FBI arrests mob members en masse, herds them like sheep

100+ people were arrested by the FBI in New York and New Jersey this morning for mob ties
24+ of those were members of the NYC area’s five crime families; the rest were associates source

» Among the charges face: Murder (some dating back to the ’80s and ’90s), extortion, loan-sharking, gambling and labor-racketeering in some of the mob’s continued strongholds – the construction industry and the waterfront. Not the waterfront!

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bad Camden, NJ, a city that was once home to Walt Whitman, has the second-highest crime rate in the entire country.
worse The formerly industrial city, in steep decline, has a massive budget shortfall – it’s roughly $26.5 million in the red.
worser To solve the worse problem, they chose the cut the police force by half, making the bad problem worser. source

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I would question whether they’d grant him a furlough because of heightened publicity. He could be a target. He could be shot.
Federal Prisons Consultants managing director Ed Bales • On Bernie Madoff’s chances of being allowed to go to his son’s funeral. Madoff has two things against him here: A handbook that generally only allows furloughs for prisoners with two years or less in their terms, and (since that’s usually waived for white-collar criminals) a level of notoriety that would probably mean an appearance like that would endanger his safety. On a side note, this story is from the New York Post, which used an “end of his rope” pun to explain Mark Madoff’s death on its front page recently. We’re sure they’ve hit lower depths, but we can’t remember when. source

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What is Pranknet? The until-now anonymous network, led by Windsor, Ontario resident Tariq Malik, has been a loose collective of shut-ins, some with criminal records, using Skype and chat networks to commit a campaign of terror on chain businesses – largely restaurants and hotels – around the U.S.
The crimes In one case, they caused hotel employees to destroy sprinkler systems, causing $50,000 in damages. In another, they convinced a hotel employee to drink a patron’s urine. Most infamously, they convinced KFC employees to go outside, strip naked and urinate on each other.
Take cues from TSGThe mainstream media could learn a lot from The Smoking Gun – which is owned by Time Warner, by the way. Here’s an organization that posts funny mugshots, sure, but then posts these killer investigative pieces full of finished homework that lots of people read. Newspapers, take note. source

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20 Jan 2011 10:27