Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable, and What We Can Do About It

From one of the world's leading authorities on global security, Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It, takes readers deep into the digital underground to illuminate the alarming ways criminals, corporations, and even countries are using new and emerging technologies against you and how this makes everyone more vulnerable than you ever thought possible.

Technological advances have benefited our world in immeasurable ways, but there is an ominous flip side. Criminals are often the earliest, and most innovative, adopters of technology, and modern times have led to modern crimes. Today's criminals are stealing identities, draining online bank accounts, and erasing computer servers. It's disturbingly easy to activate baby monitors to spy on families, to hack pacemakers to deliver a lethal jolt of electricity, and to analyze a person's social media activity to determine the best time for a home invasion.

Meanwhile, 3D printers produce AK-47s, terrorists can download the recipe for the Ebola virus, and drug cartels are building drones. This is just the beginning of a tsunami of technological threats. In Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It, Marc Goodman rips opens his database of hundreds of real cases to give readers front-row access to these impending perils. Reading like a sci-fi thriller, but based in startling fact, Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It, raises tough questions about the expanding role of technology in our lives. The book is a call to action for better security measures worldwide, but most importantly it will empower readers to protect themselves against looming technological threats before it's too late.

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17 Yr Old Charged with Attempted Murder of a Police Officer After Firing Shot at State Trooper

Illinois State Police (ISP) officials are investigating a shooting that occurred near the Shell gas station located at 55th and Wells, next to the Dan Ryan Expressway at 8:55 p.m., Saturday, February, 7, 2015.

An ISP trooper identified an occupied stolen vehicle at the Shell gas station through a license plate check. The trooper initiated a traffic stop in the parking lot of the Shell gas station.  The trooper attempted to make contact with the sole occupant, the front seat passenger, a 17 year old male juvenile.  The suspect passenger exited the stolen vehicle and fled the scene on foot. The trooper chased the suspect in a foot pursuit for approximately 1000ft north on Wells, during which time the suspect fired a single shot at the trooper. The trooper returned fire once. The suspect fell to the ground and was taken into custody by the trooper.  The suspect's gun was recovered. No injuries were reported as a result of the gun fire.

The Cook County State's Attorney's Office was contacted and approved charges of Attempted Murder of a Police Officer, Aggravated Discharge of a Firearm, Aggravated Unlawful Use of a Weapon, Criminal Trespass to a Vehicle and Aggravated Assault.  The suspect was transported to Cook County Juvenile Detention and will appear for a bond hearing on Monday, February 9, 2015.

The identity of the driver of the stolen vehicle is still pending investigation.

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Alleged Black P Stones Gang Leaders Taken Down #OperationTangledWeb

A joint investigation by law enforcement officials helped take down a North Side drug operation that crossed into Evanston and Skokie and netted about $2.5 million over the course of the investigation, police said.

The investigation, dubbed Operation Tangled Web, targeted Black P Stones gang leaders on the North Side and focused on drug trafficking that involved gang members in Chicago and the northern suburbs of Evanston and Skokie, police said.

Law enforcement officials used court-ordered wiretaps that ultimately revealed the multimillion-dollar operation. The wiretaps focused on the dealings of Black P Stones leaders Craig "Chop" Johnson and Henry "Mix" Wiggins, who ran the operation, police said.

Their operation was found to also supply gangs outside of the Black P Stone Nation that deal drugs on the North Side.

At least 22 people were charged with calculated criminal drug conspiracy, including Melvin Foote, an original ranking member of the Black P Stones, police said.

Officials seized eight vehicles, about $58,000 in cash, 377 grams of crack cocaine and a 9 mm gun during a search warrant.

Wiggins also was charged with possession of a defaced firearm in addition to the conspiracy charge, which carries up to a 30-year prison sentence if convicted.

The Chicago Police Department's Bureau of Organized Crime, the Chicago Police Gang Investigation Unit and the FBI Joint Task Force on Gangs were a part of the sting.

Thanks to Deanese Williams-Harris.

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DEA Contemplated Using License Plate Readers to Track Gun Show Attendees

Recent revelations about a proposed federal law enforcement program might have some friends and families drawing lots to decide who drives to the next gun show.

Criminals rarely obtain guns from gun shows. A Department of Justice survey of state and federal inmates, found that only 0.7 percent of those polled had acquired a firearm that they possessed at the time of their offense from a gun show. Unfortunately, this didn’t stop at least one federal official from suggesting that the sophisticated tools of the modern surveillance state be turned on unsuspecting gun show attendees.

Documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union reveal that, in 2009, the Drug Enforcement Administration contemplated using License Plate Readers (LPRs) to track vehicle traffic from gun shows. A highly redacted email from an unknown DEA official suggests the program was past infancy, and stated, “DEA Phoenix Division Office is working closely with ATF on attacking the guns going to [redacted] and the guns shows to include programs/operation with LPRs at the gun shows.”

ACLU correctly points out the danger of such technology in an article on their website, explaining, “An automatic license plate reader cannot distinguish between people transporting illegal guns and those transporting legal guns, or no guns at all; it only documents the presence of any car driving to the event. Mere attendance at a gun show, it appeared, would have been enough to have one's presence noted in a DEA database.”

The proposed program is even more disturbing when placed into the larger context of the Justice Department’s ongoing general license plate tracking program. A January 26 article from the Wall Street Journal explains the broad contours of DOJ LPR surveillance. The piece states, “The Justice Department has been building a national database to track in real time the movement of vehicles around the U.S., a secret domestic intelligence-gathering program that scans and stores hundreds of millions of records about motorists.” The authors go on to explain the wide availability of the collected data, writing, “Many state and local law-enforcement agencies are accessing the database for a variety of investigations… putting a wealth of information in the hands of local officials who can track vehicles in real time on major roadways.” They further note that this national database “allows any police agency that participates to quickly search records of many states for information about a vehicle.”

According to a January 27 Wall Street Journal article focusing specifically on the gun show surveillance proposal, DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart told the paper, “The proposal in the email was only a suggestion. It was never authorized by DEA, and the idea under discussion in the email was never launched.” Further, the article stated that DOJ officials were quick to deny any BATFE involvement in the LPR scheme. However, as has been made clear by the events of the last two years, public statements by federal officials regarding the scope of federal surveillance activities should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism.

DEA’s proposed indiscriminate gun show surveillance places an unacceptable burden on the privacy of law-abiding citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights and even smacks of firearm registration. Further, such tactics infringe upon rights protected by the First Amendment. Gun shows are far more than just shopping opportunities for gun buyers. They are also community gatherings that often serve as venues for political expression and organizing. As such, they are subject to the First Amendment’s rights of freedom of association and to peaceably assemble and should be free from government activity that could chill free and open participation.

In recent years, the unfettered growth of the surveillance state has become an increasing threat to the privacy of gun owners, and NRA recognizes this challenge. That’s why in early 2014 NRA filed a friend of the court brief in a case challenging the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of phone and internet data. The brief contended that the data collection program is unconstitutional on First Amendment freedom of association grounds, and that it violates statutory prohibitions against compiling gun ownership records. Likewise, NRA is investigating the recent DEA revelations and will continue to work in this area to ensure the privacy of all gun owners.

Thanks to the NRA-ILA.

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#MafiaCops Cost City $5,000,000 Settlement

The City of New York on Friday agreed to pay $5 million to the family of a man killed after being mistaken for a mobster with the same name — thanks to information the killers gleaned from two former police detectives later convicted of moonlighting as hit men for the mob.

The city Law Department called Nicholas Guido’s 1986 death tragic in a statement Friday and says settling is in the city’s best interest.

The family’s lawyer did not immediately return a call from the Associated Press.

The 26-year-old Guido was shot outside his mother’s home on 17th Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn on Christmas Day 1986, according to a New York Daily News report.

Federal prosecutors said the gunmen had Guido had no ties to organized crime, but happened to share a name with an associate of the Gambino crime family who was part of a team of hit men that tried to kill Lucchese family underboss Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso three years earlier.

Casso who paid two detectives – Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa — to help in eight murders, according to the Daily News report. They were accused of carrying out two of those killings themselves.
Eppolito and Caracappa were both sentenced to life in prison.

Thanks to CBS New York.

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Daniel Spitzer Sentenced to 25 Years in Federal Prison for Cheating 455 Investors of $105 Million and Causing $34 Million Loss

A northwest suburban man was sentenced for engaging in a lengthy investment fraud scheme in which he and a co-defendant swindled approximately $105 million from 455 investors who invested in funds they purported to operate. The defendant, DANIEL SPITZER, pleaded guilty to 10 counts of mail fraud last July on the day his trial was scheduled to begin in Federal Court. Spitzer misused the money he raised from investors for his own benefit and to make Ponzi-type payments to investors, resulting in a loss of $33.98 million to at least 279 victims, many of them elderly.

Spitzer, 55, of North Barrington and formerly of the U.S. Virgin Islands, caused “very substantial damage,” U.S. District Judge James Zagel said in imposing the sentence today, a day after he ordered Spitzer into federal custody. The judge also ordered restitution of $33.98 million.

Spitzer engaged in an “extended act of greed,” between late 2004 and early 2010, Assistant U.S. Attorney Madeleine Murphy argued at today’s hearing.

According to court records, Spitzer was the principal officer and sole shareholder of Kenzie Financial Management; the sole manager and member of Kenzie Services, LLC; the president of Draseena Funds Group, Corp.; the manager of DN Management Company, LLC; and the manager of Nerium Management Company.

Co-defendant ALFRED GEREBIZZA, 59, formerly of Crystal Lake and Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., was the secretary and a director of Draseena and a sales agent for the Kenzie Funds, who also held himself out as a trader. Gerebizza was convicted at trial last July of 10 counts of mail fraud and six counts of federal income tax fraud. He is in federal custody awaiting sentencing.

Through these entities, Spitzer controlled 12 investment funds collectively known as the “Kenzie Funds.” Spitzer and Gerebizza offered and sold to the public investments in the various Kenzie Funds in the form of membership interests and limited partnerships. Through sales agents and various marketing materials, they informed investors and potential investors that their investments would be used primarily in foreign currency trading, that the Kenzie Funds had never lost money, and that they had achieved profitable historical returns. The defendants had to continually raise funds through the solicitation of new investors in the Kenzie Funds to make payments on investments made by earlier investors, all of which they concealed and intentionally failed to disclose to both new and earlier investors. Although Spitzer and Gerebizza falsely represented to prospective investors and current investors that different Kenzie Funds had different levels of risk and different investment strategies, they commingled the money invested in all 12 Kenzie Funds, then misappropriated a significant portion, and only invested less than one-third of the approximately $105 million raised from investors.

The defendants represented to investors that the Kenzie Funds had rates of returns ranging from 4.52 percent to 13.54 percent over the prior five years, although the bank accounts for the Kenzie Funds reflected that the total net return during that period was less than one percent. As of June 30, 2009, they represented that the Kenzie Funds were worth approximately $250 million when, in fact, the Funds collectively had only approximately $4 million in their bank accounts.

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Distributor for Atlantic City Dirty Block Gang Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison

An Atlantic City, New Jersey, man was sentenced to 120 months in prison for engaging in a conspiracy to distribute heroin with Mykal Derry, a leader of the “Dirty Block” criminal street gang that allegedly used threats, intimidation and violence to maintain control of the illegal drug trade in Atlantic City, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.

Aree Toulson, a/k/a “Beyah,” a/k/a “Beyeazz,” 26, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Joseph E. Irenas to a superseding information charging him with one count of conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute, and to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute within 1,000 feet of public housing, 100 grams or more of heroin. Judge Irenas imposed the sentence today in Camden federal court.

According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:

Toulson acted as a distributor on behalf of Mykal Derry, 34, of Atlantic City, helping Dirty Block distribute heroin in and around the public housing apartment complexes of Stanley Holmes, Carver Hall, Schoolhouse, Adams Court and Cedar Court in Atlantic City.

Toulson was arrested on March 26, 2013. He and others travelled with Mykal Derry to a shooting range in Lakewood, New Jersey, on Oct. 18, 2012, where Toulson—a previously convicted felon—used, possessed, and discharged a firearm. According to filed documents, members of the group also participated in a violent altercation with rival drug traffickers at an Atlantic City casino in December 2012.

In addition to the prison term, Judge Irenas sentenced Toulson to serve eight years of supervised release.

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