thecrimeshop

2019-09-16

Pigeon Shits on Lawmaker Sending Message Suggesting Lawmaker Shut It

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Pigeon Poop Station – Chicago

Cristal M Clark

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As it turns out, Pigeon’s don’t dig it when you talk smack about them shitting everywhere.

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Democratic state Rep. Jaime Andrade was discussing the problem of pigeon shit everywhere in Chicago’s poop station with a reporter when a pigeon overheard and took offense thus doing a fly by and shitting on said lawmaker, “Oh, did I just get… No, I didn’t… I did, didn’t I? I got a little bit,” after feeling the bird shit on his head. “I’ll just have to go clean up. … That’s what happens to my constituents. They get shit on all time.”

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I’m surprised Trump hasn’t been delightfully tweeting about this or maybe he and the offending pigeon are partners in crime?

Rep Jamie Andrade has been attempting to address the situation at the station by suggesting things like installing a hose line for power washing because the sidewalks are literally covered in pigeon shit and feathers, which could if left unchecked can cause a health hazard.

In cases you’d like to visit, poop station is a Chicago Transit Authority stop located at Irving Park Blue Line station.

Just be sure to take an umbrella.

Cristal M Clark

2019-09-15

Florida Man Creates Fake International Court

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Lee County, Florida

Cristal M Clark

45-year-old Randal Rosado created the “International Court of Commerce,” a little something he created all on his own back in 2016. I have to ask, I know criminals can sometimes be brazen but who on earth would create an International Court?

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Randal as it turns out has a long history of duping people out of money, his criminal plotting and scheming started back in 2009, when he had been helping short sell a property in foreclosure, and instead Randal decided to rent it out and pocket the proceeds. Randal subsequently transferred the property to his name.

Jump ahead to 2016 Randal decided to send some packages to various individuals associated with the Lee County Circuit Courts. The packages had been delivered to the private residences of the clerk, her husband, a circuit court judge and 6 other attorneys, all of the packages contained fraudulent legal documents claiming they owed him tens of millions of dollars, totaling over $2.5 million.

This guy has some balls for sure.

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In court documents, investigators explained how a widening entanglement of real estate transactions and fake court filings revealed a broader conspiracy to undermine U.S. government institutions. According to investigator Robert Nichols, “This investigation began with homeowners who failed to meet their mortgage obligations being accused of filing frivolous lawsuits or liens against real property with the intent to defraud and harass everyone involved in the foreclosure process. The tactics and philosophies taken by these homeowners were identified as part of the “Sovereign Citizen” movement. Their intent is to intimidate law enforcement, courts, government officials, as well as the financial institutions.”

Under this anti-government movement, Sovereign Citizens “convene their own special courts,” such as the one referenced in the deliveries to court officials ostensibly sent from the “International Court of Commerce.” Sovereign Citizens do not recognize, Municipal, City, State, County and Federal Laws.

So capitalizing on this, Randal would issue his own fake yet realistic looking indictments and arrest warrants. In letters he wrote: “I am a PRIVATE Citizen of the Florida Republic Union state and… have not waived any of my constitutionally protected YAHWEH (G-D) GIVEN rights secured under the national and state constitutions of this country.”

The false documents also named an attorney which lent credibility to the documents. But, the attorney named as the preparer of the false documents identified himself as part of a law firm called the Reichmann Group. On the firm’s website, a disclaimer at the bottom reads: “The Reichmann Group is not a public law firm or a member of any state’s private Bar Association.”

Randal would use fictitious names and companies to commit the crimes and to deceive clients into believing he was using the findings of an International Court yet in the end it was really just Randal Rosado utilizing his own personal make believe court so that he could commit the crime of financial fraud.

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Turns out hiding behind Sovereign Citizenship doesn’t really mean a lot, Ronaldo was sentenced to 40 years in state prison.

Cristal M Clark

2019-09-10

Denver – Charge Customers Who Use Plastic Bags

Denver-City-Council-Crimeshop

Denver City Council Not Telling You the Full Story

Cristal M Clark

Yesterday I heard that the Denver Colorado City Council is currently deciding whether or not they want to charge consumers extra for using plastic bags. They tried this back in 2013 and it never passed.

Yesterday I saw quite a few social media posts asking the city to figure out a way to actually create affordable living again in Denver rather than worry about charging its citizens for using plastic bags.

One Comment read: “Maybe instead of worrying about how you can get more money out of your residents you can figure out how to get the costs of apartments lowered to a more reasonable price.”

Another read: “You are building all this so called “affordable housing” that isn’t available to the working class and you want to charge us more just to live and shop in this city? Open up that so called “affordable housing” to the working class before asking us to pay more just to live here!”

Another read: “What a huge waste of time. We have bigger issues in Denver than plastic bags the city can’t figure out how to recycle, now they want to penalize us?”

“I’m a business owner they created a piece of paper that has to be filled out for tax exempt sales in the city which they will never verify because everyone filling the paper out is another city, government, hospital, school or church which they never audit, I fill it out or get charged the tax which I have to recoup from my customer and now you want me to tell my customers you are going to charge more for the use of a plastic bag for the auto parts I sell? I’m already losing business in Denver over taxes and all the paperwork my customers and I now have to fill out, now you want us to haggle over a plastic bag? I own a auto part store how many of those are in the next town over with less hassle, taxes and extra fees for a plastic bag?”

“I agree and don’t agree theirs a time and a place for this sort of thing and this is not California. I have to pay a fee to park my car at home if I want to park on the street, it’s called a permit, I pay extra fee’s just for living in Denver city limits outside of that in addition to the fees I pay when I shop here, now they want more? What a joke.”

“I’ll pay the fee when they offer real affordable housing to all not just welfare recipients.”

What City Council is not telling you is that when you do not use plastic bags currently, retail outlets actually do give you a discount for either re-using them or bringing your own cloth/paper bags. So do retailers really want to charge even more for the plastic bags than they already do? Do they? The cost of living is more than wages in Denver, now City Council wants to add more to the cost of living? And no it’s not much but at some point voters start looking at being nickeled and dimed by a city or municipality in terms of fees for just about anything.

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The issue with recycling plastic bags is not even a consumer issue, it’s a recycling plant issue.

Yes, you read that right, this is a recycling issue that has nothing to do with consumers.

The argument according to the city council is simply, most of our plastic trash bags just end up as litter because they damage the machinery at recycling facilities, meaning even if you are throwing them into your recycling bin, they are not, in fact being recycled which…excuse me if I am wrong here sort of defeats part of the purpose of having recycling in the first place because here in Denver, we cannot put those plastic bags into our purple bins.

Sounds a lot like a recycling facility issue to me rather than a consumer issue. I mean if you are going to have a recycling facility one would think you would also figure out just how to recycle those plastic shopping bags, we have been using them for over a decade now.

So what is the city going to do with that money? Develop a way to actually recycle those plastic bags or waste it elsewhere?

My guess is they really have no intention of allocating such an extra tax other than to put it into some fund of waste, which has nothing to do with recycling.

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Charge the recycling plants who can’t seem to actually recycle this plastic instead of the consumer, some of us when we forget our cloth bags actually do re-use those plastic bags for other purposes before just tossing them out.

OR urge stores to stop offering them period.

Yes recycling and the environment is a huge love affair currently, Denver City Council has more important things they should be focusing on currently, rather than penalizing consumers for an issue that a so called recycling plant cannot deal with, how is that our fault, most of us don’t own a recycling plant.

Cristal M Clark

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2019-09-09

Millennials Blamed for White Claw Shortage – Leaving Nation in a Panic?

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Millennials and White Claw

Cristal M Clark

Not sure if any of you have tried White Claw yet or not, if you haven’t you might have to wait a while because the nation is facing a shortage of it currently.

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White Claw which is which is owned by the makers Mike’s Hard Lemonade, was actually launched back in 2016 but, just this year took the nation by storm leaving many scratching their heads. A lot of my friends have tried them and cannot stand them, they tell me the flavor is hideous after the first couple of sips. I’ve tried them and while I don’t hate them, I also wouldn’t choose to drink them again, the after taste is a reminder of artificial sweetener.

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Labor Day Weekend took a bite out of the company apparently and now the nation is facing a shortage leaving the fans of the popular drink at a loss. Many mainstream media outlets have been reporting that the shortage has Millennials freaking the hell out over the shortage.

I have yet to see any rioting over the shortage.

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Leading industry experts are also blaming the issue on Millennials who they say cannot cope with life, kids and need to self medicate every night. I heard a brief blurb on the way home today on a talk radio show where the experts were claiming that now that Millennials are having kids they cannot cope with being parents so they are going home every night and drinking in excess in front of their kids without caring about the impression that leaves.

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I’m a little shocked by this honestly, I mean is there nothing we won’t blame Millennials for? They are called entitled, spoiled, wasteful…What’s more is that I have more friends near my age, with multiple DUI’s, who continue to drink and drive and who drink every day in an effort to self medicate compared to what I have seen come from your average group of Millennials.

The point being is alcoholism or drinking every day is not just a Millennial thing, we have multiple generations who partake in the fine art of drinking on a daily basis for a multitude of reasons, most of the very same reasons some experts are saying cause Millennials to drink every day.

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In any case, folks don’t panic, White Claw will soon be restocked at a store near you according to the company’s senior vice president Sanjiv Gajiwalaof: “We are working around the clock to increase supply given the rapid growth in consumer demand, White Claw has accelerated faster than anyone could have predicted.”

Cristal M Clark

2019-09-08

Digital Textbooks Now Offer Malware and Viruses

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Back to School Woes

Cristal M Clark

We love digital anything, news, magazines, textbooks and essays. Kaspersky Labs is now alerting college students to be on the lookout for malware and viruses in some pretty unlikely places.

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According to research conducted by Kaspersky Labs has shown that it’s not just illegal movie and software downloads that are riddled with viruses, but educational materials, as well.

Due to the high cost of textbooks even digital one’s cash strapped students look online for less costly alternatives and that is when students looking to save a few bucks end up paying even more than they originally bargained for.

Kaspersky scanned school and student related filenames to then determine the number of times viruses had been downloaded by users.

This should not come as a huge shock, Kaspersky discovered that in the past academic year, there were 356,000 cases of attack attempts, malware and viruses trying to infect the users computer.

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The majority of the examples found came happened to from essays, with 233,00 instances of them being downloaded by more than 74,000 users and more often than not, when essays were downloaded students didn’t just download one at a time of course.

Textbooks came in second, with 122,000 registered attack attempts. Among them, English textbooks were the most likely to have an infection, followed by maths and literature. Subjects such as natural sciences and foreign languages were also found to harbor viruses but not as many.

While it’s easy to tell students not to download less costly alternatives, the reality is unless the cost of textbooks, essays and other needed digital materials for students is lowered to more reasonable prices, they are going to continue to run the risk of downloading infected files.

Hopefully, the news encourages students to download antivirus software and double and triple check the site they intend to download from.

May your back to school year start off with no malware.

Cristal M Clark

2019-09-03

CEO Duped By Scammer

Deepfake Scammers Step it Up

Cristal M Clark

In case you haven’t heard one of the newest trends used by scammers is called Deepfake, From Wikipedia: “Deepfake (a portmanteau of “deep learning” and “fake”) is a technique for human image synthesis based on artificial intelligence. It is used to combine and superimpose existing images and videos onto source images or videos using a machine learning technique known as generative adversarial network.”

Until recently, Deepfakes have been used to spread propaganda, pornography, fake news, fake press conferences, memes, jokes, you name it Deepfakes are used for pretty much any type of scam you could dream up, using mostly images and video.

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In this particular case however, a scammer was able to Deepfake a CEO’s voice and trick him into transferring $243,000. Here’s how it played out, the CEO of an unidentified energy firm based in the UK thought he was taking a call from his boss, another CEO who is his businesses’ parent company CEO which is based in Germany.

The caller whose voice sounded familiar told him to send $243,000 (€220,000) to a Hungarian supplier within the hour. So that’s what the guy did.

The money was reportedly sent to a Hungarian bank account, moved to an account in Mexico, and then magically distributed to various other locations. Oddly, no suspects have been identified.

The scammer also happened to call the victim company three times. Once the transfer occurred, the scammer called a second time to falsely claim that the money had been reimbursed. Then the scammer apparently called a third time to ask for another payment. Even though the same fake voice was used, the last call was made with an Austrian phone number and the “reimbursement” had not gone through, but due to the number of calls and the Austrian number the victim felt something was not quite right.

According to a report over at the Wall Street Journal, the firms insurance company Euler Hermes Group said that this is a first for them as they have never dealt with a client who had been duped using AI mimicry. After an investigation they learned that the victim recognized his superior’s voice because it had a hint of a German accent and the same “melody.”

This is not the first news of this type of technology though, back in May the AI company Dessa released a simulation of the podcaster Joe Rogan’s voice that was a pretty damn near-perfect replica. In fact, the replica was so similar to the real thing that a longtime listener would have difficulty distinguishing between Joe Rogan and “Joe Fauxgan.”

Because this technology is readily commercially available, companies and firms are going to have to develop protocols in an effort to prevent money transfers such as this one, and those protocols need to be kept strictly confidential and change often just in case.

Until then, if someone dial’s you up at work, sounds like your boss and tells you to transfer a large sum of money, it would be best to make sure that the request is legitimate.

Sooner or later, being able to replicate anyone’s voice will be just like blinking one’s eyes.

Cristal M Clark

2019-09-02

Avast and Police Kill 850,000 Malware Infections

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Avast and French Police Outsmart Botnet Creators

Cristal M Clark

The Retadup malware infects computers and starts mining cryptocurrency by sapping power from a computer’s processor. The malware was used to generate money and the malware operators could also run other malicious code, such as spyware and/or ransomware. The malware also comes with a bonus, wormable properties, allowing it to spread from computer to computer.

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Since its birth, the cryptocurrency mining malware has spread across the world, including the U.S., Russia, and Central and South America.

Sounds a lot like a nightmare for any infected computer, yet French police managed to hijack and neutralized a massive cryptocurrency mining botnet that controlled close to a million infected computers. Security firm Avast confirmed that the operation was quite successful.

Avast discovered a design flaw in the malware’s command and control server. That flaw, if properly exploited, would have “allowed us to remove the malware from its victims computers without pushing any code to victims computers,” according to researchers at Avast.

Sadly, Avast did not have the proper legal authority to exploit the flaw considering it would have involved them manipulating end users computers without their permission and I am not referring to the bad guys, I am referring to individuals such as you or myself. So Avast did the next best thing, they contacted French authorities because the malwares infrastructure seemed to live and breath in France.

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So after obtaining the right authorization in July, Avast and French police took control of the server and disinfect affected computers.

This take-down ended in perfect fashion however had the authors of the malware realized what had been happening they could have pushed ransomware to hundreds of thousands of computers while still attempting to profit from the malware before the take-down.

Researchers built their own replica of the malware since they now had a copy of it, which disinfected victim computers instead of causing infections. Avast amazingly stopped the malware from operating and removed the malicious code to over 850,000 infected computers.

Remotely shutting down a malware botnet is a rare and difficult feat to achieve, my hats off to the Avast and the French Police.

Cristal M Clark

2019-08-27

This Week’s Black Supermoon

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Friday August 30, 2019

Cristal M Clark

If you look at your calendar, you’ll most likely see that this Friday marks a new moon, but this Friday’s moon is much more than just a new moon.

The new moon occurs Aug. 30, at 6:37 a.m. EDT (10:37 GMT), just a few hours before the moon reaches perigee, the closest point in its orbit to Earth. When the moon reaches perigee on or around the same day as a full moon, it is commonly referred to as a “supermoon.” That’s because it appears slightly larger and brighter than usual due to its closer proximity to Earth. However, the “super” new moon for all you moon gazers won’t be visible in the night sky. Because this new moon is the second new moon in a single calendar month, it will also be a “Black Moon” in some parts of the world. While the Western Hemisphere had a Black Moon on July 31, the Eastern Hemisphere will have theirs on Aug. 30.

The sun and moon both influence the height of the tides and this Black Moon on Friday will cause a perigean spring tide because both the sun and the moon will on the same side. And that River that is going to flow backwards? That would be the River Severn in the U.K. known as the “Severn Bore.” A tidal bore is when a wave travels up a river in the “wrong” direction, against the current. Here, the tidal range is the second highest in the world and it’s common for a wave to flow backwards. However, only just after a supermoon is it possible to see up to and possibly over a 10-meter wave and it could cause flooding in Gloucestershire.

Not all of us will see the new Super Moon this week, our next chance however is right around the corner when a “secret supermoon” happens September 28 that will lead to an even bigger tidal bore.

Until then, happy moon gazing.

Cristal M Clark