Tag Archives | Crime

Man Sentenced to 15 Years in Jail for Selling Six Counterfeit Discs

By on November 18, 2012 in News 11

Picture: Flickr, quinn.anya (CC)

I guess they’re calling it Copyright Terrorism! This report shows just how friendly the recording industry is with your friendly neighborhood law enforcement.

Via RT:

A Mississippi man was sentenced to 15 years behind bars and another three under supervised release this week after pleading guilty to selling five counterfeit DVDs and one bootleg music CD to an undercover agent.

Patrick Lashun King, 37, was sentenced by Judge Lamar Pickard of Copiah County Circuit Court after he pleaded guilty to six counts of selling pirated material, charges that he was lobbed with after an undercover agent attempted to purchase just a half-dozen homemade copies of music and movies the defendant wasn’t authorized to have up for sale.

When investigators searched King’s home and businesses, they eventually turned up 10,510 counterfeit discs and the computer equipment they believe he used to manufacture the bootlegs. The Clarion Ledger notes that authorities also uncovered a number of weapons, including an assault rifle, from King’s Hazlehurst, MS home, but it was only the six counts of piracy that will put him away until 2027.

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Former Federal Prosecutor: Feds Should Honor States’ Pot Laws

By on November 14, 2012 in News 12

Former federal prosecutor and current law professor Mark Osler offers his take on how the feds might react to Colorado and Washington’s new marijuana laws:

Via CNN:

The residents of Colorado and Washington state have voted to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, and all hell is about to break loose — at least ideologically. The problem is that pot is still very much illegal under federal law, and the Obama administration must decide whether to enforce federal law in a state that has rejected the substance of that law.

What makes this development fascinating is that it brings into conflict two important strains of political thought in America: federalism and moralism.

Federalists, who seek to limit the power of the federal government relative to the states and individuals, will urge a hands-off approach. Moralists, on the other hand, strongly believe in the maintenance of an established social order and will argue for continuing enforcement of federal narcotics laws.

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How To Become A Russian Cyber Criminal

By on November 5, 2012 in News 0

Thanks to Trend Micro, you too can now have cheap, easy access to Russian cyber crime. Via Wired UK:

If you want to buy a botnet, it’ll cost you somewhere in the region of $700 (£433). If you just want to hire someone else’s for an hour, though, it can cost as little as $2 (£1.20) — that’s long enough to take down, say, a call centre, if that’s what you were in the mood for. Maybe you’d like to spy on an ex — for $350 (£217) you can purchase a trojan that lets you see all their incoming and outgoing texts. Or maybe you’re just in the market for some good, old-fashioned spamming — it’ll only cost you $10 (£6.19) for a million emails. That’s the hourly minimum wage in the UK.

This is the current state of Russia’s underground market in cybercrime — a vibrant community of ne’er-do-wells offering every conceivable kind of method for compromising computer security.

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Extenuating Circumstances? DC Sniper Lee Boyd Malvo Claims He Was Sexually Abused by Partner in crime

By on October 26, 2012 in News 2

In an interview with Today‘s Matt Lauer, Lee Boyd Malvo, one of the two men convicted in a series of deadly DC sniper attacks, stated that he was sexually abused by co-defendant John Muhammad. Malvo told Lauer that the abuse began at age 15 and continue to the pair were arrested. Malvo was 17 at the time. He is now 27 and currently serving several life sentences without the possibility of parole. Malvo said that he had only recently become comfortable enough to admit the truth. Muhammad is not around to refute the claim, having been executed in 2009. Some might think that this is a cynical ploy for the attention and sympathy of the public, for whom the memories of those nine senseless deaths (and three woundings) may have become hazier over the last decade.

Presuming that Malvo’s claims are true, should they justify any kind of lenience? Malvo was a minor during the shooting spree, and under the sole supervision and guidance of a man – if we’re to take Malvo’s word for it – sexually abused him for years. Even without the sex abuse, their relationship was supremely dysfunctional by any definition, but does that mitigate to any degree Malvo’s responsibility for his actions?

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Unheard Audio Tapes From 1969 Could Reveal A Dozen Additional Manson Murders

By on October 22, 2012 in News 0

Charles Manson’s Family may have committed more than twice as many killings as previously believed, the Los Angeles Times reports:

Los Angeles police officials said they hope to bring closure to the families of victims in a dozen unsolved homicides that occurred near places where the Manson family operated during its slew of murders four decades ago. Officials revealed Thursday that they hope audiotapes recorded in 1969 between Charles Manson follower Charles “Tex” Watson and his attorney could provide some answers.

Watson is serving a life sentence for his role in some Manson killings. He has been fighting to limit the Los Angeles Police Department’s access to the tapes.

This spring, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Texas granted the LAPD’s request to review eight cassette tapes containing hours of conversations between Watson and his late attorney. Watson’s new attorney appealed, and the case was stalled.

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Local Cops Now Paid With Federal Money To Troll IRC

By on October 11, 2012 in News 25

Picture: Liam Cooke, Flickr (CC)

In an era where the Rand Corporation claims links between IP theft and terrorist activity (ignoring a 2011 major international study that found “‘no evidence’ of systematic links between piracy and serious organized crime”), your tax dollars are being used to put cops in chat rooms to track down the degenerate digerati.

Via  at Ars Technica:

In a speech before an assembled crowd of law enforcement officials in Maryland this week, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the winners of a new federal grant that will send hundreds of thousands of dollars to 13 agencies in an effort to step up enforcement of copyright and trademark laws.

The Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Grant Award, which became available in January 2012, was given to a wide variety of local law enforcement groups, including the City of Austin, the City of Orlando, the County of Sacramento, the Virginia State Police, and most oddly, the City of Central Point, Oregon (population: 13,000).

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Japanese Exorcist Whose Rituals Killed Six Receives Death Penalty

By on September 28, 2012 in News 0

It seems anyone who crossed the Japanese faith healer with a small cult following would be beaten to death with sticks in an deadly “exorcism” rite. Via Japan Subculture:

Sachiko Eto, 65, a faith healer and self-professed exorcist, was convicted for murder after the deaths of six believers in Fukushima Prefecture between 1994 and 1995.

According to Japanese media reports and The Associated Press, Sachiko Eto, her daughter and another accomplice had beaten their victims to death, using thick drumsticks. The beating were to “drive out demons hiding in their bodies” and conducted in her home. At least one of the exorcisms was apparently motivated by Ms. Eto’s decision that the the victim was sleeping with Ms. Eto’s lover. Another victim was “exorcised” after refusing to loan Ms. Eto money. There were also questions as to the vanishing of her husband in 1992, before she became a spiritual leader.

Eto is reportedly the first female in Japan to be executed in more than 15 years.

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Police Hunting For Burger King Mascot Who Entered McDonald’s In Georgia

By on September 21, 2012 in News, stories 17

Will ‘inciting corporate-branding cognitive dissonance’ be a crime of the future? Georgia’s Rome News-Tribune reports:

Rome Police were called to the restaurant at 2215 Shorter Ave. at approximately 1 p.m. by a manager in reference to a suspicious person. When they arrived, the manager said that a man dressed as the mascot for Burger King entered the restaurant with bags of hamburgers and began handing them out to several customers.

He danced while inside the restaurant and stopped to take pictures with children. The report states that one child took a picture with him and ran away as he appeared to be scared. The subject then got into a white Acura. The manager saw him take off his mask and he appeared to be a middle age white male with dark hair.

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New Research on “Junk” DNA Raises Questions on Eve of Crucial Court Hearing

By on September 18, 2012 in News 6

Picture: Flickr, Peter Alfred Hess (CC)

It seems that new discoveries about DNA, and our own human genome in particular, are coming more rapidly today. More things seem to exist on a scale of genetic variance, and it was recently found that our so-called “junk DNA” is full of important ramifications for genetic disorders and random mutations that determine our evolutionary fate.

But in a more immediate sense, DNA research may raise dire questions and have important bearing on current legal arguments, such as the Ninth Circuit‘s Haskell v. Harris, a case challenging California’s warrantless DNA collection program.

Via Jennifer Lynch at the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

EFF asked the court to consider ground-breaking new research that confirms for the first time that over 80% of our DNA that was once thought to have no function, actually plays a critical role in controlling how our cells, tissue and organs behave.

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DHS Employees Arrested For Cocaine Smuggling, Child Porn, And More Last Year

By on August 29, 2012 in News 1

Wired has an update on what the Department of Homeland Security has been busy doing to shield us from terror the past 12 months:

Border Patrol agents smuggling weed and coke. Immigration agents forging documents and robbing drug dealers. TSA employees caught with child porn. Those are just a few of the crimes perpetrated by Department of Homeland Security employees in just the past year.

Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security nearly a decade ago, the agency’s inspector general has been tasked with uncovering corruption, waste and criminality within its own ranks. The IG has had his hands full. According to a newly released DHS inspector general’s summary of its significant investigations, 318 DHS employees and contractors were arrested in 2011.

The corruption investigations have also netted contractors. At least one contractor with the Federal Emergency Management Agency was convicted of defrauding the agency of more than one million dollars.

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