BBC:
Customs officials say they made the discovery while examining two air compressors - departing in a cargo shipment to Japan on 27 March - which drew suspicions due to their unusual texture and weight.
An examination ultimately found both were riddled with gold that had been "moulded and camouflaged" into parts such as gears, screws, and motor cores
WSOC:
IRS investigators say he bought athletic shoes and apparel from a major un-named sneaker company. Authorities said the contract forbid him from selling those items to other retailers or selling them outside the U.S.
But agents claim the business owner did both, selling them to a Chinese national who then resold the items -- at least $32 million worth -- over a five-year period.
Investigators said the group didn’t report cash payments over $10,000 like it was supposed to, lied to U.S. banks, and potentially broke federal anti-money laundering law.
Nike, which is headquartered in Oregon, is [the owner]’s largest collaborative partner. The brand regularly works with [his] stores on special-edition releases, the kind that are sought after and resold on the secondary market for well over their suggested retail price. This year alone, Nike plans to release 12 different sneakers in collaboration with [his] stores.
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In response to the complaint, the Whitaker Group highlighted its work to help people of color tell their stories and said that work was under now attack
Vice (reminds me of the type of caper Garreth would have pulled off in William Gibson's novels):
The wetsuit-clad, unconscious form of ... a professional scuba diver and adrenaline junkie from Brazil, was found floating in the industrial port of Newcastle, Australia, surrounded by 54 kilos of cocaine bricks in May last year.
It’s alleged that [the diver], 31, and another diver he knew ..., had been smuggled into Australia days before to undertake a risky underwater mission.
They were reportedly there to carry out a nighttime dive to retrieve 108 kilos of cocaine – worth around $30 million to Australian crime gangs – attached to the outside of the hull of the Areti GR, a huge 34,000-tonne cargo ship that had sailed into Newcastle the night before from Argentina.
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After [the diver] died, [a] superyacht agent ... from Cairns in Australia was arrested while trying to fly to Singapore. Court documents allege [the agent] smuggled the two Brazilians into Cullen Bay
The article goes into detail on the technology used in such operations, including "The Torpedo, a cocaine-packed parasite drone designed to attach itself by magnets to the hull of cargo ships."
A lot of great pics on Instagram:
Why did he fill two checked bags with Fruit Roll-Ups? “It has something to do with ice cream,” the man’s voice says.
The man was almost certainly referring to a viral TikTok trend, ongoing since at least March, in which users of the video social network wrap the sweet, sticky roll-up around a small scoop of ice cream, which then freezes over and becomes hard and crunchy.
*Previously: Greatest living pool cue maker sentenced after pleading guilty to helping smuggle elephant ivory
Here's just some of the suspicious details from CBS:
Police officials determined that the men were not authorized to operate the boat and had not obtained permission to dive. According to Polish media reports, only one of the men had a Spanish passport, while the others offered only verbal identification.
Another wrinkle was their explanation: The men claimed to have been searching for amber. While the Baltic Sea is famous for its vast deposits of amber, searching for it in the dark is unlikely to be a successful strategy.
Seasoned amber hunters interviewed by Polish media said one more thing didn't add up: The men had an underwater scooter, used to drag divers swiftly through the water — something that wouldn't help in a hunt for small objects on the seafloor, especially as such a device's propeller lifts debris from the bottom, decreasing visibility.
Officers apparently saw nothing suspicious at first in the fact that the men were diving near critical infrastructure at night with no permit and atypical amber-hunting equipment, and the local police did not pursue the matter, releasing the men without further questioning.
They have all reportedly left Poland.
Guesses include smugglers and failed false flag operation.
I ordered batteries off eBay and they shipped it in a fake mouse lol pic.twitter.com/ONbcTszRzm
— Faker 🇦🇱 (@fakershigebebe) December 23, 2022
more than 100 agents had boarded one of MSC’s ships, the Gayane, as it slid into the Port of Philadelphia for what was supposed to be a quick stop on its way to Rotterdam. Deep below deck, hidden in containers packed with wine and nuts, the agents discovered nearly 20 tons of cocaine, worth $1 billion. The ensuing investigation showed that more than a third of the crew—all MSC employees—had helped transfer vast amounts of cocaine from speedboats at night while the ship powered through the open ocean off South America. It was the largest maritime drug bust in American history.
The crime was so big and brazen that authorities made the exceptional decision to seize not just the cocaine but also the Gayane itself, a 1,000-foot-long ship worth more than $100 million.
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For US officials, the company’s claim of ignorance didn’t add up.
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The family likes to say seawater runs through their veins, citing shipping documents from the 17th century that bear their name
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MSC also distinguished itself by emphasizing price over speed of delivery. “MSC, very often in the early years, the inside joke in the industry was that it was shorthand for ‘maybe ship comes’ ”
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Searching a fully loaded ship is difficult, so much so that it’s rarely done. Holds are cramped and containers can be difficult to get to. The agents acquired special oxygen monitoring devices in case they had to go deep beneath the deck, where rusted iron can deplete oxygen levels.
The series ZeroZeroZero on Prime is terrific. (And speaking of federal agents dealing with drug runners, a NSFW movie clip.)
"links to websites that sell them circulate among gun enthusiasts who often meet through web forums and sites like Reddit."
Writing for Guernica, Kimon de Greef describes Birdsport:
Prices start at around one hundred dollars but rise quickly for promising singers. On his last trip, [the smuggler] spent four thousand dollars on a bird for himself.
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“This one’s angry,” [the smuggler] said appreciatively. “I look for birds like that.”
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When two men agree to race, they lift their cages from these improvised pegs and place them, inches apart, on a shoulder-height spike driven into the ground for just this purpose. As soon as the birds see each other, they begin singing to defend their turf; the two judges tally each burst of whistles, and the first bird to fifty wins.
Much of that product, the documents showed, came from Harbin Gaotai Food Co Ltd, a Chinese supplier. Canadian health authorities later linked berries from Harbin Gaotai to a 2017 norovirus outbreak in Quebec that sickened hundreds of people. Canadian authorities issued a recall on Harbin Gaotai berries coming directly to Canada from China dating back to July 2016.
What they didn't realize is that Harbin Gaotai raspberries had also entered Canada through a backdoor during that period in the form of falsely labeled fruit shipped from Chile by Frutti di Bosco.
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Harbin Gaotai, based in Binzhou, China, didn't respond to requests for comment. Its products have raised concerns elsewhere. The company since 2009 has been on a U.S. Food and Drug Administration watchlist
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Ramirez last year pleaded guilty to two criminal counts of making false statements on export declarations. He received a $6,266 fine and a suspended 122-day jail sentence. Chilean Customs had recommended a maximum fine of $55.6 million.
“I felt like Dante descending into the inferno,” said Lt. Col. Gabriele Gargano, the police officer who led the raid and a subsequent investigation. “I’ve seen many smuggling busts — but 70 sacks of cigarettes on a military vessel? I never saw that in my whole life.”The investigation has spread to a second and third ship.
The bust has tarnished what European leaders have portrayed as a tough-minded, but principled, effort to curb migration to the continent.
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Even before its sailors began smuggling contraband, the Caprera had apparently violated the terms of a United Nations arms embargo on at least three occasions, according to the documents. The embargo bars foreign actors from supplying arms to any faction involved in the Libyan civil war and repairing military equipment.
According to an application for a court order filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on September 5, investigators want information on users of Obsidian 4, a tool used to control rifle scopes made by night-vision specialist American Technologies Network Corp. The app allows gun owners to get a live stream, take video and calibrate their gun scope from an Android or iPhone device.Previously: "A.T.F. Filled Secret Bank Account With Millions From Shadowy Cigarette Sales"
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The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) department is seeking information as part of a broad investigation into possible breaches of weapons export regulations. It’s looking into illegal exports of ATN’s scope, though the company itself isn’t under investigation, according to the order. As part of that, investigators are looking for a quick way to find out where the app is in use, as that will likely indicate where the hardware has been shipped. ICE has repeatedly intercepted illegal shipments of the scope
Gold bars fraudulently stamped with the logos of major refineries are being inserted into the global market to launder smuggled or illegal gold, refining and banking executives tell Reuters. The fakes are hard to detect, making them an ideal fund-runner for narcotics dealers or warlords.Speaking of gold:
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High gold prices have triggered a boom in informal and illegal mining since the mid-2000s. Without the stamp of a prestigious refinery, such gold would be forced into underground networks, or priced at a discount. By pirating Swiss and other major brands, metal that has been mined or processed in places that would not otherwise be legal or acceptable in the West – for example in parts of Africa, Venezuela or North Korea – can be injected into the market, channeling funds to criminals or regimes that are sanctioned.
It is not clear who is making the bars found so far, but executives and bankers told Reuters they think most originate in China, the world’s largest gold producer and importer, and have entered the market via dealers and trading houses in Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand.
One of our photographers found the coolest thing recently: a #WVU season pass from the 1930s pic.twitter.com/knZLEIIzdg— Andrew Spellman (@andrewspellman_) August 27, 2019
they were pulled over minutes later and arrested by Border Patrol agents. That stop on July 3 led this week to the arrest of 16 other Marines suspected of human smuggling and drug violations, pointing to a much broader operation that reached deep into the enlisted ranks.
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The leaders at Camp Pendleton [in Southern California] sent a strong message this week as the investigation widened, ordering the 16 Marines to the front of an early morning battalion formation on Thursday, and arresting them in front of 800 of their peers.
The vessel had a total of 8,000 to 9,000 containers on board, said customs official Arno Kooij. "One of those containers was the one we were looking for," he said.
The container in question was found hidden beneath an airplane fuselage being transported by ship. Despite fears that the fuselage could be damaged, Dutch trade officials decided to extract the container.
In the last three decades, 40 percent of the world’s giraffe population has died. But Niger, the third-poorest country on earth, has remarkably reversed the trend, giving a second chance to Africa’s most threatened giraffe subspecies. They've come back so strong here, in fact, that they're now posing a problem for local farmers.
The new law hasn’t stopped some dealers from trying, however — so the DEC is still conducting undercover operations. During the June mission, which went down at the Ro Gallery in Queens, DEC officers dressed as ivory-loving art connoisseurs. For Lieutenant Jesse Paluch, who headed the mission, that meant wearing a large ivory necklace and bracelet, as well as a linen shirt that he joked was designed to keep “a level of GQ.”
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The case against the owner of the art gallery is now pending pre-indictment. We spoke to the owner . . . during an “ivory crush” held in Central Park this past August where the DEC publicly destroyed illegal ivory agents had seized.
Nearly 4,000 ill-gotten artifacts will be returned to Iraq on Wednesday, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says. The ancient objects were bought by Hobby Lobby, a national chain of arts and crafts stores, then smuggled into the United States in violation of federal law.