A Man Had His Identity Stolen By A Child Exploitation Trader. Then The FBI Raided His Home.
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Getting your identity stolen is bad enough. What if it was abused to buy and sell some of the worst content imaginable?
That’s what happened to a man in Ohio, whose name and personal details were used by people who were allegedly trading child sexual abuse material (CSAM), according to a search warrant reviewed by Forbes.
In 2023, when the FBI began looking into a person uploading CSAM to Dropbox, they discovered they’interacting with an individual who’d been selling links to abuse material.
Data from the user’s CashApp showed it’d ostensibly been registered by a 31-year-old from Mississippi. When cops learned the man was also under investigation in Dallas, they decided to search his address.
But when detectives forensically examined the man’s electronic devices, it became clear he was not the perpetrator. One clear indicator, they said, was that a key Gmail address linked to the CSAM deals was not found on any of his phones or computers.
It appeared that his name, address and other personal data had been stolen, then used to set up accounts online by the CSAM dealer.
According to the FBI, one email from the unidentified user suggested they used multiple different identities when selling child abuse material.
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THE BIG STORY:
This Secretive Company Built An Empire By Hawking Bad Financial And Health Advice On Facebook
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A company called The Agora and a sprawling conglomerate of subsidiaries has been flooding Facebook with wild financial claims and health advice to get users to sign up to its newsletters and wellness supplements, Forbes finds.
One current spate of ads claims President Trump will soon “unleash” a $150 trillion “secret trust” and the American people can get rich from trading on it, as long as they subscribe first.
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Columbia University applicants have had their personal data stolen, according to Bloomberg. The hacker had political motivations, according to a university official, and the pilfered data included university-issued ID numbers, citizenship status and application decision. Among those affected by the leak was New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, the New York Times reports.
IT giant Ingram Micro has been hit by ransomware attack, leading to a shutdown of internal systems, as well as its website and online ordering systems, Bleeping Computer reports.
Winner of the Week
ICEBlock, a mobile app for anonymously reporting ICE raids, went viral after homeland security chief U.S. attorney general Pam Bondi slammed the app and threatened to go after its creator Joshua Aaron. Bondi and other security officials also said CNN was wrong to report on the app, but the criticisms only boosted ICEBlock, which swiftly rose to the top of Apple’s iPhone app downloads chart.
Loser of the Week
Noah Lamb, a 24-year-old from California, was charged with allegedly soliciting the assassination of federal officials and working with the so-called Terrorgram Collective on a hit list of “high-value targets.” Acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, Michele Beckwith, said, “Individuals on the list were targeted because of race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity, including federal officials.”
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