crime

FBI reports auto thefts, recovery rates down

Although the FBI reports that vehicle thefts are down, you are still unlikely to recover your stolen car if you don't have some sort of electronic recovery system.

According to the 2009 Crime Statistics report, out of the 794,616 vehicles stolen that year, only 343,274 vehicles (43.2 percent) were recovered. This is the lowest recovery rates have been reported in 25 years.

Stolen vehicles are notoriously used by thieves to commit other crimes, or taken to chop shops and stripped for parts. A number of vehicles each year are shipped out illegally overseas.

In a news … Read more

Former IBM exec gets jail time for insider trading scheme

Former IBM executive Robert Moffat on Monday was sentenced to six months in jail for his part in a major insider trading scheme, according to news reports.

Moffat was also reportedly ordered in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to pay a fine of $50,000 after serving his jail time, which is due to begin on June 11 of 2011.

In March, the former IBM executive pleaded guilty to revealing insider information about IBM, Lenovo, and Advanced Micro Devices to New Castle Funds consultant Danielle Chiesi, with whom he allegedly claimed an intimate relationship, according to a Bloomberg report.… Read more

Zuckerbandits? Alleged 'Facebook' burglars busted

It may be finally occurring to people that telling lots of strangers online that you're not home--and telling them where you live--is not necessarily very smart.

According to several local news outlets in Nashua, N.H., police say they've arrested three young men allegedly responsible for about 50 burglaries in the city last month. More specifically, TV station WMUR notes that the suspects "used social-networking sites such as Facebook to identify victims who posted online that they would not be home at a certain time."

It sounds a whole lot like an experimental site called PleaseRobMe.com, … Read more

N.J. town posts DUI photos on Facebook: Tag away?

Police departments maintaining a presence on Facebook and Twitter are nothing new, but Evesham Township, N.J., is taking social-media law enforcement a step further by controversially posting arrest photographs on its Facebook page--like the names and photographs of people arrested for drunk driving. While the police department's Facebook page has been around for about six months, the decision to add DUI photos was added only on Monday.

Before you ask, no, this is not the township in New Jersey where "Snooki" was arrested for disorderly conduct. But if the rabble-rousing "Jersey Shore" … Read more

Gamers fight back: Video shows Internet cafe patrons battling would-be muggers

An amazing video clip aired by a TV news station in Hawaii (and which we first showed you on this week's Digital City podcast) shows the PC-game-playing patrons of a local Internet cafe fighting back against a gang of bandanna-wearing thugs intent on robbing them. According to the blow-by-blow description from KHON2 News:

It is just before midnight on Wednesday. Devin Wolery is sitting at the counter at PC Gamerz in Kaneohe watching over his nine customers when two masked men walk in...Video surveillance shows him reaching to push a panic button to alert police when things escalate. &… Read more

Woman jailed for reporting bogus text threats

There are days when I really don't like myself very much. Sometimes, I even curse the very ground I tread and the being that I have willfully become.

However, if I write these feelings down, I try to make sure that they're in a very private corner of my laptop or, at the very least, hidden in one of the self-help books in my bookcase.

It seems, though, that Jeanne Mundango Manunga, a 25-year-old woman from Santa Ana, Calif., took a slightly different philosophical approach.

According to the Orange County Register, Manunga wanted to make people believe that … Read more

The cell phone number whose owners all die

A film director in Singapore once told me that he sent back a very expensive crane he had just bought because its serial number, according to numerological lore, signified "Will die, must die." (From what I remember, there were too many 4s.)

Bulgaria, however, is not a place, as far as I am aware, that is deeply committed to number-based superstitions. Until now, perhaps. For, according to the Telegraph, three consecutive owners of one single cell phone number have left this life for the next.

Perhaps your first thought was that the number was 0666-666-666. You would be … Read more

Reports: Sprint fires chasers of Apple store thief

I don't know if the Cherry Creek Mall in Denver, Colo., is a haven for thieves, but, in recent days, shoplifting seems to be something of a trending topic there.

Last week, a man lost a finger when a bag in which he had a newly-bought iPad was ripped from his grasp by a mean-spirited thief. Now it appears that another shoplifter's brazen behavior at Cherry Creek Mall led to unfortunate consequences for two employees of the Sprint store.

According to the Denver Westword, Paul Shoemaker and Mike McGhee, were about to head off to a well-earned break … Read more

Thief steals iPad, rips off victim's pinkie

I am sure there were some who, consumed by passion for the iPad, said, in an idle moment, that they would give their right arm for one.

Bill Jordan, a 59-year-old from Aurora, Colo., was surely not one of them. Yet, he and Apple's latest creation crossed ill-starred paths with the result that he has lost part of a finger.

KDVR-TV Denver went to interview Jordan at his house to learn just how it was that a thief stole an iPad from him and ripped away the top half of his left pinkie.

Jordan had wandered into the Apple store in the Cherry Creek Mall in Denver in order to buy an iPad. He wasn't even buying it to take home and indulge himself. He had been asked by one of his colleagues in Canada to pick up an iPad for someone who had enjoyed a promotion.

"I didn't even know what it was. It's a toy," Jordan told KDVR.

Surveillance film reportedly showed that the minute he left the Apple store, Jordan was followed by two young men. He had the Apple bag tied around his wrist and, just before he entered the parking garage, he felt someone violently tugging on his arm.

The rest is just plain nasty.… Read more

Google Street View blamed for burglary

In the week in which Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said his company is now "paranoid" about security (not an advert for Chrome at all), a lone milkman in the UK has expressed a paranoia that seems to have been dismissed by the great search engine in the sky (and on the ground).

Gordon Rayner is a 54-year-old man without a mountain bike.

He used to have a mountain bike, but, according to the Telegraph, Rayner says Google's infinitely discreet Street View cameras published a picture of it to the world--which includes the underworld. The cameras happened … Read more