Tag: theft

NSA REPORT: The NUMEC Affair and Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Program

Nearly seventy years have gone by since Israel embarked on its nuclear program, and almost sixty years have passed since it achieved nuclear weapons capability. However, the narrative of Israel’s nuclear history remains largely unarticulated. The country has not produced an official and sanctioned account of its nuclear development, nor have any insiders been permitted to share their perspectives.

In 1966, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) performed a security inspection at the NUMEC uranium facility located in Apollo, Pennsylvania. During this inspection, the inspector suspected that some of the missing uranium had been transported to France before ultimately reaching Israel. Zalman Shapiro, one of NUMEC’s founders, had established a dubious new enterprise in collaboration with a French organization known as Société D’Applications de la Physique (SAIP). This new venture was named NUMEC Instruments and Controls Corporation (NUMINCO) and was located in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. In 1957, as France was advancing its nuclear program, it initiated a nuclear agreement with Israel, sending engineers to assist in the construction of the nuclear reactor at Dimona, Israel. However, to facilitate the development of nuclear weapons, the newly established state required a plutonium separation facility, which was secretly built by the French company “Saint Gobain.” Shimon Peres, who passed away on September 28, 2016, was a protégé of David Ben-Gurion and played a key role in shaping Israel’s clandestine nuclear program, a program that was developed with French assistance – but whose existence is still officially denied to this day.

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Non-Citizen Former USPS Worker Convicted in $1.7 Million Mail Theft and Bank Fraud Scheme, Lying on Citizenship Papers

A former U.S. Postal Service (USPS) employee, Hachikosela Muchimba, has been convicted of masterminding a $1.7 million mail theft and bank fraud scheme and falsifying his citizenship application.

Muchimba, 44, worked as a letter carrier at the Friendship Post Office in D.C.

During his tenure, Muchimba stole 98 checks, primarily from the U.S. Treasury, valued at over $1.6 million, by altering payee names or forging endorsements to deposit them into seven bank accounts he controlled.

Surveillance footage from banks showed him often making transactions in his USPS uniform.

“Muchimba used the proceeds of the stolen checks to fund a lavish lifestyle that included international travel, stays at luxury hotels, and purchases at gentlemen’s clubs,” the Department of Justice said in a press release.

The press release added, “During the scheme, Muchimba applied to become a naturalized U.S. citizen and provided false information to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers by telling them that he had not committed any crimes for which he had not been arrested. That offense carries a maximum penalty of ten years of incarceration and possible administrative denaturalization.”

In September 2023, Muchimba was arrested at Dulles International Airport. He was carrying $2,000 in cash, a Zambian passport, and a ticket to Zambia.

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Mexican National Guardsman Convicted of Helping Cartel Car Theft Ring in Texas

A member of Mexico’s National Guard pleaded guilty to using his position to help a car theft ring that was supplying vehicles from Texas to the Gulf Cartel in Mexico.

On Friday morning, Luis Enrique Guzman Pablo went before U.S. Magistrate in the Southern District of Texas Judge Nadia Medrano, where he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States. He is expected to be sentenced at a later date. Guzman had been in federal custody since his arrest in July 2024.

According to a criminal complaint based on an investigation by U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, Guzman was assigned to conduct traveler inspections on the Mexican side of Veteran’s International Bridge in Brownsville, Texas. He would wave through stolen vehicles for his associates connected to the Gulf Cartel. Guzman would receive $150 per stolen vehicle that made it through his inspection area, and he told investigators he would see between five and six vehicles per day. The man told investigators that he had been coordinating the crossing of vehicles with two men who hired him, court documents revealed.

During the investigation, authorities found photographs of stolen vehicles on Guzman’s phone, which he would use to identify which vehicles to watch out for and allow to cross.

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Go Figure: Walgreens CEO Admits Locking Up Merchandise Makes It Hard To Sell

What genius retail executive mind could have figured this one out – that locking up merchandise in stores actually makes its more difficult for honest, paying customers to get to, and buy what they want?

Walgreens – facing a significant drop in year-over-year earnings – just announced plans to close 450 more stores nationwide, according to Futurism/The Byte. These closures exhibit the broader challenges faced by Walgreens.

Efforts to curb “shrink” — losses from theft or fraud — included increased security measures, such as locking merchandise in containers requiring staff assistance at Walgreens.

However, these measures proved ineffective and counterproductive, frustrating customers.

CEO Tim Wentworth said on the company’s earning’s call: “It is a hand-to-hand combat battle still, unfortunately.”

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‘Everyone does it’: media pilfering from Air Force One prompts clampdown

A White House staffer recently met a reporter for a covert assignment by the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square.

But the House of Cards-esque rendezvous was not staged to hand over state secrets, or leak presidential gossip, or even to spread dirt on Joe Biden’s opponents. The item handed over – an embroidered pillowcase from Air Force One – was handed back, by the reporter involved.

So said Politico, reporting an attempt to clamp down on theft of branded items from the presidential plane.

The meeting by the Jackson statue, Politico said, came about after US air force crew members alerted the White House travel office that a west coast trip in early February ended with “several [items] missing from the press cabin”.

An email went out, described by one of no less than six anonymous sources as saying: “Hey, if you inadvertently wound up taking something off the plane by mistake, we can help facilitate a quiet return.”

The reporter who took the pillowcase had done so “probably not by accident”, Politico said. And so the meeting was arranged, the item “changed hands, and that was that”.

According to Politico, the White House press pack has long seen Air Force One as a source of souvenirs.

One unnamed current White House reporter said: “On my first flight, the person next to me was like, ‘You should take that glass.’ They were like, ‘Everyone does it.’”

Several unnamed sources, meanwhile, described to Politico a “former White House correspondent for a major newspaper” hosting a dinner party using “gold-rimmed Air Force One plates, evidently taken bit by bit over the course of some time”.

“Reporters recalled coming down the back stairs after returning to Joint Base Andrews in the evening with the sounds of clinking glassware or porcelain plates in their backpacks,” the site said.

Nor is such light-fingeredness a new phenomenon.

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These Are The Most Prevalent Forms Of Cyber Crime

Owed in part to the pandemic-induced increased shift from offline to online, cyber attacks have become a lucrative avenue for criminals in recent years. 

As Florian Zandt reports, Statista experts estimate global losses of $7.1 trillion in 2022 compared to 2019’s $1.2 trillion, with crypto exchange and protocol hacks by prolific groups like the state-affiliated North Korean hacking team Lazarus dramatically increasing in the years 2021 and 2022 according to Chainalysis. While the number of hacks and the damage caused has been on a constant uptick, the types of cyber attacks have shifted dramatically in the past five years.

In 2017, roughly 42 percent of recorded cyber crimes were connected to non-payment or non-delivery.

This category includes purchases made via fraudulent online stores that never materialize and promised payments never arriving.

Personal data breaches and phishing scams constituted an additional 28 percent, while identity theft, credit card fraud and other cyber attacks had a relatively low share in all reported cyber crimes.

Five years later, phishing has become the most prevalent cyber attack. This past year, more than half of criminal online activity was connected to this long-running type of cyber crime.

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FBI Hit With Lawsuits After Allegedly Losing Hundreds of Thousands in Rare Coins During Raid

A pair of Americans, who had their property taken following a raid by the FBI, are now alleging that the organization lost or stole their property.

In March 2021, the FBI raided U.S. Private Vaults, a company based in Beverly Hills, seizing property from at least two people, Don Mellein and Jeni Pearsons.

After they prevailed in court the first time, the FBI agreed to return their property, but both clients discovered that some of their property was missing, and suspected that some of their valuables were either stolen by the FBI or lost in the chaos of the raid. 

This has prompted yet another pair of lawsuits, launched on Friday by the nonprofit law firm Institute for Justice. 

“All we know is that their property was in a box and safe before the FBI broke into the box,” Joe Gay, an attorney with Institute for Justice, told Fox News. “Once the FBI broke into the box, we honestly don’t know exactly what happened.”

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Rep. Ayanna Pressley says black and Latinx commuters ‘are disproportionately criminalized by fare evasion policies’

Rep. Ayanna Pressley popped up on Twitter Saturday to urge Congress to pass her Freedom to Move Act, which would “grant Black and brown riders the freedom to navigate their community without fear.” Apparently, black and Latinx commuters are hardest hit by “fare evasion policies.” It was back in 2019 when fellow squad member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made a similar point, tweeting that “arresting people who can’t afford a $2.75 fare makes no one safer and destabilizes our community.” We suspect no one was arrested for not being able to afford subway fare; our suspicion is that the arrests had more to do with not paying one’s subway fare.

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Tennessee lawmaker used federal funds to pay for wedding, lavish lifestyle, feds say

A Tennessee state senator was charged with swindling $600,000 in federal funds to pay for her wedding and finance a lavish lifestyle, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday.

From 2015 to 2019, state Sen. Katrina Robinson is accused of stealing the money that was granted to The Healthcare Institute — a company she directed, according to prosecutors.

In addition to covering her wedding costs, Robinson, a Democrat from a Memphis district elected in 2018, is charged with using the funds to pay for her honeymoon and pay legal fees for her divorce, the feds charge.

With the stolen money the lawmaker also paid for her daughter’s 2016 Jeep Renegade, home improvements, a $500 Louis Vuitton handbag and invested in a snow cone business run by her children, prosecutors and the FBI said.

Robinson was charged with theft, embezzlement and wire fraud.

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