Tag Archive for: Illegal

Rogersville Man Sentenced to 30 Years for Child Sexual Exploitation, Illegal Firearms, Nearly $1 Million Investment Fraud Scheme | USAO-WDMO

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SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – A Rogersville, Missouri, man was sentenced in federal court today for three separate cases in which he was convicted of child sexual exploitation, a nearly $1 million investment fraud scheme, and illegally possessing 19 firearms.

Roy G. Harris, Jr., 57, was sentenced by U.S. Chief District Judge Beth Phillips to 30 years in federal prison without parole. Harris was sentenced to 20 years on the child exploitation offenses, five years on the wire fraud offense, and five years on the firearms offenses, for a total of 30 years.

The court also ordered Harris to pay $809,260 in restitution to the victims of his wire fraud scheme and $5,000 to the victim of his child sexual exploitation and child pornography crimes.

On Feb. 27, 2019, Harris pleaded guilty to a one-count information charging him with wire fraud. He was indicted in a second case on Aug. 23, 2019, and on a third case on March 23, 2021. On Aug. 3, 2021, Harris pleaded guilty to all three counts of the second case – one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm, one count of possessing an illegal firearm, and one count of unlawfully possessing an unregistered firearm. On Aug. 19, 2021, Harris pleaded guilty to both counts of the third case – one count of the sexual exploitation of a minor and one count of receiving and distributing child pornography.

Regarding his wire fraud conviction, Harris admitted that he engaged in an investment fraud scheme from June 2014 to May 2017. The total loss to victims of his fraud was at least $921,250. Harris has paid back some of the money to various investors.

Harris was the owner of two limited liability companies, Orthogistic, LLC, and Amniogistic, LLC. He was also the owner of a corporation, Orthogistic Labs, Inc. He solicited investments from individuals, including a victim identified in court documents as “P.K.,” a resident of New Jersey who invested $60,000 in Orthogistic Labs, Inc. Harris made representations to these individuals that he knew were false, and used some of the money obtained from his victims for other purposes and for his personal benefit. Harris failed to tell investors that he had been convicted in 2002 of the felony crimes…

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Team of Panther engineers creates break-through technology to detect illegal Bitcoin mining on everyday users’ computers | FIU News

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Cryptocurrencies may be the way of the future. At least, that’s what many are betting on.

Entrepreneurs and companies are buying, selling and investing funds in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Some retailers are accepting payments in cryptocurrency already. And, most recently, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez proposed that the city begin using Bitcoin for some of its financial transactions, including for employee salaries.

The popularity of cryptocurrencies is attracting a number of people – including hackers. Hackers are currently finding low-cost ways to “mine” Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency illegally by tapping into everyday people’s computers and using those machines’ resources without their consent. The result? Hackers make millions mining cryptocurrency using other people’s computers. Meanwhile, the victims often find their computers slow down and become impossible to use without realizing what’s going on.

This form of hacking – called “cryptojacking” – is happening across the world at astonishing rates. Miners have not only hacked into regular folks’ computers, but they’ve also hacked into major businesses, retailers and governmental agencies to use their servers and machines.

Faraz Naseem ’18, MS ’20 is working to find a solution. Naseem works at FIU’s Cyber-Physical Systems Security Lab, part of the College of Engineering and Computing. Under the supervision of the lab’s director Selcuk Uluagac, Naseem, postdoctoral researcher Ahmet Aris, researcher and lab member Leonardo Babun ’15, MS ’19, PhD ’20 and current electrical and computer engineering master’s student Ege Tekiner, created a novel software to address the problem.

The team created a first-of-its-kind software that detects cryptojacking happening in real-time with an accuracy rate of nearly 99 percent.

“We are one of the first in the world to identify cryptojacking,” says Uluagac, who is also an eminent scholar-chaired associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences. “As Bitcoin technology becomes more prevalent, we will need these types of protections. Miami is already in the…

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UK Mass Hacking Ruled Illegal

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After five years of legal wrangling, the UK High Court has ruled that the security and intelligence services cannot search the computers and phones of millions of people under a single ‘general warrant’.

Quashing a decision by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the court ruled that section 5 of the Intelligence Services Act (ISA) 1994 does not permit the issuing of general warrants to property interference with property and certain forms of computer hacking.

The decision hinged on common law indicating that the government can’t search private premises – including computers and phones – without lawful authority; and that a warrant must target an identified individual or individuals. Because general warrants aren’t targeted, the court found, they lack that lawful authority.

“The aversion to general warrants is one of the basic principles on which the law of the United Kingdom is founded,” the court said in its ruling.

“As such, it may not be overridden by statute unless the wording of the statute makes clear that Parliament intended to do so.”

The use of general warrants was revealed in 2014, following the Edward Snowden disclosures, but a challenge by campaign gruop Privacy International failed in 2016.

However, in May 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that the Investigatory Powers Tribunal’s decisions are subject to judicial review in the High Court, leading to today’s hearing.

“Today’s victory rightly brings 250 years of legal precedent into the modern age. General warrants are no more permissible today than they were in the 18th century,” says Privacy International’s legal director, Caroline Wilson Palow.

“The government had been getting away with using them for too long. We welcome the High Court’s affirmation of these fundamental constitutional principles.” The government could in theory respond by specifically passing legislation to legitimize the use of general warrants.

However, similar practices have already been declared unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights. And while the UK’s departure from the EU could in theory negate this decision,…

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Georgia: Trump calls Senate runoff elections ‘illegal and invalid’

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  • President Donald Trump tweeted that the Georgia Senate runoff elections are “both illegal and invalid.”
  • He cited a bipartisan legal agreement as being proof of unconstitutionality — a claim that courts have rejected.
  • Hours later, Trump urged his Twitter followers to “get ready to vote on Tuesday.”
  • Trump will attend a rally in Georgia on Monday for Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

On Friday evening, President Donald Trump tweeted that the upcoming Georgia Senate runoffs are “both illegal and invalid.”

Just hours later, Trump vowed to “rally” for both Republican candidates — Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue — and told Georgians to “get ready to vote on Tuesday.”

In the initial three-part Twitter thread alleging fraud, Trump claimed that Tuesday’s vote would be illegitimate because of one of the state’s legal settlements.

Read more: Secret Service experts are speculating in group chats about how Trump might be hauled out of the White House if he won’t budge on Inauguration Day

“The Georgia Consent Decree is Unconstitutional & the State 2020 Presidential Election is therefore both illegal and invalid, and that would include the two current Senatorial Elections,” the president wrote.

 

The consent decree, a bipartisan agreement signed in March, established standards for verifying signatures on absentee ballots. Legal attempts to prove that this decree is unconstitutional have all failed.

Other legal challenges to overturn the election results, such as L. Lin Wood and Sidney Powell’s attempt to decertify Georgia’s results, have also been thrown out.

Despite Trump inaccurately dismissing Tuesday’s two Senate runoffs as illegitimate, he still urged his followers to vote.

 

The elections will directly affect the beginning of Joe Biden’s presidency. If Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock win, the Democratic Party will control the legislative and executive branches, allowing Biden to accomplish his legislative goals more easily.

Trump…

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