It might seem like a quick trip to you, but even if you don’t think you’ll be gone very long it’s always important to remember: Do not leave any living thing in a car with the windows up and no air conditioning on a hot day. If you do, you may find a few broken windows when you return, like the dog owner who left his two pooches in a hot car. [More]
Crime & Fraud
Dating Scammer Gets Five Years In Prison For Swindling Women (Again)
By 8.10.17
A New Jersey man who already spent five years in federal prison for scamming more than $200,000 from women he met through phone dating services is now heading back behind bars after being convicted for doing pretty much the same thing again. [More]
The Grease Blotter: Teens Terrorize Wendy’s With Fireworks; McDonald’s Worker Punched In Face Over Fries
By 8.9.17
Over the years, we’ve heard about plenty of incidents involving customers-gone-bad, from those who assault fast food employees when their orders are wrong to more extreme measures like setting fire to a store. We can add a few more bad consumers to this list after two separate, but equally disturbing, incidents at a Florida Wendy’s and a Texas McDonald’s. [More]
Scammer Posing As Starbucks Corporate Convinces Store Workers To Wire $2,600
By 8.9.17
A fraudster in South Carolina combined the tradition of pranking fast food restaurants with a new variation of the CEO scam last week, convincing employees at a Starbucks to give them all of the money in the store. [More]
Feds: Recent NYC Drug Bust Included Enough Fentanyl To Kill Half The City
By 8.9.17
As law enforcement around the country continue to battle the opioid epidemic currently raging in the U.S., federal officials say they’ve made a sizable bust in New York City, seizing enough fentanyl and heroin “to kill half the population” of the Big Apple. [More]
Sorry: You Have Not Won A Grant From The National Institutes Of Health
By 8.8.17
No matter what the person on the phone says, we’re sorry to tell you that you have probably not won a grant from the National Institutes of Health. Neither has anyone else who isn’t performing actual health research. [More]
Hacker Claims To Be Holding HBO Data For Ransom
By 8.8.17
The saga around a recent hack attack at HBO just keeps getting deeper. Now, hackers that claim to have a whole lot of unreleased programming and potentially embarrassing internal documentation are saying they might not release it… if HBO pays them big bucks to stay quiet. [More]
Lyft Driver Says She Was Attacked, Robbed In Road-Rage Incident
By 8.7.17
Road rage is nothing new, but a Lyft driver in California says she was brutally attacked and then robbed in what she’s calling a road rage incident. [More]
Two Men Simply Walk Out Of Walmart After Scooping Up 5 TVs
By 8.7.17
Two men in Pennsylvania were able to slip into the stock area of a Walmart store at lunchtime last Tuesday, walking out with five large flat-panel televisions. How? They didn’t disguise themselves as store employees, and were caught on camera, but no one stopped them. Now police are looking for help identifying them. [More]
Washington State: Any Trump Administration Crackdown On Marijuana Would Be “Unacceptable”
By 8.4.17
Washington state was one of the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, and now has quite a bit to lose if the Trump administration chooses to crack down on states with retail pot operations. With U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions hinting that federal intervention may be in the offing, his counterpart in Olympia is drawing a line in the soil, saying that any effort by the White House to interfere with the state’s marijuana regulations would be “unacceptable.” [More]
Unreleased ‘Game Of Thrones’ Episode Reportedly Leaked Online
By 8.4.17
It’s not Sunday night yet, but fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones may have already seen the show’s upcoming episode floating around online: A new report says the fourth episode of the season was leaked just days after hackers claimed they’d stolen 1.5 terabytes of data from the network. [More]
Women Accused Of Stealing $69K Worth Of Cosmetics From 32 Walgreens, CVS Stores
By 8.3.17
How many CVS and Walgreens locations do you have to steal lipstick, eyeshadow, concealer, and other beauty products from in order to get to $69,000? According to the Miami Dade Police Department the answer is 32. [More]
Lawsuit Claims Airbnb Failed To Properly Vet Host Who Allegedly Assaulted Guest
By 8.3.17
An Airbnb guest accused the company in a new lawsuit of negligence by failing to protect her by performing a thorough background check on a host, who she claims later sexually assaulted her.
Health Insurance Telemarketer Faces $82 Million Fine For Illegal Robocalls
By 8.3.17
A health insurance marketing company that allegedly placed more than 21 million illegal automated phone calls, interrupting the enjoyment of Modern Family reruns for Americans everywhere, now faces fines in excess of $82 million for violations of the Truth In Caller ID Act. [More]
Wells Fargo Subpoenaed Over Alleged Insurance Scheme That Resulted In 25,000 Vehicle Repossessions
By 8.2.17
Less than a week after a report alleged, and Wells Fargo admitted, to charging its auto loan customers for unnecessary and unwanted insurance, the bank has been subpoenaed by New York state banking and insurance regulators over the matter. [More]
Teen Allegedly Groped By Fellow United Airlines Traveler
By 8.2.17
When sending a child on a cross-country trip unaccompanied, parents will likely be worried until they receive a call that their child has arrived safely. But a Washington family never imagined that call would include news that their teen daughter had allegedly been groped by a fellow passenger. [More]
Podcasters Take Annoyance With Tech Support Scammers Really, Really Far
By 7.31.17
If you’re looking for something to brighten your Monday, and you’ve always wanted to learn more about the actual people and businesses behind the robocalls that plague your phone, here’s just the thing. It’s a world-spanning epic that began with a tech support robocaller that happened to dial the number of the wrong bored podcast host. [More]
Airport Employee Punches Passenger Holding Baby Because We Live In A Cruel And Absurd Universe
By 7.31.17
As Dostoyevsky wrote, a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel, so it’s of little surprise that a random airport worker lashed out with his fist at a passenger — a traveler who was not only holding an infant in his arms at the time, but who had languished for some 13 hours while waiting for his repeatedly delayed flight. [More]
