Arwel Hughes, who some of you might remember as the fake Darth Vader from one of my favorite news stories earlier this year, has been sentenced to a two-month suspended sentence and a £100 fine. We’re hoping Hughes, who’s a chronic alcoholic, something rare in Britain, can stay out of trouble and on the right side of the Force. → Read More
A note to future would-be thieves planning on stealing Apple laptops: You can use a small piece of tape to obstruct the built-in iSight camera to keep from being identified by police as the person who stole a MacBook. See, people have found ways to remote control their MacBooks to take photos automatically with the integrated cameras. They can make copies of the photos and show them to people… → Read More
Since last fall, police in New York’s Orange County have been using experimental gun-mounted camera technology that begins recording the moment a police officer’s gun is pulled from its holster. The technology was adopted after a public outcry surrounding the 2006 shooting of a Newbugrh, New York man in which, “the street version of the story differs massively from the one told… → Read More
Despite having more CCTV cameras than anywhere else in Europe, UK police have solved a whopping 3 percent of London robberies with them. Considering that all those cameras cost somewhere in the billions of pounds, or infinity dollars, that’s not exactly the return on investment many had wanted to see. As to why the cameras aren’t being used to solve crime, New Scotland Yard says police… → Read More
Where there is crime, there is a victim, or so the adage goes, and in this case, you’re likely one of the victims yourself. Eddie Davidson was the spam king of Louisville until he was caught in 2007, and he was sentenced today to 21 months in a federal PMITA prison. Davidson sent out millions of spams, from fake rolexes to junk stocks. He was convicted on tax charges and for falsifying… → Read More
It’s not all fancy, yet pointless, touch-sensitive tables and shoddily constructed video game systems for Microsoft . Nope. Now Redmond is getting involved in the gritty world of law enforcement, having developed a thumb drive that helps Johnny Law quickly extract information, encrypted or otherwise, from computers. The drive, adorably named COFEE, which doesn’t stand for Computer… → Read More
When is a disposable camera—who still uses those?—considered a weapon? When you’re a student in New Jersey with a knack for modifying them to shoot electrical charges at people, that’s when! A 14-year-old in Clinton, NJ has been charged with possession of a dangerous weapon on school grounds. Seems the future engineer was able to turn a disposable camera, just like that… → Read More
[photopress:iphoneburglar.jpg,full,left]A pair of fools from Salem, MA, have found themselves in jail after stealing 332 iPhones from the Apple Store they worked for and selling them on the black market. Thinking they’d never get caught, the thieves stole and sold for months before being caught. For those keeping score at home, the grand total of their heists: $132,468. → Read More
[photopress:ipod_porn_videos.jpg,full,center] Attention teenagers: There are many ways to see naked girls. Many. Even when I was a teenager, before there were terabytes of porn on the Internet, I found ways, and none of them got me arrested. This guy from Iowa, though, he had different ideas. He stole a classmate’s iPod, then demanded that she video record herself doing some filthy, dirty… → Read More
[photopress:ipodthefturb.jpg,full,center] Steal this player It’s real simple—if you don’t wanna get robbed, don’t walk around bad neighborhoods with the standard iPod earbuds on. You’re just asking for trouble. I don’t see what’s so hard to understand about that. A recently released study from a DC think tank kinda suggests that iPods may be responsible… → Read More
[photopress:201_2M26FABOO.standalone.prod_affiliate.4.JPG,full,center] David Anthony Faboo, pictured, is in trouble. The 37-year old allegedly met a 16-year old girl on MySpace. He then went to her house a short distance away and picked her up, likely for illicit underage sex. After a few hours of driving north, the girl changed her mind and started texting her friend. With the help of her cell… → Read More
Are you ready to show the FBI that tattoo you got in Key West when after you broke up with Celia and decided to go on a tear and get a tattoo disparaging both Celia and her mom? I sure don’t! It seems the FBI is planning a $1 billion, 10-year project to map identifying characteristics of millions of suspects, including palm prints, eye scans, and tattoo maps. Most of this data is already… → Read More
[photopress:japanesecat3603.jpg,full,center] This cute photo is to counteract the horror of the story below. You’re playing your Xbox 360, you’re really into your game, and your 17-month old daughter accidentally knocks the console over. Do you: a) Chuckle to yourself about having a clumsy kid? b) Explain to her that she has to be more careful and give her a “time out” in… → Read More
When Allofmp3.com got shut down in July, it took little time for its replacement MP3sparks.com to fill the void. Well, MP3sparks has recently been blocked from many major ISPs in the United Kingdom thanks to its alleged links to the Russian Business Network, “a notorious group known for pumping the internet with child pornography and denial of service attacks” according to The… → Read More
We’ve heard tales of people buying electronics, getting them home, and opening them just to find, well, not what they’d purchased. It’s been suggested that store employees had been swinging the ol’ switcharoo, and now a trio of thieving associates at a Best Buy in New Jersey (natch) have been caught red-handed doing just such unlawful misdeedery. Michael Lombardozzi, Jose… → Read More
Remember a few days ago we brought you news of the small town in Florida that was affixing GPS units to members of its nativity scene because people kept stealing Baby Jesus? As it turns out, someone did steal Baby Jesus, and the cops got her. Moral of the story: Read CrunchGear more often, Danielle Santino of Wellington, FL. Read CrunchGear more often. GPS Used To Recover Stolen Baby Jesus [Local… → Read More
The FBI of the USA is busy building the world’s largest photo database of people’s faces, fingerprints, and palm prints. It’ll be used for crime fighting and terrorist wrangling but it can also be used as part of a plan "under which employers could ask the FBI to keep employees’ fingerprints in the database, subject to state privacy laws, so that if that employees are… → Read More
We’re following the story of a 48-year old man who was posing online as an 18-year old Marine recruit, and was romancing an 18-year old girl who was really a middle aged woman in real life, and the man was jealous of her online relationship with a 22-year old co-worker who was really 22, so he shot him dead at close range in his pickup in a factory parking lot. The Aristocrats! Man Killed… → Read More
Tired of being assaulted only to find your pepper spray is inaccessible? We know, it happens. Domonique Torrence knows, too, but he’s come up with a solution. The “Spider-Man” bracelet is a pepper spraying bracelet inspired by Spidey’s web-slingers. (The comic book version, anyway.) You wear it on your wrist and make the “thwip” motion with your fingers, and a… → Read More
If you’re a trainee manager at a video game store, and you really, really want a PS3, then you shouldn’t be working at a video game store in the first place should wait until you’re a regular staffer and use your employee discount to get one at a discounted rate. Do not be like this idiot in England and try to steal one. They’re the kind of thing that people notice when… → Read More
Cameras on cellphones are as common as Herpes on a Hilton, and are generally used for home made porn capturing precious moments digitally. That being said, you’ll want to be careful what you keep pics of on there. In Vermont, a young man lost his cellphone. It was found and returned to the police, which was very a very nice thing to do. When the owner of the phone, Peter Ste. Marie, swung by… → Read More
Dear Friend, Please this is important and very urgent i have an urgent transaction of US$20.6 million, used to transfer to your nominated account,I am Mr Abubaker Yaro. The Auditor, with Accounting Department of the BANQUE ATLANTIQUE-OUAGADOUGO BURKINA FASO. After going through some old files in the records, I discovered that if I do not remit this money out urgently it will be forfeited for… → Read More
Wacky Boston has an idea for stopping crime and guess what!? You’re a part of it! The next time you get mugged or see someone racketeering, you can be a NARC and text the Crimestoppers tipline the city has recently just set up. This new tipline will allow residents to send Boston police an anonymous (yeah, right) text message when a crime is being committed. While this seems like a great… → Read More
Russian hackers may have broken into Valve’s Steam servers, obtaining credit card numbers and other sensitive information. While Valve, the developer of Half-Life, has yet to confirm such shenanigans, the Russian hackers are already patting themselves on the back. Next-Gen contacted the black hats, who go by the names of “MaddoxX” and “cintX” (does every hacker name… → Read More
While most of us are at the height of the giving feeling this holiday season, some crooks out of Silicon Valley are more interested in taking. In a clever heist straight out of CHiPs ’07, a gang of thieves made off with $190,000 in microchips and a Mazda using a modified crash-and-dash scheme to not only collect the loot, but make a getaway as well. The Mazda MPV was trasporting 100,000… → Read More
has been recovered. The private investigators hired by Jannard to find the missing gear have been successful in locating the swiped prototype, lens, and some personal computers. The development information, however, is still at large, though Jannard is optimistic in his post over at DVXUser. In addition, Red asks us not to speculate on the motives or identities of the thieves, but where’s… → Read More
We are totally glad we don’t work at HP. Not only is Dunn out the door, but yesterday and today, the embattled woman was forced forced to defend her company’s illegal actions to the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce. And they’re grilling her good. At the heart of the conflict are allegations of Pretexting, a sneaky, not to mention illegal, way of getting… → Read More
, makers of the Red One ultra-high-definition digital cinema camera. James Jannard, founder of the company, brings us this update via a post on DVX User: While items taken included many computers, drives, monitors, prototypes (including our “shiny” aluminum IBC prototype), ID files and our Scratch system… it appears that the thieves did NOT get any sensors, sensor information or… → Read More
, has posted scant but exciting details about a break-in last night at the Red headquarters. Not mere criminals, the felons didn’t make away with only typical, easy-to-fence HD gear, but with paperwork and perhaps hardware related to the Red One camera. Jannard is quick to point out that this won’t set back development and deployment of the camera at all. Nonetheless, he’s… → Read More
I’m not sure if this is a case of “IT department losing stuff” or “someone ganking government laptops” but it looks like the Department of Commerce has lost 1,100 laptops since 2001, with 250 from the Census Bureau alone. These laptops contained sensitive information including names and Social Security numbers. While we all know what happened – Joe Blow took his… → Read More
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