By Xeni Jardin at 9:47 pm Monday, May 21
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Well this is rich. NBC Bay Area reports that Thomas Langenbach, identified as a VP at SAP's Palo Alto Integration and Certification Center, has been charged with four felony counts of burglary over ill-gotten LEGOs.
Authorities say the German software engineer generated his own fake bar codes, printed stickers with them, then slapped those cheaper bar codes over more expensive kits. And then, it is alleged, he sold that hugely-discounted LEGO loot on eBay for a profit.
Stealing and reselling LEGO on eBay is a thing! Back in 2005, Mark blogged about a guy from Reno, Nevada who pulled the same scam with phony DIY bar codes, and made off with $200K worth of stuff. Back in 2008, Boing Boing covered the story of a man in West Palm Beach, Florida who ripped off $42K worth with an even simpler method. And there are more similar cases.
Read the rest
By Cory Doctorow at 6:00 am Friday, May 11
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The Verge's Joseph L. Flatley delves into the world of Internet marketing scams (those stupid spam pitches you get for "lead generation" and such) in eye-watering detail. Fundamentally, these things are exactly what they appear to be: con artists who suck money out of desperate people by lying to them about the money they can make with "work from home" businesses. They're pyramid schemes. But Flatley lingers on the personalities, the histories, the motivations and the unique innovations that the Internet has given rise to, providing insight into the feel of being inside one of these desperate, sweaty scams.
If anything, Internet Marketing is a form of "pure marketing" that exists often without the complication of an actual product. Rather than develop something useful, Internet Marketers create something out of thin air: likely a worthless e-book, or some sort of coaching session that consists of a semi-regular phone consultation.
"Well, yeah," Dillon Miles said, a little uncomfortably, when asked about this. "I think there's a lot of that going around. There's a lot of people that will teach you how to make money. It's just, the thing is, like, an information product in that niche, is, I mean, how tangible is that information? What is someone going to do with what you tell them. Most people won't do anything with it. You know, 90% of the people who get that information product, really aren't going to do anything with it. It's no different than when our country tells people to go to college for, you know, eight years, four years, like I did and expect a job when they come out. And then there's no job.
It was hard to get him to stay focused. I couldn't tell if he was talented at deflecting this kind of criticism, or if he just couldn't follow a train of thought. Or maybe he felt bad about the whole thing and refused to think about it. When pressed, he would either offer a variation of the "it only works if you work it" language of Alcoholics Anonymous, or express his frustration at not being able to get a job. He repeatedly positioned his Internet Marketing materials as a replacement for college, or said that college is the real scam.
"I just want to make sure we're clear," I said towards the end of our conversation. "You said that this was no different than going to college, but then you said college was a rip-off. Is this [Internet Marketing info-products] a rip-off? Is that what you meant?
"Well, it could be. I mean, that depends on what the person thinks. I mean, the products we sell, you get a sixty-day, money-back guarantee. I don't remember the last college that gave me a money back guarantee. But I mean, it's all relative. Like, I try to put projects together that people find valuable, but information is such an intangible asset that it's hard to qualify."
Scamworld: 'Get rich quick' schemes mutate into an online monster
(via Waxy)
By Xeni Jardin at 6:26 pm Tuesday, May 8
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You probably thought we covered all possible scenarios of TSA stupidity in our recent round-up post.
You thought wrong.
Via MSNBC today, the story of Savannah Barry, a 16-year-old diabetic girl who says the TSA broke her insulin pump. Savannah was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes four years ago, and her pump is a specialized medical device that can cost up to $10,000 to replace, according to MSNBC.
Snip:
The Colorado teenager says TSA screeners forced her to go through a full-body scanner in Salt Lake City last week, breaking her $10,000 insulin pump in the process.
According to Sandra Barry, Savannah’s mother, her daughter was coming home from a school trip when screeners required to her to go through a full-body scanner despite the fact that the girl had a doctor’s note describing her condition and stating that she should be given a pat-down rather than subjected to screening machines.
“Believe me, being 16 and female, she probably doesn’t want the pat-down but she knows that this is what’s required,” Sandra Barry told msnbc.com. “She tried to advocate for herself and they just shut her down.”
Read the rest
By Xeni Jardin at 2:22 pm Monday, May 7
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Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones writes about a trove of new photographs documenting the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which released nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico two years ago.
In the midst of the disaster, BP and its contractors did everything they could to keep people from seeing the scale of the disaster. But new photos released Monday offer some new insight to just how grim the Gulf became for sea life.The images were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act Request that Greenpeace filed back in August 2010, asking for any communication related to endangered and threatened Gulf species. Now, many months later, Greenpeace received a response from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that included more than 100 photos from the spill, including many of critically endangered Kemp's Ridley sea turtles dead and covered in oil.
More photos and more about what they reveal at Mother Jones.
After we learned this week about how rotten the DEA and TSA are, we can also add Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the list of corrupt government entities: "James M. Woosley, former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) intelligence chief, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to an elaborate scam over several years involving false travel expense reports totaling nearly $600,000."
Today James Woosley became the fifth — and highest-ranking — individual to plead guilty as part of a series of fraud schemes among rogue employees and contractors at ICE,” said U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen said in a statement. “He abused his sensitive position of trust to fleece the government by submitting phony paperwork for and taking kickbacks from subordinates who were also on the take.”
(Via The Agitator) — Mark
An epic four-part documentary on the global financial crisis from PBS Frontline is
now available to view in entirety online.
— Xeni
By Xeni Jardin at 4:35 pm Wednesday, May 2
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Cue up the Yakity Sax! In case you missed it, there have been a number of Boing Boing posts of late documenting outrageous TSA incidents:
• A terminal in Newark airport was evacuated because the TSA forgot to screen a tiny baby.
• TSA agents discovered an "anomaly in the crotchital area" of a 79-year-old woman.
• TSA agents at JFK harassed the family of a 7-year-old girl with cerebral palsy and developmental disability.
• TSA screeners in LA ran a drug ring and took bribes from drug dealers.
• The TSA's anti-hugging squad caught a terrorist masquerading as a 4-year-old girl who loves her grandma.
• A 95-year-old US Air Force veteran from World War II and his 85-year-old friend were humiliated, searched and robbed at a San Diego TSA checkpoint.
Did we miss anything else in the past week or so? Let us know in the comments.
Photo: Carolina K. Smith, M.D. / Shutterstock.com
By Xeni Jardin at 1:02 pm Wednesday, May 2
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Via the BB Submitterator, BB reader rbrammer says:
The Sikh Coalition just released the FlyRights app. It’s a smart phone app that gives travelers who believe they’ve been the victim of discrimination by the TSA the ability to submit formal complaints directly from their smart phones.
You should have this on your phone the next time you fly!
Available for both Android and iOS. Makes perfect sense to me that a Sikh organization would be the one to put this together, given all of the idiot-hate that community has received post-9/11.
Justin Vincent chose a moving company based on positive Yelp reviews. Things did not work out well. "I spent 40 days without any furniture and quite a few of my belongings have been misplaced – forever." Turns out negative reviews were there, but suppressed.
Could smarter design have prevented this? (via @
blam)
— Xeni
By Xeni Jardin at 8:50 pm Wednesday, Apr 25
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The Transportation Security Administration launched the “TSA Cares” program to assist disabled fliers just four months ago, but a story making the rounds today proves that the TSA definitely does not. The Frank family was traveling from New York City's JFK airport to Florida, and were abruptly pulled aside after a dispute over how their 7-year-old daughter Dina was screened. The child is developmentally disabled and has cerebral palsy. She walks with crutches and leg braces.
Read the rest
By Xeni Jardin at 8:10 pm Wednesday, Apr 25
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Photo: Reuters. A man is screened with a backscatter x-ray machine at an LAX TSA checkpoint.
Four present and past security screeners at LAX took 22 payments of up to $2400 each to let large shipments of coke, meth, and pot slip through baggage X-ray machines. Oh, we are so very, very shocked.
In one incident detailed in the 40-page indictment (Link), screeners plotted to allow eight pounds of crystal meth to get through—then one of them ducked into an airport men's room where he was handed $600, the second payment for that delivery.
Read the rest
By Xeni Jardin at 7:50 pm Wednesday, Apr 25
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PHOTO: Snapshot by Lori Croft of her 4-year-old granddaughter Isabella Brademeyer, in Wichita, Kan., where she was a flower girl at her uncle’s wedding. The child was harassed by TSA goons on the way back from that family event, for the crime of hugging her granny.
Earlier this week on Boing Boing, Cory blogged about a 95-year-old Air Force veteran who was robbed of $300 at a TSA checkpoint. After picking on the elderly, today the TSA is bullying children. A 4-year-old girl who was upset during a TSA screening at the Wichita, KS airport was forced to undergo a manual pat-down after hugging her grandmother. Agents yelled at the child, and called her an uncooperative suspect.
Nope, we're not making this up.
The child's mom, Michelle Brademeyer of Montana, shared the incident in a public Facebook post last week, and the story has since spread widely.
“They didn’t explain anything and she did not know what was going on,” the grandmother told the Associated Press. “She saw people grabbing at her and raising their voices. To her, someone was trying to kidnap her or harm her in some way.”
Think the TSA has apologized? Nah. The agency is defending its agents, despite promised changes in operational standards to "reduce pat-downs of children."
Read the rest
By Cory Doctorow at 8:26 pm Monday, Apr 23
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Omer Petti is a 95-year-old USAF veteran with artificial knees and a heart condition. Madge Woodward, his partner, has an artificial hip. They recently flew home to Detroit from San Diego, and were humiliated and robbed at the San Diego airport TSA checkpoint. The metal in their bodies set off the TSA magnetometer, and Petti was instructed to put his $300 in cash in a bin. Then he was further detained when a swab detected the nitroglycerin residue from his heart pills. He and Woodward were subjected to humiliating patdowns, and then discovered that their $300 had gone missing. When Petti asked where his money had gone, the TSA agent required he and Woodward to remove their shoes again and empty out their pockets, and asked if they were "refusing his request" when they objected. The TSA manager checked the security footage, but reported that it was "too blurry" to see what had happened to the money. The two elderly people were loaded into their wheelchairs and taken to their plane at full tilt, barely making it. They never got their money back.
"Can you imagine an 85-year-old lady and 95-year-old retired Air Force Major in wheelchairs being treated like terrorists?" Petti asked recently sitting in the kitchen of the Bloomfield Township home he shares with Woodward.
On March 29 Petti and Woodward arrived at the San Diego International airport at 10 a.m. for a flight scheduled to leave at 11:36 a.m. As usual, Petti and Woodward removed their shoes, jackets and sweaters and put these along with their other belongings — belt buckles, carry on bags, purse and jewelry, including Petti's money clip — into a total of four rubber bins.
Petti says a security officer asked him to remove Kleenex and $300 in folded bills that he had in his pocket and send it through the detector. "I hesitated and said: 'You really want me to put my bills in there?' " Petti said. The officer said yes, so Petti put the cash into a fifth bin. Then he and Woodward proceeded through the metal detector.
Seniors get the TSA runaround, lose $300
(Thanks, ROSSINDETROIT!)
By Cory Doctorow at 4:05 pm Friday, Apr 20
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The Guardian's Esther Addley reports on the trial of Kelley Lynch, his former business-manager and lover who was convicted of stealing from him and leaving him penniless, who was ordered to pay $9.5M in restitution but didn't, and who then relentlessly stalked Cohen and harassed and threatened him. Lynch has been sentenced to 18 months in prison and 5 years probation for the stalking by a California judge.
Addley's account has Cohen behaving with admirable calm and dignity in the courtroom, even as his lawyers presented the jury with 10 binders full of threatening, crazy emails from his former manager. After the sentencing, Cohen cordially thanked the judge and even wished Lynch well, expressing his desire that she would "take refuge in the wisdom of her religion, that a spirit of understanding will convert her heart from hatred to remorse, from anger to kindness, from the deadly intoxication of revenge to the lowly practices of self-reform."
Cohen's post-ripoff story is remarkable. Penniless at nearly 70, Cohen moved into a Zen Buddhist monastery in California for five years, then emerged with a fantastic new album and a record-beating tour that netted him more than the $9.5M he was owed.
Addley's account of Cohen's courtroom behavior is just fabulous, a kind of parable about karmic justice and the power of positive emotion to trump life's miseries.
"I want to thank the court, in the person of your honour," Cohen told an LA county superior court judge, "for the cordial, even-handed and elegant manner in which these proceedings have unfolded. It was a privilege and an education to testify in this courtroom..."
"'Cohen is going to be hung,'" the singer drily told jurors at one point, "is not agreeable to hear..."
"I want to thank the defendant Ms Kelley Lynch for insisting on a jury trial, thus... allowing the court to observe her profoundly unwholesome, obscene and relentless strategies to escape the consequences of her wrongdoing," he said.
Leonard Cohen's poetic thanks as former manager and lover is jailed for harassment
By Cory Doctorow at 9:59 am Saturday, Mar 24
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Writing for Screen Trade Magazine Joe Paletta, CEO of Spotlight Theaters, announces that cinemas will begin to eliminate the premium charges on 3D movies and raise the prices of 2D movies to make up the difference. This gives me the rage. 3D movies give me a headache and eye-strain, and I actively avoid them. I hate the idea that I'd be charged a premium on the few 2D movies I can find in order to subsidize 3D screenings.
As Roger Ebert put it, "Oh, no! In a move to recoup their unwise investment in 3D, theaters discuss, and I quote, 'patrons will have a single price for both 2D and 3D films. 2D prices will increase and 3D prices will decrease.' In other words, punishing those who dislike 3D."
Among the bigger changes will probably see the 3D-upcharge disappear. 3D charges will help increase the overall ticket-price but, as an industry, I think we’ll see a blend begin to emerge in 2012, where patrons will have a single price for both 2D and 3D films. 2D prices will increase and 3D prices will decrease.
Joe Paletta - screentrade
(Image: 3D glasses, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from mattneale's photostream)
