Crime
Scammers steal billions from Americans every 12 months. What’s worse is that most scammers get away with it

The cheaters win.
Sophisticated foreign criminals steal tens of billions of dollars from Americans every year, and the crime wave is expected to accentuate because the U.S. population ages and technologies like artificial intelligence make it easier than ever to commit fraud and get away with it.
Online and telephone scams have grown “exponentially,” overwhelming police and prosecutors who’re catching and convicting relatively few perpetrators, said Kathy Stokes, director of fraud prevention at AARP’s Fraud Watch Network.
Victims rarely get their a reimbursement. This includes seniors who’ve lost their life savings in marriage scams, grandchild scams, tech support scams, and other common scams.
“We’re at a crisis level of fraud in society,” Stokes said. “So many people have joined the fight because it’s pretty easy to be a criminal. They don’t have to follow any rules. And you can make a lot of money, and then there’s very little chance of getting caught.”
A recent case from Ohio through which an 81-year-old man fell victim to a scammer and allegedly responded with violence illustrates the challenge law enforcement faces.
Police say a person fatally shot an Uber driver after wrongly assuming she was involved in a plot to swindle $12,000 in alleged bail money for a relative. The driver fell victim to the identical scammer, sent to a house halfway between Dayton and Columbus to select up a package for delivery, in response to authorities.
Homeowner William Brock has been charged with murder in connection with the fatal shooting at Lo-Letha Hall on March 25, however the conman who threatened Brock over the phone and set off the tragic chain of events stays at large greater than three months later.
Brock pleaded not guilty, claiming he feared for his life.
Scammers taking advantage
Internet and telephone crimes have turn into so common that law enforcement and adult protective services should not have enough resources to maintain up.
“It’s kind of like drinking from a fire hose,” said Brady Finta, a former FBI agent who oversaw investigations into elder fraud. “There’s so much of it, logistically and rationally, that it’s almost impossible to overcome now.”
Crimes may be difficult to analyze, especially those that originate overseas, where stolen funds are quickly converted into hard-to-trace cryptocurrency or transferred to offshore bank accounts.
Some police departments don’t take financial fraud as seriously as other crimes, which discourages and demoralizes victims, said Paul Greenwood, who has spent 22 years prosecuting seniors in San Diego.
“A lot of law enforcement thinks that because a victim is sending money voluntarily through gift cards or bank transfers or buying cryptocurrency, that it’s actually consensual,” said Greenwood, who travels the country teaching police tips on how to spot scams. “And that’s a big mistake, because it’s not. It’s not consensual. They’ve been scammed.”
Greenwood said federal prosecutors typically don’t intervene in a case until the fraud reaches a specific amount.
The U.S. Justice Department says it doesn’t impose a general monetary threshold for federal elder abuse prosecutions. But it acknowledged that a number of the 93 U.S. attorneys’ offices across the country may set their very own thresholds, giving priority to cases with more victims or greater financial impact. Federal prosecutors bring tons of of elder fraud and abuse cases every year.
The Federal Trade Commission says the “vast majority” of scams go unreported. Often, victims are reluctant to come back forward.
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A 74-year-old woman who was recently charged with robbing a credit union north of Cincinnati was the victim of a web based scam, in response to her family. Authorities say they consider the lady was taken advantage of by the scammer, but there is no record that she filed a proper police report.
“These people are very good at what they do, and they are very good at scamming people and getting money out of them,” said Fairview Township, Ohio, police sergeant Brandon McCroskey, who investigated the robbery. “I’ve seen people almost want to fight with police and bank tellers because … they believe they have to get that money out.”
A destructive plan
Older people have more wealth as a gaggle and are a vulnerable goal for fraudsters. The effects may be devastating because lots of these victims are past their working years and don’t have much time to recoup their losses.
The variety of complaints about elder fraud filed with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center increased 14% last 12 months, while losses increased 11% to $3.4 billion, in response to a brand new report from the FBI.
Other estimates put the annual loss much higher.
A 2023 AARP study calculated that Americans over 60 lose $28.3 billion a 12 months to fraud. The Federal Trade Commission, attempting to account for unreported losses, estimated that fraudsters stole a staggering $137 billion in 2022, including $48 billion from seniors. The study’s authors acknowledged there is a “significant degree of uncertainty.”
In San Diego, William Bortz, 80, said criminals stole nearly $700,000 of his family’s savings in an elaborate scheme involving a nonexistent Amazon order, a fake “returns processing center” in Hong Kong, fake bank statements and directions that Bortz must “sync bank accounts” to get the a reimbursement.
Bortz’s scammer was relentless and harassed him, harassing him with dozens of phone calls, and at one point took control of his computer.
Even though he was the victim of a criminal offense, Bortz struggles with guilt.
“Now I understand why so many elder abuse scams never get reported. Because when you think about it, you think, ‘How could I have been so stupid?’” said Bortz, who retired after a profession in banking, financial services and real estate.
His daughter, Ave Williams, said local police and the FBI tried hard to trace down the foreign fraudster and get well the cash but bumped into dead ends. The family blames Bortz’s bank, which Williams says ignored multiple red flags and allowed her father to make several large transfers over an eight-day period. The bank has denied wrongdoing, and the family’s lawsuit against it has been dismissed.
“Fraudsters are getting better,” Williams said. “We need our law enforcement agencies to be given the tools they need, and we need our banks to get better because they are the first line of defense.”
The Justice Department believes the industry must do more and the United States is not going to discover a strategy to resolve the difficulty through the courts.
“Private industry — including technology, retail, banking, fintech and telecommunications — must make it harder for fraudsters to defraud victims and launder victims’ money,” the agency said in an announcement to The Associated Press.
The way forward
Banking industry officials told a Senate subcommittee in May that they were investing heavily in latest technologies to stem fraud, “and some of them are very promising.” The American Bankers Association says it is working on a program to coordinate real-time communications amongst banks to higher flag suspicious activity and curb the flow of stolen funds.
But industry officials said banks can’t prevent fraud on their very own. They said the U.S. needs an overarching national technique to combat fraud, calling the federal government’s current efforts scattershot and uncoordinated.
Law enforcement and industry need to affix forces to combat fraud faster and more effectively, said Finta, a former FBI agent who founded a nonprofit called the National Elder Fraud Coordination Center aimed toward strengthening cooperation between law enforcement and huge corporations equivalent to Walmart, Amazon and Google.
“There are very, very smart people and there are very powerful, wealthy companies that want this to stop,” he said. “So I think we have an opportunity to make a bigger impact and help our brothers and sisters in law enforcement who are struggling with this tsunami of fraud.”
Crime
Fireworks mortars, gas canisters stuffed inside Tesla, which exploded in front of the Trump Hotel Las Vegas

Las Vegas (AP)-Camp fuels were found in the back of Tesla Cybertruck, which exploded before the President-President of Elect Donald Trump Las Vegas Hotel, killing the suspect in the vehicle.
Metropolitan Police in Las Vegas and fire brigades of Clark said that the person had died in a futuristic pickup, and 7 people nearby suffered a slight injury.
In the late Wednesday afternoon, the authorities were still working on pulling the body out of the vehicle and starting the processing of evidence inside. President Joe Biden was informed about the explosion.
“Our number one goal is to ensure the proper identification of the entity involved in this incident,” said Jeremy Schwartz, acting as a special agent liable for the FBI Las Vegas office, “after this our second goal is to establish it was an act of terrorism or not. “
The sheriff of the Police Department Kevin McMahill said that the authorities know who rented a truck with the Turo application in Colorado, but they don’t give the name until the investigator determines whether he was the same person died.
McMahill said that the video captured at Tels charging stations provided by CEO of Elon Muska helped the authorities track the vehicle’s journey, arriving at Las Vegas around 7:30 in the morning. Then driving about an hour later in the territory of Trump International Hotel, where he sat 15-20 seconds before the explosion.

The film presented at the afternoon press conference showed the fall of the charred fireworks mortars, canisters and other explosives crowded at the back of the pickup. The partitions of the truck bed were still intact because the explosion fired straight than on the sides.
Musk said on Wednesday afternoon to X that “we have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb transported in the bed of rented Cyberbruck and is not associated with the vehicle itself. The whole telemetry of the vehicle was positive at the time of explosion. “
In an earlier post on the Musk platform, he said that his entire higher period examined the explosion, adding: “We’ve never seen something like that.”
Musk has recently grow to be a member of Trump’s inner circle. Neither Trump nor Musk were in Las Vegas on early Wednesday. Both participated in the Eve Eve New Year’s Trump event in Trump’s Estate in southern Florida.
Musk estimates about $ 250 million during the presidential campaign to support the former president. He was in Trump’s resort on an election night and was often a guest there. Trump called Musk, the richest man in the world, to steer a brand new effort to search out ways to scale back the size and expenditure of the government.
“This is Tesla’s truck and we know that Elon Musk cooperates with President Elekt Trump and this Trump Tower,” said McMahill, when reporters asked about possible political connections. “So of course you should be worried about it and we still look.”
The truck explosion took place just a few hours after the driver He stuck the truck into the crowd In the famous French district in Nowy Orlean at the starting of the latest yr, killing not less than 15 people before they were shot by the police. The disaster was examined as a terrorist attack, and the police consider that the driver didn’t act alone.
“We absolutely examine all connectivity with what happened in New Orleans, as well as other attacks that took place all over the world,” said McMahill. “We don’t rule out anything.”

In a press release, Turo said he was cooperating with the authorities.
“We do not believe that either the tenant involved in Las Vegas and New Orlean attacks had criminal origin that would identify them as a security threat,” he said.
In Las Vegas, witness Ana Bruce, visiting Brazil, said she had heard three explosions.
“The first in which we saw fire, the second, probably a battery or something like that, and the third was a great one who smoked the whole area and was the moment when everyone was told that they were evacuating and staying away from afar,” said Bruce.
Her travel companion, Alcids Antunes, showed a video that he took the flames, tilting the sides of the vehicle in silver.
The 64-storey hotel is positioned next to Las Vegas Strip and on the other side of the street from the Las Vegas shopping mall.
Eric Trump, son of President Elek and Vice President of the Executive Organization of Trump, Published about fire On the social media platform X. praised the fire brigade and native law enforcement agencies “for a quick reaction and professionalism”.
(Tagstranslate) Las Vegas (T) Trump Hotel (T) Tesla (T) @AP (T) explosion
Crime
Memphis, a man arrested after finding a baby in the trash


James Boothe was allegedly arrested placement The body of the deceased newborn baby in the garbage of the gas station.
The 45-year-old was allegedly caught on a video with a supervision carrying a garbage bag, which was later revealed that the infant inside.
The Police Department in Memphis announced the arrest of Boothe on the official Facebook page. The man is detained in the prison of Shelby, and his bond is $ 250,000.
“Officers were reported that the minor had been born. The officers were informed that he was on the way to the hospital, when the birth took place, and the man with whom she was, James, took the child and placed the child in the trash at 1312 East Shelby Drive. The officers searched the area and located the deceased child, “said the post.
The owner of the gas station, Jeet Singh Gurya, said that the fire brigade He got here to go looking the area After receiving reports about the whereabouts of the deceased infant. He helped the department by entering the trash in order to get better the garbage containing the infant’s body.
“The fire brigade appeared and I see a bag in the garbage. Then I just go there to see what they are checking for. “There is someone, a body in a bag,” Gulaya said. “Then I jump into the garbage, took out the bag and handed it over to the fire brigade. They checked out it and said that there was a body inside. “
According to reports, the mother of the infant is a 16-year-old girl. The teenager told the police that the child was born in a vehicle because she was on her strategy to an ambulance. Girl I didn’t reveal the details About how the infant died or about the circumstances that led to the insertion of the newborn in the trash bag and rejection.
The investigation remains to be open; Boothe’s allegations might be updated about the sexual assault of youngsters, because the teenager said she was in the mistaken sexual relationship with Booth for 13 years.
(Tagstotranslat) baby
Crime
FBI now says that the driver responsible for the deadly new Orlean Rampage was acting alone

Nowy Orlean (AP) – The American Army veteran who stuck a van into the crowd of New Year’s revelers, FBI said on Thursday, reversing his position from the next day, that he probably collaborated with others in carrying out a deadly attack, which in response to officials was an act of terrorism inspired by the Islamic State group.
The FBI also revealed that the driver, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a US citizen from Texas, published five movies on his Facebook account in hours before the attack, through which he adapted IS and told viewers that he had previously joined the battle group last summer.
“It was an act of terrorism. He was premeditated and evil, “said Christopher Raia, deputy assistant to the Director of the FBI employed department.
Attack He killed 14 peopleIncluding an 18-year-old woman who had the ambition to turn into a nurse. The authorities initially raised the variety of fatalities to fifteen, including Jabbar, which was deadly shot in the fight against the police.
Officials said on Wednesday that they were looking for additional potential suspects during the attack that took place when Jabbar was guided by a police block and plowed the crowd.
But Raia said that the current assessment is that he acted alone, with none conspirators.
The authorities regained the black flag of the Islamic State in a truck, and President Joe Biden told him that the FBI told him that Jabbar, a US citizen from Texas, published movies for social media a couple of hours before the slaughter of the fight group and expressed the desire to kill.
He was shot by the police, and the FBI said on Wednesday that he believed that he didn’t act alone. Investigators found weapons and something that looked like an improvised explosive in the vehicle, together with other explosives in other parts of the French district.

Officials considered searching orders and spent hours at home in Houston, which was regarded as related to the investigation. But from Thursday morning there have been no additional arrests and it was clear whether the FBI was still actively looking for more suspects.
Madness turned the festive Street of Bourbon right into a macabre scene of mutilated victims, bloodied bodies and pedestrians escaping for safety in nightclubs and restaurants. In addition to the dead dozens of individuals were wounded.
18 -year -old Zion Parsons from Gulfport, Mississippi said that he saw a truck “passing through people, throwing people like on a film stage, throwing people at the air.”
“Body, bodies up and bottom of the street, everyone screams and scream,” said Parsons, whose friend Nikary Dedaux was amongst the dead.
But until Thursday, the city was still returning to normal operations. The authorities ended the processing of the stage early in the morning, removing the last body, and Bourbon Street was to be re -opened sooner or later later, in response to an official acquainted with the case, which spoke provided anonymity for the Associated Press.
Game Sugar Bowl College Football between Notre Dame and Georgia, initially set for Wednesday evening and postponed in the future in the interest of national security, was still on Thursday. And the city planned to arrange a Super Bowl next month.
Federal officials studied potential Jabbar associations with all terrorist organizations after they hunted for additional suggestions in what considered to be the most deadly assault inspired by IS to American land for years.
Meanwhile, local officials faced subsequent questions regarding security protocols in the city resulting in the attack, The latest example of a used vehicle as a weapon Carry out mass violence.
The authorities reported that Jabbar drove a rented van on the pavement, walking on a police automobile, which was set to dam automobile traffic. The barrier system geared toward stopping vehicle attacks was repaired As a part of preparations for Super Bowl.
Jabbar was killed by the police after he left the truck and opened fire to the corresponding officers, said the police superintendent in New Orleans Anne Kirkpatrick. Three officers returned fire. Two were shot and are in a stable condition.
The driver “defeated” security measures to guard pedestrians and “was” hellish in creating slaughter and damage, “said Kirkpatrick.
“This is just not just an act of terrorism. This is bad – she added.

Also on Wednesday there have been deadly explosions Honolulu and beyond Las Vegas Hotel belonging to President Elek Donald Trump. Biden said that the FBI analyzes whether Las Vegas’s explosion was related to the attack in Nowy Orlean, but she had no “not to report” from Wednesday evening.
The photo circulated amongst law enforcement officers showed bearded Jabbar in camouflage next to the truck after killing. The Intelligence Bulletin obtained by AP said that he was wearing a ballistic vest and a helmet. Flbi said that the flag of the Islamic States group was on the trailer of the truck trailer.
“For those people who do not believe in objective evil, everything you have to do is look at what happened in our city early in the morning,” said Senator John Kennedy, a Republican of Louisiana. “If this does not cause a reflex of gags of every American, every honest American, I will be very surprised.”
Jabbar joined the army in 2007, serving on human resources and IT technologies and deployed in Afghanistan in 2009–2010, as the service said. He moved to the army reserve in 2015 and left in 2020 with the rank of staff sergeant.
Just a few hours after the attack, a couple of coroner’s office vans were parked on the corner of Bourbon and Canal streets, curted with police tape with a crowd of stunned tourists standing around, some tried to maneuver in luggage through the labyrinth of blockades.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landra called people to avoid an area that remained an lively place of crime.
“We looked on our door and saw a tape of caution and dead silence, and it is amazing,” said Tessa Cundiff, from Indiana, who moved to the French district a couple of years ago. “This is not what we fell in love with is sad.”
Biden, speaking from the presidential retreat in Camp David, turned to the victims and residents of Nowy Orleans: “I want you to know that I regret you. Our nation is saddened with you, regretting and treating. “
FBI officials have repeatedly warned about the increased international threat of terrorism due to the Israel-HAM war. Last yr, the agency disturbed other potential attacks, including in October, when it arrested an Afghan man in Oklahomie for the alleged conspiracy on the day of elections regarding large crowds.
(Tagstranslate) @AP
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