criminals

CBS recently crossed into a new fan frontier with its first-ever booth and extensive presence at Comic-Con. For the uninitiated, Comic-Con is a wildly popular comic-book convention that's been drawing huge crowds for decades. In recent years, the four-day consumer event in San Diego has broadened its offering to also include horror, sci-fi, movies, television, and online entertainment.

People from everywhere flock to see the coolest comics and costumes, to sample movie and TV previews, to snag exclusive giveaways, and to get a glimpse of their favorite stars. Attendees are passionate entertainment lovers in the truest sense: they spend … Read more

Italy's godfathers might well be holding emergency meetings this weekend, after one of their remarkably obedient godsons was snared due to an especially pernicious habit. Yes, chatting on Facebook.

Pasquale Manfredi is reputed not to be the most affable of our human brethren. According to CNN, he is wanted for, among other acts of charmlessness, availing himself of a rocket launcher to send a rival Mafia family member to another life.

While in some Mafia movies, like "Goodfellas," Mafiosi wouldn't even use a phone, now, with the advent, perhaps, of pre-paid, they have come to embrace … Read more

Think of the worst thing you have ever swallowed. Haggis, perhaps? Maybe pig's ear? Arguments you have swallowed don't count.

You see, I want to get you into the appropriate mood for the story of Florin Necula. Necula seems to have gotten himself into a bothersome situation with the upstanding members of our Secret Service.

According to the Smoking Gun, they thought he might have been involved in an ingenious, if somewhat illegal, technological exercise, whereby he and several co-defendants used card readers to gain magnetic-strip information from cards that had been inserted into ATM machines.

The agents arrested him and took him to a Secret Service office in Brooklyn. U.S District Court filings allege that peculiar things ensued there. The most peculiar involved one of the pieces of evidence--a Kingston flash drive.

Agent Joseph Borger (no relation to Lucretia) said that Necula "grabbed Subject Flash Drive 2, which had been on his person at the time of his arrest, and swallowed."

I have never swallowed a flash drive. I imagine it to be worse than swallowing, say, a sock. At least the sock would go soft, whereas the flash drive would surely scratch the epiglotis.

Once you've swallowed it, however, I imagine your insides don't make like a happy pinball machine. In Necula's case, the flash drive seems to have become the camel that was unable to pass through the eye of a needle. … Read more

Twittering from court is prohibited, according to a federal judge in Georgia who banned spectators from sending live updates from a criminal trial.

U.S. District Judge Clay Land in Georgia wrote that Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure should be interpreted to ban Twitter.

Rule 53 says: "Except as otherwise provided by a statute or these rules, the court must not permit the taking of photographs in the courtroom during judicial proceedings or the broadcasting of judicial proceedings from the courtroom."

A reporter for the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer had asked permission to Twitter updates from … Read more

Top Criminal Check allows you to look up a person's criminal history; however, we didn't get very far with the program because a trial limitation required payment to view any of its findings.

The user interface features search capabilities that require a person's first and last name, but to fine-tune your search, you can add the person's date of birth, gender, and state information. The program also lets you search by phone number, address, ZIP code, and even e-mail address. You can also select the categories you want to include in the search, such as government … Read more

J.P. Weichel claims he was "venting." But his alleged comments in Craigslist's Rants and Raves section might now lead him to a room where the vents let in a chilling draft.

Colorado prosecutors have decided to bring a case of criminal libel against Mr. Weichel.

Apparently, the state has a law, dating from the 1880s, that says you can be prosecuted for "blackening the name of one who is dead." Or for exposing "the natural defects of one who is alive, and thereby to expose him to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule."… Read more

Debit cards and PINs are hot subjects on the criminal underground forums these days, Tom Rusin said on a recent visit to CNET. Rusin is president of North American operations at Affinion Group, a company that monitors the criminal underground for several thousand banking institutions by lurking in carder chat rooms.

"Carders" are the people who buy, sell, and trade online the credit card data stolen from phishing sites or from large data breaches at retail stores. Affinion is one of the largest identity protection companies in the world, with offices in more than a dozen countries. Over … Read more

This week Tom Rusin, president and chief executive officer of Affinion's North America operation, is Robert Vamosi's guest. His company monitors the criminal underground for several thousand banking institutions by lurking in carder chat rooms.

"Carders" are the people who buy, sell, and trade online the credit card data stolen from phishing sites or from large data breaches at retail stores. Affinion is global, with offices in more than a dozen countries. And over the years they have provided a wealth of information to the U.S. Secret Service and the FBI. A few weeks ago, … Read more