Last month, the FBI created a national online database to finally start coordinating law enforcement reports about "swatting" attacks nationwide, NBC News reported yesterday.
Swatting is a form of domestic terrorism that is sometimes deadly and has become more widespread in the US, according to a March report from Hal Berghel, a computer science professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Berghel's report defined swatting as:
A malicious act that involves making fraudulent 911 calls to cause emergency response teams, such as law enforcement special weapons and tactics teams, or SWAT teams (thatโs where the gerundโs root comes from), to react forcefully to a nonexistent public threat.
Scott Schubert, of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services, told NBC News that the database will help combat the growing swatting problem by facilitating "information sharing between hundreds of police departments and law enforcement agencies across the country pertaining to swatting incidents."
In a decrepit house in Sรฃo Paulo lives a woman who many people call a bruxa (the witch). As a blockbuster Brazilian podcast recently revealed, Margarida Maria Vicente de Azevedo Bonetti is wanted by U.S. authorities for her treatment of a maid named Hilda Rosa dos Santos, whom Margarida and her husband more or less enslaved in the Washington, D.C. area:
In early 1998โ19 years after moving to the United Statesโdos Santos left the Bonettis, aided by a neighbor sheโd befriended, Vicki Schneider. Schneider and others helped arrange for dos Santos to stay in a secret location, according to testimony Schneider later gave in court. (Schneider declined to be interviewed for this story.) The FBI and the Montgomery County adult services agency began a months-long investigation.
When social worker Annette Kerr arrived at the Bonetti home in April 1998โshortly after dos Santos had movedโshe was stunned. Sheโd handled tough cases before, but this was different. Dos Santos lived in a chilly basement with a large hole in the floor covered by plywood. There was no toilet, Kerr, now retired, said in a recent interview, pausing often to regain her composure, tears welling in her eyes. (Renรช Bonetti later acknowledged in court testimony that dos Santos lived in the basement, as well as confirmed that it had no toilet or shower and had a hole in the floor covered with plywood. He told jurors that dos Santos could have used an upstairs shower but chose not to do so.)
Dos Santos bathed using a metal tub that she would fill with water she hauled downstairs in a bucket from an upper floor, Kerr said, flipping through personal notes that she has kept all these years. Dos Santos slept on a cot with a thin mattress she supplemented with a discarded mat sheโd scavenged in the woods. An upstairs refrigerator was locked so she could not open it.
โI couldnโt believe that would take place in the United States,โ Kerr said.
During Kerrโs investigation, dos Santos recounted regular beatings sheโd received from Margarida Bonetti, including being punched and slapped and having clumps of her hair pulled out and fingernails dug into her skin. She talked about hot soup being thrown in her face. Kerr learned that dos Santos had suffered a cut on her leg while cleaning up broken glass that was left untreated so long it festered and emitted a putrid smell.
Sheโd also lived for years with a tumor so large that doctors would later describe it variously as the size of a cantaloupe or a basketball. It turned out to be noncancerous.
Sheโd had โno voiceโ her whole life, Kerr concluded, โno rights.โ Traumatized by her circumstances, dos Santos was โextremely passiveโ and โfearful,โ Kerr said. Kerr had no doubt she was telling the truth. She was too timid to lie.ย
Last month, a declassified FBI report revealed that the bureau had used Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to conduct multiple unlawful searches of a sitting Congress memberโs personal communications. Wired was the first to report the abuse, but for weeks, no one knew exactly which lawmaker was targeted by the FBI. That changed this week when Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.) revealed during an annual House Intelligence Committee hearing on world threats that the FBIโs abuse of 702 was โin factโ aimed at him.
โThis careless abuse by the FBI is unfortunate,โ LaHood said at the hearing, suggesting that the searches of his name not only โdegrades trust in FISAโ but was a โthreat to separation of powersโ in the United States. Calling the FBIโs past abuses of Section 702 โegregious,โ the congressmanโwho is leading the House Intelligence Committee's working group pushing to reauthorize Section 702 amid a steeply divided Congressโsaid that โironically,โ being targeted by the FBI gives him a โunique perspectiveโ on โwhatโs wrong with the FBI.โ
LaHood has said that having his own Fourth Amendment rights violated in ways others consider โfrighteningโ positions him well to oversee the working group charged with implementing bipartisan reforms and safeguards that would prevent any such abuses in the future.
Surprise! The FBI has been involved in warrantless surveillance! But that's not particularly surprising; we've known that for a while now (even in some pundits like to pretend as if it's absolutely unprecedented when the FBI occasionally stops monitoring Muslims, Black rights, and environmental activists and turns their attention to money laundering networks surrounding right-wing politicians). โ Read the rest
Last September, a longtime Las Vegas journalist named Jeff German was shot and killed. The person charged in his death is a public official German investigated. There were other investigations German hadnโt completed when he was murdered, including one about a Ponzi scheme. Reporter Lizzie Johnson picked up where he left off, reporting a story about a scam that, as scams so often do, enriched a few at the expense of many:
Jager had told Mabeus about the opportunity to make money in August 2019, during a couples trip to Mexico, she said. She felt flattered to be included.
โWe were a little nervous, but we trusted him,โ Mabeus said. โBecause we were friends and belonged to the same church, the red flags were heart-shaped. I was like, โWow. We are really lucky to be involved in this investment.โโ
The next month, she and her husband wired over $140,000. Ninety days later, the first interest payment of $18,000 arrived, right on time. The couple continued adding money, until they reached a total of $680,000, she said.
โThere was never a hiccup,โ Mabeus said. โMy bishop was involved and invested, and so were my closest friends. A lot of people were told to keep it quiet.โ
When she and her husband, a former Major League Baseball pitcher who worked for a medical device company, divorced in June 2021, Mabeus agreed to take the investment as alimony. She planned to rely on the dividends, along with child support payments, to remain at home with her daughter and three sons. A former elementary school teacher, she hadnโt worked for 13 years.
Now, Mabeus hung up the phone, horrified.
She tried to call Jager. No answer.
โWord is spreading like wildfire,โ Mabeus remembered. โPeople are texting left and right. No one is getting responses.โ
Maybe it was all a big misunderstanding, she thought. She told herself that sheโd know for sure the next day, when the quarterly interest payment was scheduled to hit her bank account.
But when Friday arrived, the money didnโt. All her savings, Mabeus realized, were gone.
ABC News reports that Charles McGonigal, a former FBI agent in a senior counterintelligence role, was arrested over suspicions he helped a Russian billionaire violate sanctions.
โ Read the restHe was arrested Saturday afternoon after he arrived at JFK Airport following travel in Sri Lanka, the sources said.
Alex Gibney's 2007 Oscar-winning documentary, Taxi To the Dark Side, first revealed how the FBI, CIA, and the military, with the knowledge of elected officials and security agents of the state, while also deceiving leaders, kidnapped and tortured innocent people in military prisons and black sites. โ Read the rest