Tag: crime

56 Arrested in Massachusetts Child Porn Sweep

Massachusetts authorities arrested 56 people across the state for alleged child pornography activities in a crime sweep dubbed “Operation Firewall,” state police announced on Monday.

The three-day investigation in 38 communities targeted the growing problem of possession, production, child enticement, and sharing of child sexual abuse material, the Massachusetts State Police reported.

In addition to the arrests, investigators say they searched 34 homes and seized 229 devices.

“Over several months, members of the State Police’s Division of Investigative Services used their training and skill to develop these cases,” said Col. Geoffrey Noble. “I commend the Troopers for their hard work to overcome the evasive tactics of suspects and build a comprehensive operational plan to safely remove predators from our streets.”

The defendants are expected to face charges connected to child pornography, child enticement, outstanding warrants for assault and battery of a child, rape of a child, and failure to register with the Sex Offender Registry Board, according to authorities.

The investigators worked for several weeks to develop Operation Firewall, according to Lt. Col. Daniel Tucker.

The operation relied on several partners, including detective units, district attorney’s offices, special tactical teams, and officials specializing in the apprehension of violent fugitives.

Troopers conducted arrests for a variety of sexual offenses with children, including contact, enticement, trafficking, and aggravated rape, the state reported.

“The Massachusetts State Police are working very hard every day to keep our communities safe, especially our children,” Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement.

According to the state police, many child pornography investigations stem from a growing number of online tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) regarding suspicious activity.

Under federal law, electronic service providers are required to submit a cyber tip line report to the agency when they recognize dangerous behavior. Troopers assigned to the cybercrime unit review the tips to see if the content violates the state’s child pornography laws.

Keep reading

Trump Pardons Mountain Runner Michelino Sunseri, Who Was Prosecuted for Using an Unapproved Trail

“In an unbelievable twist that even Hollywood couldn’t write,” mountain runner Michelino Sunseri announced on Facebook yesterday, “I woke up this morning to find out I’ve been given a PRESIDENTIAL PARDON from Donald J. Trump.” Thus ends what Sunseri facetiously described as “the trail trial of the century”—his prosecution for taking an unauthorized route while ascending and descending Grand Teton in record time last year.

Sunseri’s case attracted attention as an example of overcriminalization—in particular, the ways that general statutes authorizing criminal penalties interact with a sprawling federal regulatory code to entrap people who break the law without realizing it. That description pretty clearly applied to Sunseri, who provided the evidence that led to his prosecution by posting a map of his 13-mile Grand Teton route on social media.

On his way down, Sunseri briefly took a quarter-mile path known as “the old climber’s trail” that had been used by six of seven previous Grand Teton record holders. As Cato Institute legal fellow Mike Fox noted in March, “tour guides who charge hefty sums frequently lead hikers up the same route,” which WyoFile described as “a historic trail so well-used that it’s become a skinny singletrack.”

The National Park Service (NPS) nevertheless considered that trail “closed,” although it notified the public of that designation only via two small and ambiguous signs that could easily have been misinterpreted. As the NPS saw it, Sunseri therefore had violated 36 CFR 21(b), which says a park superintendent “may restrict hiking or pedestrian use to a designated trail or walkway system.” It adds that “leaving a trail or walkway to shortcut between portions of the same trail or walkway, or to shortcut to an adjacent trail or walkway in violation of designated restrictions is prohibited.”

The regulation says nothing about criminal penalties, which are separately authorized by 16 USC 551. That law says violations of “rules and regulations” governing the use of public and national forests “shall be punished by a fine of not more than $500 or imprisonment for not more than six months, or both.”

By authorizing prosecution for agency-defined offenses, Congress has created a bewildering situation in which the average American cannot reasonably be expected to know when he is committing a federal crime. The Code of Federal Regulations is so vast and obscure that even experts can only guess at the number of criminal penalties it authorizes—at least 300,000, they think.

“Many of these regulatory crimes are ‘strict liability’ offenses, meaning that citizens need not have a guilty mental state to be convicted of a crime,” Trump noted in a May 9 executive order. “This status quo is absurd and unjust. It allows the executive branch to write the law, in addition to executing it.”

Trump said federal prosecutors generally should eschew criminal charges for regulatory violations based on strict liability and focus on cases where the evidence suggests the defendant knowingly broke the rules. Trump also instructed federal agencies to “explicitly describe” conduct subject to criminal punishment under new regulations and prepare lists of regulatory violations that already can be treated as crimes.

After Trump issued that order, the NPS, which initially recommended Sunseri’s prosecution, reconsidered, saying a plea deal offered by the government, which included a five-year ban from Grand Teton National Park as well as a fine, amounted to “an overcriminalization based on the gravity of the offense.” But federal prosecutors in Wyoming, where that park is located, were undeterred. They proceeded with a two-day bench trial that ended on May 21.

After U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephanie Hambrick found Sunseri guilty in September, prosecutors offered to drop the case in exchange for 60 hours of community service. The U.S. Attorney’s Office described that retreat as “an evolution of what is right,” saying the decision “was made to preserve prosecutive and judicial resources while upholding the best interests of the public and the justice system.”

Hambrick was irked, telling Ed Bushnell, one of Sunseri’s attorneys: “It’s an interesting message you send to the public. If you whine and cry hard enough, you get your way.” But she said she would not decide whether to accept the belated deal until after a hearing on November 18.

Trump’s pardon obviates the need for that hearing. And contrary to Hambrick’s take, it sends a positive message—unlike his pardons for Capitol rioters, corrupt public officials who abused their powers for personal gain, allies in his fight to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, or other supporters with dubious cases for clemency. Sunseri’s pardon is consistent with Trump’s avowed concern about overcriminalization, which was also reflected in his May 28 pardons for two Florida diving instructors who were convicted of federal felonies after they freed sharks they mistakenly thought had been caught illegally.

Keep reading

FBI Seeks To Unmask Anonymous Web Archiving Service Owner

The subpoena, dated last Tuesday and posted publicly on Archive.today’s X account, states it relates to a federal criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI, as The Verge reported. However, the document provides no specific details about what alleged crime is under investigation.

The FBI is requesting comprehensive identifying information from Tucows, including customer or subscriber name, address of service, and billing address associated with Archive.today, per The Verge report.

Beyond basic contact details, the subpoena demands an extensive array of data such as telephone connection records, including incoming and outgoing calls and SMS or MMS records, payment information like credit card or bank account numbers, internet connectivity session times and durations, device identifiers, IP addresses, and details about services used such as email, cloud computing, and gaming services.

The subpoena instructs Tucows not to disclose its existence indefinitely, as any such disclosure could interfere with an ongoing investigation and enforcement of the law, as recounted by Gizmodo. 

That request became moot when Archive.today publicly posted the document. Journalist Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, drew attention to the subpoena on X, emphasizing that Archive.today is used by journalists and researchers to “document edits to articles, bypass subscription walls and avoid giving traffic to the failing corporate media.”

Keep reading

Federal Officials Revise Sentencing Guidelines For Drug Selling Convictions

New amendments to federal sentencing guidelines will put less of an emphasis on the quantity of drugs someone was charged with, and give more consideration to the scope of their role in the overall drug distribution chain. The United States Sentencing Commission implemented the amendments November 1.

Federal sentencing is calculated using a deeply convoluted scoring system that assigns a base offense level (BOL) between 1 and 43, according to how serious a conviction is perceived to be. For drug-trafficking, this is determined partly through a Drug Quantity Table that uses the number of grams involved to assign a BOL that—prior to the new amendments—could be between 6 and 38. But about two out of three people were being sentenced using a BOL of between 30 and 38.

The fixation with quantity as the biggest factor in how serious each case made it easy to prosecute local distributors as if they were high-level members of drug trafficking organizations. Neighborhood sellers who might only deal in relatively small quantities could still be assigned a BOL for much larger quantities, if the number was measured over a long period of time or manipulated in other ways.

The length of someone’s prison sentence also depends on other factors like prior convictions, but a higher BOL correlates to a longer sentence. For a BOL of 37 or higher, the upper end of the sentencing range can be life in prison, depending on the person’s criminal-legal history.

Now, BOL will be capped at 32 for people determined to have a “mitigating role” in the violation—meaning those at the lower end of the supply chain—and the USSC is supporting a broader application of that standard. A BOL of 32 means a sentencing range of roughly between 10 and 22 years.

“An adjustment…is generally warranted if the defendant’s primary function in the offense was plainly among the lowest level of drug trafficking functions, such as serving as a courier, running errands, sending or receiving phone calls or messages, or acting as a lookout,” state the guidelines. “[Or] if the defendant’s primary function in the offense was performing another low-level trafficking function, such as distributing controlled substances in user-level quantities for little or no monetary compensation or with a primary motivation other than profit.”

Primary motivations other than profit could include personal relationships, or being threatened or coerced. The USSC is still considering whether to apply the adjustment retroactively.

Keep reading

JUST IN: Judge Immergut Permanently Blocks Trump From Deploying National Guard Troops to Portland

Judge Karin Immergut issued a permanent injunction blocking President Trump from deploying National Guard troops to Oregon.

Last month a federal appeals court temporarily blocked President Trump from deploying Oregon National Guard troops to Portland after a judge issued a Temporary Retraining Order (TRO).

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily reinstated Judge Karin Immergut’s TRO last month after it halted an order issued by a three-judge panel from the court.

President Trump previously called up hundreds of California National Guard Troops to Portland to circumvent the judge’s order blocking Oregon National Guard Troop deployment.

Trump also activated up to 400 Texas National Guard troops for deployment to Oregon, Illinois and other states amid violent, anti-ICE protests.

On Friday evening, Immergut issued a permanent injunction and blocked Trump from deploying troops to Portland.

Trump can appeal Immergut’s ruling.

NBC News reported:

A federal judge in Oregon on Friday issued a permanent injunction barring the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard on the streets of Portland in response to protests against the president’s immigration policies.

“This Court arrives at the necessary conclusion that there was neither ‘a rebellion or danger of a rebellion’ nor was the President ‘unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States’ in Oregon when he ordered the federalization and deployment of the National Guard,” U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in his first term, wrote in her ruling.

Keep reading

‘It’s a Small World After All’ As ICE Crackdown of Illegal Immigrant Truckers Gets Even More Eye-Opening

As is usually the case regarding a horrific event, it takes something tragic before a microscope is trained on the real issue. Joe Biden and Democrats have plenty of blood on their hands from years of massive waves of illegal immigrants pouring over a wide-open southern border. There have been plenty of high-profile cases like Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungaray. But it took the deaths of three unknown people on a Florida highway to bring attention to the huge problem of illegal immigrants who speak and read little to no English driving 18-wheelers across the country, and the story keeps getting worse.

Since the Florida crash, the Department of Transportation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have become involved. Since late October, ICE, along with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, has targeted a portion of Interstate 40. The operation has nabbed 70 illegal immigrants, 34 of whom were operating semi-trucks in violation of Oklahoma state law. It is no surprise where the illegal immigrants are obtaining their commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs). ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Executive Associate Director Marcos Charles had this to say:

“For the second time in just the past month, the state of Oklahoma and ICE have banded together to bolster public safety along Oklahoma’s highways, identifying and apprehending illegal aliens who are in the country illegally and have been recklessly issued a commercial driver’s license by states like California, Illinois, and New Jersey. Many of the illegal aliens arrested behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound tractor trailer can’t even read basic English, endangering everyone they encounter on the roads.”

Also, as is usual, the details just get more disturbing. The sting operation called “Operation Guardian” discovered, as stated above, that 26 of the illegal immigrant truckers had CDL licenses from the usual suspect states of California, Illinois, and New York. But the best part, eight of the drivers were operating 18-wheelers with no CDL license at all. That’s right, no CDL license. The illegal immigrant truckers picked up by Operation Guardian reads like a who’s who of the United Nations from countries such as China, Guatemala, India, Uzbekistan, as well as other nations. Many also have extensive rap sheets that include convictions for violent crimes.

Keep reading

Woke Portland Politician Who Demanded “Unhoused Neighbors” Be Given a Place to Sleep Has Home Torched by Homeless Person

A Portland Democrat who once called for homeless individuals to be given housing suffered an ironic and cruel twist of fate last week.

As The Oregonian reported, 51-year-old homeless man Vashon Locust was arrested on Tuesday after starting a fire that torched Portland City Councilor Candace Avalos’ townhome and car.

He faces charges of reckless burning, second-degree mischief, and trespassing. These are all misdemeanors.

According to a police affidavit obtained by the paper, Locust snuck into a shed near Avalos’ home on October 26 and attempted to use an electric outlet.

When that failed, he set a fire to stay warm, but he later claimed that it got out of control and tried to put it out.

“He shared that it was very cold that night and his clothing was wet,” the affidavit reads. “Locust attempted to extinguish the fire with his foot.”

Locust then fled to a nearby church.

On October 28, Locust allegedly returned to the scene of the crime to inspect the remains.

Avalos and her cat managed to escape the incident unharmed. She claimed afterward that she was targeted for her political beliefs.

Whatever the cause, this didn’t happen in a vacuum,” she wrote. “In our current national context, it’s hard not to connect this moment to everything happening around us — the threats, the division, the way public service sometimes puts a target on your back.”

The Daily Mail notes that Avalos has long been an apologist for Portland’s homeless population.

She even wrote a column in 2021 titled: “Our unhoused neighbors deserve a safe and clean place to sleep.”

Locust has been arrested more than 50 times for various felony and misdemeanor charges since 2006, according to court records obtained by The Oregonian.

His most recent arrest occurred in February. In this incident, a woman in North Portland reported that Locust would not leave her property and chased her while waving around a stick.

The Oregonian notes that Locust has not been arraigned on the reckless burning charge at this point, and no attorney has been assigned to his case.

He remains in jail until his first court appearance.

Keep reading

Marijuana Arrests Comprised Nearly Half of All Drug-Related Arrests in Over a Dozen States in 2024

Marijuana-related arrests far outpace arrests for other drug-related violations in jurisdictions where its possession and use remain criminally prohibited under state law.

In five states (Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Wisconsin), more than half of all drug-related arrests reported by state and local law enforcement agencies in 2024 were cannabis-related, according to data provided by the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer.

In nine other states (Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Carolina, Utah, and Wyoming), 40 percent or more of all drug-related arrests were for marijuana-related violations. In the District of Columbia, where adult-use is legal but public use remains a criminal — not a civil — violation, 42 percent of all drug-related arrests were marijuana-related.

In these states, marijuana-related arrests are almost exclusively for low-level possession. In Alabama, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming more than 97 percent of all marijuana-related arrests in 2024 were for minor possession, not trafficking or sales.

By comparison, marijuana-related arrests typically comprise only a small percentage of arrests in states where personal possession has been legalized. For instance, in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, Vermont, and Washington, marijuana-related arrests comprised fewer than five percent of all drug-related arrests in 2024. By contrast, marijuana-related arrests comprised over one-third of all drug-related arrests in Illinois, despite lawmakers legalizing the adult-use market in 2019.

Keep reading

Illegal Alien Trucker Was Facing 17 Years for Killing 3 in Freeway Crash; Now It’s Down to 10 Thanks to California Laws

The Biden administration’s border policies are still haunting us.

An Indian illegal immigrant faces three counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and reckless driving for allegedly causing a collision last month on the westbound 10 Freeway in San Bernardino County, California, according to the New York Post.

Jashanpreet Singh, 21, is accused of crashing a semi-truck into traffic where three people were killed and four were injured.

Singh faced 17 years in prison, but that was downgraded to 10 after it was discovered he was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol — something authorities originally claimed.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants notice before he is released, as Singh is believed to have crossed the southern border illegally in 2022 during President Joe Biden’s term.

To make matters worse, President Donald Trump’s Department of Transportation is pointing the finger at California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom for this tragedy.

On Sept. 26, the Transportation Department updated the process for obtaining a CDL.

But a report from the department claims that California illegally upgraded Singh’s license on Oct. 15, which was not in compliance with the new regulations.

Singh went from a restricted CDL which would only allow him to drive in California to a commercial one which would allow him to travel out of the state when he turned 21 in October. So, despite the pause on commercial licenses, he was upgraded anyway.

The DOT stated if California followed the new law, Singh would have had his license revoked altogether.

Illegal immigrants should not hold CDLs, nor should they hold a license at all.

They should not be here.

Per KABC-TV, among the dead were a high school basketball coach and his wife.

Keep reading

Migrant-Youth Crime Exploding in Various European Countries (Yet Some Won’t Prosecute Under-15s)

After evaluating 45,000 youths, an interesting study out of Germany found that with increasing religiosity, Christian teens became less violent. The research also found, however, that with increasing religiosity, Muslim teens became more violent. That was back in 2010. Now, 15 years later, another study in Germany finds that violence among migrant children is exploding. Meanwhile, native German youth are actually becoming more peaceful.

(If the Morlocks and Eloi come to mind for you here, you’re not alone. You’re also probably over 45 [if you’d make that association].)

Of course, none of this means the German kinder are “Christian,” except in name (secularism reigns in today’s Western Europe). Nor does it mean all the criminal migrant youths are Muslim, though an inordinate percentage would be. Germany isn’t alone, either, as some other nations are also experiencing this fruit of diversity. Why, some migrant children are “waging war” in Norway, with two 13-year-olds having hurled grenades at a storefront in September. The kicker:

Authorities can’t charge the little miscreants. Because kids younger than 15 can’t be prosecuted under Norwegian law for even serious crimes. Danish and Swedish law has the same loophole, too.

Deutschland Unter Alles?

As to the story out of Germany, website Remix reports on the aforementioned recent research:

The study, produced by the University of Cologne and the State Criminal Police Office, looks at youth crime in North Rhine-Westphalia….

The study found that more and more of the criminal suspects in the German state are children, with attacks on teachers, police officers, and emergency responders reaching alarming figures. In particular, the study shows that children with a migration background are causing significant damage.

Over the course of several months, researchers surveyed 3,800 students in grades seven through nine at 27 different schools in the area of Gelsenkirchen, Marl, and Herten. These are known as especially high-crime areas in the western German state. The same study was conducted in 2015, with dramatically different results this time around.

The study showed that violence, hatred, and disrespect are all increasing among young perpetrators.

Note here that Germany’s “migrant-background” population now accounts for a whopping 30.4 percent of the country. (“Migrant background” references those not born with German citizenship or having at least one parent who wasn’t thus born.) More strikingly, the migrant background share rises to ~40-45 percent for those 0-18, according to a Grok AI analysis. It also finds that for children under five, the percentage is 43.1. In other words, native Germans are disappearing.

Note as well, however, that many of the migrants are fellow Europeans. This said, the largest migrant group arriving between 2015 and 2021 was Syrians (716,000). And Muslims now constitute 6.5 percent of the German population.

Keep reading