open guilty pleas Friday to three dozen counts in Dauphin County.

Authorities said the people who rented the Pennsylvania plates — which were packaged with fraudulent insurance paperwork — used the anonymity to evade traffic tickets, parking fines and highway tolls.

The attorney general’s office said eight other people also entered pleas, and Levi, the ringleader, also pleaded guilty on behalf of nine businesses.

Levi was charged in April 2017 with hundreds of counts. Defense attorney Geoffrey McInroy said Monday his client had accepted responsibility, as evidenced by not only the pleas but his plan to pay restitution that would probably top $1 million.

Woman sentenced in death of infant

A Lancaster County woman has been sentenced to 11 to 22 years in prison in the suffocation death of her 2-month-old son as the two slept in the same bed.

Thirty-year-old Jessica Harper pleaded no contest Monday to third-degree murder and child endangerment charges in the child’s July 2017 death in Fulton Township.

Authorities in Lancaster County said social services workers and the defendant’s pediatrician repeatedly warned her of the dangers of sleeping in the same bed as the infant.

Harper served 85 days following the 2011 asphyxiation death of another 2-month-old child sleeping on a couch at her Maryland home.

Lancaster County Common Pleas Judge Margaret Miller said Harper’s decision not to change her parenting style after the first baby’s death “simply floors me.”

Harper said “My kids mean the world to me.”