crime

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I have a suspicion that the inventor of this Anti-Stab Knife has seen one too many crime shows.

Designed to prevent the kind of injury that makes it onto the front page of the local newspaper, the knife sports a blunted edge that blocks the knife from being plunged into...um...inappropriate media. Don't worry about your fruits and veggies suffering, though: there is still a perfectly good cutting edge to cut those.

What I'm struggling to figure out is the target audience for a kitchen gadget of this nature...is … Read more

Lori Drew, the woman convicted of using a hoax MySpace profile to harass a teenage girl to the point of suicide, was acquitted by a Los Angeles judge on Thursday, Wired reported.

Judge George Wu overturned Drew's guilty verdict, which was issued in November, saying that if Drew had been convicted of a felony in the case, she would already have been sentenced. But because she was convicted of three misdemeanors--a significantly lighter offense than prosecutors originally sought--the constitutionality of the guilty verdict was less clear.

Drew, a Missouri resident, had been convicted of three misdemeanor counts of "… Read more

Social-networking sites and other Web services can't be held liable in a sexual assault on a minor that stemmed from a meeting online, according to a ruling in a California appeals court that consolidated a number of complaints against MySpace on behalf of teenage girls and their parents.

Reuters reported late on Wednesday that the Second District Court of Appeals in Los Angeles cited the Communications Decency Act in coming to the conclusion. Claiming negligence and product liability, the plaintiffs had alleged that MySpace had failed to put in place age verification software or to keep profiles on a &… Read more

Not so long ago, the faces of gaming on social networks were those of zombies, vampires, and cuddly virtual pets. Now it's more along the lines of Michael Corleone or Tony Soprano.

You've probably seen it in your news feed: From Facebook to MySpace and now Twitter, Mafia-themed games have more or less taken over. Mobsters, a game created by development company Playdom, is the most popular application on MySpace's platform. Mafia Wars, owned by Zynga, is a huge hit on Facebook. The Social Gaming Network has an iPhone app called Mafia: Respect and Retaliation. And earlier … Read more

The world weaves odd, strangely patterned webs.

Last September, a 14-year-old boy told police in Groningen, Holland, that he had been knocked off his bike and robbed of some money and his cell phone.

What evidence did he have of his alleged assailants? Very little.

Six months later, the Associated Press reports, he was pootling around on Google Street View when he saw an image of himself--and of two males behind him, who, he seemed to remember, were just in the place where he was allegedly robbed.

So he called the police again.

Paul Heidanus, a spokesman for the Groningen … Read more

Johnathon Hock, 20, was indicted Monday and charged with two counts of sexual assault and one charge of voyeurism.

According to an earlier report by the Associated Press, the charges stem from an incident on February 26, when Hock allegedly sexually assaulted a woman whom he had been dating for two weeks.

Phoenix police said in their probable cause statement, reported on June 3 by KPHO TV, that Hock "set up a computer with a Webcam and sexually assaulted a woman he knew as she was passed out from drinking alcohol."

Analyzing the reports is a sobering and … Read more

Last Thursday, KPRC Channel 2 in Houston ran a story during its evening news titled Rapper Charged In Wire Fraud Scam. (The video segment can be seen here.) In the segment, reporter Phil Archer details charges against a local Houston rapper, William James Dennis--aka Willie D--who has been accused of a wire fraud scam involving the Apple iPhone. According to Archer's report:

Acting U.S. Attorney Tim Johnson said William James Dennis, 42, who goes by the name Willie D, posed as an electronics salesman and used eBay to establish credibility with international buyers.

Dennis was selling Apple iPhones … Read more

I once used to live in an apartment in London that had previously been something of a bordello.

It was a very nice apartment. However, it was extremely disconcerting to receive late-night calls from strange men wondering if Hermosa was available.

But this was but a mere twinge when compared with the discomfort of a woman from Norwalk, Conn., who also allegedly began to receive phone calls of a somewhat perplexingly sexual nature.

She described these communications to CBS 2 this way: "Men calling, looking for a good time. And I said, 'You got the wrong number.' I hung … Read more

In September 2008 police began arresting alleged members of Dark Market, an underground Internet forum for buying and selling credit card data used for identity fraud. The sting wouldn't have been possible without the work of FBI agent J. Keith Mularski who spent two years infiltrating the group.

Mularski became hacker "Master Splynter," a play on the name of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle character called "Master Splinter," a rat who lives in New York City's sewers. He was so successful in his online disguise that he ended up running the server that hosted … Read more