Tag: crime

Tech CEO Found Guilty In $2 Million Ponzi Scheme

Michelle Bisnoff, the CEO of wearable tech company Esos Rings Inc., was convicted of running a nearly $2 million Ponzi scheme.

Bisnoff tricked investors into believing she owned patents for “smart rings” payment technology that rightfully belonged to her former employer, according to a statement by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday. Of the $2 million scammed from investors, the victims lost roughly $1.4 million.

Bisnoff, 59, from Boca Raton, Florida, was hired by United Kingdom-based company McLear Ltd. to develop a market in the United States for its near-field communication wearable payment rings, which embedded credit card information. McLear received a patent for this “smart ring” technology in 2016.

In addition, Bisnoff fraudulently obtained $150,000 in COVID-19 pandemic business relief loans. Instead of using funds for business expenses as initially claimed, Bisnoff used some of the money to pay for personal expenses.

In 2017, Bisnoff formed Esos, and as part of bringing investors into the company, she falsely represented that Esos owned patents for its smart rings, which were actually patents owned by McLear, according to an August 2024 complaint filed in the case.

According to the DOJ, Bisnoff deceived investors, saying that Esos was profitable, had made use of investor money for expanding manufacturing capabilities and inventory for meeting demand from major retailers like Target and Walmart, and received large infusions of capital from tech companies such as Apple and Roc Nation.

“She also falsely claimed to be on the cusp of a licensing arrangement with Middle Earth Enterprises (MEE), which controls The Lord of the Rings brand,” the DOJ said.

However, Esos had no agreements with Target; sold only six smart rings on Walmart.com, out of which three were returned; generated little revenue; did not finalize any licensing agreement with MEE; and did not secure investment from Roc Nation or Apple, the department said.

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How Many Ministries Of Truth Does One Country Need

How many Ministries of Truth does one country need? With Andy Burnham announcing yet another, Prof Michael Rainsborough points out that Britain’s “narratives of decline” arise because the country is, in fact, declining…

In previous essays I have sought to describe the political condition into which Britain and other Western democracies have been drifting by offering various analogies.

At first, I tried being serious. My initial forays drew comparisons with the post-totalitarian societies of late communist Eastern Europe, where the widening distance between official propaganda and observable reality produced an ever-greater institutional effort to enforce the official world view. Later essays pursued the analogy more directly, asking whether Britain was becoming increasingly Sovietised, with some of the same characteristics of a political order in severe decline becoming recognisable. With the supply of serious comparisons running low, and the ironies apparently passing unnoticed, there seemed little left to do except laugh.

Once the absurdities become difficult to describe with a straight face, parody is the logical next step. The difficulty now has been making the exaggeration last until publication. Institutions and bureaucratic inventions for comic effect have acquired real-world counterparts before the joke has had time to land.

WISDOM escapes into the wild

A few weeks back my satirical turn took the form of ‘The Spy Who Came in From the Consensus‘, a John le Carré spoof in which the machinery of the contemporary British state deployed its formidable powers of information gathering to confirm what it already believed. At the centre of the story was WISDOM, the Whole-of-Institution Strategic Data and Outcomes Management system. Created to defend Britain against foreign disinformation, it soon graduated to monitoring “harmful narratives”, “problematic nostalgia”, declining trust and negative sentiment about immigration. A genuine photograph of migrants arriving on a beach was flagged for “decontextualised visual framing”. Requests for original sources and factual corrections became possible indicators of hostile interference.

Having begun by investigating Russia, China and Iran, WISDOM eventually discovered that the most troublesome source of misinformation about Britain was British people’s stubborn attachment to feeling British. WISDOM’s final diagnosis of the country’s deteriorating social cohesion was commendably concise: “The problem isn’t the problem, the problem is the people noticing the problem.“

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Andy Burnham stood before the United Nations and announced the creation of a National Centre for Information Defence. Barely had WISDOM escaped onto the page before reality began catching up with the satire.

According to Burnham, NCID will detect, attribute and disrupt hostile-state information attacks. He cited Russian bots masquerading as British citizens, fake websites, fabricated reports, forged newspaper branding and covert interference. Most insidious of all, naturally, was the amplification of “far Right narratives“. Russia, Burnham said, was creating a narrative of British decline. Britain, he claimed, had surrendered too much ground to those promoting such an account.

Burnham insisted that the “negative” and “corrosive” narrative about life in Britain “bears no resemblance to reality“. A few moments later in the very same speech, Burnham described people struggling with the “cost of living”, lives that were “not improving”, young people outside employment, education or training, widening inequality and a society vulnerable to division. Making life more affordable, he then announced, would lie at the heart of a new “10-year plan” for Britain.

The narrative of decline therefore bears no resemblance to reality, although reality apparently requires a 10-year plan.

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Does Britain Have a Free Speech Problem?

When Keir Starmer visited the White House in February 2025, J.D. Vance used the occasion to raise what he called “infringements on free speech” in Britain. Our then Prime Minister, sitting a few feet away in the Oval Office, was having none of it. “We’ve had free speech for a very, very long time in the United Kingdom,” he said, “and it will last for a very, very long time.” He added that he was “very proud of our history there”.

Was Sir Keir right to dismiss those concerns? I want to answer that question not with anecdotes, of which I have a great many, but with numbers.

Arrests, charges and convictions

Let’s start with a new report from Big Brother Watch, entitled Britain’s Free Speech Problem. Its headline finding is that between January 1st 2021 and December 31st 2025, 62,199 people were arrested in the UK on suspicion of committing just three communications offences. These are section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, which criminalises sending a “grossly offensive” message over a public electronic network; section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988; and section 179 of the Online Safety Act 2023, the new “false communications” offence.

That’s a shocking figure, but it’s an underestimate. Several police forces didn’t respond to Big Brother Watch’s Freedom of Information requests, including Police Scotland. Big Brother Watch estimates the true figure is 73,023. So on a conservative estimate, the police are arresting an average of 34 people a day for things they’ve said, the vast majority online, and the true figure is closer to 40 a day. Russia, incidentally, is thought to arrest around 400 people a year for similar offences.

Of those 62,199 people, 18,520 were charged and 12,292 were convicted. That’s more than 12,000 people with criminal records for speech offences in five years. And that number is likely to go up if the proposals to curtail the right to trial by jury, first put forward by David Lammy when he was Justice Secretary, become law. Research by the Free Speech Union found that in the year to June 2025, 14% of people tried for speech offences in a magistrates’ court were acquitted, compared with 33% in the Crown Court, where the case was heard by a jury. Twelve ordinary men and women, it turns out, are less likely than a district judge to conclude that an intemperate tweet merits a criminal conviction. Leave the decision to them and more people will be convicted.

Is it getting worse?

But is the number of people being arrested for speech offences actually increasing? Yes, it is, as a similar piece of research by the Times established last year. It FoI’d every police force in England and Wales and asked how many arrests they’d made relating to just two of those three offences: section 127 of the Communications Act and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act.

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DACA DUI Defendants Get Preferential Treatment over U.S. Citizens in Democrat-Run Arlington County, VA.

The Commonwealth’s Attorney in Democrat-run Arlington County, Virginia, instructed prosecutors to change the charges when a DUI conviction could prompt deportation of a migrant with DACA status.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, a Democrat, (pictured above) confirmed the practice in a closed-door deposition with the House Judiciary Committee in July which was published Monday in a 23-page report on the county’s sanctuary rules. Her office sent prosecutors a memo telling them to weigh DACA status and encouraging them to change a DUI charge to a different charge that will not cause the defendant to possibly lose their DACA status.

DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is the 2012 program that shields roughly 750,000 illegal aliens brought to the country as children and hands them renewable work permits. It was started by former President Barack Obama via executive order and has been curbed  — but not eliminated — by the courts.

Federal immigration officials consider a drunk driving conviction a significant misdemeanor that can cost illegal migrants their DACA status and leave them open to deportation.

In response, Dehghani-Tafti’s office offers the illegal alien a different misdemeanor of roughly equal weight  — what it calls a lateral charge.

The committee says an American citizen charged with DUI cannot claim similar benefits.

Dehghani-Tafti told Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) the swap has come up three or four times that she can recall, and fewer than 10 times for certain. She said her office does not dismiss the case or necessarily reduce it, and will not let the defendant expunge the original charge.

Explaining what she means by a lateral charge, she said a first-degree misdemeanor would still be a first-degree misdemeanor on the record. (Actually, however, Virginia has no first-degree misdemeanors; the state sorts misdemeanors into Classes 1 through 4.) Drunk driving is a Class 1 misdemeanor, the most serious one.

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Case of Hanging Death of Black Woman in Mississippi Takes Another Twist as Democrats Sound the Alarm on Lynchings

The death of Tasia Fortune, the black woman found hanging from a tree, just took another interesting turn.

Earlier this month, a black man was arrested and charged with murder in the death of Tasia Fortune, a black woman who was found hanging from a tree in Mississippi, sparking unfounded claims of a potential lynching case, fueled by leftwing media and Democratic politicians.

Fortune, a 29-year-old mother of four, was found hanging from a tree on August 3rd in Jackson, Mississippi.

Outlets like CNN and the Associated Press immediately said the case brings up memories of the history of lynchings in the south even though Tasia Fortune was killed by a black man.

Two black men were arrested in connection with Tasia Fortune’s death.

“The death of Tasia Fortune, a Black Mississippi woman found hanging from a tree on Aug. 3, has stirred distressing memories of the grim history of lynchings across the U.S. South,” the AP said.

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Sydney man becomes first jailed under Nazi salute laws

A Sydney man has been jailed for performing a Nazi salute and publishing offensive online posts under new mandatory minimum sentencing laws.

Nathan Ballesty was arrested in December after the Australian Federal Police (AFP) launched an investigation into a post in which he called for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to be kidnapped.

After searching his home on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, authorities found Nazi paraphernalia, including a uniform and a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and seized his electronic devices.

Among the content found on his devices were violent messages aimed at Mr Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, and a recording of a video call in which he performed a Nazi salute.

Ballesty pleaded guilty to performing a Nazi salute, as well as six counts of using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend and one count of contravening a police order after he refused to provide investigators with his device passwords for weeks.

On Friday, he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment — including a non-parole period of 18 months — backdated to January, when he was first remanded into custody.

The sentence includes a mandatory minimum of 12 months’ imprisonment for performing a Nazi salute, making Ballesty the first person to be sentenced under the laws introduced in February 2025.

He will be eligible for parole in May 2027.

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Trial of Accused Tupac Shakur Murderer Brings to Light Police Coverup

On August 31, Duane “Keffe D” Davis was convicted of first-degree murder for his role in the death of famed rapper Tupac Shakur 30 years earlier.

Prosecutors argued that Davis and his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, “went hunting” for Shakur after Anderson was in a fight with him and his entourage at the MGM Grand following a Mike Tyson boxing match, Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal said.

According to Palal, Davis led the charge through his role as a “shot caller” for the Southside Compton Crips and, ultimately, was driven by self-interest in his statements.

The defense countered by saying that the evidence tying Davis to Tupac’s killing was inconclusive and that the prosecution had not presented documentation to show that Davis was even in Las Vegas at that time.

Evidently the jury did not believe this. But regardless of whether Davis was involved in the murder in some capacity, he is a small fish compared to some of the big players who were involved in Tupac’s murder, which appears to have been orchestrated at higher levels.

Like other Black artists, Tupac was a target of offshoots of the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation.

He came from a radical family linked to the Black Power Movement and was considered a threat to revitalize the spirit of that movement, especially because his rap songs adopted subversive anti-establishment messaging.

The FBI, at the behest of ruling U.S. elites, deliberately provoked internecine conflict among Black rappers and groups that, if united, could have potentially mobilized Black youth in a political direction and away from the gang violence that has helped to devastate the Black community along with neo-liberal economic policies that have affected them disproportionately, racialized policing and the War on Drugs, which has spawned a new Jim Crow.

Tupac himself had expressed admiration for the Black Panther Party—the central target of COINTELPRO in the 1960s and early 1970s, and believed that he was a target of COINTELPRO.

Short for Counter-Intelligence Program, COINTELPRO was an FBI program instituted in the 1950s to covertly disrupt radical political organizations in the United States. The program is also known to have targeted artists and musicians, as well as non-violent political dissidents.

In former Black Panther Lee Lew Lee’s 1996 film All Power to the People: The Black Panther Party and Beyond, FBI agent whistleblower Wes Swearingen, CIA whistleblower Phil Agee, and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark detailed how U.S. intelligence operations such as the FBI’s CounterIntelligence Program, murderously targeted The Black Panther Party (excerpted in Drugs as Weapons Against Us 1:00:30- 1:57).

Agent Swearingen stated fellow agents told him that their FBI CounterIntelligence (COINTELPRO) was “officially” closed in 1971 but these activities continued at least until 1995, under different names. These activities in turn are thought to be connected to Shakur’s 1996 death.[1]

According to U.S. intelligence researcher John Judge, “there’s quite a bit of evidence that has come out over the years about the surveillance of [Shakur]. Apparently there were people that were surveilling him at the time of his murder that were never questioned by police.”

U.S. Intelligence and the Black Panther Shakur Family

Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, was a section leader of the Harlem Black Panthers, and his stepfather, Dr. Mutulu Shakur (Jeral Wayne Williams), was a founding member of the Republic of New Afrika.

U.S. intelligence unsuccessfully tried to frame Afeni as part of the New York Panther 21, a group of Panthers who were accused of targeting New York police officers and planning terrorist acts. Dr. Shakur was imprisoned for decades, on charges of conspiring to rob a bank (1981 Brinks robbery) and for breaking Assata Shakur from prison.

Tupac’s “Auntie Assata” was imprisoned for purportedly shooting a police officer, while his godfather, Geronimo (Ji-Jaga) Pratt, led the Los Angeles Black Panthers and was falsely imprisoned for decades.

Police shot at Assata while she had her hands raised and shot at Geronimo’s bed as, fortunately, he was sleeping on the floor due to a bad back caused by a Vietnam War injury.

After activists stole documents from an FBI office in 1971, they found that the FBI orchestrated most of these attacks on Black Panthers like Assata and many others under COINTELPRO.

Police Attempted to Murder Tupac Before: Oakland in 1991 and Atlanta in 1993

The New Afrikan Panthers, active in nearly a dozen cities, elected Tupac Shakur as their National Chairman in 1989. Tupac’s music celebrated blackness and gave voice to the frustrations and disillusionment so many black youth faced with the prevailing political-economic system while provoking empathy for the system’s victims.

Tupac continued his activism with his imprisoned stepfather Mutulu Shakur and his Black Panther extended family by helping to spread a truce between the Bloods and Crips gangs from a few areas around Los Angeles to across the country.

There were at least four attempts on Tupac Shakur’s life with police foul play involved before he was murdered at the age of 25 in September 1996.

Several days after MTV released the political song “Trapped” from his solo debut CD in 1991, Oakland police stopped him purportedly for jay-walking, pounded his head against the curb and choked him into unconsciousness.

In Atlanta, Georgia, in 1993, two allegedly off-duty police officers shot at Tupac with a gun they had stolen from an evidence locker.

LA Police Detective: Police Killed Rapper Biggie to Cover up Their Murder of Tupac

An assailant fatally shot Tupac Shakur from another car in Las Vegas after a Mike Tyson heavyweight championship boxing match on September 7, 1996.

Six months later, a gunman fatally shot Tupac’s former friend and fellow top rapper Christopher “Biggie/Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace in Los Angeles.

After Biggie’s murder, Los Angeles Police Detective Russell Poole said that he found out that his fellow police officers murdered Biggie to distract from their murder of Tupac, trying to make it look like a rap rivalry.[2]

Detective Poole found dozens of his fellow police officers at all levels of Tupac’s last record company, Death Row Records.

When Detective Poole asked his superiors what all those LA officers were doing there, they told him you can call them “trouble shooters or covert agents.”[3]

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Wicked Brazilian Justice Alexandre de Moraes Caught in Major Scandal – May End His Tyrannical Reign

The chickens come home to roost.

Wicked Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the man behind the socialist takeover of Brazil and punisher of all good conservatives, is caught up in a scandal that may end his tyrannical career.

How wicked is Brazilian Justice Alexandre de Moraes?

Moraes returned former President Jair Bolsonaro back to prison based on trumped-up charges immediately after Jair’s eighth surgery due to the aftermath of a 2018 attempted assassination.  The popular former president remains in prison to this day. He pulled out the same playbook to destroy his political opposition that Democrats used against President Trump.

In September 2004, social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, revealed the shocking rationale behind the recent ban imposed by communist Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.

This explosive Twitter expose’ revealed de Moraes’s involvement in serious crimes and human rights violations, all under the guise of upholding “democracy.”

In a decision issued on August 18, 20214, de Moraes justified his orders to ban social media accounts and suppress dissenting voices by claiming that anyone attempting to expose him or his allies must be silenced in the name of “democracy.”

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Michigan Dem Christina Hines Started Program Allowing Those Accused of Serious Crimes to Potentially Avoid Jail

Michigan Democrat Christina Hines helped establish a restorative justice program in Washtenaw County that allows defendants accused of serious felonies, including home invasion and assault with intent to do great bodily harm, to be considered for alternatives to incarceration.

Hines pioneered the Washtenaw County Restorative Justice Program in 2021 while serving as the county’s first assistant prosecutor under Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit. 

According to Washtenaw County’s restorative justice policy, the program consists of three primary elements:

The person who committed harm acknowledges the harm done and takes responsibility. The person who committed harm, and the person harmed, voluntarily work together and agree to a plan in which amends can be made. The person who committed the harm, and all affected parties who desire to do so, work together to determine the root causes of the harm and develop a plan to ensure that the harm will not reoccur.

The program allows eligible criminal cases to be considered for diversion after formal charges have been filed by the prosecutor’s office. Home invasion, assault with intent to do great bodily harm, and other serious felony offenses are not categorically excluded and are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Hines described Washtenaw County’s Restorative Justice Program as the first of its kind in Michigan in a December 2023 article for the Michigan Bar Journal.

“Many adult criminal cases are referrable, with exceptions for sexual assault, victimization of children, intimate partner violence, and other cases where the prosecutor determines the defendant poses a public safety risk such as homicides or cases involving gun violence,” Hines wrote.

“Restorative justice is an approach to address conflict and misconduct that focuses on healing rather than punishment and values accountability over exclusion,” she added.

An October 2022 court order establishing the program states, “The Court encourages residents of this County to employ restorative justice practices, not only in justiciable matters, but in all aspects of life and law.”

The order also provides that criminal cases may be diverted to the Restorative Justice Program after they have been formally charged by the prosecutor’s office.

A September 2021 Washtenaw County Legal News article discussing Washtenaw County’s initiative pointed to New York City’s Common Justice program, which specifically handles serious and violent felonies, including assault and robbery. “The experience in other communities has demonstrated that crime survivors often prefer restorative justice as an alternative to the traditional criminal legal system. New York City maintains a robust restorative-justice program administered by Common Justice,” the article stated.

Research has identified concerns about victims’ experiences with restorative justice.

A 2012 study examining victim-offender mediation found instances in which victims experienced marginalization, intimidation, and pressure during mediation proceedings.

“The findings of the current study indicate that these [RJ] principles were compromised in each case to some extent,” the researchers wrote.

The researchers identified victim-sensitive or victim-centered practices as the most commonly overlooked principle. In certain cases, mediators encouraged victims to “keep things positive” rather than share the depth of the personal and family impacts of the crime. Some victims felt threatened by offenders or their families, while others felt pressured to accept apologies.

The study also found that victims were sometimes inadequately prepared for mediation, pressured by mediators to behave in certain ways, or occasionally intimidated by offenders and/or their families.

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‘Trans-Identifying Nurse’ Charged With 4 Counts of Child Abuse After Abusing a Premature Baby Girl in the Hospital

A now-former nurse at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has been charged with four counts of child abuse after a tiny premature baby girl in the neonatal intensive care unit was found with multiple broken bones and bruises covering her body, including her tongue.

The accused is 43-year-old Kieran L. Ansley of Niles, Michigan. A warrant was authorized in early September, WOOD-TV reported.

Ansley faces two felony counts of second-degree child abuse, each carrying up to 10 years in prison, and two misdemeanor counts of fourth-degree child abuse.

Ansley appeared in Grand Rapids District Court this week, remains free on bond, and is required to wear an electronic tether. The next hearing is set for early November.

The infant was born in November 2025 at 23 weeks, weighing one pound, one ounce. She spent months in the NICU fighting to live. By early April she had made it past her due date and was two days from going home.

“She was born at 23 weeks: 1 pound, 1 ounce,” grandfather Robert Steavens told WOOD-TV. “And she made it through her due date, ready to go home. And then two days before she was ready to go home, this happened.”

On the evening of April 2, the child’s mother left the unit with her daughter appearing fine. She returned about 6:30 a.m. the next morning.

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