The conviction of a resident of California for distributing illegal content over a peer-to-peer computer network is the latest strike against supposedly untraceable material on the internet. It's a "tip of the iceberg" moment but it shows that there are ways of investigating and securing convictions across apparently secure and secret methods of content distribution.
One might imagine that, in a post-11 September 2001 world, The Americas would be the worst place that anyone could use an aircraft for illegal purposes. But it's not so. The skies remain friendly to drug dealers for whom aircraft are a tool of choice.
The drive of the Left in the UK towards allowing minors (i.e. those under the legal age of majority) to vote is simple. It's a development of the Lutherian concept which stated "give me the child before seven and I will give you the man." The idea is simple: like those on the left who think that the age of sexual consent for homosexuality should be reduced to 12 years, the plan is to capture voters before they enter the real world and discover the fallacy of the left.
How small is a country? We've seen, over the years, a number of what World Money Laundering Report calls "invented jurisdictions" but can one person be a country, even a country within a country? The so-called "sovereign citizens" movement in the USA says so and the authorities and the courts have been battling against the concept for years. Here's the current state of play. (Free for seven days)
Just how much money can a group of tourists hide in their socks and knickers, plus a variety of other methods of concealment? It's far more than you might think.
When Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, CEO of Mashreq Bank, told the bank's 50th Anniversary meeting that it would become "the most progressive bank" in the Gulf and would become a "branchless bank" he was the latest in a line of bankers who has said this can happen. But while some internet only banks have been launched, no bank has ever succeeded in closing its branch network. Nigel Morris-Cotterill looks at some examples and says that Britain's Midland Bank developed, 30 years ago, the concepts that are now at the core of the delivery of real-world retail banking.
On-line shopping platform Lazada has systemic problems that manifest in a wide range of ways. Here's five reasons you should not order from them until they fix them. In each case, the orders were placed on the Lazada platform in response to advertisements by third parties whose identity is not easily obtainable by customers and, arguably, is obscured by Lazada.
The owner of a laboratory will be jailed after pleading guilty to defrauding insurance companies for medical tests that were never performed in a fraud that depended on duping multiple people.
If you are easily offended, you can read this but perhaps not click on some of the links. We never thought we'd have a headline like this but when a serious case came to court, we found dozens of other stories and, obviously, we like to satisfy our members. Here's the one that came first plus four more.
The music industry is littered with artists who end up poor because their managers ran away with the money they earned, or didn't properly account for it, or added in personal or corporate expenses as chargebacks. Luckily, none of the clients of the latest accountant / manager to get caught has ended up sleeping on a dirty mattress or not having enough to eat as has happened to others in the same position. But none of that is the most interesting thing about this case.
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