I haven’t seen much reporting about this elsewhere: executives of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker have been indicted on charges of bank fraud and money laundering.
The LAT is reporting that Full Tilt’s domain has been seized by the F.B.I. I’m not in a position to check that at the moment.
The NYT has discovered the underground trade in “loosies”: sales of loose cigarettes. A “legal” pack, with taxes, goes for $12.50 (thus sayeth the Times); the “loosie” dealer profiled in the article sells loose cigs for 75 cents each, two for a buck, or $8 a pack ($7 if he knows you). And business is good, Mayor Bloomberg.
Tilman Fertitta and the Landry’s chain are trying to purchase McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurants. Good luck with that.
Should the Chowchilla school bus kidnappers be paroled?
Sagra Italian Restaurant damaged by fire. The SDC ate there, and, well…we wish the owners the best, even if we can’t say we were wild about the restaurant.
I intended to blog this a few days ago: the latest APD suspension is for 90 days. In this case, the officer in question “was rude to a citizen and initially gave misleading statements to investigators”.
Oh, sure, you laugh at me for picking the Cubs to win it all. But I’ll point out that the Cubs have actually won a game this year, unlike certain other teams (cough cough Houston cough cough) I could name.
Things that have made me laugh today, as of about noon:
EFFector 24.11. “…undergraduate degrees in Facebook Privacy Settings”.
The PLAYMOBIL ™ Apple ™ Store playset.
The new project from His Scalziness. (The prologue is up at Tor’s site.)
The NYT falls for another April Fool’s joke. Popehat has the details.
Paolo Bacigalupi and the bacterial colony formerly known as Peter Watts are collaborating on a new shared world anthology. “‘We expect suicides,’ said Watts. ‘And maybe a Nebula.'”
Updated about 1:30 PM:
“‘Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark’ Gains Sentience, Hungers For The Flesh Of the Living“. (Hattip: Pope Scalzi the First.) Mostly because this line had me rolling on the floor:
The NYT has an interesting investigative story on the Fiesta Bowl. Or, rather, on the Fiesta Bowl’s money.
The Fiesta Bowl management and staff have apparently been spending the money taken in by the Fiesta Bowl’s 501(c)3 on some questionable items. And when I say questionable, I mean “jail time is a possibility” items: campaign contributions, strip clubs (of course. It always has to be strip clubs.), a $30,000 birthday party (how do you spend $30,000 on a birthday party for an adult human? Unless that birthday party is at a strip club. Or, apparently, Pebble Beach.), airfare and hotel for an employee’s honeymoon (plus airfare for Fiesta Bowl employees to attend the wedding). Those are the high points.
The item that really leaps out at me is $75 for flowers. The flowers were for someone at the University of Texas, and were apparently sent in an attempt to influence that person into accepting the CEO’s daughter into “a honors program” (Plan II?). $75 is such a penny-ante amount; surely the CEO could have come up with $75 out of his own pocket. And why send flowers at all? A phone call would have done just as well. “Nice football team you have there. It’d be a shame if you didn’t get a bowl bid this year because my daughter didn’t get accepted into Plan II.”
The best thing about this? It could cost the Fiesta Bowl both tax-exempt status and BCS bowl status. As a matter of fact, it appears some of the impetus for this investigation came from an anti-BCS group. I wonder what other skeletons are going to turn up in the Orange and Sugar Bowl closets. I also wonder if this is the first hammer blow at the Berlin Wall of the BCS.
Edited to add: For those who don’t want to deal with the NYT, here’s a HouChron story on the firing of bowl CEO John Junker, which covers some of what was in the NYT report. Here’s a direct link to the public release version of the special committee report (which has some information redacted due to “contractual confidentiality provisions”).
…where I promptly bludgeon them to death. At least, the rich ones.
The Steven Seagal cockfighting bust story raised some obvious questions, such as what was he doing on a raid in Arizona when he’s a deputy chief in Louisana.
Seagal’s explanation was that he was “on loan” from Louisiana. This raises some more interesting questions, such as: does the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office frequently loan out reserve deputies to other departments? Especially other departments a thousand miles away?
By way of Balko, we learn of another explanation: Seagal isn’t with JPSO any longer.
Granted, this is one of the New Times alternative weekly papers, so I’d take much of the article with a grain of salt. (Especially the parts about the more salacious allegations against Seagal: remember, anybody can allege anything they want in a lawsuit, and the complaint quoted in the article was dropped.) But the statements in the article about Seagal’s status with JPSO are direct on-the-record quotes from named sources, so I give those a lot of credibility.
We’re just jam-packed today, aren’t we?
The LA County Sheriff’s Office is planning to fire six deputies, all of whom worked on the third floor of the men’s jail.
According to the LAT‘s reporting, the six deputies in question “allegedly were part of a clique that had certain gang-like characteristics, including three-finger hand signs, representing the third floor”.
But, hey, is esprit de corps a crime? Or even a termination offense?
No. But beating up your fellow jail employees at the Christmas party is.
Six on two, guys? Really?
There’s a rather interesting article in today’s NYT about an incident in the town of Massapequa Park, which has a high concentration of active duty and retired police officers in its population.
Basically, the police got a call about a man threatening people with knives.
By the time things were over, the guy with the knives had been shot dead. And an officer with the transit police shot and killed a plainclothes Nassau County police officer.
Also in the NYT, the Miami PD has shot and killed seven people in eight months. All seven were black. All of the officers involved were Hispanic. Some folks have a problem with this.
Not from the NYT: the Fort Worth city council approved a $400,000 settlement with Chad Gibson.
You may not remember Mr. Gibson’s name, but the case got a fair amount of attention at the time. In brief, Fort Worth PD and TABC investigators decided to “inspect” the Rainbow Lounge, which is described as a “gay bar”. Somehow, during the process of “inspection”, Mr. Gibson received a serious head injury.
Edited to add: Okay, I’ll throw this one in, too, since the previous three links were kind of negative. Ten bicyclists riding in Central Park were ticketed on Tuesday morning for exceeding the speed limit. (The cyclists were doing 25 MPH at a time when cars are not allowed on the roads. The posted speed limit for cars is 25 MPH, but bicycles are subject to a lower 15 MPH speed limit.)
The punchline? The police have withdrawn all the tickets and are apologizing in person to city residents.
Edited to add 2: Oh, this is just awesome. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (yes, that’s Joe Arpaio’s outfit) raided a guy’s home and arrested him…for cockfighting.
But that’s not the best part of the story. Would you believe MCSO used a tank in the raid?
But that’s not the best part of the story, either. Would you believe Steven Seagal was along for the raid?
That’s interesting. My understanding was that Seagal was a reserve deputy with the Jefferson Parish sheriff’s department in Louisiana, and “Lawman” was supposed to portray his work with that department. I’m a little unclear as to whether Seagal is still a reserve deputy, since there was some controversy (and the show was suspended for a time) over the lawsuit against Seagal. (That lawsuit has been dropped.) I know “Lawman” has picked up again, but is it not set in Jefferson Parish now? Is Seagal traveling around the country from department to department? Or did he pick up another gig with MCSO? Anybody know? Is anybody willing to admit in public that they watch “Lawman”?
(I’ll confess: Mike the Musicologist recorded a few episodes for me, and a group of us watched the first one. That’s as far as I’ve gone; I haven’t seen any of the second season.)
(Hattip: Say Uncle.)
The sprawling metropolis of Tomball, Texas is spending a $40,000 grant from the Department of Justice to purchase…a gyroplane.
It is unclear from the linked article if the pilot will have to strap a colander to his face. It is also unclear what a gyroplane will accomplish that can’t be accomplished by a UAV (which the Houston Police Department actually has some experience with, unlike the gyroplane, which is not in use by any other police department in the United States).
In other news, Chief Art Acevedo has suspended two Austin Police Department officers.
Officer #2 was suspended for “failing to yield to two pedestrians crossing Barton Springs Road in a crosswalk in December”. According to the Statesman, the officer was responding to an emergency call, but did not have his lights and sirens on, and did not actually hit anyone. He was suspended for a day.
What did Officer #1 do? Well, he went out to a call at a local home (at 2:30 AM on New Year’s Eve). While inside the home, it appears he was standing on a table trying to search the attic when the table tipped over and the officer fell.
Unfortunately, the officer had his booger hook on the bang switch of his weapon when he fell, causing it to go off
The officer in question has been suspended for three days. Beyond what is quoted in the article, there is no update on the current medical condition of the officer who was shot in the feet.
Obit watch: Ferlin Husky.
Shocked, shocked I am:
In other news, I have not been able to find a current execution date for Antoinette Frank.
Keeping with our trend this morning of depressing our readers:
Here is the Charity Navigator page for the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation. Note the rating.
As noted previously, the mayor and much of the city council of Bell lost the recall election.
Ah, but there’s a catch: the city of Bell is losing their shirts on this deal, but they’re looking for audiophiles who need high quality cassette tapes. has to certify the election results. Under ordinary circumstances, that would be a non-issue. But a judge has ordered three of the current city council members to stay at least 100 yards from City Hall, as well as ordering them not to conduct city business. So there’s nobody available to do the certification. The answer: special emergency legislation.
And what of Robert “Ratso” Rizzo? The latest news from his hearing on conflict of interest charges is that, as city administrator, he hired an engineering firm owned by Dennis Tarango to do various environmental studies. Tarango was also the city’s planning director. And, even better, Tarango and Ratso were business partners in a horse-racing venture.
Somebody’s going to get a great true crime book out of this.
Edited to add: Wow. Just wow. Google Books, making it possible to hattip references from the early 1980’s.
The LAT link above contains a great photo of Timothy Durham being perp-walked by two FBI agents. Also worthy of note:
This is shaping up to be a major scandal, and I’m frankly shocked that I haven’t heard about it until now.
Local coverage from the SFChron. Curiously to me, the SFChron is not giving this story major play; I had to click several levels deep in their website to find it. On the other hand, this next story was front page news in the SFChron, even though it happened clear across the country:
This wouldn’t ordinarily be big news. But one of the people arrested was Felicia Pearson, who played “Snoop” on The Wire.
Damn shame.
I thought about including this in the previous round of random notes, but on second thought it deserves a post by itself. Here are two epic tales from bloggers that I admire (though I have not met either of them):
Ambulance Driver and his buddy, Too Old to Work, Too Young to Retire, bring a woman back from the dead while on vacation.
Ken over at Popehat talks about a day in the glamorous life of a defense lawyer.