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Friday, January 07, 2022

Prosecutor investigating PG&E's role in Dixie Fire says Cal Fire determination is 'not the end' of criminal investigation

Cal Fire determined a tree striking PG&E equipment to be the cause of the Dixie Fire. Prosecutors investigate if the company can be held criminally responsible.

CALIFORNIA, USA — On July 13, PG&E dispatched a troubleman to the Cresta Dam to investigate an outage on one of the company's power lines. That same evening, the employee made a call to his dispatcher:

"There’s a tree on the line. Started a fire," he told the dispatcher.

The flames the troubleman found were the beginnings of the Dixie Fire, which went on to burn 963,309 acres over more than 3 months. It was the second largest fire in California history.

On Tuesday, Cal Fire investigators issued a statement agreeing with that PG&E employee's initial assessment. In it, the state agency determined, “the Dixie Fire was caused by a tree contacting electrical distribution lines owned and operated by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E)..."

"It is not the end of the investigation," said Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey.

Butte County leads a group of four others impacted by the fire, including Plumas, Lassen, Tehama, and Shasta, investigating whether PG&E should be held criminally responsible for the fire.

The first sparks of the Dixie Fire fell in the same canyon as the last PG&E-caused fire that Ramsey’s office prosecuted: the deadly 2018 Camp Fire. PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of felony manslaughter in that case.

"Unfortunately, we have the most experience in this type of prosecution," Ramsey said.

One of the key questions prosecutors are investigating now is whether PG&E should have cut the tree down before it fell into the line and ignited the Dixie Fire. They are also concerned with why that line was left on for nearly 10 hours after the outage was first reported, per PG&E's own timeline of the events of July 13.

"Those are elements that we take into consideration in determining whether we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that PG&E acted recklessly in this matter," Ramsey said.

PG&E told a federal court that the tree was not identified as a hazard in 2020 or early 2021, when trees near the line were last inspected.

PG&E is still on a five-year federal probation for crimes in the San Bruno gas explosion. Judge William Alsup, who oversees the company's probation, has made public a number of photos of the tree, before and after the fire, through his questioning. Alsup has also called to the stand the PG&E troubleman who first saw the Dixie Fire.

In a hearing Monday, the Judge called PG&E a “menace to society.” Their probation is set to expire January 26, but the judge said he would give “serious consideration” to extending it if federal prosecutors were to ask.

In a statement on Cal Fire’s finding PG&E says that “a large tree struck one of our normally operating lines,” and that it was "one of more than 8 million trees within strike distance to PG&E lines." The company does not explicitly accept Cal Fire’s determination in the statement.

Trump deal partner’s blank-check firm seeks to avoid liquidation

By Krystal Hu

(Reuters) - The chief executive of the blank-check acquisition firm that plans to merge with former U.S. President Donald Trump’s new social media venture is chasing retail investors to save another of his deals from falling apart.

According to regulatory filings and a person familiar with the matter, Benessere Capital led by Patrick Orlando has postponed its special shareholders' meeting to extend its deadline to complete a merger because not enough investors sent in their votes.

The special shareholder meeting has been rescheduled to Jan. 7, the previously set date for Benessere to close a deal, from Jan. 5. If Benessere Capital can’t secure enough shareholder votes to extend the deadline by then, the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) will face the risk of being dissolved.

Orlando’s other SPAC, Yunhong International, liquidated last year, citing its "inability to consummate an initial business" within the deadline stipulated as per the company’s regulations in its filings.

As retail participation in SPACs rose since 2020, it can post challenges for SPACs to chase down individual investors and gather enough shareholder votes from them. Lucid Group(LCID.O), a highly popular SPAC target among retail investors, had struggled to get enough votes to approve its merger last year.

SPACs usually hire proxy solicitors to contact retail investors to vote through mails and by phone. Retail investors account for over 60% of Benessere's shareholders, according to the source.

When Orlando's other SPAC, Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC.O), announced its plan to merge with Trump's new social media company, many retail investors flocked into the stock as well as Benessere.

Benessere has agreed to combine with hydrogen fuel supplier eCombustible in November, valuing the energy firm at $805 million.

A SPAC is a publicly listed shell company that raises funds intending to merge with a private company within a deadline ranging from 12 to 24 months.

(Reporting by Krystal Hu in Toronto; editing by Greg Roumeliotis and Grant McCool)

Literary mystery may finally be solved as man arrested for allegedly stealing unpublished books

Filippo Bernardini is accused of impersonating publishing figures to steal manuscripts, in scam that has stumped authors and editors for years

Author Margaret Atwood. Her book The Testaments was targeted by a fraudster, who contacted her publishers and even the Booker prize judges to get the manuscript ahead of publication.

Photograph: Ian West/PA

Sian Cain
THE GUARDIAN
Thu 6 Jan 2022

A mysterious fraudster who impersonated publishers and agents to steal book manuscripts in an international phishing scam may have finally been caught, with the FBI arresting a 29-year-old man at John F Kennedy airport in New York on Wednesday.

Filippo Bernardini, an Italian citizen who worked at UK publisher Simon & Schuster, was arrested upon landing in the US on Wednesday. The FBI alleged that Bernardini had “impersonated, defrauded, and attempted to defraud, hundreds of individuals” to obtain unpublished and draft works.

Bernardini is charged with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in a New York district court, with the indictment saying Bernardini had registered more than 160 fake internet domains to impersonate others since 2016.

Bernardini’s arrest may mark the start of the end of a mystery that has fascinated and appalled the literary world for five years, during which hundreds of unpublished manuscripts have been targeted.

Some authors, agents, editors, scouts and even judges for the Booker prize have been victims of phishing scams involving manuscripts of highly anticipated novels by Margaret Atwood, Sally Rooney and actor Ethan Hawke.

‘If publishers become afraid, we’re in trouble’: publishing’s cancel culture debate boils over

Those responsible created slightly tweaked email addresses to fool publishing figures, including replacing “t” with “f”, “q” with “g”, and using “r” and “n” to make “m”, as in @penguinrandornhouse.com. They would use industry lingo, such as “ms” for manuscript, and demonstrated an understanding of the publishing process, which fooled some into handing over manuscripts and information about upcoming projects or film rights.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Simon & Schuster said the publisher was “shocked and horrified” by the allegations against Bernardini and that they had suspended him pending further information.

“The safekeeping of our authors’ intellectual property is of primary importance to Simon & Schuster, and for all in the publishing industry, and we are grateful to the FBI for investigating these incidents and bringing charges against the alleged perpetrator,” he added.

Simon & Schuster was not named in the indictment, and the Guardian understands it is not accused of wrongdoing.

Publishing industry figures and authorities have been stumped for years by possible motivations behind the phishing scam, with no ransom or blackmail demands ever materialising after manuscripts were mistakenly sent on.

None of the books ever turned up online, and everything from celebrity releases to debut novels by unknown writers were targeted. Some had suspected the individual was a literary scout, attempting to secure information to make film and television deals ahead of others.

“If you try to find financial and economic gain, it’s of course hard to see,” Daniel Sandström, literary director of a Swedish publisher that was targeted multiple times, told Vulture last year.

“But if the game is psychological, a kind of mastery or feeling of superiority, it’s easier to visualise. This is a business full of resentment as well, and in that sense, it becomes a good story.”

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Bike Index Uncovers International Bike Theft & Sale Operation

Jan 5, 2022
by Alicia Leggett

In early 2021, users of the bike registry Bike Index alerted the website that a seller based in Juarez, Mexico, appeared to be selling large numbers of bikes that matched many of those stolen in Colorado. The tips catalyzed a special data compilation project that took place throughout 2021, has indexed more than 1000 suspicious bikes, and has matched several victims of bike theft with their bikes.

To start out, Bike Index is a nonprofit organization that has created an online database of bikes, stolen and not, that can be used to identify and recover stolen bikes. The organization also collects information about the bicycle black market, so that the more bikes are recovered, the more the organization understands how to efficiently identify stolen bikes in the future.

Over the next several months, Bike Index watched and documented as Alexander's Bikes posted bike after bike for sale on its Facebook page, which was geo-restricted and only viewable from Mexico or using a Mexico VPN.

Bike Index tediously combed through theft reports on both Bike Index and in Colorado cycling Facebook groups. In the first batch of 43 bikes that it looked at, Bike Index was able to match 10 with owners who'd had their bikes stolen, verifying the matches using identifying markings that couldn't be attributed to chance. That was enough for Bike Index to keep going. All in all, Bike Index documented 1077 bike listings with more than 15,000 screenshots.

In this instance, the owner had a photo of a rim dent that they could match up with the photos in the listing.

Now, all those bikes are indexed in an exhaustive spreadsheet. If you or someone you know has had a bike stolen in Colorado since roughly 2019, that spreadsheet would be a good place to look. Read Bike Index's report for more information about using the database and working with authorities to recover the bikes.

While Bike Index was working to compile screenshots of bike listings, Colorado's Attorney General Phil Weiser was working on an anti-theft operation of his own called Operation Vicious Cycle. In November 2021, Weiser charged eight men with 227 counts related to 29 bike shop burglaries in which they stole about $985,000 in high-end mountain bikes, according to a press release.

The thieves had a system: they would steal either a box truck or a van, ram it into the front windows of a bike shop or otherwise break in using heavy landscaping rocks, and then specifically target mountain bikes. In one instance, they stole $90,000 worth of bikes in under five minutes. Some shops were hit multiple times. One was robbed four times over several months.

The press release goes on to suggest that the Attorney General believes the group worked with "fences" who sold the stolen bikes for them - such as Alexander's Bikes - and that it's likely the stolen goods may have been moved into Mexico.

The specific bikes stolen have not been publicly listed, but Bike Index has cross-referenced its list with the shops targeted, and some of the bikes listed on the Alexander's Bikes Facebook page still had stickers from some of the shops named in Operation Vicious Cycle.

The details had some tells.

Alexander's Bikes is notable in part because of the way it connected two very different demographics - the people who had their bikes stolen in Colorado and the people who were looking to buy bikes in Mexico. It's quite unlikely that someone looking for their next ride in Mexico would be keeping tabs on the bikes stolen in Colorado, and it's unlikely that someone who had a bike stolen in Colorado would stumble upon the geo-restricted Facebook page.

Also fascinating is that the bikes for sale by Alexander's Bikes came from all over Colorado and were stolen using a wide variety of tactics. The lack of specificity points to Alexander's Bikes having a multitude of thieves and groups stealing bikes, not just one main source - thus, the thieves apprehended by Operation Vicious Cycle are highly unlikely to have been the only ones, though they're likely to have been at least somewhat involved. Other large burglaries have been linked to Alexander's Bikes, too, including the Guerilla Gravity headquarters break-in in November. Guerilla Gravity has identified at least two of the bikes stolen from its showroom in the Alexander's Bikes listings.

The Bike Index investigation also highlighted how quickly bikes can make their ways into the black market - one example that Bike Index shared was a Zerode Katipo that was stolen in late August and appeared for sale in early September, taking just over two weeks to make its way south and onto Facebook.

This Zerode made it from Denver to Juarez in just over two weeks.
The vast number of stolen bikes that were listed by Alexander's Bikes points to the existence of bike theft operations that are larger and more profitable than was previously understood, but also to the possibility that once those operations are cracked, the bikes are recoverable.

The investigation also quantified the black market in a way that hadn't been done before, according to Bike Index. Most of the bikes for sale listed in the $4000 to $5000 USD range. For the number of bikes that were likely sold, even without knowing Alexander's Bikes' overhead costs, that's likely a huge profit margin.

As of right now, it appears that Alexander's Bikes has been fully shut down, and there's a fair chance that it has to do with the Colorado Attorney General's investigation or with the amount of publicity this story has received in the last few weeks. Alexander Espinosa Perez, who ran Alexander's Bikes, denied any involvement with bike trafficking and the sale of stolen goods and promised to work with US and Mexican authorities against bike theft, but he immediately deleted the shop's Facebook and TikTok pages and wiped its Instagram page clean of all content.

It's unclear where Perez is now or whether he'll be able to continue selling bikes, but authorities now definitively have more information about large-scale bike theft and resale than ever. No doubt, when the next operation of this type crops up in the future, there will be some knowledge to be taken from this, and authorities might know just where to look.