theft

A man accused of nabbing unreleased music by Beyoncé in a vehicle break-in last summer has pleaded guilty to the theft and has been sentenced to serve time in prison.

Kelvin Evans, 41, on Tuesday entered guilty pleas in Fulton County Superior Court in Georgia to counts of entering an automobile and criminal trespass. Fulton County Superior Court Senior Judge Jane C. Barwick sentenced Evans, who was set to go on trial this week, to two years in prison and three years on probation. Evans was also warned to keep his distance from the victims and the scene of the theft.

Evans was sentenced less than a year after stealing the pop diva’s unreleased music from her choreographer’s van in Atlanta. According to police, Evans broke into the Jeep Wagoneer rented by choreographer Christopher Grant and dancer Diandre Blue when they stopped at a restaurant to eat. The artists were in town for the “Diva” singer’s four-night takeover of Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium for her Cowboy Carter tour.

Evans damaged the trunk window and stole a pair of suitcases that contained two computers and five jump drives of unreleased music as well as footage, plans for the tour production and past and future set lists, the police report said. He also stole clothing, Apple AirPods Max headphones and designer sunglasses, police said.

Police arrested Evans in August. He was indicted in October and initially pleaded not guilty in January and even rejected the plea deal during a hearing last month.

Despite his arrest, police have not recovered the stolen items.

The chances of Beyonce releasing new music was already pretty slim heading into Evan’s scheduled trial. Speculation swirled online that the Grammy winner would drop the third act of her planned music trilogy timed to the summer. The singer’s rep Yvette Noel-Schure put a hard stop on those rumors in late April.

“This is unequivocally false!!” Noel-Schure posted on X.

Times assistant editor Christie D’Zurilla and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — A man who stole a purse from then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem while she dined at a restaurant under the protection of Secret Service agents was sentenced on Wednesday to three years in prison for a string of thefts in the nation’s capital.

Mario Bustamante Leiva did not recognize Noem when he grabbed her Gucci handbag from the floor of a restaurant where she was eating with her family in April 2025, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. Noem’s purse had credit cards and about $3,000 in cash. Police recovered it from Leiva’s motel room.

Bustamante Leiva, a 50-year-old native of Chile, is facing deportation after his sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden.

“Bustamante Leiva came to Washington illegally to prey on citizens of the district,” said Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, in a statement. “His pattern of theft ends here.”

Noem, who is identified only by her initials in court filings, acknowledged the incident in a statement last year that referred to Bustamante Leiva as a “a career criminal who has been in our country illegally for years.”

He pleaded guilty in November to three counts of wire fraud and one count of first-degree theft. He was charged and convicted of robbing two other people and charging fraudulent purchases to their credit cards.

Bustamante Leiva was charged along with a second suspect, Cristian Montecino-Sananza, who was sentenced in March to 13 months of incarceration for his role in one of the other thefts.

Investigators said they identified Bustamante Leiva as a suspect in the thefts after he used a stolen gift card to make a purchase.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

April 14 (UPI) — The founder and former chairman of Chinese property giant China Evergrande Group pleaded guilty Tuesday to a slew of charges, including embezzlement, securities fraud and corporate graft at a trial in the southern city of Shenzhen.

Hui Ka Yan admitted “illegally absorbing public deposits” where buyers’ down payments on apartments off-plan were used to fund hundreds of other projects in the case in which Evergrande Real Estate Group also faced a similar set of charges, the Intermediate People’s Court of Shenzhen said in a statement online.

Evergrande took in millions of dollars from buyers that, instead of being used to complete the properties they were purchasing, were diverted to new developments, the court heard.

Hui also admitted fundraising fraud, illegal issuance of loans and unauthorized disclosure of “important information” during the high-profile two-day trial, which was attended by deputies from the National People’s Congress, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference of which he was once a standing committee member, and investors.

The court statement said China Evergrande Group and Evergrande Real Estate Group were also indicted on charges of illegally collecting public deposits, fundraising fraud, illegal issuance of loans and fraudulent issuance of securities.

The downfall of the business tycoon, once Asia’s richest with a net worth of more than $42 billion, began in 2021 when the property empire he founded 25 years earlier collapsed after a massive Chinese property bubble burst, leaving 1,300 half-finished Evergrande developments financed with $300 billion of debt.

Hui was placed under house arrest in September 2023, prompting the suspension of trading in Evergrande shares by market regulators across the border in Hong Kong, only a month after trading had resumed following a 17-month suspension.

The company was also the subject of a winding-up petition in a Hong Kong court brought by creditors and had sought protection from being made bankrupt in the United States in a New York court the previous month.

Hong Kong regulators initially suspended Evergrande for failing to issue financial results for two years. When it did report in July 2023, it said it had lost $81.1 billion total in 2021 and 2022, mostly through payments to suppliers and lenders, as it battled to finish thousands of housing projects across 280 Chinese cities.

In January 2024, after repeated reprieves to allow it time to come up with a viable plan to restructure liabilities that had by then grown to at least $325 billion, the court in Hong Kong placed Evergrande into liquidation.

Hui was handed a $6.5 million fine in March 2024 for Evergrande, stating in its results that revenue was $78 billion more than it actually was and was handed a lifetime ban from participating in China’s capital market.

The final blow came in August 2025 with the delisting by regulators of Evergrande shares from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, almost 16 years to the day after it was the most oversubscribed IPO of 2009 with a valuation in excess of $50 billion.

The ban was imposed after an 18-month deadline for Evergrande stock to resume trading passed the previous month, with the company opting not to appeal the decision.

Hui had led a 15-year drive to grow Evergrande into one of China’s largest businesses, spending billions expanding into tourism and recreation, healthcare, finance, EV manufacturing and infrastructure, entertainment and agribusiness.

In 2020, it began work on a new $1.7 billion, 100,000-seat stadium for Guangzhou FC, the soccer club it had purchased 10 years earlier.

However, the company’s growth was delivered through massive borrowing, much of it highly leveraged, with the result that six years on the stadium, like many of Evergrande’s projects, it remains incomplete after it was seized by the government in November 2021.