Tag: oklahoma

Under-The-Radar Oklahoma Bitcoin Mining Site Condemned After Leaking 3 Million Gallons Of Water

A massive water leak in El Reno, Oklahoma has brought new scrutiny to a Bitcoin mining operation that city officials say had been operating without required approvals and in violation of multiple building and safety codes, according to KFOR 4. Three million gallons of water were leaked, according to KOCO ABC.

The facility, operated by Athlon BT LLC, had largely escaped public attention until the leak was discovered. City officials say the company had also installed a fire hydrant without their knowledge, while questions remain about how water was being used at the site.

Athlon originally applied for building permits in 2022. By 2023, however, El Reno had issued a stop-work order after the permits expired and officials identified multiple fire and life-safety code violations. The company was given until December 2023 to address the problems, according to the city.

Instead, officials say Athlon continued construction and eventually began operating the facility despite lacking the inspections and final certificate of occupancy required by the city. Officials have cited problems involving electrical systems, drainage and other areas of the property.

“They really weren’t in compliance at all,” city spokesperson Lyndsay Bayne said.

The discovery came as a surprise not only to residents but also to local officials, who said the Bitcoin mining operation had attracted little attention before the leak, according to KFOR 4.

Athlon had previously described the structures on its website as “mobile data centers.” The operation, however, differs considerably from the large hyperscale data centers proposed in communities such as Yukon and Piedmont, which have generated debate over their potential demands on local infrastructure and water supplies.

The KFOR 4 report says that El Reno officials say Athlon told the city its equipment was air-cooled and therefore should not have required water for cooling. According to the city, the water line involved in the leak was supposed to serve only a fire hydrant.

That hydrant itself has raised additional questions. Officials say Athlon installed it behind the property without notifying the city, and it did not appear on municipal records. The hydrant was also reportedly concealed beneath a large pile of brush.

KFOR later observed above-ground piping that appeared to connect the mobile data center units and extend toward the hydrant. Athlon’s website, before becoming unavailable, also referenced what the company called “hydro-cooling technology.” Those details have prompted questions about whether the water line may have served a purpose beyond fire protection.

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Oklahoma City Manager Arrested on 11 Felony Voter Fraud Charges After Falsifying Registration Applications With Other People’s Names

The city manager of a tiny Oklahoma town has been arrested and charged with 11 felony counts of voter registration fraud after investigators say she submitted applications using other people’s names and forged their signatures.

Shonda Lou Barnes, city manager for the Town of Mannsville in Johnston County, was taken into custody at her home Monday afternoon on a warrant charging her with 11 counts of false affidavit in voter registration. She was booked into the Johnston County Jail, KXII reported.

The Johnston County Election Board flagged the applications in late May.

The forms had been submitted from the Mannsville area just before the voter registration deadline so the names could vote in the June primary.

Investigators found multiple applications bearing matching signatures that did not belong to the people whose names were on the forms. Authorities then traced those applications to Barnes.

Johnston County Sheriff Gary W. Dodd did not mince words:

“As one of Oklahoma’s 77 constitutionally elected sheriffs, it is our duty and the duty of every Sheriff’s Office in this State to protect the integrity of our elections — one of the most sacred rights of citizens of this country.”

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Migrant From Ghana Arrested Multiple Times in Two Weeks For Raping, Sexually Assaulting Women in Oklahoma

A migrant from Ghana has been arrested at least three times in the last two weeks for raping and sexually assaulting women in Oklahoma.

26-year-old Jeff Kufi Asare, a foreign national from Ghana, has sexually assaulted four women this month.

Koco reported:

Jeff Asare has been in jail three times in the last two weeks, all for allegedly assaulting women.

On Aug. 1, near Northwest 23rd Street and Classen Boulevard, police responded to a possible rape. Asare allegedly pushed a woman against a bus stop window and put his hands down her pants.

Another woman told police that Asare came up behind her while she was walking on Classen Boulevard, pulled her pants down, and fled after she pushed him away. He was arrested for sexual battery and indecent exposure.

Five days later, near Scissortail Park, Asare allegedly walked up behind a woman, grabbed her buttocks multiple times, and began digging in his pants. When the woman asked him to leave, he walked away. Police later spotted him and arrested him for sexual battery.

Six days after that, on Wednesday, Asare allegedly approached a woman from behind on the Lake Hefner Trail, pulled her down, and attempted to rape her. Firefighters intervened and called police.

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Flock Cameras Come to Norman, Despite Council Rejection

Norman, Oklahoma’s city council turned down Flock’s automated license plate readers more than once. The surveillance cameras hit the city anyway, carried in by the county sheriff and a scatter of homeowners associations the council has no authority over.

All nine members of the council said no. Mayor Stephen Tyler Holman told 404 Media that Flock gave the city two presentations in three years, both at the request of a police department that wanted the cameras, and that the company’s answers on privacy and data security were what sank the deal. He asked why anyone would want a record of every vehicle going in and out of the city, whether or not the driver had done anything wrong, held for 30 days on a database whose security and access nobody at Flock could fully account for.

“Those were some of the reasons why we ended up not doing it,” Holman said. Some council members wanted any retention measured in minutes, not a month.

That refusal governs the city government and nothing past it. Norman lies inside Cleveland County, and the county’s commissioners approved a $60,000 renewal for 20 Flock cameras run by the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office, an agreement that runs through December 2026 and passed on a 2-1 vote after the board postponed the decision three times waiting on a legal opinion from the district attorney.

Jacob McHughes, the commissioner whose vote carried the renewal, backed it only on the strength of that opinion. He said the cameras belong with the state legislature rather than county officials, and he called the legal question unsettled, “I think it needs legislative approval, and I think it’s super gray.”

Rod Cleveland, a commissioner who happens to share the county’s name, cast the only vote against the renewal. He said the Flock model builds “a vast, warrantless surveillance network that tracks the movements of every driver, innocent or otherwise,” feeding private databases reachable nationwide and, potentially, by federal agencies, and he would not support it without enforceable limits on how long the data is kept and who can reach it.

“There are numerous homeowners associations that use them too,” Holman said, and the city itself, by his account, is now the only body in the area holding out. By the police department’s own count, fewer than a dozen privately owned Flock cameras already operate inside Norman, held by local businesses and neighborhoods the council cannot touch.

More than 80 cities have canceled Flock contracts, and Holman said the company turned Norman’s own stance into a selling line at that last presentation, warning the room that people “would find that out and they’d come to commit crime in Norman because they know that we don’t have Flock cameras.” Norman borders an Oklahoma City metro already blanketed by the cameras, so the pitch amounted to telling a town that its restraint was a liability.

Holman spent 12 years on the council before beating the incumbent for the mayor’s office last year. He traces the anti-Flock feeling to an earlier fight over the police buying a Bearcat armored vehicle, the sort of purchase most cities rubber-stamp, which Norman took ten years and a bare five-four vote to approve. “There’s a lot of folks here who are weary about government surveillance, especially giving that over to a private company,” he said.

404 Media has reported more about the company the council rejected and the county renewed anyway. Officers keep getting caught using the cameras to stalk people, the system makes mistakes, and a former employee recently said Flock lied to him about how it does business.

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Cause of Death Revealed for Republican Oklahoma State Senate Candidate Found Dead in His Truck

A Republican Oklahoma state senate candidate was found dead in late April, two days after he was reported missing.

Barry Christian, 54, a candidate for Senate District 38, was reported missing after he disappeared and was a no-show for a meeting earlier this year.

Authorities discovered Barry Christian’s pickup truck in the Sandy Sanders Wildlife Management Area.

At first, it was unclear if foul play was involved; however, the Oklahoma Medical Examiner ruled that Barry Christian died by suicide.

Barry Christian died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Christian’s family lashed out at the Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s Office for releasing the findings without their consent.

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YOU’RE FIRED! Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation Boots Leftist Staff Attorney After Profane Anti-ICE Meltdown — Vowed to Make Agents’ Lives “F**king Miserable”

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) has fired a staff attorney after she posted a profanity-laced anti-ICE tirade.

Shannon Desherow, the leftist Assistant General Counsel at the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, has been FIRED after posting an expletive-filled TikTok tirade in which she refused to cooperate with ICE, claimed the agency has “no authority and no jurisdiction over U.S. citizens,” and urged Americans to “make their lives f—ing miserable.”

OSBI confirmed the termination to Fox News after completing an internal investigation.

“Once we were made aware of her social media post, we opened an internal investigation,” an OSBI spokesperson said.

“Upon completion of the internal investigation, she was terminated. Since this is a personnel matter, we are unable to further comment at this time.”

Desherow’s unhinged video, which first exploded after Libs of TikTok amplified it in early July, captured the radical attorney ranting from what appeared to be her car:

“Conservatives really think they’re doing something when they say, ‘Just comply’ when it comes to ICE and United States citizens… why the f— would I comply with someone who has no jurisdiction over me… ICE has no authority and no jurisdiction over U.S. citizens. So why the f— would I comply with an order given to me at gunpoint by somebody who has no f—ing authority to make that order? I’m not going to. That’s the f—ing thing.”

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Oklahoma Homeowner Charged with MANSLAUGHTER After Gunning Down Squatter Who Took Over One of His Houses

An Oklahoma homeowner earlier this month took deadly action against a lazy squatter and now faces a serious threat to his freedom.

As KOCO reported, 59-year-old Timothy Smith was arrested by police and charged with first-degree manslaughter after fatally shooting 42-year-old Justin King, who had taken over one of his homes in Oklahoma City.

KOCO revealed that Smith discovered King was living on the property and went to confront him on May 1. When Smith arrived, he stumbled upon the squatter having carnal relations with a female in one of the home’s bedrooms.

Smith claims he shot King in self-defense after the squatter took a step toward him.

The squatter died one week later.

From KOCO:

Smith, who was not living in the home at the time, said he entered with a gun and confronted King when he found him in the back bedroom with a woman.

When he ordered King to leave, Smith claimed that King stepped toward him, so he aimed at the area of the squatter and pulled the trigger, per court records cited by KOCO.

He hit King in the neck, and he was taken to the hospital. He died a week later on May 8.

Smith was initially arrested on charges of assault and battery with a deadly weapon. He was then charged with first-degree manslaughter after King died in the hospital.

Criminal defense attorney Ed Blau told KOCO that the self-defense claim in this case may not apply because Smith was not living in the home at the time of the shooting.

“There’s no death penalty for squatting in the state of Oklahoma. You can’t just take a gun in and shoot somebody,” Blau explained.

Blau added that while Oklahoma’s Castle Doctrine allows homeowners to defend their primary residence against intruders, the law is different for a vacant home.

“If a trespasser or a burglar breaks in or comes into the home that you live in and you’re there, you can pretty much shoot them or do whatever you want to with them,” Blau told KOCO. “And because of the Castle Doctrine here in Oklahoma, in a situation like this, an abandoned house, it’s much different.”

“You can’t go in, put yourself in a situation and say, ‘This is my house, so I felt I had the right to shoot him.’”

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More States Enact New Laws Curbing Teachers Unions

New organized labor reforms signed into law by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last week require a majority of members to be present for teachers union certification or recertification votes, increase fines for illegal strikes, and establish merit-based pay for educators.

In Idaho, after July 1, teachers unions will be prohibited from collecting dues directly from members’ paychecks, using paid time off for union activities, or recruiting new members during school hours.

A similar law in Arizona, which also bans teacher strikes and prohibits organized labor members from using any school property—even email addresses—for union activities, will be decided on by voters in the November election.

“They can’t consume taxpayer-funded resources during the school day,” said Rusty Brown, special projects director for the Freedom Foundation policy organization, which assisted state legislators with those measures and helps teachers opt out of union membership.

These ideas are expected to gain ground throughout the nation in the months and years ahead, Brown told The Epoch Times.

Individually, the Freedom Foundation’s Teacher Freedom Alliance has so far helped more than 272,535 teachers opt out of union membership, including more than 50,000 in 2025 alone, according to data provided to The Epoch Times. This includes educators in red and blue states.

At the state level, Oklahoma lawmakers have advanced legislation that would allow teachers to withdraw from a union at any time and would terminate “closed shop” provisions that prevent teachers from accessing alternative labor or professional organizations, such as the Teacher Freedom Alliance.

Brown calls this an “equal access and an end to a monopoly and captive audience bill.” Alternative organizations can offer teacher liability insurance and other benefits at a fraction of the price that traditional unions charge, he said.

Brown said he believes that the legislation could pass before Oklahoma’s session ends later this month, but the member withdrawal proposal probably won’t go through this session.

Alabama state lawmakers will consider legislation similar to Oklahoma’s next session, he said.

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Does Someone Want to Tell Him? Pete Buttigieg Gets ROASTED as He Forgets An Inconvenient Fact While Calling for Abolishing the Electoral College

Pete Buttigieg likes to fancy himself as a sophisticated and intelligent man, but ended up looking dumb while at a recent town hall event in Oklahoma.

As FOX 23 reported, the former Secretary of Transportation held a “Win the Era” town hall at Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma two weeks ago where he discussed a variety of topics including artificial intelligence, LGBTQ rights, and healthcare.

But in a clip that has gone viral today, Buttigieg also pondered how great it would be if just got rid of the ‘pesky’ electoral college and used the popular vote to elect presidents.

This movement has been a Democrat clarion call ever since George W. Bush defeated Al Gore back in 2000 while losing the popular vote.

“One thing that would make a huge difference is if we selected our president by letting the person who got the most votes take the office, instead of the national Electoral College,” Buttigieg said to the roughly 2,000 people in attendance.

The audience responded to this by erupting in cheers for several seconds.

“It would be a really good idea,” Buttgieg continued. “Because any Democrat wanting to be president would have to campaign in Oklahoma.”

“By the way, any Republican would have to campaign in Brooklyn! that would be good for our democracy.”

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Missing Republican Oklahoma Senate candidate Barry Christian, 54, found dead in rural area

The body of a missing Republican Oklahoma state Senate candidate was found in a truck in a rural area — turning his family’s world “upside down,” his devastated daughter said.

Barry Christian, a 54-year-old Trump-supporting candidate for District 38 in western Oklahoma, was discovered dead Thursday after he mysteriously vanished just two days prior, his campaign said in a news release obtained by KOCO.

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation confirmed to the outlet that Christian’s 2024 charcoal gray Ram truck was found just off Highway 30, south of Erick, with a body inside.

The truck was located by a ravine near the Sandy Sanders Wildlife Management Area. Because of where the vehicle is located, officials are unable to remove his body, delaying identification, the outlet reported.

A large campaign sign for Christian, however, was photographed eerily tossed onto the prairie land as authorities scoured the area.

The circumstances surrounding his death are unclear. The OSBI did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

Christian was reported missing Tuesday after he failed to show up to a scheduled meeting. He was last seen driving his Ram truck, according to the Harmon County Sheriff’s Office.

He last posted on Facebook on Saturday, asking his district’s residents to attend a meet-and-greet at the Mangum Oklahoma Rattlesnake Festival to discuss “issues that matter most to our community.”

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