Everett Daily Herald, October 23, 2015

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Ex-cop’s sex trial starts The former school board member is accused of sexually fixating on a student he first met when she was 10 years old. By Scott North Herald Writer

EVERETT — Carlos Alberto Martinez was a respected figure in east Snohomish County. He rose through the ranks at the Monroe Police Department

to become a sergeant. When a 2006 opening came up on the school board, he was tapped to fill the post. The appointment recognized the years he’d spent as a police officer, going into elementary school classrooms to help teach students to avoid drugs and

make good choices. Now 61, his police career years in the past, Martinez sat in Snohomish County Superior Court on Thursday and heard himself accused of sexually fixating on one of those students, a girl he met when she was just 10. Martinez was “well liked. He was charismatic,” deputy prosecutor Lisa Paul told jurors. But

over a period of years, he also secretly groomed the girl into a “very twisted relationship” that began with inappropriate contact in Monroe when she was in her teens and continued until she was in her early 20s and living as Martinez’s girlfriend in Texas. See TRIAL, back page, this section

Dargey lawyers plead his side

Boulder over your neighbors

The SEC wants a third party appointed to manage the companies owned by the Everett developer accused of defrauding foreign investors.

Huge rock can be yours, but there are a few rules that are set in stone

By Dan Catchpole

You’ll have to meet certain criteria, including being >> Interested? “responsible for your own landscaping’s feng shui — once the rock

By Sharon Salyer Herald Writer

EDMONDS — Need a new lawn ornament? The city has a suggestion. It’s a granite boulder and weighs about 30,000 pounds. They’re willing to deliver the chunk of granite to your home, but you have to agree to a number of conditions. Perhaps most important is: You didn’t get it from Nordstrom. No returns. Once you get it, it’s yours. The offer was posted on the city’s Facebook page Thursday morning, written by Ed Sibrel, the city’s capital projects

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manager. Within the first two hours, it had 1,150 views. “So often people think the work of the city is terribly serious,” said Mayor Dave Earling. “It’s good to know the staff has a wonderful sense of humor.” The 15-ton rock was unearthed during a repaving project on 220th Street SW and 80th Avenue W. Construction crews were designing a pedestrian ramp from the sidewalk to the road. “Lo and behold, there

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was this very large rock under a bunch of sticker bushes,” Sibrel said. The stone is suspected to be a glacial erratic deposited during the last Ice Age. Several other similar large stones are scattered around the city and the county. The equipment on the road repaving site was large enough to move it aside, but not to large enough to move it off site, Sibrel said. The cost of moving and

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is on the ground, the city is not gonna nudge it ‘a little more this way.’” Find the rest of the requirements on A2.

disposing of it is estimated at $5,000. “It would be less if we could find someone to adopt this stone,” he said. The city will accept no more than five applicants seeking to be the new owner of the rock. The requests must be submitted to the city by Tuesday. Applicants must be Edmonds residents and the boulder’s new prospective showplace must be on the homeowner’s property and within the city limits. Sibrel offered another suggestion in his post: “You darned well better have the permission of your significant other.”

SEATTLE — Attorneys for an Everett-based developer accused of defrauding foreign investors said in court Thursday that federal authorities’ actions threaten to destroy two major development projects. Lawyers representing the developer and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission were in U.S. District Court arguing about how much power should be given to a third-party appointed by the court to oversee companies owned by the developer, Lobsang Dargey. The SEC filed a lawsuit against Dargey and his Everett-based company Path America in August, accusing him of defrauding foreign investors out of more than $17.5 million. The same day the SEC filed its civil complaint, the FBI searched Dargey’s office in downtown Everett and his homes in Bellevue, according to court records. Documents seized and turned over to the SEC revealed much wider potential misuse and misappropriation of investor money, SEC attorney Susan LaMarca said in a motion filed with the court. At the SEC’s request, the court froze the assets of Dargey and his myriad development companies. In August Path America issued a public statement saying that it did nothing wrong in soliciting millions of dollars from Chinese investors to fund various real estate projects in Snohomish and King counties. The company also said it would cooperate with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission while “aggressively” defending itself. In late September, the SEC asked the court to put Dargey’s companies and properties into receivership. If it agrees, the court would appoint a receiver, a neutral third-party to manage the entities. That would include the 220-apartment Potala Place and Farmer’s Market and adjacent Hampton Inn in downtown

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A roughly 30,000-pound granite boulder is being given away by the city of Edmonds.

Herald Writer

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