Crime

FTX fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried objects to tighter bail, says prosecutors ‘sandbagged’ him

NEW YORK, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Lawyers for Sam Bankman-Fried on Saturday urged a U.S. judge not to ban the indicted FTX cryptocurrency executive from communicating with former colleagues as part of his bail, saying prosecutors “sandbagged” the process to put their client in the “worst possible light.”

The lawyers were responding to a Friday night request by federal prosecutors that Bankman-Fried not be allowed to talk with most employees of FTX or his Alameda Research hedge fund without lawyers present, or use the encrypted messaging apps Signal or Slack and potentially delete messages automatically.

Because he’s a connected little snot …

“The fact that an offshore hedge fund that was basically a crypto firm was buying a stake in a tiny bank for multiples of its stated book value should have raised massive red flags for the F.D.I.C., state regulators and the Federal Reserve,” said Camden Fine, a bank industry consultant who used to head the Independent Community Bankers of America. “It’s just astonishing that all of this got approved.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Digital Currency", Crime

Unanswered questions from videos of Tyre Nichols’ arrest

The video footage of Tyre Nichols being beaten by police in Memphis shows in harrowing detail the events that led to his death. But some questions still remain.

Lawyers for his family said the officers acted like a “pack of wolves” and beat him “like a human pinata”.

Police Chief Cerelyn Davis, who is the first black woman to serve in the role, told the BBC she was shocked. “Something happened that we can’t explain,” she said.

The 29-year-old motorist was pulled over by police on 7 January. The footage that emerged led the authorities to fire the five officers last week and charge them with second-degree murder.

Evidently the Black officers who killed Tyre Nichols internalized white supremacy…

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCrime, WTF?

‘Shortness of breath’: How police first described what happened to Tyre Nichols

The first time Memphis police described what happened between their officers and Tyre Nichols — the 29-year-old who died of his injuries after being beaten by police — they wrote that “a confrontation occurred” following a traffic stop. Nichols fled on foot, and then “another confrontation occurred.”

“Afterward, the suspect complained of having a shortness of breath,” reads the statement posted on the Memphis Police Department’s Twitter account the morning after Nichols was beaten on Jan. 7. “The suspect was transported to St. Francis Hospital in critical condition.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCrime

Sam Bankman-Fried’s Prosecutors Ask Judge to Tighten Bail Conditions

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said on Friday that the disgraced cryptocurrency executive Sam Bankman-Fried had tried to contact a potential witness in his criminal case, and they asked a judge to impose new bail conditions limiting his ability to communicate with former colleagues.

In a court filing, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York said Mr. Bankman-Fried sent messages over email and the encrypted messaging app Signal this month to the general counsel of the U.S. arm of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange he founded. Mr. Bankman-Fried, 30, has been charged with fraud, money laundering and campaign finance violations linked to the implosion of FTX last year.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Digital Currency", Crime

Van Jones at CNN: The police who killed Tyre Nichols were Black. But they might still have been driven by racism

Because of course.

One of the sad facts about anti-Black racism is that Black people ourselves are not immune to its pernicious effects. Society’s message that Black people are inferior, unworthy and dangerous is pervasive. Over many decades, numerous experiments have shown that these ideas can infiltrate Black minds as well as White. Self-hatred is a real thing.

That’s why a Black store owner might regard customers of his same race with suspicion, while treating his White patrons with deference. Black people can harbor anti-Black sentiments and can act on those feelings in harmful ways.

Black cops are often socialized in police departments that view certain neighborhoods as war zones. In those departments, few officers get disciplined for dishing out “street justice” in certain precincts — often populated by Black, brown or low-income people — where there is a tacit understanding that the “rulebook” simply doesn’t apply.

Cops of all colors, including Black police officers, internalize those messages — and sometimes act on them. In fact, in Black neighborhoods, the phenomenon of brutal Black cops singling out young Black men for abuse is nothing new.

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by Black Mamba••0•Posted inBatshit Crazy Progressive Racists, Crime

How Tyre Nichols was beaten to death

Memphis cops on Friday night released footage showing the events leading up to the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols.

Horrific footage showed the moments he was stopped by police, him fleeing, then the vicious beating when they caught up and the lack of medical care.

Five officers involved in the January 7 incident have been charged with second-degree murder, and fired from the force.

There are 4 lengthy videos at Vimeo.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCrime

FTX Seeks to Question Sam Bankman-Fried’s Family About Its Wealth

The parents and brother of alleged crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried should be forced to answer questions and provide financial documents about their personal wealth and any money they may have gotten from FTX, the bankrupt firm he founded, lawyers said in a court filing.

FTX asked a judge for permission to question, under oath, Bankman-Fried’s family and a handful of the company’s former top executives as part of a hunt for hidden assets that could be used to repay creditors owed billions of dollars.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Digital Currency", Crime

An Update on America’s Homicide Surge

New CDC data show that the rise in murders isn’t a “red state” or “blue state” problem.

“… To take one of the more dramatic examples, between the 2018–2019 and 2020–2021 periods, the black homicide rate went up by about 40 percent and the white one by 15 percent—already a glaring disparity. But since the black homicide rate started out so much higher than the white one, this translated to an increase of just 0.4 per 100,000 for whites and 9.7 per 100,000 for blacks—nearly 25 times as large. The increase in the black homicide rate was greater than the total homicide rate for the nation as a whole.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCrime

Bodycam video shows Tyre Nichols being beaten, tased by Memphis police

The Memphis Police Department on Friday released body camera video showing black motorist Tyre Nichols being brutally beaten, pepper sprayed and tasered by multiple cops during a traffic stop earlier this month.

The appalling beatdown that led to Nichols’ death in the hospital days later only lasted about three minutes out of the hour-long footage released by police.

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Video 4

There are 4 lengthy videos at Vimeo.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCrime

Mandatory Minimum Penalty for Firing Gun at House Unconstitutional: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that a mandatory minimum sentence of four years for firing a gun at a house is unconstitutional.

The decision comes in the case of Jesse Dallas Hills, who pleaded guilty to four charges stemming from a May 2014 incident in Lethbridge, Alta., in which he swung a baseball bat and shot at a car with a rifle, smashed the window of a vehicle and fired rounds into a family home.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCrime

Supreme Court of Canada to rule on constitutionality of mandatory firearm sentences

OTTAWA – The Supreme Court of Canada plans to rule today on the constitutionality of mandatory minimum sentences in cases involving armed robbery and recklessly firing a gun.

In one case, Jesse Dallas Hills pleaded guilty to four charges stemming from a May 2014 incident in Lethbridge, Alta., in which he swung a baseball bat and shot at a car with a bolt-action rifle, smashed the window of a vehicle and fired rounds into a family home.

Hills argued the minimum four-year sentence for recklessly discharging a firearm violated the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCrime

Tucker Carlson eviscerates Department of Justice coverup of Jeffrey Epstein’s death

It’s been long enough since the highly suspicious death of Jeffrey Epstein in the federal lockup in Manhattan that the very popular meme “Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself” is no longer as pervasive as it once was. But in the interim, the coverup has continued and deepened. Kudos to Tucker Carlson for using the opening segment of his show last night, the highest-rated cable news program, to go over the insulting propositions that federal officials, notably including former AG William Barr, have tried to get the public to accept. Tucker dryly noted that Barr did not accept an invitation to appear on the show to respond.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCrime

All five officers fired over the death of Tyre Nichols who died after a ‘violent’ traffic stop have been charged

All five officers who were fired from the Memphis Police Department over the death of Tyre Nichols, who died following a ‘violent’ traffic stop, have been charged.

Each of the officers have been charged, though charges were listed for just three of them.

Justin Smith, Emmitt martin and Tadarrius Bean have been charged with two counts of official misconduct, one count of second-degree murder, official oppression, aggravated assault-act in concert and an additional two counts of aggravated kidnapping.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCrime