Tag: crime

Judge Tosses Road Rage Killer’s Sentence over AI-Generated Video of Victim Played in Court

An Arizona appeals court has overturned the prison sentence of a man convicted of manslaughter after a road rage incident, determining that an AI-generated video of his deceased victim used during sentencing was unreliable and created fundamental unfairness in the proceedings.

The New York Post reports that Gabriel Horcasitas will face resentencing after the Arizona Court of Appeals vacated his 10.5-year prison sentence on Wednesday. Horcasitas was convicted of manslaughter and endangerment in the 2021 shooting death of Christopher Pelkey during a road rage incident in Chandler, Arizona, approximately 25 miles outside Phoenix.

The appellate court took issue with an AI-generated video of Pelkey that was presented during the original sentencing hearing. Breitbart News reported on the controversial AI video last year:

The AI-generated video, believed to be the first of its kind used nationwide, recreated Pelkey’s image and voice, allowing him to “speak” about his life and the fateful day he encountered Horcasitas. The video included real footage from Pelkey’s life, showcasing his personality and sense of humor, while also addressing his killer directly.

“In another life, we probably could have been friends,” the AI version of Pelkey said to Horcasitas. “I believe in forgiveness…” The video also featured a photo of Pelkey with an “old age” filter, as he remarked, “This is the best I can ever give you of what I would have looked like if I got the chance to grow old. Remember, getting old is a gift that not everybody has, so embrace it and stop worrying about those wrinkles.”

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French Feminist Convicted Of The Crime Of “Public Insult” For Refusing To Call Transgender Mayor A “Woman”

Dora Moutot is a feminist who has dedicated much of her life to fighting for women’s rights and has built a following on social media. Like other feminists, Moutot does not view transgender women the same as biological women. She has now joined others who are facing criminal charges for expressing those views. Transgender advocates have demanded that she be punished for her views in France.

Moutot recounted how transgender activists demanded that she be more “inclusive” in how she referred to “women.” She refused, and explained that “being a woman is a biological fact and that I didn’t think saying so should be controversial.” She was immediately denounced as a “transphobe and a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist), a term I’d never even heard before.”

What followed was all too familiar. A cancel campaign led to her brand partnerships being canceled. In 2022, she was invited on a French TV program to discuss transgender issues with Marie Cau, France’s first transgender mayor. On the program, she was asked if she thought Cau was a woman. Moutot responded, Cau “is a man, a transfeminine man.”

That was all it took. Transgender advocates had their case and filed charges for “public insult,” which is a crime in France with a maximum punishment of one year in prison and a fine of up to €45,000 for insults committed against a person because of their sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.

Free speech has long been in a free fall in France. Many disagree with Moutot and they are accorded free speech to denounce her views. However, Moutot is not extended the same protection based on the content of her views.

These laws criminalize speech under vague standards referring to “inciting” or “intimidating” others based on race or religion. For example, fashion designer John Galliano has been found guilty in a French court on charges of making anti-Semitic comments against at least three people in a Paris bar. At his sentencing, Judge Anne Marie Sauteraud read out a list of the bad words used by Galliano to Geraldine Bloch and Philippe Virgitti, including using ‘dirty whore” in criticism.

In another case, the father of French conservative presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was fined because he had called people from the Roma minority “smelly.” A French teenager was charged for criticizing Islam as a “religion of hate.”

This is a nation that still echoes the cry of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity (“liberté, égalité, fraternité”). However, in today’s France, “liberté” is no longer valued. Individual rights of religion and speech are routinely sacrificed in the name of “equity” and “fraternity.”

In my book The Indispensable Right, I discuss the decline of free speech in France and other nations. As we face our own growing anti-free speech movement, citizens need to take a long look at countries like France to see what awaits us down this path. Europe went down this slippery slope of censorship decades ago, and the desire to silence others has now become an insatiable appetite.

As in this case, activists spend more time silencing opposing views than responding to them. For transgender activists, it is intolerable for feminists like Moutot to hold contrary views. Instead of addressing her viewpoints in public, they want her declared a criminal. Censorship then becomes an insatiable appetite for groups to silence their own critics.

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U.S. Marine Arrested in Okinawa on Suspicion of Robbing and Murdering 39-Year-Old Japanese Woman — Japan Lodges “Strong Protest” with United States

A 20-year-old U.S. Marine stationed in Okinawa has been arrested by Japanese authorities on suspicion of robbing and murdering a 39-year-old woman inside a hotel in Naha, triggering a formal protest from the Japanese government.

Lance Cpl. Devin Jacob Ballard, assigned to Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, was taken into custody early Sunday in connection with the death of Anna Yagi, 39, a resident of Naha.

According to Stars and Stripes, Okinawa Prefectural Police allege that Ballard killed Yagi at the Naminoue Crystal Hotel in Naha’s Wakasa district sometime between approximately 2:10 a.m. and 4:17 a.m. Saturday. Police also accuse him of stealing her wallet and another personal item.

Police say surveillance footage showed Yagi entering the hotel with a man before the man later left alone carrying her belongings.

When Yagi failed to leave by checkout time, a hotel employee entered the room and discovered her unresponsive. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Authorities later located Ballard walking alone in an entertainment district and detained him before formally arresting him on suspicion of robbery and murder. Ballard has denied the allegations.

The precise cause and circumstances of Yagi’s death have not yet been publicly disclosed, and investigators are still working to determine the relationship, if any, between Yagi and Ballard.

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Chainalysis Used Ai To Trace The $387m Bitget Hack Back To North Korea

In a recent blog post, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis attributed the $387 million theft from cryptocurrency exchange Bitget to North Korean state-sponsored hackers. The firm used a combination of its’ AI-powered cryptocurrency analysis and its’ traditional investigative methods to track the stolen funds, moving them across multiple blockchains. Importantly, although the firm used technology to enhance the analysis of the data, it was human investigators who ultimately attributed the theft and controlled the output of their analysis.

After the breach, the attackers had been using more sophisticated techniques for laundering the stolen assets, spreading them through cross-chain liquidity protocols, messaging platforms, instant swap services, as well as specialized laundering infrastructure. The scale of such attempts highlights the attackers’ high level of experience in managing a large-scale cybercrime operation and in evading detection by blockchain forensics experts, writes Decrypt.

Stolen XRP was handled differently by the hackers and after some time it was converted into Bitcoin through cross-chain liquidity protocol and then extracted from the pool on the other side of the trade. This cross-chain arbitrage was used by hackers not only to convert very traceable asset into something else but also to make it as anonymous as possible by hopping from one protocol to another. The activity of extracting tens of millions of dollars in assets through this method took approximately 36 hours.

We previously highlighted that the attack bore similarities to past attacks conducted by DPRK cyber crime operators, as identified by Bitget CEO Gracy Chen. Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic also assessed the involvement of North Korean cyber crime operators in the theft to be “highly likely”.

The money laundering activity is very transparent and is being carried out on public blockchains. The attacker moved parts of the funds to Zcash’s shielded pool in order to use the privacy features. However, how swap services react to these transactions varies greatly. Near Intents for example rejected over $50m in hacker-linked transactions. They got hacked days later though. Thorchain on the other hand continued to process the suspect transactions.

However, stablecoin issuers such as Circle and Tether were able to prevent $318,000 in stablecoins that were siphoned off in the hack from entering circulation. The move highlights the power of centralized control of widely held stablecoins even as the broader decentralized trading environment continues to facilitate hacker activity.

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Prominent fashion exec and wife found shot dead outside posh home near UC Berkeley

The CEO of a swanky fashion company and his wife were found shot dead outside their home in the hills overlooking UC Berkeley on Friday morning.

Berkeley police were called to the area around 10:48 a.m. Friday after shots were heard. Cops found married couple, Bryan, 61, and Michelle Walker, 63, and performed life-saving measures. Both were then pronounced dead.

The Walkers ran a women’s fashion company, Bryn Walker. The pair designed clothing with “luxurious fabrics” aimed at “women who demand comfort, quality and easy sophistication,” according to their website. The company had locations in Berkeley and Massachusetts.

Haunting surveillance video reviewed by CBS, too horrifying for them to play on air, unveiled the mysterious circumstances of the shooting. The first gunshot can be heard on video around 10:43 a.m. Friday, and then a man is heard crying and screaming in a “very dramatic” scene.

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Florida Judge Denies Rapper Rick Ross Special Treatment After Attorney Plays the Fame Card: “I Have No Idea Who You Are”

If you attempt to play the “fame card” in Judge Mindy Glazer’s courtroom, you will not have any luck.

Rapper Rick Ross found out the hard way.

William Roberts II, whose stage name is Rick Ross, turned himself in to Florida authorities on Thursday morning and was charged with two counts of battery.

Later on Thursday, the rapper appeared in the Miami-Dade Bond Court before Judge Mindy Glazer, where his attorney requested that his client be expedited from Miami-Dade County Jail because he’s a celebrity.

Judge Glazer, without missing a breath, quickly responded, “Hi, Mr. Roberts. I have no idea who you are, except as somebody here in the court who’s going to be treated fairly just like everybody else here,”

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Former Congressman Sentenced To 10 Years In Federal Prison After Secretly Lobbying For Foreign Regime And Laundering Millions

A former U.S. congressman will now spend a full decade behind bars after being handed a 10-year federal prison sentence on Friday.

Former Florida politician David Rivera was slapped with the decade-long sentence after being convicted of secretly acting as an unregistered foreign agent for a hostile regime, failing to register under FARA rules, and conspiring to launder tens of millions of dollars tied to the illicit scheme.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported in May, Rivera and Nuhfer were found guilty by a federal jury following a trial that exposed the secret Venezuela-linked lobbying arrangement.

The previous Gateway Pundit report detailed prosecutors’ allegations that Rivera and Nuhfer accepted millions connected to the Maduro government while concealing the relationship and using Rivera’s political connections to pursue Venezuela’s interests in the United States.

Rivera had faced a statutory maximum of as much as 60 years behind bars following his conviction.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian handed down the 120-month sentence on October 2 following Rivera’s conviction on conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), violating FARA, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and four counts involving transactions in criminally derived property, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.

Rivera, 61, represented Florida as a Republican in the U.S. House from 2011 to 2013.

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Girl Wins $164 Million Lawsuit from Hotel in Sex-Trafficking Case

A federal court in Georgia has ordered a hotel to pay a female victim $164 million because it allowed a sex trafficking ring to operate on its premises.

The victim, who was 15 at the time of her trafficking, was reportedly held at the Super 8 hotel in College Park, Georgia, in 2020 and 2021, where she was sexually assaulted by her captors and their clients.

“They set up an environment for children to be sold,” said Patrick McDonough, the anonymous victim’s attorney, according to WAGA-TV. “This hotel operator would actually warn the traffickers if the police were coming.”

“Hey, look, if you’re going to turn a blind eye and profit off of children being sold, you’re going to be held accountable,” the attorney added, noting that the girl was held in the hotel for about 120 days.

The federal jury in the case determined that the owner of the hotel chain, Lincoln Bancorp LLC, would have to pay $44 million in compensatory damages and $120 million in punitive damages.

This is not the first hotel that has been held liable for sex trafficking in Georgia. Last year a $40 million verdict was returned against United Inn and Suites in DeKalb County. A woman who was 16 when she was trafficked sued the hotel and won, making it the first hotel in the Peach State to be found civilly liable for sex trafficking.

There are currently three other hotels being sued in civil court for sex trafficking in Georgia.

Georgia is not the only state where hotels are being accused of participating in sex trafficking.

According to the Lawsuit Information Center, there are currently two hotels in New Jersey being sued for cases of sex trafficking. Other cases include hotels in Los Angeles, Ohio, Philadelphia, and more.

Breitbart News has reported several cases of hotel and motel operators being accused of either facilitating or turning a blind eye to sex-trafficking going on in their establishments.

One such incident occurred in Virginia, where an Indian family with the last name of Sharma was arrested for allowing drug and sex trafficking to occur in their Red Carpet Inn hotel in Dumfries.

In another case, federal authorities in Nebraska carried out a series of raids, leading to the arrest of a group of Indian nationals who were allegedly engaged in an elaborate scheme involving sex, labor, and drug trafficking. In addition to multiple businesses owned by the suspected traffickers in Nebraska, the scheme also involved companies in Georgia and Texas.

In yet another case, Kavankumar Patel, an illegal migrant from India, was sentenced to a ten-year prison term for participating in a child sex-trafficking ring in Omaha, Nebraska, the Department of Justice announced.

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Trump DOJ Announces More Indictments, Guilty Pleas For Voter Fraud While Democrats Insist ‘There’s No Fraud’

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced this week the indictments of ten aliens for voter fraud in Minnesota alone, as well as charges and guilty pleas involving 12 individuals – including three illegal aliens – for election crimes throughout the nation.

According to a DOJ announcement released Wednesday, the ten defendants in Minnesota were found by the Department of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to have voted illegally in the November 2022 and 2024 general elections, and the August 2026 primary election. A federal grand jury indicted them separately on September 24 for voter fraud, and all ten have made their initial appearances in federal court.

Details about the defendants can be found here at the DOJ website.

The announcement about the indictments for voter fraud in Minnesota came Monday after the department revealed charges and guilty pleas in the cases of 12 individuals – including three illegal aliens – related to “illegal voting, fraudulent voter registration, and related election crimes across the country,” including in Florida, Kansas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Hawaii, and Utah, the DOJ reported.

U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin, and U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen spoke during a press conference Wednesday about the indictments for voter fraud.

“[E]very voter that votes should know that their vote counts,” Mullin said. “It shouldn’t be canceled by an illegal or someone illegally voting in those elections, and that’s exactly what happens. The only people that should be choosing our leaders are American citizens that are legally able to vote.”

Mullin said the investigations into voter fraud are increasing rapidly.

“When we start talking about cases – yes, we just made 10 – I think we just had 10 convictions,” he said. “We have 100 administrative arrests, 53 criminal arrests, 37 indictments, and 10 convictions – and we’re just getting started. We have over 1,600 voter fraud cases that we are currently investigating, and we have 300,000 more that we’re getting to.”

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Disgraced Team USA Gymnastics Doctor Larry Nassar Removed from Michigan Sex Offender Registry

The state of Michigan has erased thousands of sex offenders from its database, including one particular notorious name that many will immediately remember: Dr. Larry Nassar.

The move to scrub as many as 20,000 names from the state’s sex offender registry followed a Michigan Supreme Court ruling holding that “amendments issued in 2021 to the Sex Offender Registration Act can’t be used to retroactively require registration due to older incidents.”

This led to the removal of offenders whose crimes were committed before July 1, 2011.

Among those whose crimes precede that date is Dr. Larry Nassar.

Nassar was convicted of using his position as team doctor for USA Gymnastics from 1996 to 2014 and as team physician for Michigan State until 2016 to sexually abuse hundreds of young women.

Even though Nassar’s conviction wouldn’t come until many years after the July 2011 cut-off date, his name was still removed because many of his crimes predated July 2011, prosecutors explained.

While Nassar is no longer a threat to the public, as he is currently serving lengthy prison sentences which will likely ensure he spends the rest of his life in jail, the disappearance of 20,000 sexual offenders from the state’s database will remove the ability of Michiganders to use the registry as a way of determining whether people living among them were ever listed as abusers.

“The Eaton County Prosecutor’s Office also listed other offenders its office had prosecuted over sexual assault of minors, where the registration requirement was lifted. The Supreme Court could have applied a different interpretation upon hearing the case, the prosecutor’s office claimed, and allowed for certain sex offenders to remain on the list,” CBS News reported.

“While the effectiveness of such lists can be debated, that should occur in the legislature, not by decision of the court.”

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