This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Crime

  • SWATTING gets doofus a year in jail

    SWATTING gets doofus a year in jail

    Complex reports that 22-year-old Matthew Tollis earned himself a year in jail for several SWATTING episodes. SWATTING is the practice of calling the police to report an emergency that would require the police to roll up on a target with SWAT teams or another extreme reaction. I only know of one member of TAH who was SWATTED – someone, you can speculate who, called the police and said that this member was suicidal and had a gun. Luckily, the police were in possession of their complete faculties and didn’t go all SWAT on that TAH member. But back to young Matthew;

    This summer, Matthew Tollis pled guilty to faking a bomb threat as part of a group known as “Team Crucifix or Die” or TCOD. According to the Department of Justice, Tollis was involved in six fake emergency calls in 2014, including one that shut down the University of Connecticut for three hours as police searched for explosives. Last week, a judge sentenced him to 12 months and one day in prison, plus three years of supervised release and 300 hours of community service.

    […]

    US Attorney Deirdre Daly released a statement regarding Tollis’ sentence: “Swatting is not a schoolboy prank, it’s a federal crime. It is our hope that this prosecution and the knowledge that this defendant will serve time in prison and live with a felony conviction for the remainder of his life will deter others from engaging in this immature, dangerous and criminal behavior.”

    As the article points out, SWATTING is usually targeted towards individuals’ homes making the practice more dangerous. If I have been SWATTED, I’m not aware of it, but then I’ve told the local State Police and Sheriff about our members’ experience with his own police force. I do, however, know of other telephonic pranks that plague our friends, and that noose is tightening on the responsible persons. It’s good to see prosecutors getting serious about it, too, but a year and a day seems a little light to me.

  • Gee, What A Surprise

    Well, Clintoon’s private email is in the news again. And not for good reasons.

    1.  It seems that, well . . . some people in other countries were interested in Clintoon’s private email server. Seriously interested.

    As in, “people who appear to be linked to the People’s Republic of China”. That private email server was apparently targeted by malware operating from locations in China, South Korea, and Germany. The malware executing these attacks is reportedly linked to China.

    Other attacks, for which more information has not been made public, apparently also occurred.

    These attacks occurred during late 2013 and 2014. Those attacks were detected (and apparently blocked) by anti-malware software installed to protect the server in October 2013.

    No such anti-malware software was installed on the server prior to 2013. It’s thus unknown if the server was targeted prior to October 2013.

    However, were I a betting man, well . . . yeah, I’d guess it was. Some of our adversaries seem pretty damn competent when it comes to this kind of stuff.

    2.  Remember Platte River Networks and their lack of backups for Clintoon’s mail server? Well, it looks like maybe there’s an explanation for that after all.  Apparently, a Clintoon family firm – Clinton Executive Service Corporation – reportedly asked Platte River to reduce the amount of time for which backups of the server were held on-file.

    It appears Platte River originally had backups of the server from day one.  Clinton Executive Service Corporation seems to have asked them to reduce that to 30 days – apparently after the FBI began looking into the matter. Don’t know about you, but that makes me wonder.

    3.  However, it’s not only Clintoon’s private server that’s an issue. Apparently the FBI recently impounded four servers from the Department of State in conjunction with the matter.  Interesting.

    4.  And, finally: remember those claims by Clintoon that she never saw anything marked as classified in her private email?  Well, apparently the lady has rather poor eyesight – or has either very poor reading comprehension or memory.  At least 3 of the emails that the FBI received from her lawyer do indeed appear to be marked as being classified.  And the total number of emails found to contain classified information – whether marked or unmarked – is now up to around 400.

    Oh, and did I mention that one of those emails found to be marked as classified discussed the Iranian nuclear program?

    . . .

    But hey – what’s the problem?  No foreign governments could possibly have any interest in Clintoon’s chit-chat with her aides.  I mean, she was only the US SECSTATE.  She couldn’t possibly discuss anything in those emails of interest to foreign nations, right?

    Yeah, right.  And I’m the rightful Emperor of China, too.

  • Phony National Guardsmen in South Carolina

    South Carolina Now warns residents of Georgetown County, SC that there are a couple of looters going door-to-door pretending to be National Guardsmen who warn homeowners to evacuate because of rising flood waters;

    “We have received reports that people claiming to be S.C. National Guardsmen are going door to door in some areas of the county asking residents to voluntarily evacuate,” Jackie Broach, Georgetown County spokesperson, said.

    “S.C. National Guard representatives stationed in our Emergency Operations Center say this is not authorized by the National Guard at any location in Georgetown County,” Broach said.

    “In disasters in other areas there have been cases of people posing as authorities asking people to leave their homes, then they go in and pillage things from the home after it is empty,” she said.

    But, you know, wearing a uniform and pretending to be a soldier is freedom of speech and it’s a victimless crime.

  • Dating scam warning from CID

    I wish you guys knew how much of my day is taken up with women asking me about their “new love” that they found on a dating website somewhere. The fellow who immediately fell in love with them through emails and private messages. He loves her so much that she should send him a few thousand bucks to pay the military to process his marriage request, or he wants to meet her so she should send him some money so he can take leave from Africa or Syria to be with her. Oh, don’t worry, he’ll pay you back as soon as he gets to his bank, because you know, he’s the commander of all of the troops in Afghanistan, or SOCOM.

    We even saw a case where the woman was in love with the former Sergeant Major of the Army. I met his wife last year, and I don’t think she’d appreciate it very much if some random woman was planning on eloping with the man. By the way, she is way more attractive than most of you women trolling dating websites.

    Scammers are taking photos of the troops that they find on the internet to make phony profiles on Facebook and Twitter. We try to shut those down when we find them, but, there are so many, it’s hard to track them all down. If you find one, report it to Facebook – Facebook staff are pretty good at recognizing them. Mostly those profiles are just a few days or weeks old and only have a picture or two and not too many “friends”.

    Most of these guys claim to be widowed and single parents, I guess that makes their story even sadder and makes them a more sympathetic figure. But, ladies, it’s all BS. If a guy who has never met you, wants to marry you, don’t you think that’s a little odd?

    My rule of thumb is; never send money to someone you’ve never met face-to-face. If you find yourself here on this blog questioning the veracity of your new love’s internet messages, you probably already know the answer to your question. Go with your instincts.

    But there’s an article in the Fayetteville Observer which gives you a phone number and an FBI website where you can report the crime;

    If you believe you are a victim of such a crime, report it at ic3.gov/default.aspx or by calling 1-877-ID-THEFT (438-4338) or TTY, 1-866-653-4261

    But the best way to not be a victim is to use a little common sense.

  • Four arrested in school shooting plot

    The sheriff’s department of Tuolumne County, California says they’ve arrested four Sonora high students who had been planning to shoot up their school. Some of their fellow students had observed some odd behavior and reported it to the school’s administrators, who notified the police;

    While serving two search warrants in the case, Mele said, authorities found “evidence verifying a plot to shoot staff and students at Summerville High School,” which the suspects later confessed to in statements to investigators. He said the plot was detailed, and included a list of victims, locations and methods for the attack.

    “They were going to come on campus and shoot and kill as many people as possible on the campus,” Mele said. “It is particularly unsettling when our most precious assets — which are our students, their teachers — are targets for violence.”

    Authorities said the plot was in the beginning stages and no students or adults were hurt.

    According to the officers, the four hadn’t acquired any guns up to that point. They also didn’t say what the motivation was for the attack but they hinted at bullying. There’s something wrong with a culture that teaches our youths to reach for a gun to get respect from one’s peers.

    This story doesn’t bleed, so you probably won’t read about it in too many places today.

  • Yet Another “Private Email” Update

    Well, we have a few new bits of news regarding the Clintoon “private email” brouhaha.

    So, Clintoon’s lawyers have turned over all her “private email”? Well, maybe – or maybe not. There are gaps totaling roughly 5 months in what was turned over to government authorities by Clintoon’s lawyers. Specifically, in what was released by Clintoon’s lawyers there’s roughly 2 months with no email received by Clintoon: 21 January thru 17 March 2009. There’s also a roughly 3 month gap in email sent by Clintoon: 21 Jan thru 17 April 2009 – plus another sent email gap for her last month in office, 30 December 2012 thru 1 Feb 2013.

    And then we have this: a senior DoS records management official apparently stated in an email to a colleague that they did not want to discuss certain matters by email, but instead wanted to discuss the matter in person. Why? Well here’s one possible reason: as that official knows quite well, email is considered a Federal record – and can be requested under a FOIA request. Verbal discussions that generate no written records are much easier to hide. (The specific details of what were to be discussed were redacted in the email from the senior DoS records management official that was made public. However, since that email was obtained by Judicial Watch in conjunction with the Clintoon private email scandal, it’s reasonable to infer the subject was – or was related to – the Clintoon email matter.)

    Oh, and it seems that Congress is starting to get a bit fed up with the matter, too. They’ve asked the Attorney General to weigh in on whether or not they can meet privately with Brian Pagliano (the staffer who set up Clintoon’s private email server) and his lawyers while determining whether to grant Pagliano immunity and then compel him to testify. It seems that Pagliano’s lawyers are pulling out all the stops to prevent this; they’ve raised questions as to whether such a private meeting would constitute a waiver of Pagliano’s 5th Amendment rights.  A couple of Congressmen have therefore asked the Attorney General for a formal reading on the subject. I guess Pagliano’s lawyers must never previously have been involved with similar private discussions with prosecutors with or on the behalf of other clients regarding possible testimony in exchange for immunity. Silly me – I thought lawyers did that on occasion.

    That’s all for today, but stay tuned – this one seems worth watching.

  • Wanna See ALL of Clintoon’s “Private” Email? Come Up With $500k and Maybe You Can.

    Gee, what a surprise.  We’re talking a private server, operated for a long time in an open environment and possibly without any effective information security controls.  What could possibly go wrong?

    Exposed! Libya Security Briefs, Algeria Hostage Info & More — Hacker Threatens To Sell Hillary Clinton’s ENTIRE UNRELEASED Private Emails For $500K

    My question is: if some unidentified hacker managed to get access and download all of that . . . who else did?

     

  • SGT Atting Eminue murdered while helping the homeless

    SGT Atting Eminue murdered while helping the homeless

    From Atlanta, Georgia comes the sad story of 3-time Afghanistan veteran and Nigerian immigrant active duty Sergeant Atting Eminue who was murdered in downtown Atlanta while he was helping to give shoes to homeless people there;

    Atlanta Police say Eminue was walking with a friend to his car early Sunday morning and was shot near the Peachtree Pine homeless shelter during an altercation.

    His family says someone confronted him while he tried to give away shoes to the homeless and he was shot multiple times.

    “He had shoes and stuff that he was giving because he always does that,” said Gbaka.