Adams’ campaign confirmed his electronic devices were taken by FBI agents on Monday night, but his lawyer issued a somewhat cryptic statement that appeared to indicate he found out someone close to him acted improperly.
“After learning of the federal investigation, it was discovered that an individual had recently acted improperly. In the spirit of transparency and cooperation, this behavior was immediately and proactively reported to investigators. The Mayor has been and remains committed to cooperating in this matter,” said Adams’ campaign attorney Boyd Johnson. “On Monday night, the FBI approached the mayor after an event. The Mayor immediately complied with the FBI’s request and provided them with electronic devices. The mayor has not been accused of any wrongdoing and continues to cooperate with the investigation.”
On Wednesday, at his weekly meeting with reporters, Adams faced questions mostly about the stunning FBI raid on the home of his chief campaign fundraiser Briana Suggs. The mayor did not reveal that he had been approached by FBI agents who confiscated his electronic devices two days earlier.
“As a former member of law enforcement, I expect all members of my staff to follow the law and fully cooperate with any sort of investigation-and I will continue to do exactly that. I have nothing to hide,” Adams said in a statement Friday.
Sources told CBS New York political reporter Marcia Kramer the information Adams’ lawyers turned over to investigators did not involve Suggs, but someone else in the mayor’s circle.
Sources refused to characterize the person, but information about them was believed to be on one of the mayor’s devices, which were apparently returned to him after a few days.
Marcia Kramer joined CBS2 in 1990 as an investigative and political reporter. Prior to CBS2, she was the City Hall bureau chief at the New York Daily News.
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A Beverly Hills luxury watch dealer accused of stealing people’s pricey timepieces was arrested by the FBI following a report in The Times detailing the allegations of theft against the dealer.
Anthony Farrer, 35, was charged with mail fraud and wire fraud over his alleged consignment scheme. The businessman, who ran a watch company called The Timepiece Gentleman, told potential clients that he would sell their watches and take a commission but often kept all the money, prosecutors announced Wednesday.
“Rather than selling the watches and remitting the funds back to the watch owners, Farrer appears to instead sell the watches and keep the proceeds for himself,” wrote Justin Palmerton, an FBI agent, in an affidavit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.
If convicted, Farrer faces up to 20 years in prison and is currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles. His next court date is Dec. 14.
Farrer stole about $3 million from at least 20 victims, according to Palmerton. Numerous victims of Farrer spoke with The Times for the October article, including one man who said he lost his life savings to Farrer.
All the while, Farrer lived a life of luxury, buying high-end cars, spending tens of thousands of dollars on a single meal and renting one of the most expensive apartments in Los Angeles — all of which he flaunted on social media sites such as TikTok. He posted about his exploits and eventually admitted to using people’s watches to pay off other debts.
“He confessed to running a Ponzi scheme and he almost does not seem to understand it,” said Chad Plebo, who helped put victims of in touch with the FBI in the case. “It’s such a bizarre, weird story.”
Farrer posted on social media about his debts in August, admitting that what he did was wrong.
“Spending people’s money, living above my means. … I’ve been digging myself this hole and it’s a five-million dollar hole,” he said in the Aug. 2 video. “About three million of that debt is to two big clients of mine. One who acted as an investor and I used his money to fund my lifestyle.”
In The Times story detailing the allegations, seven people said they had given Farrer watches worth between $10,000 and well over $100,000, only to have the timepieces disappear. One of the seven alleged victims has a pending lawsuit against Farrer over the issue; an eighth person who also sued did not speak with The Times.
When asked whether he was worried about going to prison for his alleged actions, Farrer said he could not focus on that.
“If I do, I do. If I don’t, I don’t,” he said.
Farrer was raised in Texas and started his company there in 2017 before moving to downtown Los Angeles, where he produced his own reality show about his life called “South Hill,” which he self-published on YouTube.
“People trusted him in this space because he had a social media following,” said John Buckley, a luxury watch dealer who runs a business called Tuscany Rose.
A bipartisan collection of privacy-minded lawmakers today announced the introduction of a bill that would reform and restrain the authorities of federal agencies from snooping on American citizens and collecting data without getting a warrant first.
Federal surveillance authorities under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) are up for congressional renewal this year. Section 702 is intended to authorize the warrantless surveillance of foreigners outside of the United States for potential threats to national security. But in truth, through various loopholes and tricks, these authorities have been used by the federal government to collect and track domestic data and communications by American citizens, without us knowing and without warrants.
We’ve had years of evidence that federal intelligence authorities like the National Security Agency (NSA) have been misusing their powers and a number of legislative attempts to rein them in. Today, a pack of lawmakers introduced the Government Surveillance Reform Act of 2023, intended to add several new restrictions to protect Americans from warrantless snooping and collection of data as a condition of renewing Section 702.
The law is co-sponsored in both the House and Senate by privacy- and liberty-minded lawmakers from both parties, from Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D–Calif.) on the left to Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah) and Rep. Nancy Mace (R–S.C.) on the right, among others.
“The FISA Court and the Director of National Intelligence have confirmed that our government conducted warrantless surveillance of millions of Americans’ private communications,” said Lee in a prepared statement. “It is imperative that Congress enact real reforms to protect our civil liberties, including warrant requirements and statutory penalties for privacy violations, in exchange for reauthorizing Section 702. Our bipartisan Government Surveillance Reform Act stops illegal government spying and restores the Constitutional rights of all Americans.”
Their bill addresses and attempts to end a host of different ways that federal authorities have attempted to make end runs around the Fourth Amendment’s requirements that officials get a warrant before accessing Americans’ private data or communications. Some of the important reforms include:
Ending the “backdoor search” loophole. The massive collection of data authorized by FISA has created a trove of stored info that the FBI has accessed to investigate domestic crimes, even though that data was collected without warrants for the alleged purpose of protecting us from foreign spies and terrorists. The power of the FBI to do so was actually expanded under President Donald Trump (in spite of his anger over being subjected to secret surveillance). The Government Surveillance Reform Act would close this loophole by requiring authorities to get a warrant before searching citizens’ data.
Ending “reverse targeting” of Americans in foreign surveillance. One clever bypass federal snoops have used to listen in on Americans’ communications without having to get a warrant has been to target foreigners overseas those Americans talk to instead. When FISA authorities allow the NSA to wiretap foreign targets, they will have access to all sides of the communication, and that includes Americans whom under normal situations they would not be able to snoop on so secretly, thanks to the Fourth Amendment. This bill would prohibit such targeting without consent and prevent the use of data gathered this way in court proceedings.
Ending the authority for surveillance “about” U.S. citizens. Another way the feds secretly spy on us is by collecting data and communications that are “about” us that come from valid foreign FISA surveillance targets. In other words, the feds can tangentially snoop on specific Americans by warrantlessly collecting communications from foreign sources that mention them. This bill would end that practice.
Ending purchases of private data from third-party brokers. In order to bypass warrant and Fourth Amendment requirements to gather private information about Americans, government agencies have been turning to third-party data brokers who compile information from our use of phones and computers. Government agencies simply buy data that we have stored through third-party sources that they would not be allowed to access on their own without a warrant or subpoena. This bill would prohibit such purchases.
And there’s more to the full bill, which can be read here. It is chock full of changes to surveillance authorities that some lawmakers have been trying to pass for years now, in exchange for a four-year renewal of Section 702.
As such, the bill also has support from civil rights and privacy groups from across the political spectrum, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the National Association for Criminal Defense Lawyers, FreedomWorks, Restore the Fourth, the Due Process Institute, and many others.
“We have said again and again that Section 702 should not be reauthorized absent fundamental reforms, said Kia Hamadanchy, a senior policy council at the ACLU, in a prepared statement. “The Government Surveillance Reform Act meets this high standard. This legislation would address the countless abuses of Section 702 we have seen from the government, and it would ensure the protection of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights. Congress should not vote to reauthorize Section 702 without the critical reforms contained in this bill.”
As head of security, Comey reported to Dalio’s longtime deputy Greg Jensen, who seemed eager to prove that he took the protection of Bridgewater’s secrets as seriously as Dalio. With little evidence of actual offending behavior to snuff out, they created their own. Comey helped come up with a plan to leave a binder, clearly labeled as Jensen’s, unattended in the Bridgewater offices. It worked like a charm. Comey watched as a low-ranked Bridgewater employee stumbled upon the binder and began to peruse it. Jensen and Comey put the employee on trial, found him guilty, and fired him, with Dalio’s approval.
During and after Comey’s era at Bridgewater, tens of thousands of hours of the firm’s internal deliberations, arguments and trials were uploaded into what was called the “Transparency Library” and available for playback for all at the firm.
Lordy, there was plenty to watch.
No doubt Comey’s most infamous internal case was his prosecution of Bridgewater co-chief executive officer, Eileen Murray, who stood out like a pimple in Bridgewater’s blue-blooded executive suite. She’d grown up in a housing project in Queens, rarely wore skirts, never married, never had children, and talked frequently about her dogs. A former Morgan Stanley executive, she sent emails off the cuff, all lowercase, with typos, suggesting she was too busy to give anything her full attention.
The proximate cause of Murray’s lesson in the application of The Principles was innocuous enough. A job candidate mentioned to a Bridgewater executive that he was familiar with the hedge fund’s head of accounting, Perry Poulos, one of Murray’s hires. The job candidate evinced surprise—didn’t they know Poulos had been fired from Morgan Stanley?
Comey grabbed a former FBI agent on the Bridgewater staff and went to intercept the unsuspecting Poulos. The duo pulled him into a conference room without warning.
“Hi, guys,” Poulos said.
“We just want to know, is there anything in your background we should know about?” Comey responded.
“I had some things there, but it’s all cleared up now.”
“You wouldn’t mind if we ask a few questions and look a little more?”
There’s really nothing to find, Poulos said.
Go ahead. He exited the room, heart racing, and soon found Murray. She knew, as he did, that he had been let go from Morgan Stanley after questions were raised about his expenses. But Murray sensed a larger target at play. “It’s not you,” she told Poulos. “It’s me. They are trying to get to me.”
Comey called in Poulos for another interview.
“Did you talk to anyone about this?” Comey asked.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, I haven’t talked to anyone.”
“You live with Eileen, don’t you?”
Knowing Bridgewater’s reputation for intimate relationships, Poulos assumed Comey was sniffing for a romantic angle. During the week, Poulos said, he sometimes spent the evening at Murray’s place, in separate bedrooms.
“Even that evening, after we spoke, you didn’t talk to her?” Comey asked.
A former Delta co-pilot was federally indicted earlier this month, accused of threatening to shoot the captain of a commercial flight last year if he diverted the plane because a passenger on board may have been suffering a medical emergency, authorities confirmed Tuesday.
According to court documents obtained by CBS News, on Oct. 18 a Utah grand jury indicted Jonathan Dunn with one count of interference with a flight crew.
The purported incident occurred on an Aug. 22, 2022, flight, the Department of Transportation’s inspector general’s office said in a news release Tuesday, but did not specify the airline where the flight originated from, or its destination. However, a Delta Air Lines spokesperson confirmed to CBS News that Dunn was working for Delta as a Delta first officer at the time of the incident.
According to the inspector general, Dunn, the co-pilot, had “a disagreement” with the captain, who wanted to potentially divert the flight “due to a passenger medical event.”
Dunn then allegedly “told the captain they would be shot multiple times” if the flight was diverted, the inspector general said.
Officials did not provide any further details on how the situation played out.
Dunn was authorized to carry a gun as part of the Transportation Safety Administration’s Federal Flight Deck Officer program, the inspector general said. Federal flight deck officers are airline pilots authorized by the TSA to be armed in the cockpit on domestic flights. They undergo special training to do so and are provided with a TSA-issued weapon to defend the flight deck against an attempted hijacking.
The two-page indictment, obtained by CBS News Tuesday, alleges that Dunn “did assault and intimidate a crew member of an aircraft…and did use a dangerous weapon in assaulting and intimidating the crew member.”
In a statement Tuesday evening, a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration told CBS News, “TSA is aware of an incident involving a Federal Flight Deck Officer.”
The agency says Dunn has been removed from the FFDO program, but could not comment further due to the “pending investigation.”
Delta told CBS News in a statement Tuesday evening that Dunn was no longer employed by the airline and refrained from commenting further pending the investigation.
Felicia Martinez, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Utah, also told CBS News in a statement that “at this stage in the case, we don’t have a lot of information to share without jeopardizing the integrity of the case.”
Dunn is scheduled to be arraigned on Nov. 16.
The inspector general’s office said it is getting assistance from the FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration in its investigation.
The FAA and FBI declined to comment.
It is not immediately clear if Dunn has a lawyer representing him ahead of his scheduled arraignment.
On Oct. 22, authorities allege that an off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot tried to shut off a plane’s engines during a commercial flight from Everett, Washington, to San Francisco, California. The suspect, Joseph Emerson, has been charged with 83 counts of attempted murder.
— Robert Legare and Katie Krupnik contributed to this report.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress Tuesday that the attack by Hamas militants on Israel could inspire domestic extremist groups to plan similar attacks in the U.S. targeting Jewish or Muslim communities. Scott MacFarlane has more.
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Nearly 40 years ago, long before the latest conflagration between Israel and Hamas militants, a bomb ripped through the Santa Ana office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, taking the life of the group’s regional director, Palestinian American activist Alex Odeh.
The FBI labeled the bombing a terrorist attack and early on identified the Jewish Defense League as “the possible responsible group.” At the time, the JDL was the focus of numerous state and federal investigations and had gained notoriety as an underground network of radical militants, espousing a violent form of Jewish nationalism that mainstream Jewish leaders rejected.
The FBI never formally charged anyone in Odeh’s death, but for years the agency’s investigation focused on Robert Manning, a burly ex-boxer from Los Angeles, and his wife, Rochelle, both JDL adherents.
With the Odeh probe still underway, Manning was convicted in 1993 of an unrelated murder: a 1980 mail-bomb attack that killed Patricia Wilkerson, a Manhattan Beach secretary. Manning was sentenced to life in prison. And in the ensuing decades, the Odeh case largely went cold.
Since becoming eligible for parole in 2001, Manning tried — and failed — seven times to win release. He appealed the most recent rejection, and on Oct. 3, an appellate board overturned the decision in accordance with a federal law that mandates parole for inmates who have served 30 years of a life sentence and are deemed unlikely to reoffend.
Now 71, Manning is on track to be paroled in July from a federal penitentiary in Phoenix.
The appellate board found that Manning’s “almost spotless record during his 32 years of incarceration made it unlikely he would reoffend.” The decision also took into account Manning’s age and health concerns, according to a U.S. Parole Commission spokesperson.
Paul Batista, an attorney representing Manning, declined to comment and did not make his client available for interview. At a past parole hearing, Manning detailed plans to live with his sister in Los Angeles and sell his prison artwork online if he won release.
Among Arab American leaders, news of Manning’s parole has aggravated the painful wound of Odeh’s still unsolved death, and for some, has reinforced a belief that the American judicial system let them down.
“It was a gut punch,” said Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a civil rights group created in 1980 to combat anti-Arab stereotypes. “If Manning was truly reformed, then he would cooperate and give law enforcement names of the individuals he worked with or the individuals that he knows were involved in the Odeh assassination. He’s done none of that.”
Ayoub learned of Manning’s parole through the Justice Department’s victim notification system, an alert service for federal crime victims. The decision came just days before the committee hosted its annual memorial banquet for Odeh in Garden Grove.
Founded by controversial Rabbi Meir Kahane, the JDL emerged in New York City in 1968 in the wake of the Six Day War between Israel and a coalition of Arab states. Its members embraced a self-appointed mission to aggressively combat antisemitism with swaggering slogans like “every Jew a .22” that over time evolved into terror campaigns against their perceived enemies.
Five terror attacks in 1985 alone led the FBI to warn Arab Americans that they were in a “zone of danger” from an unnamed group taking aim at the “enemies of Israel.”
“To many Jews in North America, they were seen as heinous crimes,” said Alon Burstein, an Israel Institute Fellow and visiting assistant professor in UC Irvine’s political science department. “On the other hand, it was also seen as the first time — with the exception of the state of Israel — that Jews were standing up militantly and saying ‘never again.’ ”
Manning grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household in Los Angeles, where he dropped out of Fairfax High School at 17. He joined the Army only to leave a year later on a “not able to adjust” discharge. He worked variously as a private investigator, machinist and draftsman.
Manning joined the JDL’s West Coast chapter in 1971 and soon ran afoul of the law. He was convicted in the 1972 bombing of an Arab activist’s Hollywood home, and sentenced to three years’ probation after disavowing his JDL affiliation in court.
After the case, he left for Israel, where he renewed his JDL ties and continued to travel back and forth to the U.S.
Federal authorities considered Manning a suspect in four political bombings in 1985, including the one that killed Odeh. One attack killed a suspected Nazi in Paterson, N.J.; another bomb exploded outside the home of a suspected Nazi in Brentwood, N.Y., and a third injured two police officers trying to defuse a bomb sent to an Arab American group in Boston.
But the attack Manning served time for — Wilkerson’s mail-bomb murder — did not appear political in nature. Two years after Manning’s 1993 conviction, a Los Angeles federal jury convicted real estate agent William Ross of paying Manning to carry out the attack. Prosecutors said Ross intended the bomb for Wilkerson’s boss, who had sued Ross over the sale of a Manhattan Beach house, costing him thousands of dollars.
Manning’s wife, Rochelle, whom prosecutors also implicated in the bombing, died in an Israeli prison in 1994 while fighting extradition to the U.S.
With Manning in prison for the Wilkerson murder, the FBI continued to question him in the Odeh bombing. At his last three parole hearings, the Odeh family and representatives of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee were recognized as victims of Manning and allowed to argue against his release.
During a Nov. 2020 hearing, Manning explicitly denied involvement in the Odeh bombing and challenged the government to bring a case. “If they say I’m the top subject, then charge me for it, and I’ll go to court and prove my innocence,” he said.
Last year, Manning sued the government for allowing the Odeh family and the Arab committee to participate in his parole hearings. A judge dismissed the suit in February.
Odeh’s eldest daughter, Helena, said being recognized as victims at Manning’s parole hearings had brought her family some comfort. Now, with him set to be paroled, even that half-measure of justice seems to be slipping away.
“It does seem like we’re taking a step back,” Helena said. “But we’re going to continue to fight for justice and hope that my dad’s murder is solved. He didn’t deserve to die the way that he did.”
Odeh was seen as a polite, soft-spoken voice of moderation in his day. He was a poet and lecturer at Coastline College in Orange County, as well as West Coast director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. He held an unwavering commitment to Palestinian statehood as a prerequisite for peace in the Mideast.
With the Israel-Hamas war exploding anew, Helena said she is thinking of her father more often than usual.
“I wonder what he would do or say in this situation,” she said. “I know he wouldn’t want innocent people getting hurt all around.”
Law enforcement officials on Thursday surrounded the last known address of the suspect in two shootings that left at least 18 people dead and dozens wounded in Lewiston, Maine.
The Associated Press (AP) reported heavily armed officials returned to a house in the town of Bowdoin a few minutes before 8 p.m. The homeowner is a relative of Robert Card, authorities’ lone suspect in Wednesday’s deadly shootings at a bowling alley and a bar. As of press time, it was not known if Card was inside the residence.
“You need to come outside now with nothing in your hands. Your hands in the air,” police shouted through a megaphone, instructing Card or anyone in the house to come outside, according to the AP.
The gunman on Wednesday opened fire at Schemengees Bar and Grille and Just-In-Time Recreation in Lewiston, police said.
Law enforcement officials gather in a Bowdoin, Maine, road leading to the last known home of the suspect in two mass shootings in Lewiston on Wednesday. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
According to information released by the Maine State Police, Card is a trained firearms instructor believed to be in the U.S. Army Reserve stationed in Saco, Maine.
Newsweek reached out to the state police via email for more details on Thursday night.
Authorities said Card had recently reported suffering from mental health issues, including hearing voices and threatening to shoot up the National Guard Base in Saco. Card was also reportedly admitted into a mental health facility for two weeks in the summer, but a police document did not provide details of the treatment he received or his condition.
While hundreds of law enforcement agents search for Card, residents in Lewiston and the surrounding area have been warned to stay inside their homes as he is considered armed and dangerous.
Card was last seen wearing brown clothing and carrying an assault-style rifle. According to police, Card was last known to be driving a white 2013 Subaru Outback bearing Maine license plate number 9246PD.
Authorities have shared a photo of the Subaru as well as multiple photographs of Card on social media.
Along with hunting for Card on land, authorities are also searching on water.
On Thursday morning, the Coast Guard sent a patrol boat out along the Kennebec River. A Coast Guard officer told the AP they had no direct intelligence that suggested Card may have tried to escape by boat but were “just doing our due diligence.”
Maine Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat, said in a Thursday statement that “the full weight” of her administration is backing law enforcement efforts to capture Card.
She also vowed “to hold whoever is responsible for this atrocity accountable under the full force of state and federal law; and to seek full justice for the victims and their families. We are not, and we will not, rest in this endeavor.”
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Remember when Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) accused then–White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci of funding China’s Wuhan virus lab?
Fauci replied, “Senator Paul, you do not know what you’re talking about.”
The media loved it. Vanity Fairsmirked, “Fauci Once Again Forced to Basically Call Rand Paul a Sniveling Moron.”
But now the magazine has changed its tune, admitting, “In Major Shift, NIH Admits Funding Risky Virus Research in Wuhan” and “Paul might have been onto something.”
Then what about question two: Did COVID-19 occur because of a leak from that lab?
When Paul confronted Fauci, saying, “The evidence is pointing that it came from the lab!” Fauci replied, “I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating.”
Was Paul lying? What’s the truth?
The media told us COVID came from an animal, possibly a bat.
But in my new video, Paul points out there were “reports of 80,000 animals being tested. No animals with it.”
Now he’s released a book, Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up, that charges Fauci and others with funding dangerous research and then covering it up.
“Three people in the Wuhan lab got sick with a virus of unknown origin in November of 2019,” says Paul. The Wuhan lab is 1,000 kilometers away from where bats live.
Today the FBI, the Energy Department, and others agree with Paul. They believe COVID most likely came from a lab.
I ask Paul, “COVID came from evil Chinese scientists, in a lab, funded by America?”
“America funded it,” he replies, “maybe not done with evil intentions. It was done with the misguided notion that ‘gain-of-function’ research was safe.”
Gain-of-function research includes making viruses stronger.
The purpose is to anticipate what might happen in nature and come up with vaccines in advance. So I push back at Paul, “They’re trying to find ways to stop diseases!”
He replies, “Many scientists have now looked at this and said, ‘We’ve been doing this gain-of-function research for quite a while.’ The likelihood that you create something that creates a vaccine that’s going to help anybody is pretty slim to none.”
Paul points out that Fauci supported “gain-of-function” research.
“He said in 2012, even if a pandemic occurs…the knowledge is worth it.” Fauci did write: “The benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks.”
Paul answers: “Well, that’s a judgment call. There’s probably 16 million families around the world who might disagree with that.”
Fauci and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) didn’t give money directly to the Chinese lab. They gave it to a nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance. The group works to protect people from infectious diseases.
“They were able to accumulate maybe over $100 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars, and a lot of it was funneled to Wuhan,” says Paul.
EcoHealth Alliance is run by zoologist Peter Daszak. Before the pandemic, Daszak bragged about combining coronaviruses in Wuhan.
Once COVID broke out, Daszak became less eager to talk about these experiments. He won’t talk to me.
“Peter Daszak has refused to reveal his communications with the Wuhan lab,” complains Paul. “I do think that ultimately there is a great deal of culpability on his part.… They squelched all dissent and said, ‘You’re a conspiracy theorist if you’re saying this [came from a lab],’ but they didn’t reveal that they had a monetary self-incentive to cover this up,” says Paul.
“The media is weirdly uncurious about this,” I say to Paul.
“We have a disease that killed maybe 16 million people,” Paul responds. “And they’re not curious as to how we got it?”
Also, our NIH still funds gain of function research, Paul says.
“This is a risk to civilization. We could wind up with a virus…that leaks out of a lab and kills half of the planet,” Paul warns.
Paul’s book reveals much more about Fauci and EcoHealth Alliance. I will cover more of that in this column in a few weeks.
The FBI is investigating whether an off-duty pilot who tried to shut down the engines of an in-flight jetliner on Sunday was on psychedelic mushrooms, an official told The Times.
Federal prosecutors in Oregon have charged Joseph Emerson, 44, with interference with flight crew members and attendants. Emerson was arrested after pilots and crew members detained him Sunday following an outburst in the cockpit during a Horizon Airlines flight from Seattle that was headed to San Francisco. Horizon Airlines is a regional carrier owned by the parent company that owns Alaska Airlines.
In a criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday, an FBI agent revealed that Emerson told investigators about his use of psychedelic mushrooms and said “it was his first time taking mushrooms.”
But FBI officials declined to confirm that Emerson had taken mushrooms at the time of the midair incident.
“It is vague in [the complaint], but that is part of what [the] FBI is investigating,” said Joy Jiras, an FBI Portland field office spokesperson. “The FBI is investigating the timeline of his use of magic mushrooms. We are trying to figure out whether he was on them that day or whether they were in his system or not.”
Emerson had been flying in the “jump seat,” a foldout seat usually placed behind the captain’s seat, according to experts.
“I am not OK,” Emerson said during the flight, after he had been casually engaging the two pilots in conversation, a federal agent said in the complaint.
Both pilots then saw Emerson grab onto the red fire handles, which are used to extinguish engine fires and shut down all fuel to the engines, potentially turning the plane into a glider, the pilots told federal investigators.
One pilot struggled with Emerson for about 25 or 30 seconds before the off-duty pilot “quickly settled down,” according to the complaint.
The other pilot saw Emerson throw his headset across the cockpit before saying he was not OK.
The pilots said the interaction with Emerson lasted about 90 seconds before they were able to remove him and secure the cockpit, the complaint said.
Flight attendants then saw Emerson “peacefully walking to the back of the aircraft,” the complaint said. They had received a call from the pilots saying that Emerson was “losing it,” and he told one attendant that he “just got kicked out of the flight deck,” according to investigators.
“You need to cuff me right now, or it’s going to be bad,” he told the attendant.
He was cuffed and seated in the back of the plane, according to the complaint, where he tried to grab the handle of an emergency exit before he was stopped by a crew member.
Another crew member said that Emerson made statements about how “he tried to kill everybody,” the complaint said.
“The flight attendant noticed Emerson take out his cellular phone and appeared to be texting on the phone. Emerson was heard saying he had just put 84 peoples’ lives at risk tonight including his own,” FBI Agent Tapara Simmons wrote in the complaint.
After the plane made an emergency landing in Portland, Ore., Emerson was detained. He told police he had become depressed six months ago, according to the complaint.
He talked with the officer about “the use of psychedelic mushrooms” and said “it was his first time taking mushrooms.”
“I’m admitting to what I did. I’m not fighting any charges you want to bring against me, guys,” he told police, according to the complaint.
Emerson was booked by police in Multnomah County on suspicion of 83 counts of attempted murder. It was not clear whether the state case would continue in light of federal charges.
A passenger on an Alaska Airlines flight on which an off-duty pilot attempted to kill the plane’s engines has recalled how the suspect, Joseph Emerson, “looked dead in the eyes” as he was being escorted off the aircraft by police.
Emerson, 44, had been traveling on the flight deck between Everett, Washington, and San Francisco, California, on Sunday when he “unsuccessfully attempted to disrupt the operation of the engines,” the airline confirmed in a statement on Monday night.
He was detained at the back of the Horizon Air flight—a subsidiary of Alaska Airlines—by members of the crew, and the plane made a safe emergency landing in Portland, Oregon, where Emerson was arrested.
He has since been charged with 83 counts of attempted murder, the number of people on board, as well as other charges, including endangering an aircraft, booking records show.
“The flight attendant got on [the] loudspeaker and seemed very frazzled, and she said: ‘We’re having a situation, everyone’s safe, but we’re going to need to emergency land this plane,’” Aubrey Gavello, a real estate agent in San Francisco, told Portland broadcaster KATU News.
An Alaska Airlines plane on August 31, 2023, in Los Angeles, California. Passengers have recounted the ordeal after a man tried to “disrupt the engines” during an Alaska Airlines flight on Sunday. AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
“We landed and then about 10 police officers, armed, came on, walked straight to the back of the plane where I was sitting and detained him and walked the gentleman off the plane,” she added. “He looked dead in the eyes, almost.”
Alex Wood, another passenger, told ABC News that the pilot had announced “a disturbance in the cockpit,” but added: “It was very professional, handled very calmly, and we didn’t really know what was going on until we landed.”
Alaska Airlines said Emerson, of Pleasant Hill in northern California, had engaged a fire suppression system designed to cut fuel supply to the engines, each of which is individually controlled by a T-handle. “In this case, the quick reaction of our crew to reset the T-handles ensured engine power was not lost,” it said.
It said that Emerson had first joined the company as a first officer in 2001, before leaving for another airline which was later acquired by Alaska Airlines. In 2019, he became a captain for the carrier. Alaska Airlines said Emerson had completed medical certifications throughout his career and “at no point were his certifications denied, suspended or revoked.”
The FBI field office in Portland confirmed that it was now investigating the incident, adding in a statement that it “can assure the traveling public that there is no continuing threat related to this incident.”
Newsweek approached the FBI’s Portland field office via telephone for further information on Tuesday.
At present, Emerson’s motivations remains unclear. According to ABC, the Federal Aviation Authority told carriers that the incident was “not connected in any way shape or form to current world events.”
Emerson is said to have remained subdued after being escorted by the crew from the flight deck of the plane. The passengers were later able to complete their journey with a new plane and crew, Alaska Airlines said.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Bitcoin (BTC) ATMs have become both convenient and worrying, with scammers taking advantage of unsuspecting victims. Authorities in the US and other jurisdictions are now waging a war against crypto-ATM-based scams.
California takes a stance on new cryptocurrency laws
The state of California has introduced rules for cryptocurrency transactions. Senate Bill 401, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, means you can only make $1,000 worth of cryptocurrency transactions at ATMs each day, and starting in 2025, the maximum they can charge you is $5, or 15% of the transaction. Whichever is higher.
Initially, some Bitcoin ATMs allowed up to $50,000 in transactions with fees ranging between 12% and 25% above the value of the digital asset. These changes are intended to protect people from scams and high fees, explained Sen. Monique Lemon, one of the co-authors.
Scammers taking advantage of the convenience of Bitcoin ATMs have been a growing concern, with the Federal Trade Commission reporting that more than 46,000 people have lost more than $1 billion to cryptocurrency scams since 2021. New transaction limits give victims more time to spot scams before loss of money. But Charles Bell of the Blockchain Advocacy Coalition worries that these rules could hurt the cryptocurrency industry and small businesses.
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FBI Alerts About Bitcoin ATM and QR Code Scams
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has raised the alarm about fraudulent schemes exploiting ATMs for cryptocurrencies and quick response (QR) codes for payments. These schemes take various forms, including online impersonation, romance scams, and lottery fraud, all using cryptocurrency ATMs and QR codes as tools.
QR codes, which smartphone cameras can scan, simplify cryptocurrency payments. However, criminals are now using it to trick victims into paying money. Victims are often asked to withdraw money from their accounts and use a QR code provided by scammers to complete transactions at physical cryptocurrency ATMs.
Once the victim makes the payment, the cryptocurrency is transferred to the scammer’s wallet, making recovery nearly impossible due to the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies. The FBI offers several tips to protect against these schemes, focusing on caution, verification, and avoiding cryptocurrency ATM transactions that promise anonymity using only a phone number or email.
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Cryptocurrency regulation efforts in California
The passage of Senate Bill 401 in California is part of a broader effort to regulate the cryptocurrency industry while protecting consumers. Another law, scheduled to take effect in July 2025, will require digital financial asset companies to obtain licenses from the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation. This represents a clear shift towards tightening government regulation and oversight in the world of digital finance.
Gavin Newsom’s decision to sign these bills into law demonstrates California’s commitment to strengthening the cryptocurrency industry and protecting its citizens. Balancing innovation and security remains a challenge, especially in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Bitcoin Depot’s historic debut on the NASDAQ
In July, Bitcoin Depot, a leading bitcoin ATM operator, went public on the Nasdaq. This milestone comes after Bitcoin Depot merged with GSR II Meteora, a blank check company.
The move to go public demonstrates the growing legitimacy and acceptance of cryptocurrencies in major financial markets.
Authorities vs. illegal crypto ATMs
The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is taking a strong stance against illegal cryptocurrency ATM operators. Using its power under money laundering regulations, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has carried out raids on cryptocurrency ATMs suspected of illegal activities across England.
The measures, which follow previous operations in east London and Leeds, are part of the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) efforts to crack down on unregulated cryptocurrency operations. This highlights global pressure for stronger cryptocurrency regulation, mirroring steps taken in California. The balance between innovation and security remains a fundamental concern for regulatory bodies around the world.
First, Warnings from “Five Eyes” intelligence leaders. Next, American shares story of being held in Iran. Then, Pink: The 60 Minutes Interview. And, Isle of Man’s dangerous TT motorcycle race.
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Intelligence leaders from the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand are issuing a stark warning on the danger of China’s global espionage campaign.
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War in the Middle East has the FBI tracking more potential threats of terrorism in the United States. Tonight, the bureau’s director, Christopher Wray, tells us his main concern is not an organized attack but lone actors inspired by the violence. We met Wray, Wednesday, for an unprecedented interview that included him and the intelligence directors of our english-speaking allies. Together, they know more about the threats in the world than perhaps anyone. They’re known as the Five Eyes and they have never appeared in an interview together. They’re doing it now because they’re alarmed by China which they say is the greatest espionage threat democracy has ever faced. But given the war, we’ll begin with FBI Director Wray on the threat of terror at home.
Christopher Wray: We have seen an increase in reported threats but vigilance is heightened right now just because of the fluid and volatile environment in the Middle East and the ways in which that could spin out in the U.S.
By the time we had gathered for our interview, it had already ‘spun out in the United States.’ In Illinois, a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy was stabbed to death by a man enraged by the attack on Israel.
Scott Pelley: How do you stop that kind of thing?
Christopher Wray: The key that we found in stopping it more and more is trying to have the right eyes and ears out in the community. And so, what we need to have are people in the community. When they see something starting to go awry, calling law enforcement. And the attacks that we’ve been able to prevent over the years have almost always included somebody who’s made that phone call. And the attacks that haven’t been prevented have almost always had somebody who had that information, but for one reason or another, didn’t make that phone call.
Five Eyes intelligence leaders
60 Minutes
About 30 Americans were killed in the Hamas Attack. Two American hostages were released Friday, which left 10 still missing. Sources tell us it’s unclear how many of them may be hostages. Israel leads the hostage effort. The FBI is prepared to help.
Christopher Wray: We’re gonna work closely with our partners, our Israeli partners, our U.S. embassy partners, the whole U.S. government to do whatever we can to ensure that those hostages come out safe. But make no mistake, this is a dangerous time.
We met Chris Wray with his fellow intelligence chiefs of the so-called “Five Eyes” — from the left, Mike Burgess of Australia, David Vigneault of Canada, Ken McCallum of the United Kingdom and, at far right, Andrew Hampton of New Zealand. The “Five Eyes” alliance was formed after World War II to gather intelligence. But this was their first public appearance ever and they did it in Palo Alto, California, Silicon Valley, to make this point— the technology secrets that are about to change the world, in artificial intelligence, biology and computing are falling into the wrong hands — stolen — in a global espionage campaign by China.
Christopher Wray: The People’s Republic of China represents the defining threat of this generation this era. There is no country that presents a broader, more comprehensive threat to our ideas, our– our innovation, our economic security, and ultimately our national security. We have seen efforts by the Chinese government, directly or indirectly, trying to steal intellectual property, trade secrets, personal data– all across the country. We’re talking everything from Fortune 100 companies, all to smaller startups. We’re talking about agriculture, biotech, health care, robotics, aviation, academic research. We probably have somewhere in the order of 2,000 active investigations that are just related to the Chinese government’s effort to steal information.
Scott Pelley: But all countries spy.
Mike Burgess of Australia.
Mike Burgess: Yes, absolutely, all countries spy. Our countries spy. All governments have a need to be covertly informed. All countries seek strategic advantage. But the behavior we’re talking about here goes well beyond traditional espionage. This scale of the theft is unprecedented in human history. And that’s why we’re calling it out.
Mike Burgess of Australia
60 Minutes
They were ‘calling it out’ this past week in private meetings with 15 top Silicon Valley executives and Stanford University.
Ken McCallum: This is not just about government secrets or military secrets. It’s not even just about critical infrastructure. It’s about academic research in our universities. It’s about promising startup companies. People, in short, who probably don’t think national security is about them.
Ken McCallum is director general of MI5, the U.K.’s FBI.
Ken McCallum: So we see the theft happening in a range of ways. One is that we see employees within those companies being manipulated. Often, in the first instance, they are not aware of what is happening. We have seen, for example, the use of professional networking sites to reach out in sort of masked, disguised ways to people in the U.K., either who have security clearance or who are working in interesting areas of technology. We’ve now seen over 20,000 examples of that kind of disguised approach to people in the U.K. who have information that the Chinese State wishes to get its hands on.
Christopher Wray: You have the biggest hacking program in the world by far, bigger than ever other major nation combined. Stolen more of our personal and corporate data than every nation, big or small, combined.
Scott Pelley: Are you saying that it is a threat to the way of life of democracies?
Christopher Wray: It is– a threat to our way of life in a number of ways. The first is that when people talk about stealing innovation or intellectual property, that’s not just a Wall Street problem. That’s a Main Street problem. That means American jobs, American families, American livelihoods, and the same thing for every one of our five countries, directly impacted by that theft. It’s not some abstract concept. It has flesh and blood, kitchen-table consequences.
Here’s one example. When China stole the technology secrets of one American wind turbine company, the company lost its competitive advantage, sales collapsed and it laid off nearly 700 workers.
Scott Pelley: When you encounter a company that isn’t sure that it wants to cooperate with you, what do you tell them?
Ken McCallum is director general of MI5, the U.K.’s FBI.
60 Minutes
Ken McCallum: I would say that if you are operating at the cutting edge of tech in this decade, you may not be interested in geopolitics, but geopolitics is interested in you. And you would be reckless, not just with my secrets but with your own company’s viability, with your shareholders’ capital if you didn’t think about what that means.
Christopher Wray: We all came into these meetings with the mindset of we want to figure out how we can better help protect you, your innovation, your intellectual property. They all came into the conversations with ideas of ways they can help us help them.
The intelligence chiefs told us Chinese companies are overseen by the Communist Party and, for many, espionage is a sideline on behalf of the PRC, the People’s Republic of China.
Scott Pelley: Is the Chinese government building industrial sites in your countries that are actually covers for espionage operations?
David Vigneault of Canada.
David Vigneault: We have seen in the past, acquisition of land, acquisition of different companies where you, when you start to dig a little bit further, you realize that it’s, there is another intent. And we have seen and blocked attempt by the PRC to acquire locations near sensitive, strategic assets of the country where we knew that the ultimate purpose was for spying operations.
David Vigneault of Canada
60 Minutes
Scott Pelley: And Director Wray, have you seen that in the United States?
Christopher Wray: We’ve seen a variety of efforts by Chinese businesses, in some cases state-owned enterprises, in some cases ostensibly private companies– attempting to acquire businesses, land, infrastructure, what have you, in the United States in a way that presents national security concerns.
Including investigations, recently of Chinese companies purchasing land and building plants near U.S. military bases.
Christopher Wray: We welcome business with China, visitors from China, academic exchange. What we don’t welcome is cheating, and theft, and repression.
Political repression is another target of the Five Eyes. They told us they’re fighting China’s meddling in elections and violence aimed at silencing Chinese dissidents living in their countries.
Christopher Wray
60 Minutes
Christopher Wray: We had a case that we– that was indicted not that long ago where there was– an actual congressional candidate who was very critical of the Chinese government. the efforts were initially to try to see if they could come up with dirt on the candidate to derail his candidacy. And then to try to concoct dirt, just fiction– about the candidate. And then, if that didn’t work, there was even discussion about the candidate befalling a horrible accident.
That candidate was Yan Xiong, a Chinese American who served in the U.S. military and protested China’s crackdown on Hong Kong. Last year he lost the Democratic nomination in a New York congressional race. In court filings, prosecutors say a Chinese agent hired an American private investigator to discredit Yan, and left the investigator a voicemail saying, “…violence would be fine…beat him until he cannot run for election.”
Scott Pelley: Is that the threat of violence in the United States that we face from the Chinese government?
Christopher Wray: We have seen over and over again efforts to really stop at almost nothing to intimidate people who would have the audacity here in the United States where we have freedom of speech to express criticism of the regime.
Scott Pelley: While we have the allies around the same table, let me ask this question. The catastrophe in the Middle East, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Chinese espionage on a scale that’s never been seen before, are all of you stretched too thin?
Andrew Hampton: I think one of the strengths of the Five Eyes partnership is that we share some really fundamental values as countries and as agencies.
Andrew Hampton of New Zealand.
Andrew Hampton: Part of how you respond to that is by working together as like-minded countries. Part of how you respond to it is partnering across our own countries, as we’ve talked about, with community groups, with the private sector they’re our biggest strengths.
Andrew Hampton of New Zealand
60 Minutes
For its part, China said this about the Five Eyes point of view: “We firmly oppose the groundless allegations and smears toward China…”
MI5’s Ken McCallum told us never in his nearly 30 years in intelligence has the threat been so complex– Iran, Russia, terrorism, but it was China that was the first to get the Five Eyes around this table—and before the eyes of the public.
Christopher Wray: I mean, essentially what you have with the Chinese government is the autocracy and oppressive regime of– you know, East Germany combined with the cutting edge technology of Silicon Valley. And the combination represents a daunting first of its kind threat for the United States and for our allies.
Scott Pelley: You seem to be saying that the Chinese government is running a criminal enterprise.
Christopher Wray: Well, I would say the Chinese government, if they want to be a great nation, it’s time for them to start acting like one. And that includes abiding by its own commitments not to steal innovation. That includes not exporting repression to other countries. That includes working with all of our countries and all the other countries that we work with all the time who have common threats, like cybercrime, fentanyl trafficking, money laundering. It means not working with criminals but rather working to uphold the rule of law.
Produced by Aaron Weisz. Associate producer, Ian Flickinger. Broadcast associate, Michelle Karim. Edited by April Wilson.
The FBI has charged six individuals over allegations of running an unlicensed crypto money-transmitting operation in New York.
According to an unsealed affidavit of FBI special agent Lawrence Lonergan, six people, Naineshkumar Patel, Nileshkumar Patel and Raju Patel, Shaileshkumar Goyani, Brijeshkumar Patel, and Hirenkumar Patel, operated an illegal money transmitting business between July 2021 and September 2023.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) requires virtual currency transmitters and exchangers to register with it and have state licenses before being allowed to operate.
Per the affidavit, the six used an anonymizer on the dark web called “darknet” to convert cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), into cash.
Of the six accused, one has been granted conditional release by a U.S. magistrate judge, according to CoinDesk citing a filing.
The charges come after years of investigations triggered by the identification of an individual on the dark web in April 2021 who was offering a service to convert Bitcoin into cash and ship it via the U.S. Postal Service’s Express Mail or Priority Mail.
On Feb. 7, the FBI arrested the individual who had been moving the cash packages through a Westchester, New York post office, upon which they agreed to cooperate with the law enforcement agency.
The FBI’s investigation involved photographic and video surveillance that caught the six accused in the act, running the unregistered and unlicensed business.
Additionally, the informant, who previously worked with the six defendants, said the operation raked in more than $30 million in the period it was active. The unnamed informant also claimed that some clients who used the service were drug dealers and cybercriminals.
They said the service was run through messaging apps, including Telegram and WhatsApp. It also involved in-person cash exchanges where the informant and the defendants would deliver agreed-upon sums of fiat money to customers in exchange for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
In a recent crypto investigation, the US FBI successfully infiltrated a group of Indian citizens suspected of engaging in illicit activities involving the exchange of cryptocurrency for over $15 million in cash.
The alleged transactions took place at various locations in Westchester County, with the group catering to customers seeking anonymity for their activities.
Crypto Crime Unveiled
According to recent reports, five out of the six suspects were apprehended on October 17 and subsequently charged in US District Court, White Plains.
The charges primarily revolve around operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. The investigation unfolded with the assistance of law enforcement agents who monitored 80 “cash hand-offs”.
The FBI’s scrutiny began in April 2021 when they identified a suspect operating within the “dark web” criminal marketplaces.
Although the individual remains unnamed in the criminal complaint, they are believed to be a co-conspirator of the arrested local suspects. Notably, the suspect offered to ship cash to customers in exchange for cryptocurrency.
According to the complaint, the unidentified co-conspirator disclosed to an undercover officer in January that some of their customers were involved in drug sales, while their wealthier clients were hackers.
The co-conspirator claimed to have amassed approximately $30 million over three years by exchanging cash for cryptocurrency.
In February, an individual responsible for mailing packages of cash on behalf of the co-conspirator was arrested. The complaint reveals that this individual had been receiving sacks of cash from various individuals, three times a week for 18 months, at a Westchester County post office. The cash bundles ranged from $100,000 to $300,000.
In a bid to receive leniency during sentencing, the aforementioned individual agreed to assist the FBI with their investigation. Over several months (from February 10 to September 27), they allegedly participated in 80 controlled cash pick-ups amounting to $15,067,000.
One of the arrested individuals, Raju “Jay” Patel from Flushing Queens, played a significant role in the operation. The complaint alleges his involvement in 58 cash transfers totaling $10.8 million.
Raju would collect cash from various locations in George, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. Subsequently, Raju allegedly coordinated the transfers with the co-conspirator and the FBI’s confidential source.
On March 6, Raju allegedly arranged an exchange of $250,000 at a Tarrytown supermarket parking lot. Surveillance conducted by law enforcement agents captured Raju leaving his Queens apartment with an orange cloth bag, which he handed over to the FBI’s confidential source upon arrival in Tarrytown. The bag reportedly contained $249,715.
Illicit Cash Exchange
Similar exchanges took place at a parking lot in Port Chester, further implicating the suspects involved. On August 6, Shaileshkumar Goyani allegedly handed over a bag containing $114,000 to the FBI’s confidential source.
Apart from Goyani, the complaint identifies Brijeshkumar “Samir” Patel, Hirenkkumar Patel, Naineshkumar Patel, and Nileshkumar Patel as additional suspects in the case.
All the suspects are charged with operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business under New York and federal laws.
According to an affidavit by FBI agent Lawrence Lonergan, such unlicensed money-transmitting businesses operate as shadow banks, enabling funds to pass through without undergoing the scrutiny imposed by Congress on the United States financial system.
While the allegations against Goyani’s crypto fraud remain unproven, his defense attorney, Daniel A. Hochheiser, emphasizes that his client has not been indicted by a grand jury. Hochheiser further stated that if and when an indictment is issued, Goyani intends to enter a plea of not guilty.
The total crypto market cap stands at $1.09 trillion after briefly breaching the $1.20 trillion mark on the daily chart. Source: TOTAL on TradingView.com
Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView.com
A teenage girl accused of shooting five people outside a Denver club last month was arrested this week in San Bernardino County, according to authorities.
The girl, whose age was not released by police, was arrested Thursday in Barstow, about 115 miles from Los Angeles, according to a Denver Police Department news release. She was arrested on eight counts of first-degree attempted homicide.
She is accused of shooting five people on Sept. 16 in the 1900 block of Market Street, authorities said. All five people survived their injuries.
Police said the girl had tried to get into a bar but was rejected by the club’s security personnel because they thought she wasn’t using her real ID. She left the line and then shot toward the club as she was leaving, authorities said.
Police believe that she had tried to shoot toward security personnel and that those who were wounded were not the intended targets.
The Denver Police Department worked with the FBI’s L.A. SWAT team, the FBI’s L.A. Desert Cities Safe Streets Task Force and the Barstow Police Department to apprehend her. Because she is a minor, her booking photo and arrest affidavit were not released.
The number of carjackings soared last year, with more cars being stolen by groups of thieves, FBI statistics released this week show.
Nearly 90 percent of thieves were carrying a weapon when they forced the owner out of the car.
Experts told Newsweek that the end of lockdown last year had given robbers more opportunities to pull car owners from their vehicles.
Motor vehicle theft jumped 10.9 percent from 2021 to 2022, with nearly a million vehicles stolen in the latter year. According to the FBI report, nearly 70,000 people were arrested for motor vehicle theft in 2022, including 2,000 who were carrying a firearm when arrested.
Carjackings were up 8.1 percent in 2022. Nearly 90 percent of them involved a weapon, and more offenders worked in groups, marking a 13 percent increase in arrests involving two or more suspects. Males under the age of 18 accounted for 17.8 percent of those arrested.
The FBI statistics show that nearly half of all carjackings occurred at night, between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m.
Officer Daniel Arteaga chases a man who stole a car and sped away in Chelsea, Massachusetts on May 1, 2021. FBI and other statistics point to an increase in car thefts and carjackings across America. AFP via Getty Images/JOSEPH PREZIOSO
Thief Sped Away With Child
Although the FBI report does not list individual cases, carjackings in 2022 included a case in New York where an 11-year-old was trapped in a car with a thief.
In February 2022 David Perez left his 11-year-old son, Daniel Perez, in an SUV while he ran into a supermarket Sunday, WABC reported. He said the keys were in the car, and it was running. Surveillance video shows an unknown man get into the car and take off with the 11-year-old still in the front seat. Daniel was crying and texting his father as the thief sped away at 100mph.
The thief crashed twice before dropping Daniel off on a street corner.
‘A Masterclass in Criminology’
Alex Piquero, professor of Criminology at the University of Miami and former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, told Newsweek he is worried about the number of guns being used in carjackings.
“Not all violent crimes went down, in fact I’m still concerned about carjacking increases—including the increasing use of guns. At the same time motor vehicle theft continues its post-pandemic increase,” he said.
Piquero said that “some of the strains and stress associated with the pandemic may have abated, others may have emerged”, which helps explain why some crimes are up and some are down.
He said that people should also be aware that not all reported crimes are covered by the statistics and that there can be big differences in crime rates between cities and within the cities themselves.
“We need to be mindful that the FBI numbers are national estimates among those agencies that reported, and do not include the many crimes that are not reported to law enforcement,” he said.
Adam Gelb, president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, told Newsweek that the end of lockdown meant more opportunities for carjackers.
“Behind every crime is a motive and the means and an opportunity to carry it out. COVID sparked changes in all three of those elements, especially opportunity. People stayed home. Stores were closed. It was much harder and riskier to steal stuff,” he said.
Gelb said it was interesting to study which crimes have increased as travel and work returned to normal levels last year. “Now that we’re coming out of [lockdown], theft opportunities are reemerging as well. The pandemic is giving us a masterclass in criminology,” he said.
Rising Crime in Big Cities
While the end of lockdown may account for some of the increase, there appears to be an overall trend towards more carjackings in larger cities.
For example, Washington D.C. had 140 carjackings in 2018, compared with 485 in 2022. There have been 651 reported so far in 2023.
The FBI’s 2022 crime report compiles crime statistics from national and state police agencies across the country.
Violent crime, which includes murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, aggravated assault and robbery collectively decreased by 1.7 percent last year.
Homicides dropped by 6.1 percent, aggravated assaults by 1.1 percent and rape by 5.4 percent.
Unsurprisingly, firearms were the most common weapon used in violent crime, and were used in 80.3 percent of murders and manslaughters.
While fatal and non-fatal gun deaths decreased for adults, the number of juvenile victims of gun deaths increased by 11.8 percent, from 1,300 to 1,500. The non-fatal shooting of juveniles also increased, by 10.6 percent, from 61,800 to 68,300.
More than 15,000 police agencies nationwide submitted crime data to the FBI, an increase of 1,500 agencies, compared with 2021. According to the FBI, the 2022 statistics cover roughly 93 percent of the U.S. population. For the first time, the 2022 report includes data from every city with a population of 1 million or greater.
It isn’t just the FBI reporting an increase in carjackings and car thefts.
In May, the National Insurance Crime Bureau released statistics showing a 7 percent increase in vehicle theft nationwide from 2021-2022, with more than 250,000 thefts reported in the fourth quarter of 2022 alone.
Additionally, the Council on Criminal Justice has reported that vehicle thefts and carjackings in America’s largest 30 cities rose an average of 59 percent from 2019-2022.
In Illinois, car thefts rose 35 percent between 2021 and 2022, and in Washington state by 31 percent.
Earlier this year, Mayor Eric Adams handed out 500 electronic tags to New Yorkers to hide in their vehicles so they can track them if they’re stolen.
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Violent crime across the U.S. decreased last year — dropping to about the same level as before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic — but property crimes rose substantially, according to data in the FBI‘s annual crime report released Monday.
The report comes with an asterisk: Some law enforcement agencies failed to provide data. But a change in collection methods in compiling 2022 numbers helped, and the FBI said the new data represents 83.3% of all agencies covering 93.5% of the population. By contrast, last year’s numbers were from only 62.7% of agencies, representing 64.8% of Americans.
Violent crime dropped 1.7%, and that included a 6.1% decrease in murder and non-negligent manslaughter. Rape decreased 5.4% and aggravated assault dropped 1.1%, but robbery increased 1.3%. Violent crime had also decreased slightly in 2021, a big turnaround from 2020, when the murder rate in the U.S. jumped 29% during the pandemic that created huge social disruption and upended support systems.
The violent crime rate of 380.7 per 100,000 people was a tick better than 2019 — the year before the pandemic hit the U.S., when the rate was 380.8 per 100,000 people.
Richard Rosenfeld, criminal justice professor emeritus at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said the drop in violence can be attributed largely to the fact that the “stresses and strains” associated with the pandemic have abated.
“By and large what we’re seeing is simply a return to something approaching normal after the big changes associated with the pandemic,” Rosenfeld said.
Despite the waning violence, property crimes jumped 7.1%, with motor vehicle thefts showing the biggest increase at 10.9%. The FBI said carjackings increased 8.1% from 2021, and the vast majority of carjackings involving an assailant with a weapon. Someone was injured in more than a quarter of all carjackings.
Rachael Eisenberg, managing director of rights and justice for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for American Progress, said that while the FBI report looks at 2022 data, more recent statistics indicate that the drop in violent crime will continue through this year.
In fact, the FBI findings are in line with a report released in July by the nonpartisan think tank the Council on Criminal Justice. That report using data from 37 surveyed cities found that murders dropped 9.4% in the first half of 2023 compared to the first half of 2022, but vehicle thefts rose a whopping 33.5%.
Last year’s FBI report arrived with major caveats since nearly two-fifths of all policing agencies failed to participate, including big cities like New York, Los Angeles and Miami. That followed a major overhaul in the reporting system.
For this year’s report, the FBI used data voluntarily collected from agencies using the newer National Incident-Based Reporting System, but also included data from agencies still using an older system, known as the Summary Reporting System. That accounted, in part, for the huge increase in participating agencies.
The overhaul will eventually make crime data more modern and detailed, federal officials said, but the switchover can be complicated for police departments. While the increase in 2022 participation was due in part to inclusion of Summary Reporting System data, the FBI noted that an additional 1,499 agencies submitted data through NIBRS.
This year’s report showed that while the the number of adult victims of fatal gun violence decreased 6.6%, the estimated number of juvenile victims rose 11.8%. Gun-safety advocates decry the loosening of gun laws, especially in conservative-leaning states around the U.S.
Assaults on law enforcement officers rose 1.8% compared to 2021. An estimated 31,400 of the 102,100 assaults resulted in injuries in 2022, up 1.7% from the previous year.
Violent crime overall remains far lower than the historic highs of the 1990s.
While the direct impact has ebbed, Rosenfeld said the pandemic could still indirectly result in more crime. The pandemic prompted many firms to allow employees to work from home some or all of the time. Desolate city streets make crime more likely.
“The more people in the street, the more people difficult it is for somebody to commit a crime because there are so many eyes on the street,” Rosenfeld said.
