Foreign scholars seek to lose accents in Missouri program

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Myongchee Choi came to the University of Missouri-Columbia ready to conquer the campus.

The 36-year-old visiting scholar, an urban planner and local government official from Ansan, South Korea, has studied and practiced English for more than two decades. Once she arrived, Choi quickly realized that textbook English doesn't take you very far in the linguistic melting pot that is mid-Missouri.

"They just taught us grammar and how to read," said Choi, who has adopted the first name of Clara while studying at Missouri. "They never taught us how to speak, and how to listen."

So Choi, in an effort to lose her heavy Korean lilt, enrolled at her own expense in the university's "accent modification" program, where she worked with speech therapists who normally deal with stroke victims and childhood stutterers.

Missouri has long offered such programs to nonnative speakers, but funding shortfalls limited the sessions to only one or two foreign students or visiting scholars each semester, said Dana Fritz, a clinical instructor at the university's Speech and Hearing Clinic who oversees the program.

Earlier this year, the campus Asian Affairs Center reached out to Fritz in an effort to expand the clinic's reach. A group of 16 visiting scholars from China and Korea recently completed the program, with dozens more on a waiting list.

Nixon urges veto of campaign finance bill

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Attorney General Jay Nixon called on Gov. Matt Blunt on Friday to veto legislation doing away with campaign contribution limits, but the governor has voiced support for the legislation and still plans to sign it.

The contribution limit repeal was initiated by Sen. Tim Green of St. Louis, a Democrat like Nixon. But many Democrats have decried the change, saying it goes against voters' wishes and will do nothing to make clear to voters the trail of campaign cash.

Republican supporters say the current limits are just being circumvented by political party committees and that lifting limits would mean money should flow directly to candidates -- a process easier to follow.

"He believes that it will create greater transparency in the process and doesn't believe that the old system has been effective in showing Missourians how money moves through the system," Blunt spokesman Spence Jackson said.

In 1994, Missourians voted by a margin of nearly 3-to-1 to limit contributions to House, Senate and statewide candidates. That measure was tossed out in court, so higher limits legislators had passed kicked in and were ultimately upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. The bill that passed the Legislature last week undoes those limits.

"The wholesale repeal of contribution limits would be a dramatic and unjustified shift in ethical election standards and a repudiation of the voices of 74 percent of Missouri voters who voted in favor of campaign contribution limits," Nixon wrote in a letter Friday to Blunt.

Identity theft by Red Cross worker raises concern

ST. LOUIS -- A former American Red Cross worker is accused of stealing identities of three people from a blood donor database. And because she had access to Social Security numbers of more than 1 million people, authorities are concerned there may be other victims.

Lonnetta Shanell Medcalf, 20, of St. Louis, is facing three federal counts of aggravated identity theft and one count of credit card fraud, U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway said Friday. She was indicted by a federal grand jury last month.

Medcalf worked for about five months as a telephone worker at the Red Cross' St. Louis office. Her job was to call former donors and urge them to give blood again. The office serves as regional headquarters for blood services in most of Missouri, along with southern Illinois and eight counties in Kansas.

As part of her job, Medcalf had access to Social Security numbers of past donors. U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway said Medcalf used that information to open credit card accounts with the names of at least three victims, obtaining more than $1,000 in cash and merchandise.

Medcalf was fired March 2, as soon as police in the St. Louis County town of Ladue traced one of the thefts to the Red Cross database, Red Cross spokesman Jim Williams said.

The Red Cross initially thought Medcalf's database access was limited to about 8,000 people, mostly in the St. Louis and Cape Girardeau areas. Letters were sent to those people in March, informing them of the security breach.

Former head of small phone company gets 15 months in fraud case

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- With prosecutors recommending leniency for his cooperation in a multimillion dollar fraud case involving New York mobsters, the former president of a small rural Missouri telephone company was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison Thursday.

The sentencing of Kenneth Matzdorff, 49, of Belton, came 16 months after he pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to conspiring to bilk two government programs that subsidized rural telephone carriers like the one he headed, Cass County Telephone, or CassTel. The government accused him of submitting fictitious expenses totaling $8.9 million over more than five years.

Matzdorff, whose lawyers say the bogus expense claims were made "out of misguided intentions of bettering telephone service," has already repaid $2.5 million to the government.

Not long after Matzdorf's plea, two brothers from New York pleaded guilty here to taking part in a conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. One, Richard T. Martino, alleged by the government to be a made member of the Gambino organized crime family, also pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud.

Martino, of Tuckahoe, N.Y., was sentenced in January to four years and nine months. His brother, Daniel D. Martino, of Hawthrown, N.Y., was sentenced in November to a five-year term. The brothers, who have forfeited more than $6 million to the federal government, must serve their time without parole.

The Martinos were controlling owners of Local Exchange Company LLC, which owned Peculiar, Mo.-based CassTel, which had about 8,000 customers in Cass County and a few in Kansas. The government said the Martinos and Matzdorff decided in January 1998 to inflate expenses so the company could qualify for millions of dollars from the National Exchange Carriers Association and the Universal Services Administrative Co.

-- From wire reports