Olof Kyros Gustafsson, former CEO of Escobar, pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering charges related to the company's phone scam operation. The Department of Justice says Gustafsson took orders for phones branded with Pablo Escobar's likeness but failed to deliver products, instead transferring customer money for personal use.

When customers sought refunds, Gustafsson fraudulently referred payment processors to certificates of ownership as proof of delivery. The phones were Samsung devices with gold stickers. Gustafsson faces up to 20 years in prison and $1.3 million in restitution at his December 5th sentencing.

Long-time Slashdot reader wattersa is a lawyer in Redwood City, California, and a Slashdot reader since 1998. In 2022 he shared the remarkable story of a three-year missing person investigation that was ultimately solved with a subpoena to Google. A murder victim appeared to have sent an email at a time which would exonerate the chief suspect. But a closer inspection of that email's IP addresses revealed it was actually sent from a hotel where the suspect was staying. ("Although Google does not include the originating IP address in the email headers, it turns out that they retain the IP address for some unknown length of time...")

Today wattersa brings this update: The case finally went to trial in July 2025, where I testified about the investigation along with an expert witness on computer networking. The jury took three hours to return a verdict against the victim's husband for wrongful death in the amount of $23.2 million, with a special finding that he caused the death of his wife.

The defendant is a successful mechanical engineer at an energy company, but is walking as a free man because he is Canadian and no one can prosecute him in the U.S., since Taiwan and the U.S. don't have extradition with each other.

It was an interesting case and I look forward to using it as a model in other missing person cases.

Christine Hunsicker, founder of the failed "Clothing-as-a-Service" startup CaaStle, has been criminally charged with defrauding investors of over $300 million by falsifying financials and misrepresenting the company's health. CNBC reports: Authorities said Christine Hunsicker, 48, of Lafayette, New Jersey, promoted CaaStle to investors as a more than $1.4 billion "Clothing-as-a-Service" business that helped companies rent apparel to consumers with an option to buy, despite knowing it was financially distressed and short of cash. The alleged fraud spanned six years starting in 2019, three years after the Princeton University alumna was named one of Inc magazine's "Most Impressive Women Entrepreneurs" and Crain's New York Business' "40 Under 40."

Hunsicker was charged in a six-count indictment with wire fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, making false statements to a bank and aggravated identity theft. She turned herself in to authorities, and could face decades in prison if convicted. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a related civil lawsuit. In a joint statement, Hunsicker's lawyers Michael Levy and Anna Skotko said the indictment presented "an incomplete and very distorted picture," despite their client being "fully cooperative and transparent" with prosecutors. "There is much more to this story, and we look forward to telling it," the lawyers added.

Authorities said Hunsicker falsified CaaStle's financial statements and bank records to raise capital. This included alleged representations that CaaStle earned $66.3 million on revenue of $439.9 million in 2023, when it actually lost $81 million on revenue of $15.7 million. Hunsicker was also accused of falsely telling investors their money would go toward buying discounted shares from existing shareholders who needed liquidity, including after the 2022 collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. Prosecutors said Hunsicker fraudulently raised more than $275 million for CaaStle and $30 million for a related venture, P180.

Ring has restored police access to user video footage and returned to its original crime-prevention mission under founder Jamie Siminoff, who rejoined Amazon in April after a two-year absence. The video doorbell company announced a partnership with law enforcement technology firm Axon that allows police to request footage through Axon's digital evidence management system, effectively reviving a controversial feature Ring discontinued last year.

Siminoff scrapped Ring's socially-focused mission statement "Keep people close to what's important" that Amazon introduced in 2024 and reinstated the company's original mandate to "make neighborhoods safer." The company previously paid $5.8 million to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations of privacy violations in 2023, though Amazon denied wrongdoing.

Russian lawmakers passed sweeping new legislation allowing authorities to fine individuals simply for searching and accessing content labeled "extremist" via VPNs. The Washington Post reports: Russia defines "extremist materials" as content officially added by a court to a government-maintained registry, a running list of about 5,500 entries, or content produced by "extremist organizations" ranging from "the LGBT movement" to al-Qaeda. The new law also covers materials that promote alleged Nazi ideology or incite extremist actions. Until now, Russian law stopped short of punishing individuals for seeking information online; only creating or sharing such content is prohibited. The new amendments follow remarks by high-ranking officials that censorship is justified in wartime. Adoption of the measures would mark a significant tightening of Russia's already restrictive digital laws.

The fine for searching for banned content in Russia would be about a $65, while the penalty for advertising circumvention tools such as VPN services would be steeper -- $2,500 for individuals and up to $12,800 for companies. Previously, the most significant expansion of Russia's restrictions on internet use and freedom of speech occurred shortly after the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when sweeping laws criminalized the spread of "fake news" and "discrediting" the Russian military. The new amendment was introduced Tuesday and attached to a mundane bill on regulating freight companies, according to documents published by Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Authority: Italian YouTuber Once Were Nerd covers a variety of retro gaming topics, but his reviews of ANBERNIC devices appear to be the straw that broke the camel's back. According to the video [here], customs enforcement officers from the Guardia di Finanza showed up at his home and office on April 15 with a search warrant to investigate promotion of pirated copyrighted materials. They seized a variety of ANBERNIC, Powkiddy, and TrimUI gaming handhelds from his collection. In total, more than 30 consoles were taken. The creator, assuming he didn't do anything wrong, complied with demands, providing full transcripts of his conversations and chats with gaming handheld manufacturers. The officers also took his phone, promising to return it in a few days. It was returned two months later, on June 15.

According to the video, officials are not required to disclose what exactly the charges are or who has brought them until the initial investigation is complete under Italian law. At that point, the case is either dismissed or goes to trial. The complaint specifically mentions reproduction of copyrighted material from Nintendo and Sony, but the case may originate from the agency itself. However, in the meantime officials have the option to shut down his channel, even before proving any wrongdoing. This is a scary prospect for any creator who has spent years building a channel, and unlike YouTube copyright strikes, there's likely no remedy.

Currently, officials contest that his reviews of ANBERNIC devices like the RG Slide, which often, but not always, ship with microSD cards filled with copyrighted ROMs, are punishable under Article 171 ter of the Italian Copyright Law. This law, which was originally written in 1941, allows for a maximum punishment of 15,000 euros (or 30 million Italian Lira, since the law pre-dates the Euro) and three years of jail time.

U.S. prosecutors and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have officially closed their investigations into Polymarket, the decentralized, blockchain-powered prediction market platform where users bet with real cryptocurrency on the outcomes of future events. "The DOJ was investigating Polymarket last year, reportedly for allowing U.S. users to place bets on the site despite Polymarket being required to block U.S. traders," reports CoinDesk.

The FBI raided Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan's Manhattan apartment last November, seizing his phone and electronic devices. A source close to the matter told The New York Post it was politically motivated due to Polymarket's successful prediction of Trump's election win. It's "grand political theater at its worst," the source said. "They could have asked his lawyer for any of these things. Instead, they staged a so-called raid so they can leak it to the media and use it for obvious political reasons."

A Department of Justice filing aiming to recover fraudulently obtained cryptocurrency may have inadvertently revealed the scam's victims as the CEO and CFO of crypto payment firm MoonPay. From a report: The filing, which aims to seize around $40,350 in USDT frozen by Tether, reveals that two victims sent $250,300 in USDT to a person posing as Steve Witkoff, co-chair of the President Trump's inaugural committee.

However, records obtained from Binance revealed that the wallet that received the funds was registered to Ehiremen Aigbokhan, a man based in Lagos, Nigeria. The victims are identified in the filing only as "Ivan" and "Mouna." However, as outlet NOTUS noticed, Crypto payment firm Moonpay's CEO is Ivan Soto-Wright and its CFO is Mouna Ammari Siala. Furthermore, a wallet involved in the $250,300 transaction is listed by Etherscan as a MoonPay wallet.

joshuark writes: A Russian basketball player, Daniil Kasatkin, was arrested on June 21 in France at the request of the United States as he allegedly is part of a network of hackers. Daniil Kasatkin, aged 26, is accused by the United States of negotiating the payment of ransoms to this hacker network, which he denies. He has been studied in the United States, and is the subject of a U.S. arrest warrant for "conspiracy to commit computer fraud" and "computer fraud conspiracy."

His lawyer alleges that Kasatkin is not guilty of these crimes and that they are instead linked to a second-hand computer that he purchased. "He bought a second-hand computer. He did absolutely nothing. He's stunned," his lawyer, Freric Belot, told the media. "He's useless with computers and can't even install an application. He didn't touch anything on the computer: it was either hacked, or the hacker sold it to him to act under the cover of another person." The report notes that Kasatkin briefly played NCAA basketball at Penn State before returning to Russia in 2019. He also appeared in 172 games with MBA-MAI before he left the team.

A Russian professional basketball player has been arrested in France at the request of the United States, which reportedly accused him of being involved in a ransomware group that allegedly targeted hundreds of American companies and federal institutions. From a report: Daniil Kasatkin, 26, was detained in June at Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport shortly after arriving in the country with his fiancee, according to local media reports. He is currently being held in extradition custody, with a U.S. warrant reportedly issued against him. Kasatkin previously studied and played basketball in the U.S., at Penn State University.

The unnamed ransomware network Kasatkin is suspected of being part of is believed to have targeted nearly 900 entities between 2020 and 2022. Local media, citing court proceedings in Paris, reported that Kasatkin allegedly helped negotiate ransom payments, though the extent of the damage caused by the attacks has not been disclosed.

"California residents who lit illegal fireworks over the July 4 holiday may be in for a nasty surprise in the mail thanks to covert fire department operations," reports SFGate.

"A number of California cities, including Sacramento, have begun using drones to locate people shooting off illegal fireworks." From Wednesday to Saturday night, the Sacramento Fire Department's special fireworks task force patrolled the streets with unmarked cars and drones, focusing on neighborhoods where they've had prior complaints. Task force officers and the drones took photos of the illegal activity, and within 30 days the property owner where the fireworks were used could receive a fine in the mail...

This year, Sacramento upped the fine to $1,000 for the first firework, $2,500 for the second and $5,000 per firework after that. If you lit a firework on city property, such as a park or a school, the fine goes up to $10,000 each. There's no limit to how many fines you can be issued... This year, a number of cities across the state announced they would be using drones to find scofflaws, among them Indio, Riverside, Hemet, Brea and towns in Tulare County...

Fox40 reported on Saturday that around 60 citations were being prepared in Sacramento, with more likely on the way as fire officials review surveillance footage.
Last year for illegal fireworks, one Sacramento-area resident received a $100,000 fine.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Law enforcement officials are investigating a former employee of a company that negotiates with hackers and facilitates cryptocurrency payments during ransomware attacks, according to a statement from the firm, DigitalMint. DigitalMint President Marc Jason Grens this week told organizations it works with that the US Justice Department is examining allegations that the then-employee struck deals with hackers to profit from extortion payments, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Grens did not identify the employee by name and characterized their actions as isolated, said the person, who spoke on condition that they not be identified describing private conversations. DigitalMint is cooperating with a criminal investigation into "alleged unauthorized conduct by the employee while employed here," Grens said in an email to Bloomberg News. The Chicago-based company is not the target of the investigation and the employee "was immediately terminated," Grens said, adding that he can't provide more information because the probe is ongoing.

Apple has filed (PDF) a lawsuit against former Vision Pro engineer Di Liu, accusing him of stealing thousands of confidential files related to his work on Apple's augmented reality headset for the benefit of his new employer Snap. The company alleges Liu misled colleagues about his departure, secretly accepted a job offer from Snap, and attempted to cover his tracks by deleting files -- actions Apple claims violated his confidentiality agreement. The Register reports: Liu secretly received a job offer from Snap on October 18, 2024, a role the complaint describes as "substantially similar" to his Apple position, meaning Liu waited nearly two weeks to resign from Apple, per the lawsuit. "Even then, he did not disclose he was leaving for Snap," the suit said. "Apple would not have allowed Mr. Liu continued access had he told the truth." Liu allegedly copied "more than a dozen folders containing thousands of files" from Apple's filesystem to a personal cloud storage account, dropping the stolen bits in a pair of nested folders with the amazingly nondescript names "Personal" and "Knowledge."

Apple said that data Liu copied includes "filenames containing confidential Apple product code names" and files "marked as Apple confidential." Company research, product design, and supply chain management documents were among the content Liu is accused of stealing. The complaint also alleges that Liu deleted files to conceal his activities, a move that may hinder Apple's ability to determine the full scope of the data he exfiltrated. "Mr. Liu additionally took actions to conceal his theft, including deceiving Apple about his job at Snap, and deleting files from his Apple-issued computer that might have let Apple determine what data Mr. Liu stole," the complaint noted.

Whatever he has, Apple wants it back. The company demands a jury trial on a single count of breach of contract under a confidentiality and intellectual property agreement Liu was bound to. It also asks the court to compel Liu to return all misappropriated data, award damages to be determined at trial, and reimburse Apple's costs and attorneys' fees.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A judge has sentenced a disgruntled IT worker to more than seven months in prison after he wreaked havoc on his employer's network following his suspension, according to West Yorkshire Police.

According to the police, Mohammed Umar Taj, 31, from the Yorkshire town of Batley, was suspended from his job in nearby Huddersfield in July 2022. But the company didn't immediately rescind his network credentials, and within hours, he began altering login names and passwords to disrupt operations, the statement says.

The following day, he allegedly changed access credentials and the biz's multi-factor authentication settings that locked out the firm and its clients in Germany and Bahrain, eventually causing an estimated $274,200 in lost business and reputational harm.

Designated as a foreign terrorist group by multiple countries, Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel fiercely defends its transnational organized crime syndicate.

"A hacker working for the Sinaloa drug cartel was able to obtain an FBI official's phone records," reports Reuters, "and use Mexico City's surveillance cameras to help track and kill the agency's informants in 2018, the U.S. Justice Department said in a report issued on Thursday." The incident was disclosed in a Justice Department Inspector General's audit of the FBI's efforts to mitigate the effects of "ubiquitous technical surveillance," a term used to describe the global proliferation of cameras and the thriving trade in vast stores of communications, travel, and location data... The report said the hacker identified an FBI assistant legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and was able to use the attaché's phone number "to obtain calls made and received, as well as geolocation data."

The report said the hacker also "used Mexico City's camera system to follow the (FBI official) through the city and identify people the (official) met with." The report said "the cartel used that information to intimidate and, in some instances, kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses."

U.S. banks have failed to prevent mass-scale money laundering in the face of approximately $44 billion per year in pig-butchering scams conducted by Asian crime syndicates, according to a ProPublica investigation.

Chinese-language Telegram channels openly advertise rental of U.S. bank accounts to scammers who use them to move victims' cash into cryptocurrency. Bank of America allowed hundreds of unverified customers to open accounts, prosecutors alleged, including 176 customers who claimed the same small home as their address.

Major financial institutions whose accounts pig-butchering scammers have exploited include Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, HSBC and Wells Fargo. The scams typically involve fake cryptocurrency trading platforms that convince victims to wire money to seemingly legitimate business accounts. Banks are reluctant to share account information with each other even after identifying suspicious activity, and "no real standards" exist for what banks must do to detect fraud or money laundering.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Subscribers in Southern California of Spectrum's Internet service experienced outages over the weekend following what company officials said was an attempted theft of copper lines located in Van Nuys, a suburb located 20 miles from downtown Los Angeles. The people behind the incident thought they were targeting copper lines, the officials wrote in a statement Sunday. Instead, they cut into fiber optic cables. The cuts caused service disruptions for subscribers in Van Nuys and surrounding areas. Spectrum has since restored service and is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the apprehension of the people responsible. Spectrum will also credit affected customers one day of service on their next bill.

"Criminal acts of network vandalism have become an issue affecting the entire telecommunications industry, not just Spectrum, largely due to the increase in the price of precious metals," the officials wrote in a statement issued Sunday. "These acts of vandalism are not only a crime, but also affect our customers, local businesses and potentially emergency services. Spectrum's fiber lines do not include any copper." Outage information service Downdetector showed that thousands of subscribers in and around Van Nuys reported outages starting a little before noon on Sunday. Within about 12 hours, the complaint levels returned to normal. Spectrum officials told the Los Angeles Times that personnel had to splice thousands of fiber lines to restore service to affected subscribers.

Last week America's financial aid program announced that "the rate of fraud through stolen identities has reached a level that imperils the federal student aid programs."

Or, as the Associated Press suggests: Online classes + AI = financial aid fraud. "In some cases, professors discover almost no one in their class is real..." Fake college enrollments have been surging as crime rings deploy "ghost students" — chatbots that join online classrooms and stay just long enough to collect a financial aid check... Students get locked out of the classes they need to graduate as bots push courses over their enrollment limits.

And victims of identity theft who discover loans fraudulently taken out in their names must go through months of calling colleges, the Federal Student Aid office and loan servicers to try to get the debt erased. [Last week], the U.S. Education Department introduced a temporary rule requiring students to show colleges a government-issued ID to prove their identity... "The rate of fraud through stolen identities has reached a level that imperils the federal student aid program," the department said in its guidance to colleges.

An Associated Press analysis of fraud reports obtained through a public records request shows California colleges in 2024 reported 1.2 million fraudulent applications, which resulted in 223,000 suspected fake enrollments. Other states are affected by the same problem, but with 116 community colleges, California is a particularly large target. Criminals stole at least $11.1 million in federal, state and local financial aid from California community colleges last year that could not be recovered, according to the reports... Scammers frequently use AI chatbots to carry out the fraud, targeting courses that are online and allow students to watch lectures and complete coursework on their own time...

Criminal cases around the country offer a glimpse of the schemes' pervasiveness. In the past year, investigators indicted a man accused of leading a Texas fraud ring that used stolen identities to pursue $1.5 million in student aid. Another person in Texas pleaded guilty to using the names of prison inmates to apply for over $650,000 in student aid at colleges across the South and Southwest. And a person in New York recently pleaded guilty to a $450,000 student aid scam that lasted a decade.
Fortune found one community college that "wound up dropping more than 10,000 enrollments representing thousands of students who were not really students," according to the school's president. The scope of the ghost-student plague is staggering. Jordan Burris, vice president at identity-verification firm Socure and former chief of staff in the White House's Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer, told Fortune more than half the students registering for classes at some schools have been found to be illegitimate. Among Socure's client base, between 20% to 60% of student applicants are ghosts... At one college, more than 400 different financial-aid applications could be tracked back to a handful of recycled phone numbers. "It was a digital poltergeist effectively haunting the school's enrollment system," said Burris.

The scheme has also proved incredibly lucrative. According to a Department of Education advisory, about $90 million in aid was doled out to ineligible students, the DOE analysis revealed, and some $30 million was traced to dead people whose identities were used to enroll in classes. The issue has become so dire that the DOE announced this month it had found nearly 150,000 suspect identities in federal student-aid forms and is now requiring higher-ed institutions to validate the identities of first-time applicants for Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) forms...

Maurice Simpkins, president and cofounder of AMSimpkins, says he has identified international fraud rings operating out of Japan, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nairobi that have repeatedly targeted U.S. colleges... In the past 18 months, schools blocked thousands of bot applicants because they originated from the same mailing address; had hundreds of similar emails with a single-digit difference, or had phone numbers and email addresses that were created moments before applying for registration.
Fortune shares this story from the higher education VP at IT consulting firm Voyatek. "One of the professors was so excited their class was full, never before being 100% occupied, and thought they might need to open a second section. When we worked with them as the first week of class was ongoing, we found out they were not real people."

Earlier this week looters who stole iPhones "got an unexpected message from Apple," reports the Economic Times.

"Please return to Apple Tower Theatre. This device has been disabled and is being tracked. Local authorities will be alerted."

Stolen phones "were remotely locked and triggered alarms, effectively turning the devices into high-tech bait. Videos circulating online show the phones flashing the message while blaring loudly, making them impossible to ignore." According to LAPD Officer Chris Miller, at least three suspects were apprehended in connection to the Apple Store burglary. One woman was arrested on the spot, while two others were detained for looting.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In 2019, we told you about a new interactive digital "murder map" of London compiled by University of Cambridge criminologist Manuel Eisner. Drawing on data catalogued in the city coroners' rolls, the map showed the approximate location of 142 homicide cases in late medieval London. The Medieval Murder Maps project has since expanded to include maps of York and Oxford homicides, as well as podcast episodes focusing on individual cases. It's easy to lose oneself down the rabbit hole of medieval murder for hours, filtering the killings by year, choice of weapon, and location. Think of it as a kind of 14th-century version of Clue: It was the noblewoman's hired assassins armed with daggers in the streets of Cheapside near St. Paul's Cathedral. And that's just the juiciest of the various cases described in a new paper published in the journal Criminal Law Forum.

The noblewoman was Ela Fitzpayne, wife of a knight named Sir Robert Fitzpayne, lord of Stogursey. The victim was a priest and her erstwhile lover, John Forde, who was stabbed to death in the streets of Cheapside on May 3, 1337. "We are looking at a murder commissioned by a leading figure of the English aristocracy," said University of Cambridge criminologist Manuel Eisner, who heads the Medieval Murder Maps project. "It is planned and cold-blooded, with a family member and close associates carrying it out, all of which suggests a revenge motive." Members of the mapping project geocoded all the cases after determining approximate locations for the crime scenes. Written in Latin, the coroners' rolls are records of sudden or suspicious deaths as investigated by a jury of local men, called together by the coroner to establish facts and reach a verdict. Those records contain such relevant information as where the body was found and by whom; the nature of the wounds; the jury's verdict on cause of death; the weapon used and how much it was worth; the time, location, and witness accounts; whether the perpetrator was arrested, escaped, or sought sanctuary; and any legal measures taken. The full historical context, analytical depth, and social commentary can be read in the the paper.

Interestingly, Eisner "extended their spatial analysis to include homicides committed in York and London in the 14th century with similar conclusions," writes Ars' Jennifer Ouellette. Most murders often occurred in public places, usually on weekends, with knives and swords as primary weapons. Oxford had a significantly elevated violence rate compared to London and York, "suggestive of high levels of social disorganization and impunity."

London, meanwhile, showed distinct clusters of homicides, "which reflect differences in economic and social functions," the authors wrote. "In all three cities, some homicides were committed in spaces of high visibility and symbolic significance."