Tag: var-current

Western Union fined $586 million for colluding with organized crime

Image: David Weekly/Flickr Western Union admitted it behaved criminally through its “willful failure to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program and aiding and abetting wire fraud,” reports Forbes. They’ve agreed to pay a $586 million fine. From the Forbes article : In a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission on Thursday, authorities describe insufficient or poorly enforced policies that resulted in the funneling of hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds from illegal gambling, fraud and drug and human trafficking. … In one case, illegal immigrants from China sent money back to the people who smuggled them across the border. With the help of employees, the payments were structured so that they didn’t trigger reporting requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act, say authorities. In another example, Western Union processed hundreds of thousands of transactions for an international scam, wherein fraudsters directed people to send money in order to claim a prize or help a relative. Western Union employees often processed the payments in return for a cut of the proceeds, say authorities. From CFO : Wifredo A. Ferrer, the U.S. Attorney in Miami, said the misconduct reflected “a flawed corporate culture that failed to provide a checks and balances approach to combat criminal practices.” “Western Union’s failure to implement proper controls and discipline agents that violated compliances policies enabled the proliferation of illegal gambling, money laundering and fraud-related schemes,” he added. I’m not a fan of civil asset forfeiture, which is basically a way for law enforcement to steal money and assets from anyone without charging them with a crime. But in this case, it seems appropriate for the government seize the assets of the CEO of Western Union, Hikmet Ersek, until he can prove that his $8.5 million salary didn’t depend on Western Union’s admitted criminal activities.

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Western Union fined $586 million for colluding with organized crime

Map shows Middle East based on who actually holds territory

From Geopolitical Futures via Joshua Landis . Seems rough on details. If Islamic State gets wee satellites down in Yemen, you’d think the Sinai Insurgents would at least get some diagonal shading! (more…)

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Map shows Middle East based on who actually holds territory

The amazing whistling language of Greek shepherds

In the village of Antia on Greece’s Evia island, shepherds use whistling to communicate over long distances. This isn’t a code but rather a real language. “Whistles let shepherds communicate between distant hillsides because a whistled sound wave travels farther than spoken words.” ( Scientific American )

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The amazing whistling language of Greek shepherds

How electric eels work

https://youtu.be/ukug2h1kS4Q Electric eels are incredible animals. Besides being able to shock animals, it uses radar to locate prey. This 1950s film features a happy scientist and his beloved pet eel, Joe, who happily shocks five people in the office with his superpower.

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How electric eels work

Los Angeles Valley College pays $28,000 in bitcoin ransom to hackers

In Eastern Europe, organized crime and the government are the same thing, so the US is having a tough time stopping the ransomware attacks emanating from those countries. The LA Times has a story about a recent attack on a community college in Los Angeles: Phil Lieberman, a cybersecurity expert, said attacks such as the one at Los Angeles Valley College are common among companies and government agencies that use the Internet. “The attacks generally come out of Eastern Europe and cannot be stopped because the United States does not have pacts with the countries where the attacks are launched,” he said. Ransomware is usually delivered via email or through an infected website and immediately locks a computer system, Lieberman said. After a payment is received, hackers provide an “unlock code.” Finding the hackers isn’t the hard part, he said. The problem, according to Lieberman, is that “the U.S. government has no way to stop them, since the governments of the countries that launch this are uncooperative and in fact benefit from the criminal activity going on within their borders.” Here are 27 screenshots of ransomware . Most of them look like computer screens from bad 1990s hacker movies.

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Los Angeles Valley College pays $28,000 in bitcoin ransom to hackers

Beautiful Seymchan pallasite meteorite

m0nster0 posted this 3mm-thick slice of a Seymchan pallasite meteorite to Reddit. He says its “one of my favorite bits of space rock.” I can’t argue with that! He bought it on eBay from this guy , who sells some stunning specimens.

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Beautiful Seymchan pallasite meteorite

Artisans revive the polissoir, a nearly-forgotten woodworking tool

André Roubo’s series on carpentry called L’Art du Menuisier mentions a polissior , a small device made of broom straw for polishing wood. In the two centuries since Roubo’s book, the device had faded from memory until a couple of years ago, when Don Williams recreated one from an illustration in Roubo’s book. It turned out to work amazingly well. (more…)

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Artisans revive the polissoir, a nearly-forgotten woodworking tool

Conan the Barbarian: The Complete Collection – free Kindle edition

Here’s a free 853-page Kindle edition of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian Stories . I got it and the formatting looks good, which is not often the case for free/supercheap ebooks. I read the reviews and people complained about missing chapters, but it looks like the publisher made corrections.

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Conan the Barbarian: The Complete Collection – free Kindle edition

Dizzying designs by Peter Kogler seem to warp space

Peter Kogler projects or applies patterns to the surfaces of rooms that can be quite disorienting for anyone who enters. Most of his work uses warped black and white lines to distort the size and shape of floors, walls, and ceilings. He also makes a lot of cool creations involving images of mice and ants. • Peter Kogler site (via Colossal )

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Dizzying designs by Peter Kogler seem to warp space