All posts tagged: Bust

A call about illegal dumping in Palmdale leads to 800-pound meth bust

A call about illegal dumping in Palmdale leads to 800-pound meth bust

Published by Sam Flores

Code enforcement officers in the city of Palmdale made an extraordinary discovery this week while responding to an illegal dumping complaint at a vacant lot — a narcotics lab and more than 800 pounds of methamphetamine inside a cargo container. The drug bust prompted multiple law enforcement agencies to descend on the vacant lot near the corner of 110th Street East and Ave M-8 in the unincorporated area of Lake Los Angeles, about 36 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. There, authorities uncovered what appeared to be a drug lab nestled in the cargo container. Alejandro Hernandez Gutierrez, 22, was arrested on suspicion of manufacturing a controlled substance, according to a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department news release. Palmdale officials said the discovery was one of the most significant drug busts in recent years. “This case is a powerful example of the important work our code enforcement team does every day to protect Palmdale neighborhoods,” said Mayor Eric Ohlsen in a statement. “What started as an illegal dumping investigation led to the removal of a …

Paris Drug Bust Recovers Stolen M. Picasso Canvas

Paris Drug Bust Recovers Stolen $17 M. Picasso Canvas

Published by Jenni Sidey

Police raiding a house in the Paris suburb of Champigny-sur-Marne on June 15 got a welcome surprise when they stumbled upon a stolen Pablo Picasso painting. Though the specific canvas has not yet been identified, it is reported to depict the artist’s lover and muse Marie-Thérèse Walter, reports Le Parisien, which indicates that the canvas, valued between about $13.7 million and $17.1 million, belongs to a collector from Singapore. It was allegedly stolen by a worker at an art storage facility in Paris, who claims he did it to highlight security flaws, per the outlet. Related Articles The police found not only 40 pounds of cannabis resin but also several thousand euro in cash and several hundred thousand euros’ worth of luxury clothing. Four people arrested in the case had their initial court hearing on Friday. The trial is tentatively set for August.  One of the most storied romances in all of art history began in 1927, when Walter was shopping in Paris and caught the eye of the Cubist painter, who told her, “You …

Stolen Picasso Discovered During French Drug Bust

Stolen Picasso Discovered During French Drug Bust

Published by Sam Flores

Investigators in the French city of Champigny-sur-Marne made an unexpected discovery during a drug trafficking investigation last week: a painting by Pablo Picasso that police say had been stolen from a Paris storage site on an undisclosed date. The artwork, the name of which has not been revealed, was stumbled on by police during a search conducted in the Île-de-France region. According to the Créteil prosecutor’s office, criminal investigators raided a home in the Paris suburb on June 15, expecting to find a cache of drugs. Police allegedly found “cannabis resin, luxury clothing and several thousand euros in cash,” reports AFP, as well as an artwork that on Saturday was authenticated as a painting by Picasso that depicts Marie-Thérèse Walter, the Spanish artist’s partner from 1927 to 1935. According to Le Parisien, the painting belongs to a woman from Singapore, and is believed to have been stolen by an employee of an art storage facility in Paris who claims he committed the crime to highlight the company’s security flaws. The artwork, estimated to be worth …

The British food scene was booming. Why has it suddenly gone bust? | Restaurants

The British food scene was booming. Why has it suddenly gone bust? | Restaurants

Published by Sam Flores

It’s 9am on a weekday morning and although I’ve just finished my porridge, the chef Richard Wilkins is making my mouth water. “My signature dish is soft Scottish langoustines wrapped in very thin, crispy pastry, served with Japanese sushi rice and a langoustine bisque.” His other specialities include turbot in a spinach and champagne sauce, buttery wagyu steak with English peas, and raspberry millefeuille. Sadly, I won’t be able to sample any of them and neither will anyone else. At the end of April, Wilkins took the painful decision to close his west London Michelin-listed Restaurant 104 after seven years. “The financial pressures became brutal,” says Wilkins, who previously worked with Gordon Ramsay at Pétrus. “We were very small, with only 12 covers. So when things like business rates or VAT rates change, it’s the smallest people who are hit the hardest.” At the end of last year, Wilkins was determined to fight back. “I did a five-figure refurb. I upped my marketing, leafleting and talking to hotel concierges to ask them to recommend us. …

63 Arrested, Crypto Millions Frozen As FBI, DOJ Team Up With Meta, Coinbase And Starlink To Bust Scammers

63 Arrested, Crypto Millions Frozen As FBI, DOJ Team Up With Meta, Coinbase And Starlink To Bust Scammers

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times, More than 1 million scam-related online accounts were taken down, and millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency were frozen, as part of a crackdown on Southeast Asian scam networks. Scam center workers, many of whom were trafficked and forced to work for criminals, are guarded by Karen Border Guard troops in Myawaddy, Burma, on Feb. 26, 2025. Stringer/Reuters The crackdown operations, conducted by U.S. and international agencies led by the Department of Justice (DOJ), began on May 18, when the DOJ’s Scam Center Strike Force brought together the FBI, Royal Thai Police, and law enforcement agencies from Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand to identify and disrupt criminal scam networks. Meta, Microsoft, Starlink, and Coinbase were part of joint operations held in Washington and Bangkok, Meta said in a June 3 statement. “More than a million online assets were disrupted as a result of the operation – including 1.4 million accounts, pages, and groups across Facebook and Instagram, 20,000 Microsoft accounts, and thousands of Starlink …

Were the Enhanced Games a Bust? Organizers Are Upping the Ante to Million

Were the Enhanced Games a Bust? Organizers Are Upping the Ante to $10 Million

Published by Sam Flores

Getting the world’s best athletes to abandon elite competition for the fringe ecosystem of the Enhanced Games is no easy feat. In part, that’s because athletes would potentially have to give up their Olympic dreams in order to participate, as the International Olympic Committee has threatened to bar any athlete who even attends the Enhanced Games, whether or not they use PEDs (not all of them did), from competition. The result was a roster made up largely of retired athletes or competitors who had never quite reached the level required to break world records in the first place. “A good athlete probably couldn’t do what Barry Bonds did, or pitch as fast as Roger Clemens,” says Darren Rovell, the former ESPN journalist turned venture capitalist. “So the question becomes—and I think this is where the concern lies—what is the delta between a great athlete and a good athlete? They didn’t sign up legends, that’s for sure.” While records weren’t necessarily shattered, 22 athletes achieved personal bests at the games. But whether the public cares about …

Florida authorities bust Manatee County illegal gambling network during enforcement operation

Florida authorities bust Manatee County illegal gambling network during enforcement operation

Published by skeptic

Florida gaming regulators and local investigators say a large illegal gambling operation in Manatee County has been dismantled after a coordinated raid that seized hundreds of machines and more than $120,000 in cash. The Florida Gaming Control Commission worked alongside the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office and Homeland Security Investigations during the effort, which authorities called “Operation Silent Spin.” Officials announced Tuesday (May 12) that investigators confiscated 265 illegal gambling machines while also filing criminal charges and immigration detainers connected to the case. Spin City Arcade accounted for the largest seizure. Investigators removed 155 illegal slot machines and recovered about $78,483 in cash from that location, according to the commission. Authorities also seized 61 illegal slot machines and roughly $24,157 from another arcade that was not publicly identified. At Mike’s Arcade, officers recovered 49 illegal slot machines and approximately $18,157. Investigators seized hundreds of illegal gambling machines during Florida’s latest arcade enforcement crackdown. Credit: Manatee County Sheriff’s Office via YouTube from 2023 raid State regulators say the operation reflects growing concerns about underground gambling businesses spreading …

L.A. child sex exploitation bust nets 42, out of hundreds of suspects

L.A. child sex exploitation bust nets 42, out of hundreds of suspects

Published by Sam Flores

A person wanted for child sexual assault, two corporate vice presidents and a child psychologist were among 42 people arrested in a sweeping child sexual exploitation bust in the Inland Empire, authorities announced Monday. The effort, dubbed Operation Volcano, identified more than 500 suspected distributors of child sexual abuse images as part of an effort to dismantle regional networks exploiting minors, according to the Riverside County district attorney’s office. Investigators used the operation to test a form of triage in which they identified and prioritized high-risk offenders, said Liam Doyle, supervising investigator with the district attorney’s office and leader of the county’s Child Exploitation Team. Those offenders included people who had previously committed sexual offenses, those under criminal justice supervision, people working with children, and individuals in positions of public trust. One of the first arrests they made was that of Feliciano Chavarria, 62, in Lake Elisinore. He was wanted on a $2-million arrest warrant for child sexual abuse out of L.A. County. Chavarria “had a digital mountain of child sex abuse images and files …

When The Persian Gulf Supply Shock Meets The Warsh Fed: Stagflation & The Coming AI Bubble Bust

When The Persian Gulf Supply Shock Meets The Warsh Fed: Stagflation & The Coming AI Bubble Bust

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by David Stockman via InternationalMan.com, Here is a salient place to start regarding the economic impact of the Donald’s misbegotten war on Iran: To wit, approximately 7 billion ton-miles of freight moves by truck each and every day in the USA, which heavy truck fleet consumes upwards of 2.9 million barrels per day (mb/d) of diesel fuel. Alas, the price of diesel fuel was about $3.55/gallon both a year ago and as of early January 2026, but has since soared by more than+$2.00 per gallon to around $5.60 recently. That’s a 56% rise in the cost of pumping goods and commodities through the arteries of the US economy. On an annualized basis, the diesel fuel bill for the US truck fleet went from $155 billion per year to $250 billion per year at current oil prices. The big question, of course, is through which channel these drastically higher fuel acquisition costs will be absorbed—in higher prices or reduced output? And that pertains not just to the microcosm of the trucking sector, but the entire GDP now being battered …

Thiel-backed AI project to block bad press looks like a bust

Thiel-backed AI project to block bad press looks like a bust

Published by Sam Flores

There is a persistent belief in certain corners of the tech world that complex social problems can be eliminated through computation. Right now, there are plenty of aggrieved founders, venture capitalists and MAGA-adjacent influencers who feel that journalism is one of those messy problems. And so a group of powerful men in Silicon Valley with a demonstrated willingness to retaliate are trying, once again, to bend the Fourth Estate to their will. The pitch is that better tools would enable us to separate fact from falsehood more efficiently. Give it enough data, the argument goes, and the machine will find a bias-free path to truth. It sounds like the kind of solution a public exhausted by misinformation and trained to scapegoat journalists might embrace: a technological fix for a very human problem. It also assumes that the people building these tools have no stake in the outcomes they produce. The latest incarnation of this belief system arrives in the form of Objection AI, a project that presents itself as a kind of “truth tribunal” for …