Unlike scientific laboratories, meth labs are always popping up where you least expect them, probably because they’re very illegal. For example, in a Walmart bathroom in Indiana, or more recently, nestled underneath a Walmart parking lot in New York. [More]
Crime & Fraud
NYC Couple Says Airbnb Renter Stole $5K Worth Of Stuff From Their Apartment
By 8.9.16
There are the kinds of bad houseguests who maybe leave their wet towel on the ground or put an empty milk container back in the refrigerator, and then there are the folks who leave your home a bit emptier than they found it. A New York City couple found themselves facing the latter situation, claiming that an Airbnb renter boosted a bunch of their belongings. [More]
AT&T Penalized $7.75 Million For Allowing Scammers To Charge Bogus “Directory Assistance Service” Fees
By 8.8.16
Nearly two years after AT&T was hit with a $105 million settlement over bill-cramming — the practice of letting third parties place questionable or false charges on customers’ phone bills — the Federal Communications Commission says the company has agreed to pay another $7.5 million to close the book on additional cramming accusations involving a bogus directory assistance service. [More]
Some Jerks Are Using Bluetooth Card Skimming Devices At Dallas Gas Stations
By 8.5.16
If you live in the Dallas area, you might want to rethink using plastic to pay at the gas station. Not because debit and credit cards aren’t a fine way to pay for fuel, but because some jerks are using Bluetooth skimming devices to steal from oblivious drivers at the pump. [More]
Police: Suspected Thieves Tried To Sell Pawn Shop Owner His Own Stuff Back
By 8.4.16
It’s not often that we see a perfect crime ouroboros, but when we do, it just feels like some kind of cosmic joke. To wit: two people were arrested this week for trying to sell stolen video game consoles and some other stuff back to the guy they’re accused of stealing them from. [More]
Woman Gets $163 Bill Instead Of Romance After Online Date Dines, Dashes
By 8.4.16
Have you gone on a bad date recently? Maybe he had food in his teeth the whole time, or perhaps she wouldn’t stop talking about her Precious Moments collections. It could’ve been worse, though. Your date could’ve ordered a bunch of food and drinks at a pricey steakhouse and then fled, leaving you with the bill. [More]
Hacker Claims To Be Selling Stolen Info For 200 Million Yahoo Accounts
By 8.2.16
After a rash of account breaches on social media networks like MySpace, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Twitter, the latest site to fall victim to hackers seems to be Yahoo, with a hacker claiming he’s got account information for 200 million users and is selling those credentials on the internet’s black market. [More]
Man Arrested For Doing Yoga, Threatening Crew On Flight Owes United Airlines $44,000
By 7.29.16
Remember the man who was arrested after he refused to stop doing yoga and got violent with the crew, forcing the pilot of a United Airlines flight to turn the plane around? For all of that, he’ll have to pay United more than $44,000. [More]
Man Admits To Stripping Naked And Soiling A Self-Checkout Scanner At Kroger
By 7.28.16
Convenient? Sure. But we will never look at the self-checkout scanner the same way again after an Ohio man admitted to defecating on a UScan-it terminal at a Kroger grocery. [More]
Kimpton Hotels Investigating Possible Credit Card Breach
By 7.26.16
You might not be familiar with the Kimpton chain of boutique hotels, but we can guarantee that a lot of business travelers (and the folks in their companies’ accounting departments) are now keeping an eye out for odd activity on their credit cards after news of a possible payment card data breach affecting multiple Kimpton locations. [More]
Man Arrested For Allegedly Planting Chemical Weapon At California Walmart
By 7.21.16
A little more than a month after police in Oxnard, CA found a chemical weapon inside a Walmart store, officials say they’ve arrested a 31-year-old man accused of putting it there. [More]
Reminder: Selling Or Buying A Pokémon Go Account Counts As Cheating
By 7.18.16
Although it might be tempting to make a few bucks off the stable of rare or valuable Pokémon you’ve collected so far in Pokémon Go by selling your account, according to game maker Niantic’s player guidelines, that’s cheating. [More]
Police Arrest NJ Driver Accused Of Skipping Tolls More Than 500 Times
By 7.14.16
There’s the one time you realize too late that you’re in the wrong lane/don’t have your E-ZPass or otherwise fail to pay a toll as you should, and then there’s blowing through tolls 500 times before the police catch up with you. [More]
Did You Pirate Game Of Thrones? Beware Of Phishing Scam Posing As Copyright Notice
By 7.8.16
HBO’s Game of Thrones isn’t just another wacky sitcom about fancy chairs. It’s also the most frequently pirated show on TV, with huge numbers of people clamoring each week to download and share the latest episode. Scammers are now trying to cash in on this sizable audience by sending phishing emails disguised as copyright notices. [More]
The IRS And The Cops Do Not Really Take Payment In iTunes Gift Cards Over The Phone
By 7.7.16
It’s easy to say that you’d never fall for a phone scam: everyone who really has fallen for a scam probably would have said the same thing before it happened to them. Yet one way to protect people from scams is to spread a very simple message among the people you know and love who are less savvy about the Internet and about scams than you are. Tell them that no matter what anyone on the phone says, neither jails nor the IRS accepts iTunes gift cards as a form of payment. [More]
Best-Selling Author & Convicted Liar Kevin Trudeau Makes Pitch To Supreme Court
By 7.7.16
Two years after being sentenced to a decade in federal prison for repeatedly defrauding American consumers, best-selling liar Kevin Trudeau is hoping that the U.S. Supreme Court will take a different view of his case than all of the previous courts. [More]
Family Of 13-Year-Old Allegedly Groped On Flight Sues American Airlines, Suspect For $10M
By 7.7.16
The family of a 13-year-old girl who was allegedly groped while she was flying as an unaccompanied minor on an American Airlines flight earlier this summer has filed a $10 million lawsuit against both the airline and the suspect, claiming that the carrier failed to protect the teen despite many opportunities to do so. [More]
Not Again: Some Jerk Stole 20,000 Pounds Of Cheese In Wisconsin
By 7.1.16
If you thought cheese could be safely left alone, months after a series of cheese thefts rocked the dairy love world, you thought wrong. Some brazen jerk out there is still stealing cheese in Wisconsin. [More]
