There’s a cool article over at Bay Citizen that gives a play-by-play account of a private investigator’s efforts to tail a suspected Bay Area ponzi scheme master. What makes it all the more interesting is that the target, an ex-con and fugitive, had developed an arsenal of tactics he used used to try to evade anyone who might be tracking him. [More]
crime
Fake ATMs Drain Your Account Dry
By 6.24.10
We’ve talked about spotting skimmers placed on ATMs before, but what if the whole ATM is a skimmer? [More]
Sheriff Says Tmobile Delayed Murder Investigation
By 6.24.10
The head of the Major Case Squad of St. Louis is calling out Tmobile for delaying a 20-person double-murder investigation by several days by demanding an unusual $50 fee for accessing victims’ phone records. [More]
Mother-Daughter Scam Tag Team Targeted Seniors Via Obits
By 6.23.10
Vultures. A mother and a daughter were arrested for skimming through the local obituary pages and calling up the spouses pretending to be from the bank or credit card company. They would say that the recently departed owed the company money, and the survivor needed to provide a blank check or a credit card. [More]
NYC Forces Retailers To Stop Selling Illegal Knives
By 6.21.10
If you were planning on picking up a sturdy switchblade or gravity knife from one of the Home Depots in NYC for your next home improvement project, or because you wanted to stab someone, you should note that they’re no longer available. That’s because last week, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office persuaded that store and 13 other retailers to stop selling such knives. They’re generally illegal in New York, and the retailers have agreed to surrender their inventory and forfeit any profits they made from illegal knife sales over the past four years. [More]
Ex-Disney Worker Pleads Guilty To Skimming $83,000 In Guest Credit Cards
By 6.14.10
Maybe she overdosed on saccharine. A Walt Disney World resort front desk clerk has plead guilty after getting caught for placing skimmers on the computers at work, ripping off 178 people, 32 banks and credit-card issuers of over $83,000. [More]
Dunkin' Donuts Robber Says He Was Just Asking For A Honey Bun
By 6.14.10
Be sure to always enunciate clearly when you’re placing an order, so that you don’t accidentally rob the cashier. That piece of advice comes from a man in Massachusetts who was charged for attempted armed robbery of a Dunkin’ Donuts back in April. He now claims that the cashier misunderstood him. What he really said was that he wanted a honey bun, not “Give me the money, I have a gun.” [More]
Cruise Line Employee Used Reservation List To Determine When To Rob Vacationers
By 6.14.10
I guess you could try to prepare your robbery schedule based on Foursquare and Twitter updates, but a former Royal Caribbean Cruise Line employee found a much easier way: she accessed the cruise line’s reservations list, wrote down the addresses of passengers and the dates they’d be on the cruise, and handed the list off to her husband. She’s being charged with 24 counts of burglary, while her husband will be charged soon. [More]
In Prison, Madoff Is A Hero
By 6.8.10
In the outside world, Bernie Madoff is reviled. Inside prison, he’s a hero, admired for his stunning successes. [More]
Stop Luggage Thieves
By 5.28.10
Frugal for Life has some suggestions for avoiding your baggage getting stolen, the most surefire one being to not check a bag in the first place. You can also use a cheap, neon bag, as thieves prefer more nondescript bags and tend to target those fancy “LV” emblazoned bags. Also, you can insure your bag, usually as part of trip insurance, which usually costs 5-8% of the total trip price. Do you use any special tactics to thwart luggage thieves? Leave your thoughts in the comments. [More]
How Fraudsters Make Fake Credit Cards
By 5.27.10
There’s many ways your credit card can be stolen and exploited, but this is one of the more sophisticated: In this WIRED video, Detective Bob Watts of Newport Beach Police Department shows how crooks take your credit card numbers they steal off the internet and turn a blank plastic card into something they could swipe through a Best Buy scanner or plunk down at a fancy restaurant, complete with holograms and embossing. Using these techniques, one criminal ring racked up over a $1 million in fraud before they got busted. [More]
Rapping Your McDonald's Order Is Not A Crime
By 5.18.10
A Utah teenager who was arrested after rapping his order at a McDonald’s drive-through was found not guilty of disorderly conduct,after a judge ruled that his behavior was not threatening and didn’t create any unreasonable noise. The judge didn’t rule on the skills of the teen, who was attempting to imitate the YouTube classic “Fast Food Freestyle” (aka “The McDonald’s Drive Thru Rap”). [More]
If Taco Bell Accidentally Gives You $2K Instead Of Burritos, Give It Back
By 5.17.10
Taco Bell is known for offering sweet deals, but a Dayton woman should have known it was too good to be true when a drive-thru attendant handed her a $2,000 pimp roll rather than her burritos. [More]
Okay, Who's Been Using Tyler Perry's Credit Card?
By 5.17.10
Writer/director/actor Tyler Perry updated his website on Friday with a friendly letter to his fans. He talked about wrapping up his latest theatrical tour, and how beautiful his vacation spot was, and then ended on a strange note: “By the way, some idiot stole my credit card number. Can you believe that? Take a look at all the stuff they charged. If you know any of these people, call the police.” The charges, mostly airfares between L.A., Las Vegas, New York and Fort Lauderdale, came up to more than $28,000. [More]
Marijuana Dispensaries In Montana Firebombed
By 5.11.10
Some residents of Billings, Montana are pretty upset at the burgeoning medical marijuana industry there–CNN says the town of 100,000 has had about 90 applications for storefronts since the state legalized it in 2004, and that the businesses operate with little regulation. On consecutive mornings this past weekend, someone spraypainted “Not in our town” on the sides of two establishments, then threw rocks through the front doors followed by Molotov cocktails. And then they probably chilled out for a while. [More]
Samsung Sues Journalist For Satirically Pointing Out That Its Chairman Keeps Getting Convicted Of Crimes
By 5.11.10
Did you know that the chairman of Samsung, Lee Kun-hee, was convicted in 2008 for tax evasion in South Korea? Or that he was convicted in the 90s for bribing politicians? A British journalist, Michael Breen, wrote a satirical column in a South Korean newspaper last December, and now the electronics giant is suing him for libel. If found guilty, Breen could face jail time. [More]
CVS Employee Strangles Shoplifter
By 5.10.10
A CVS employee in Chicago chased a 35-year-old shoplifter out of his store and held him in a chokehold for “several minutes” on Saturday morning until police came. The thief–who had stolen tubes of toothpaste–was taken to a hospital and initially described as in “fair-to-serious” condition, but then declared dead about 45 minutes later, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. The death is being ruled an accidental homicide, and the police aren’t going to press charges against the employee. [More]
Murder Suicide At Downtown Chicago Old Navy
By 5.7.10
The Chicago Tribune reports that a man walked into the Old Navy store at State and Washington in Chicago’s Loop and shot his girlfriend before turning the gun on himself, sending panicked shoppers flooding out of the store. [More]
