Tag: arizona

More than 600,000 voter files ripped off Arizona site in 2020 by hacker, but DOJ didn’t prosecute

Arizona’s largest county suffered a significant breach of its election data in the days before the 2020 presidential election when a self-described hacker foiled security and obtained 633,000 voter registration files but the Biden Justice Department and local prosecutors declined to bring charges even after the FBI got the suspect to confess, according to declassified documents made public Thursday by the White House.

The scraping of Maricopa County’s voter registration files was the most flagged security incident in a cyberintrusion log kept by U.S. spy agencies in the days around the Nov. 3, 2020 election, and it caused an extensive FBI investigation that led agents to a home in Fountain Hills, Ariz., the memos show.

The man the FBI confronted admitted he wrote a computer script to exploit the county voter systems security and scraped the files, which included 930 with “sensitive voter information like domestic violence victims, judges and law enforcement officers,” according to the FBI case files declassified and made public by President Donald Trump’s White House Government Transparency Task Force.

FBI Director Kash Patel sent a letter to that task force this week stating the bureau spent “significant resources” but could not get the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, the Maricopa County Arizona Attorney’s Office or the Pinal County, Arizona Attorney’s Office to bring charges despite an admission from the alleged hacker.

FBI_Letter.pdf

The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute the alleged hacker on July 12, 2021, under the Biden Administration, according to the FBI. The newly released memos do not state when the other prosecutorial agencies made similar decisions not to bring charges,  but the full case was officially closed in 2023.  

Just one day before the Nov. 3 election, the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office submitted a tip through the Arizona Counterterrorism Intelligence Center that there had been “an attempt to scrape voter registration information,” according to one FBI summary. 

FBI_Opening_Doc.pdf

According to that memo, an unidentified intruder gained access to voter registration data on the recorder’s website by using a “Powershell script” that exploited a weakness in security. More than 633,000 voter records were exfiltrated between Oct. 21, 2020, and Nov. 2, 2020, the memos state.

Keep reading

From Burger King to the Governor’s Office – The Curious Rise of Katie Hobbs

SECTION 1 — THE COLD OPEN

Katie Hobbs says she wants the “Pay-to-Play” investigation over.

There is only one complication: according to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, the Governor still has not agreed to sit down and answer investigators’ questions.

The inquiry concerns a politically connected foster-care provider, substantial campaign-related contributions, and a state decision that sharply increased the amount paid to that company only, for housing foster children. Hobbs insists she did not influence the agency’s decision. Mayes says her investigators still have questions.

And Mayes — herself a Democrat — was not subtle:

“You cannot blow off the Attorney General’s Office. Full stop. No one can.”

Hobbs says she looks forward to the investigation’s conclusion. Mayes says the investigation will move forward — with or without the Governor’s cooperation.1

An elected official wanting an inquiry finished while declining to promise an interview may not prove wrongdoing.  But it does produce one irresistible question:

How did a political career that began behind a Burger King counter arrive at a moment when Arizona’s own Attorney General publicly warned the Governor that no one is above answering questions?

To understand that, we must follow the ladder — from its first rung to the Governor’s Office — and examine what climbed alongside Katie Hobbs ascent.

SECTION 2 — WE ARE GETTING AHEAD OF OURSELVES

Before the campaign contributions, state contracts, investigators, and uncomfortable questions, there was a Burger King counter in Tempe.².

ADVERTISEMENT

Katie Hobbs also worked at Pizza Hut while pursuing her education — a familiar American story of long hours, modest pay, and determination.² It is relatable, memorable, and politically nearly perfect.

The message writes itself: Hobbs understood working families because she had struggled, she knew low-wage workers because she had been one, and she understood vulnerable people because she later chose social work as her profession.³

None of that should be mocked. Honest work is honest work, whether performed behind a desk, inside a shelter, or beside a deep fryer.

But a working-class beginning does not explain a political ascent.

This is not a campaign biography. It is a documented examination of how Katie Hobbs rose, how she exercised power, and what the public record reveals along the way.

Keep reading

Arizona, Nevada blast federal plan for Colorado River

Arizona and Nevada on Friday opposed a Colorado River usage reduction plan by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which could define the crucial waterway for 40 million people over the next decade.

The Colorado River Final Environmental Impact Statement by the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Department of Interior emphasized the federal government’s preference for negotiations to take place among states, but set in motion plans for the next decade of water conservation. The proposal, which was released Friday, included up to 3 million acre-feet in annual Lower Basin water usage reductions.

“Arizona recognizes the serious condition of the Colorado River, and we are prepared to be part of a responsible solution,” Arizona State Senate President Warren Petersen said in a statement sent to The Center Square. “What we will not accept is a federal plan that protects some states while placing a devastating and disproportionate burden on Arizona.”

Negotiations among Colorado River states have repeatedly failed to meet deadlines over the past year, leading at least four states, including Arizona, to build legal teams for potential litigation over the river’s water sharing. The Colorado River states are California, Nevada and Arizona in the Lower Basin and Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico in the Upper Basin.

The Arizona Department of Water Resources toed the line on potential legal action. The department told The Center Square in a statement that it would “work to complete the agreements necessary to implement the Lower Basin Proposal while preserving Arizona’s legal rights.”

“We appreciate the Trump Administration’s willingness to continue working with us toward a fair agreement, but the Senate stands ready to use every legal and legislative tool available if Arizona is forced to carry this burden alone,” Petersen said.

The previous Colorado River water usage guidelines from 2007 are set to expire at the end of 2026.

The Bureau of Reclamation’s new guidelines included “sideboards” to protect against extreme flow reductions in the river. The largest announcement among them was the potential annual 3 million acre-feet of water reductions that could be required from California, Nevada and Arizona.

The Colorado River Compact, originally signed in 1922, allocates each basin 7.5 million acre-feet of annual river water. Today, the agreement applies to seven states and 30 tribes.

“While our community is prepared to manage through short-term reductions to protect the Colorado River system, as the basin’s smallest water user, Nevada cannot solve the river’s imbalance alone,” John Entsminger, Southern Nevada Water Authority’s general manager, told The Center Square in a statement.

“Unfortunately, the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) released by the Department of the Interior today seeks to impose unrealistic reductions on Nevada and our water users,” Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, added in a statement Friday.

Keep reading

Indian-origin Canadian trucker caught hiding millions in cocaine on cross-continent run

Bodycam footage from an Arizona state trooper on January 6, 2025, shows just how casually certain truck drivers engage in fraud and high-stakes smuggling.

It also shows how easily this kind of criminality rides alongside ordinary traffic on North American highways.

On Interstate 40 near Holbrook, a Volvo tractor-trailer drew a state trooper’s attention when its hazard lights began flashing, then leaving a turn signal flashing. When questioned, the Canadian driver claimed there was a switch problem and said he was heading to a Love’s mechanic — after already passing both a Love’s and a TA truck stop. The driver quickly pivoted his story, claiming he was heading to an “Indian mechanic,” when the trooper flagged his response as suspicious.

While examining the electronic logging device, the trooper quickly became aware of a concerning driving pattern.

There were multiple stretches of “unidentified drive time” appearing from Michigan through Ohio into New York, and again just before the stop.

The driver invented a co-driver named “Uncle” — someone who never logged in or out yet somehow erased hours when convenient. He claimed to be in the sleeper berth when the records showed he was driving. This is textbook hours-of-service fraud designed to push past the federal 11-hour driving limit.

What began as a traffic stop escalated when the trooper checked the sleeper berth. Tightly wrapped bricks of cocaine were found hidden underneath. More packages appeared on the opposite side. Officers then found kilo after kilo concealed throughout the produce load itself, turning out to be one of the larger commercial-truck seizures in recent memory.

The driver, 31-year-old Amarjeet Singh Matharu, had allegedly made the run multiple times before. For moving cocaine valued in the tens of millions of dollars range, he received just under three years in prison.

This bodycam footage finally offers a clear window into the kind of culture that has taken root in commercial trucking.

Ontario’s Auditor General reported in May that private career colleges routinely cut the required 103.5-hour Entry Level Training to as little as 59 or 81 hours, with some skipping emergency stops and left turns at major intersections altogether.

Unregistered schools were handing out certificates, dozens of colleges were never even inspected, and nearly 100 trucking companies with serious safety violations were still being approved to bring in temporary foreign workers; putting them behind the wheel of these increasingly deadly trucks.

“Driver Inc.” has become widely known as a model that misclassifies drivers as independent contractors, allowing companies to dodge overtime, proper wages, and hours-of-service rules. The result is financial pressure that keeps exhausted drivers on the road, compromising road safety at large.

Keep reading

California Man Arrested After Police Catch Him Stealing Unvoted Ballots in Maricopa County, Arizona

A man from California was arrested in Scottsdale, Arizona, on felony charges after US Postal Inspectors caught him stealing mail, including unvoted mail-in ballots, from a USPS collection box.

The suspect, 26-year-old Richard Anthony Ramos Jr. of Stockton, California, was arrested on July 21 with several ballots in his car.

Notably, the Primary elections in Arizona were also held on July 21.

The scheme reportedly involved using a cardboard box into the collection bin to trap outgoing mail, which he would then fish out.

It is unclear whether his target was the mail-in ballots and what he intended to do with them.

Keep reading

OF COURSE! Katie Hobbs to Skip Arizona Gubernatorial Debate Against Trump-Endorsed Andy Biggs – Biggs Campaign Responds!

Arizona Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs said on Thursday that for a second consecutive election, she will not participate in a debate. 

Hobbs previously refused to participate in her primary and general election debates in 2022 before she stole the election from Trump-endorsed Kari Lake.

In a statement, Hobbs’ campaign manager Nicole DeMont told 12 News, “We respectfully decline debate invitations in this campaign because face-to-face engagement with Arizonans is more effective than a stage designed for short soundbites and political theater.”

DeMont went on to say that Hobbs has done “more than 100 open-press events”; therefore, she’s exempt from the tradition of defending her candidacy on the debate stage.

Hobbs’ team issued a similar statement amid the controversy during the last election cycle, blaming the circumstances surrounding the debate, when she refused to square off against Kari Lake.

“Debating a conspiracy theorist like Kari Lake – whose entire campaign platform is to cause enormous chaos and make Arizona the subject of national ridicule – would only lead to constant interruptions, pointless distractions, and childish name-calling,” the Hobbs campaign said last year.

Keep reading

HORROR: Whistleblower says Native Americans were drugged, locked in fake rehab houses so criminals could steal billions from Medicaid – up to 2,000 dead or missing

A massive Medicaid fraud scheme in Arizona has left up to 2,000 Native Americans feared dead or missing, with whistleblowers and attorneys sounding the alarm that the nightmare is still ongoing.

New whistleblower allegations claim vulnerable Native Americans were allegedly lured into white vans with promises of treatment, then plied with fentanyl, methamphetamine, alcohol, and other drugs before being imprisoned inside fake behavioral health homes where operators allegedly billed Medicaid for months of fraudulent “treatment.”

Arizona officials have previously estimated the fraud exceeded $2.5 to $2.8 billion, while the latest whistleblower allegations contend the broader network may have generated up to $12 billion in fraudulent Medicaid claims over time.

Even more chilling, as many as 2,000 Native Americans may be dead or missing as a result of the sprawling scheme, according to NewsNation Now.

Arizona officials knew about the fraud as far back as 2019, according to the lawsuit.

The news outlet reported:

A Navajo advocate who has blown the whistle on fraudulent “sober living” homes in Arizona says she began shining a light on the Medicaid scam targeting Native Americans after her own cousin was kidnapped by operators who plied her relative with drugs and alcohol.

“They told her she would go to Phoenix for the day and (they would) take her home. All throughout the ride they gave her alcohol,” Reva Stewart told “Jesse Weber Live” on Friday.

She said the people who took her cousin demanded personal information from her as they tried to persuade her to stay at a residence. When her cousin refused, Stewart said, they gave her a fentanyl pill and “told her that she would have to find her way home.”

When Stewart learned of her relative’s ordeal, she realized there was a connection between other missing Native Americans and white vans that were observed cruising around tribal communities.

A civil lawsuit against the Arizona government says state officials enabled what essentially was a plot to divert as many as 7,000 Native Americans to fake sober living homes in Phoenix.

Operators allegedly charged billions in Medicaid services that were not provided as handlers plied residents with drugs. An estimated 2,000 victims are still missing, attorneys have said.

During a recent interview, Stewart detailed the ongoing lawsuit and whistleblower testimony, describing conditions that resemble human trafficking more than addiction treatment.

According to whistleblower accounts, recruiters allegedly drove through tribal communities in unmarked white vans looking for vulnerable people struggling with addiction.

Victims were allegedly offered food, shelter, and treatment before being transported to bogus treatment centers.

Once inside, many never received legitimate medical care.

Instead, whistleblowers say patients were deliberately kept addicted because every additional day meant another Medicaid reimbursement.

Keep reading

Anti-ICE walkout exposes how school district ‘failed’ parents, risked student safety: ‘Broken my trust’

Internal emails, messages and memos from Arizona’s Flagstaff Unified School District (FUSD) reveal that staff allegedly breached security protocol and violated several school policies by facilitating a student walkout to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) earlier this year, according to America First Legal.

Hundreds of Flagstaff high school and middle school students walked out of class to protest ICE on Jan. 28. The protest came amid national controversy over the deaths of anti-ICE activists Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota. Immediately after the walkout, many parents, citing safety concerns, expressed outrage that they were not notified that their children had been allowed to leave school premises without their consent. One parent who said they had children under the age of 12 said the “district failed us as parents.”

Documents obtained by America First Legal, a conservative watchdog group, reveal that FUSD officials knew about the walkout days in advance and also coordinated with students. The documents, which were reviewed by Fox News Digital, were obtained by America First Legal through a lawsuit forcing FUSD to comply with its public records request for records related to the walkout.

Screenshots from a district staff text group show faculty coordinating during the walkout. One staff member texted, “We have 75 plus students staged outside of fhs [Flagstaff High School] getting ready to walk.” In the same message, the staff member wrote, “Looks like we have some members of the public joining.”

Keep reading

Transgender DSA Member and Former AZ Democratic Party Vice Chair Arrested After Allegedly Breaking into Home Wielding Knife and Duct Tape – Claims He Was Roleplaying

A former Arizona congressional candidate and ex-Democratic Party leader was arrested last week on charges of felony burglary at an ex-partner’s home. 

The suspect, Brianna Westbrook, has run for federal and state offices, including a failed 2018 bid for US Congress and losses in Democratic primaries for the Arizona State Senate and Arizona House of Representatives in 2018 and 2022.

According to ballotready.org, Westbrook’s professional experience includes serving as the Southwest Regional Co-Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America Immigrant Rights National Working Group from 2019 to the present, and a past stint as Arizona Democratic Party Vice Chair from 2019 to 2021.

Westbrook was reportedly arrested after a former partner told the police that Westbrook allegedly “pushed her way” into the victim’s home, while carrying a knife and duct tape, according to 12 News Phoenix.

Following a struggle inside the home, Westbrook reportedly threatened the victim and another individual inside the home before Westbrook reportedly “took off running,” according to records.

According to court documents, officers found “a knife, tape, and gloves” after conducting a search.

Westbrook, however, told police it was a “big misunderstanding” and that they were acting out a role-playing scene, which the victim has denied.

Keep reading

Arizona Supreme Court Delivers Crushing Blow to Maricopa Board of Supervisors

The Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday delivered a crushing blow to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors when it ended a Court of Appeals stay and reinstated a superior court’s injunctions, with modifications, that returned election-administration responsibilities of the county’s elections back to the County Recorder, Justin Heap.

The Arizona Supreme Court vacated the Court of Appeals stay from June and reinstated with modifications the “superior court injunctions governing the allocation of election-administration responsibilities between the Maricopa County Recorder and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.”

According to the Supreme Court’s News Release:

The dispute concerns which county office has the authority to perform election duties that Arizona statutes assign to “the county recorder or other officer in charge of elections.” Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap argued that those duties belong to the Recorder or to an officer designated by the Recorder.

The Board of Supervisors argued that its budgetary and administrative authority permitted it to assign those functions to a Board-appointed elections director.

The Court concluded that the Recorder is likely to prevail on the statutory interpretation issue. Relying on Arizona precedent, the Court explained that a county board of supervisors may not use its funding authority to assume or reassign statutory responsibilities entrusted to an independently elected county officer.

The Court reaffirmed that the Board has a nondiscretionary duty to fund the Recorder’s necessary expenses and may not use budgetary control to displace duties assigned by law to the Recorder or to an officer acting under the Recorder’s authority.

The Court also addressed election timing concerns. It recognized that courts should exercise caution before altering election procedures close to an election, particularly while early voting for the 2026 Primary Election is underway. However, it concluded that those concerns do not replace Arizona’s stay analysis or determine which official has legal authority under Arizona law.

To minimize disruption, the Court reinstated the superior court’s injunctions, as modified by the Recorder’s 12-point interim operational protocol.

Those temporary procedures are intended to preserve continuity during the ongoing Primary Election while the appeal proceeds. The Court also stated that either party may seek further interim modifications from the Court of Appeals.

Keep reading