Category: Crime

Ilya Sachkov who helped found one of Russia’s most prominent cybersecurity firms was accused of passing information to foreign spies. A Russian court has jailed for 14 years a top cybersecurity executive for treason in a case which centred on allegations he had passed classified information to foreign spies. Following a closed-door trial, the AFP news agency quoted Judge Alexander Rybak as saying on Wednesday, “The court found Ilya Sachkov guilty under Article 275 of Russia’s Criminal Code and sentenced…

A former CIA clandestine services officer accused of putting an aspiring operative through a sordid “training” program centered on servicing him sexually is now nowhere to be found, the alleged victim’s lawyers say. Adding additional intrigue to the search for ex-spy Shaun Wiggins, the upstate New York data analytics firm he co-founded has apparently vanished. The attorneys representing Wiggins’ accuser hired a skip tracer in hopes of tracking him down. Still, Wiggins remains frustratingly out of reach, making it all…

U.S. prosecutors have accused FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried of witness tampering and asked a federal judge to issue an order that would bar the former billionaire and other parties from making public statements likely to interfere with a fair trial. The prosecutors wrote to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Thursday referencing a New York Times article titled “Inside the Private Writings of Caroline Ellison, Star Witness in the FTX Case.” The article reported excerpts from Ellison’s personal Google documents…

In just the last five years, the “right to repair” movement has shifted from nerdy niche to the mainstream, thanks in part to significant support from the Biden FTC and efforts in states like Minnesota and New York to pass new right to repair laws, making it easier and less expensive for consumers and independent repair shops to gain affordable access to manuals, tools, and replacement parts. Surveys continue to indicate the majority of consumers support such efforts. But a significant…

The U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that Amazon has agreed to pay a $25 million fine to settle alleged children’s privacy laws violations related to the company’s Alexa voice assistant service. Amazon has offered Alexa voice-activated products and services targeted at children under 13 years old since May 2018. In May 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed charges against Amazon, accusing the company of violating children’s privacy laws,…

Enlarge this image An armed New Zealand police officer stands at a road block in the central business district following a shooting in Auckland, New Zealand, Thursday, July 20, 2023. New Zealand police are responding to reports that a gunman has fired shots in a building in downtown Auckland. Abbie Parr/AP Abbie Parr/AP WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A gunman killed two people at a construction site in New Zealand’s largest city of Auckland on Thursday, as the nation prepared to…

Three years ago, the Tennessee state Senate voted of 20-to-9 to keep July 13 a Day of Special Observance marking the birthday of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a millionaire slave trader, Confederate general, mass murderer of more than 200 Black Union POWs, and the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. The legislature did remove a bust of Forrest from the Capitol and Gov. Bill Lee stopped issuing a proclamation on Forrest’s birthday. But Tennessee continued to observe July 13…

Backstory: Epstein continued socializing with A-listers despite conviction – media, New reports on Jeffrey Epstein demonstrate deep-going corruption of US ruling elite The U.S. Virgin Islands government is seeking at least $190 million in penalties from JPMorgan Chase in connection to its banking relationship with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. In a new legal filing on Friday, the USVI’s Attorney General said the territory also wants the financial giant to separately pay damages to victims of Epstein, who killed himself in…

Recent developments raise the prospect that British intelligence agents could finally face justice for their little-known role in the CIA’s global torture program. Britain’s foreign and domestic intelligence apparatus is facing scrutiny by a tribunal tasked with intelligence oversight. On May 26, London’s infamously opaque Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) unanimously issued a landmark ruling which means the complaints of two Saudis brutally tortured at CIA black sites and jailed for years in Guantanamo Bay can finally be heard, at least…

SINGAPORE – DBS Bank has agreed to sell a 77.8 per cent stake in electronic payment services provider AXS to Tower Capital Asia, a private equity firm based in Singapore. The bank will retain a minority stake of 9.9 per cent in AXS, it said on Tuesday. It did not disclose the stake’s sale price. The deal is slated to close by August, and is not expected to have a material impact on DBS’ earnings or net tangible assets for…

  The remains of a German real estate tycoon who has been missing since July 4 have been found inside a freezer of a rental home in the Thai city of Pattaya, according to local authorities. Hans Peter Mack, 62, had been reported missing by his wife, 24-year-old Thai national Piraya Boonmak, a day after his disappearance. According to local reports, Boonmak had grown concerned after her husband failed to return to their home in Pattaya after a scheduled meeting…

A threat actor referred to as ‘RomCom’ has been targeting organizations supporting Ukraine and guests of the upcoming NATO Summit set to start tomorrow in Vilnius, Lithuania. BlackBerry’s research and intelligence team recently discovered two malicious documents that impersonated the Ukranian World Congress organization and topics related to the NATO Summit to lure selected targets. The attackers used a replica of the Ukrainian World Congress website hosted on an “.info” domain instead of the real one that uses an “.org” top-level domain….

  SAN DIEGO — A 14-year-old girl was found in the barracks at a California Marine Corps base last month, two weeks after her grandmother in San Diego reported she had run away from home, and a Marine was detained for questioning, officials said Monday. The Marine has since been released to his command while federal law enforcement officials investigate, said Marine Capt. Charles Palmer of the 1st Marine Logistics Group at Camp Pendleton, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) north…

Here we go again. It was only a month ago that Karl Bode wrote about Disney’s absolutely and totally cool process of removing a bunch of content from its Disney Plus streaming platform not because the content sucks and nobody liked it, but because it gets to play accounting tricks as to its assets in order to receive giant tax breaks. To some extent, a big media company prioritizing quarterly profit reports over providing customers value in its streaming platform…

As you’ll recall, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman whined about what he called the “landed gentry” among moderators of subreddits that were protesting his ridiculous extractive API changes. He insisted that perhaps things should be more democratic. In response, many subreddits took a vote on how subscribers to those subreddits wanted the mods to handle things, and many urged the moderators to continue protesting. But, Huffman apparently couldn’t handle that kind of democracy. So he’s spent the last few weeks threatening…

COLDSPRING, Texas (AP) — Sheriff Greg Capers was the classic picture of a Texas lawman as he announced the capture of a suspected mass killer: white cowboy hat on his head, gold star pinned to his chest, white cross on his belt and a large pistol emblazoned with his name on his hip. For four days, Francisco Oropeza had evaded hundreds of officers after allegedly killing five neighbors when they complained that his late-night shooting was keeping their baby awake….