PI Newswire

In what the U.S. authorities have called one of the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have seized the Web site Megaupload and charged seven people connected with it with running an international enterprise based on Internet piracy.

Megaupload, one of the most popular so-called locker services on the Internet, allowed users to transfer large files like movies and music anonymously. Media companies have long accused it of abetting copyright infringement on a vast scale. In a grand jury indictment, Megaupload is accused of causing $500 million in damages to copyright owners and of making $175 million by selling ads and premium subscriptions.

Four of the seven people, including the site’s founder, Kim Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz), were arrested Friday in New Zealand; the three others remain at large. Each of the seven people — who the indictment said were members of a criminal group it called Mega Conspiracy — is charged with five counts of copyright infringement and conspiracy. The charges could result in more than 20 years in prison.

As part of the crackdown, about 20 search warrants were executed in the United States and in eight other countries, including New Zealand. About $50 million in assets were also seized, as well as a number of servers and 18 domain names that formed Megaupload’s network of file-sharing sites.

The police arrived at Dotcom Mansion in Auckland on Friday morning in two helicopters. Mr. Dotcom, a 37-year-old with dual Finnish and German citizenship, retreated into a safe room, and the police had to cut their way in. He was eventually arrested with a firearm close by that the police said appeared to be a shortened shotgun.

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Earlier this week we discussed the case of a St. Louis City Treasurer’s Office employee who is accused of timesheet fraud. Federal investigators followed the man around after hearing reports that he was collecting a salary despite not doing any work. After the investigation the man was charged with wire fraud and federal program theft. The main question that remains is whether the evidence against the employee was obtained illegally.

The government is not allowed to use evidence against a person that is the result of an unreasonable search and seizure. It is unclear whether the FBI’s decision to clip a GPS tracking device to the man’s car constituted an illegal search and the issue is currently before the Supreme Court.

FBI agents tracked the man’s car movements and compared the movements with his timesheets. Although the admissibility of the GPS tracking information is unclear, challenging the validity of a search is one of first things that an experienced criminal defense attorney will consider when devising a comprehensive defense strategy against federal charges. The inadmissibility of key evidence may destroy the government’s case and result in the dismissal of charges against a defendant.

It is unclear what the government’s case against the man will consist of if the GPS evidence is deemed inadmissible. There is also a separate issue of whether the man’s job was necessary in the first place. It appears that the treasurer’s office outsourced many of the functions of the man’s job. The Post Dispatch also reported that the man has not been suspended despite the federal charges against him.

The man is also accused of embezzling $250,000 in public funds from the Paideia Academy charter school which he used to run.

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Dominick Pelletier was not expecting prison time when he went looking for a job at the FBI. But he got it.

The 34-year-old suburban Chicago resident applied with the bureau as an intelligence analyst in August of 2008, according to the Daily Herald, but after taking a routine polygraph test he told interviewers that he felt he made mistakes on the polygraph regarding questions involving child pornography.

Pelletier later admitted to having child porn on his computer, and allowed authorities to search it, the paper reported. In August of 2011 he pleaded guilty to the charges.

After pleading guilty to charges of possession of child pornography, the one-time FBI job applicant was recently handed an 80 month prison sentence without parole, reports the Daily Herald.

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After privately reviewing a closely guarded chapter of the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, a federal judge has confirmed that it cannot be released to the Muslim civil liberties group that sought access.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan forbid access to the bulk of the guide in November, agreeing that the chapters redacted by the FBI are exempt under the Freedom of Information Act because they detail specific internal investigatory techniques and procedures that could assist criminals, terrorists and foreign intelligence operatives.

The FBI had invited Muslim Advocates and other groups to review the entire 270-page guide without redactions at the agency’s headquarters in a 2008 effort to get feedback from the civil rights community. Though the groups had the opportunity to take notes on the guide, the FBI required them to return the materials at the end of the two meetings.

Claiming that they were denied a meaningful review, Muslim Advocates and the other groups demanded copies of the guide.

The FBI ultimately released portions of the DIOG to the public, but it withheld “nearly entire sections on a number of topics – including sections that address the infiltration of Muslim community and religious organizations.”

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SecureWatch, an ADT authorized dealer based here, takes steps to make sure job applicants don’t have criminal backgrounds—such as paying a top-notch company to do background checks on them and searching the Internet for information about them, said company COO Paul Victor.

So the company was stunned to learn that a brand-new door-to-door sales rep it had hired—who Victor said had checked out clean—stands charged with raping and attempting to murder a potential customer in her home last week while he was working for SecureWatch in Tampa, Fla.

Rashad Hales, 19, of Tampa, was out selling security systems the evening of Dec. 30 when he forced his way into the woman’s home, raping and choking her and threatening her with a knife, according to news reports.

“This is beyond shocking,” Victor told Security Systems News. “We did all the damn right things and still this happened. So I guess the lesson is: You never know and think about the unthinkable.”

No information the company had about Hales would have predicted he would be a threat to anyone, Victor said.

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A Missouri federal judge ruled the FBI did not need a warrant to secretly attach a GPS monitoring device to a suspect’s car to track his public movements for two months.

The ruling, upholding federal theft and other charges, is one in a string of decisions nationwide supporting warrantless GPS surveillance. Last week’s decision comes as the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the issue within months in an unrelated case.

The ruling from Magistrate David Noce mirrored the Obama administration position before the Supreme Court during oral arguments on the topic in November. In short, defendant Fred Robinson, who was suspected of fudging his time sheets for his treasurer’s office job for the city of St. Louis, had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his public movements, Magistrate Noce said.

Noce ruled: (.pdf)

“Here, installation of the GPS tracker device onto defendant Robinson’s Cavalier was not a ’search’ because defendant Robinson did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the exterior of his Cavalier. Agents installed the GPS tracker device onto defendant’s Cavalier based on a reasonable suspicion that he was being illegally paid as a ‘ghost’ employee on the payroll of the St. Louis City Treasurer’s Office.

Installation of the GPS tracker device was non-invasive; a magnetic component of the GPS tracker device allowed it to be affixed to the exterior of the Cavalier without the use of screws and without causing any damage to the exterior of the Cavalier. The GPS tracker device was installed when the Cavalier was on a public street near defendant’s residence. Installation of the GPS tracker device revealed no information to the agents other than the public location of the vehicle. Under these circumstances, installation of the GPS tracker device was not a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.”

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Police in upstate New York are in hot water with the local NAACP.

A newly surfaced video raises the possibility that Utica, N.Y., police officers planted narcotic evidence on a Black couple at the beginning of 2011.

The silent video, taken on a police surveillance camera during the traffic stop on Feb. 11, 2011, shows a police officer reaching into his back pocket, pulling out what appears to be a small plastic bag and placing the bag into the back seat of the car.

Less than 30 seconds later, the same police officer then reaches into the car and removes what appears to be the same bag and walks away from the vehicle. The video does not show what happens next, but according to the Utica Phoenix, the woman and man were both frisked by the officers, handcuffed and removed from the view of the car, prior to the planting.

The video was brought to the attention of police authorities by the Utica NAACP, which had obtained the footage. The department indicated it would follow up.

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A former private security guard was convicted by a federal jury yesterday in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for his role in providing security for a drug transaction, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Rosa E. Rodriguez-Velez of the District of Puerto Rico and Special Agent in Charge Joseph S. Campbell of the FBI’s San Juan Field Office.

Ricardo Amaro-Santiago, 39, was convicted of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine, attempting to possess with the intent to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug transaction. Amaro-Santiago was charged in an indictment unsealed on Oct. 6, 2010, along with 89 law enforcement officers in Puerto Rico and 44 other individuals, as part of the FBI undercover operation known as Guard Shack.

According to the indictment and information presented in court, in May 2010, Amaro-Santiago provided security for what he believed was an illegal drug deal, but which in fact was part of the undercover FBI operation. According to information presented at trial, Amaro-Santiago was employed as a private security guard, but posed as a Puerto Rico police officer during the transaction. Information presented at trial also revealed that Amaro-Santiago was brought into the scheme by a co-defendant who was a police officer of Puerto Rico.

In return for the security he provided, Amaro-Santiago received a cash payment of $1,000.

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In a recent hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Al Franken reminded his fellow Americans, “People have a fundamental right to control their private information.” At the hearing, Franken raised an alarm about Carrier IQ’s software, CIQ.

Few people have ever heard about CIQ. Running under the app functions, CIQ doesn’t require the user’s consent (or knowledge) to operate. On Android phones, it can track a user’s keystrokes, record telephone calls, store text messages, track location and more. Most troubling, it is difficult to impossible to disable.

Carrier IQ, located in Mountain View, CA, was founded in 2005 and is backed by a group of venture capitalists. Its software is installed on about 150 million wireless devices offered through AT&T, HTC, Nokia, RIM (BlackBerry), Samsung, Sprint and Verizon Wireless. It runs on a variety of operating systems, including the Apple OS and Google’s Android (but not on Microsoft Windows).

At the hearing, Sen. Franken questioned FBI director Robert Muller about the FBI’s use of CIQ software. Muller assured the senator that FBI agents “neither sought nor obtained any information” from Carrier IQ.

Following Muller’s Senate testimony, Andrew Coward, Carrier IQ’s VP of marketing, told the Associated Press that the FBI is the only law enforcement agency to contact them for data. The FBI has yet to issue a follow-up “clarification.”

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Darin McAllister’s life unraveled as the housing crisis revealed inflated figures on his loan documents. The former LAPD officer sees his four-year sentence for fraud as another of life’s tests.

First, he preached the Gospel in South Los Angeles. Then he picked up a badge and gun as an LAPD officer working the Wilshire Division. From there, he moved to the FBI, serving as an undercover agent in Los Angeles, then in Tennessee. His life, he said, was “my American dream.”

But now Darin McAllister is in federal prison in eastern Kentucky, serving a four-year sentence as part of a Justice Department investigation into mortgage fraud. His life today, he says, is “my American nightmare.”

His path from Bible to badge to prison bars is in some part a result of the three-year national housing crisis. When real estate loans went bad, he came under scrutiny from his own employer, the FBI, for lying about his income. But it is also a casualty of McAllister’s unbridled and ultimately unprincipled ambition to repeatedly reinvent himself and rise above his modest upbringing in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Ill.

His father painted houses. His mother cleaned them. And McAllister was going to change the world by saving souls and arresting sinners. Even in prison, he pictures himself in yet another role ministering in the nation’s capital when he gets out.

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Police in Indiana say they hope video surveillance footage, plus the recovery of DNA and fingerprint evidence, will lead them to a group of brazen thieves who stole a truckload of Canada-bound Research in Motion electronic devices earlier this month.

Investigators say the truck-stop heist of 5,200 BlackBerry Playbook tablets — with a wholesale value of $1.7 million — was pulled off in just 13 minutes, most likely by a group of professional bandits who’ve done this before.

“Looking at the video, they were well-orchestrated. This wasn’t a one-time shot,” said Mike Milbourn, an officer with the Chesterfield Police Department.

Milbourn said members of an FBI task force that specializes in inter-state cargo theft are scheduled to travel to Indiana on Wednesday to view surveillance footage from the Dec. 15 incident.

Milbourn said it appears from the video images that the semi-trailer — which was destined for Waterloo, Ont., where RIM is based — was followed from a distribution warehouse in Plainfield, Indiana, to a truck stop in Chesterfield, about one hour away.

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It is approaching five years since my father, Robert “Bob” Levinson, disappeared on Kish Island off the coast of Iran in March 2007. Earlier this year, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that my family had received proof my father is alive and is believed to be held somewhere in southwest Asia. Earlier this month, my family released that proof, a video we received in November 2010 of my father pleading for help. We had kept it private in order not to jeopardize the FBI’s continuing investigation into his disappearance.

Our family had mixed emotions on receiving that video. We were ecstatic to receive confirmation of what we had always believed to be true, that my father is alive and unable to contact us. We also learned that my father is living the worst nightmare imaginable — away from his wife, seven children and two grandchildren, in poor health and unable to come home.

My father worked for the FBI for 22 years. Before joining the FBI he worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration for six years. He had been retired for 10 years and was working as a private investigator at the time of his disappearance. Those who are holding him must have surely realized this by now. When he was with the FBI, my father worked to keep drugs off America’s streets and to put members of organized crime in prison. He was on his first trip to the region — to Dubai and Kish Island — working on behalf of several large corporations to investigate the smuggling of counterfeit cigarettes. My father was working to provide for our large family.

Nothing in our lives can replace the emptiness and utter despair of knowing that someone we love is out there, suffering and wanting nothing more than to come home. I speak for my entire family when I say that, no matter how much we try to enjoy something and continue living our lives, there is always the feeling of knowing our father is somewhere in southwest Asia living a nightmare. He is a good, decent man who does not deserve to be treated this way.

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