#organized-crime

#organized-crime

The cartel said it was seizing the store, which would only be allowed to sell online outside the state. That was in early 2022, when vapes were still legal in Mexico, a market worth $1.5 billion. But earlier this month, the country banned the sale - although not the use - of electronic cigarettes. Experts believe organized crime will now consolidate its control over the sale of the devices.

The Chinese government has executed 11 members of the Ming family crime syndicate. This comes after investigations into the criminal empire uncovered "intentional homicide, intentional injury, illegal detention, fraud, and operating gambling dens", as well as other penalties. In the announcement, which has been translated, the Supreme People's Court has confirmed that the group, led by Ming Guoping and Ming Zhenzhen, working alongside the "telecommunications fraud syndicate" led by other members, had conspired or committed various crimes.

He was writing from hell, 8,000 miles away. A summer shower had left a rainbow over my Brooklyn neighborhood, and my two children were playing in a kiddie pool on the roof of our apartment building. Now the sun was setting, while I-in typical 21st-century parenting fashion, forgive me-compulsively scrolled through every app on my phone. The message had no subject line and came from an address on the encrypted email service Proton Mail: "vaultwhistle@proton.me." I opened it.

In February 2023, an article in the Mexican press announced the capture of a vessel some 195 nautical miles from the port of Lazaro Cardenas in the state of Michoacan. It had been carrying nearly 700 pounds of cocaine packaged in plastic-wrapped bricks, in addition to 1,650 liters of hydrocarbons in 33 plastic containers. Two Ecuadorian fishermen were among the five detainees, and their immigration records showed unusual activity.

largest ever operation

Our hope is that later this year, with bringing some stability with Venezuela, with some help from American assistance, commercial help - no money from our government, no subsidies - but by getting a more stable business environment, we'll see growing production out of Venezuela that'll increase dramatically,

Hannah Beech, a New York Times reporter, gained rare access to one of Myanmar's notorious cyberscam centers to see how Chinese criminals have been targeting Americans in the middle of a war zone. Holy moly. Look at these phones. The floor is just littered with SIM cards. We're in Myanmar. Only weeks after rebel fighters took control of a cyberscam center near the border with Thailand.

It accuses the captured Venezuelan leader of running a state-sponsored drug terror network for years. Maduro, it says, collaborated with the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua, which now operates throughout Latin America, as well as with the Colombian FARC guerrilla group and the Mexican Sinaloa cartel, to smuggle cocaine into the US and enrich himself personally. The indictment described Venezuela as being systematically developed into a hub for international cocaine trafficking, with state aircraft and even the presidential hangar being used to transport cocaine.

Trump administration officials announced a sprawling probe into benefits fraud across California on Friday, citing what they called a massive, coordinated effort by "foreign actors" to fleece government healthcare to the tune of billions of dollars. The crackdown appeared to center on bogus hospice providers first exposed by The Times in 2020 and later investigated by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta. "Eighteen percent of the whole country's home healthcare billing is coming out of Los Angeles County - how is that possible?" said Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. "It's about $3.5 billion just in L.A. County for hospice and home healthcare."

His career is, in itself, a map of both the transformation and the limitations of states in the face of organized crime: he played a key role in the downfall of Colombia's major cartels in the 1990s; led the intelligence services during the moments of greatest threat to his country; spearheaded police reforms that professionalized criminal investigations; and, as vice president, participated in the construction of peace agreements that marked a turning point in Colombia's recent history.

But this is not the first time Rocha has been the subject of the authorities' interest. The businessman, with a lavish track record in the corporate world and in the import and export of hydrocarbons in Mexico, is wanted for his involvement in a fuel, weapons, and drug smuggling ring originating in Guatemala that connects him to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Mexico City-based cartel La Union Tepito.

Eric Halem, a former LAPD officer, and Gabby Ben, alleged by prosecutors to have 'ties to the Israeli mafia,' were denied bail Friday. The two men are accused of pretending to serve a police search warrant and using threats of violence to coerce a teenager into emptying a digital wallet full of cryptocurrency. Both have pleaded not guilty. Halem's attorney said her client faces danger in jail: 'He worries he is going to be killed because he was a cop.' One night last December, six men met at a home in the Hollywood Hills to plot a kidnapping, prosecutors say.

Using apartments in the San Fernando Valley and Glendale area, a shadowy group of identity thieves has been quietly exploiting a new kind of victim - foreign scholars who left the U.S. years ago but whose Social Security numbers still linger in American databases, according to a cybercrime expert. Criminals are resurrecting these dormant identities and submitting hundreds of applications for bank accounts and credit cards, says David Maimon, head of fraud insights at SentiLink and a criminology professor at Georgia State University.

Ammar Awawdeh, 34, played a key role in the sprawling plot to run the sprawling rigged poker scheme, the feds allege, operating one of the crooked games out of 80 Washington Place, a Greenwich Village townhouse where rapper Travis Scott and Kylie Jenner reportedly once lived that sold for $17 million in 2024. The conspiracy used Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and former Cleveland Cavaliers player and coach Damon Jones to draw in big-money players to underground poker games.

The police operation that left an unprecedented trail of death in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday (121, according to the latest official count) is already the subject of furious political debate, even though the fallen officers have only just been buried and many mothers in the favelas are still anxiously waiting to locate or identify their sons. Public safety has thus become a key issue in the lead-up to Brazil's presidential elections in a year's time.

Players are trying their best to win; the games are on the level. If you lose that, if the games are fixed or the players are motivated by something other than the competition, the whole thing collapses. (This is why sports gambling was banned for nearly 100 years after the Black Sox scandal; it was understood by everyone involved, until very recently, that players and coaches gambling on their own games was sports' third rail.) There's no reason to watch a game you can't believe

Poker chip trays that can secretly read cards. Glasses that can detect card markings. Rigged underground games run by the New York mafia. NBA figures exchanging insider information as part of illegal betting schemes. These are some of the wild allegations filed in two criminal complaints this week by federal prosecutors in one of the most sweeping and sensational betting scandals in recent professional sports history.

The Louvre, it turns out-at least certain nooks of the ancient former palace-is something like an anopticon: a place where no one is observed. The world now knows what the four thieves (two burglars and two accomplices) realized as recently as last week: The museum's Apollo Gallery, which housed the stolen items, was monitored by a single outdoor camera angled away from its only exterior point of entry, a balcony.