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Mon, 28 May 2012 22:32:50 -0500

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Cops Giving Drugs To Kids?

Fri, 04 May 2012 06:10:47 -0500

Occupy protestors in Minnesota are alleging that police gave drugs to young people as part of an ‘impairment study’ that helps officers identify the symptoms of drug use.

In a video , activists claim that for three weeks, law enforcement officers have been picking up volunteers to participate in a program called “Drug Recognition Expert.”

The footage shows alleged participants in the scheme, including one who claims, “They [the police] come into downtown… and basically pick up random people, and ask them to do drug evaluations.”

The man adds, “They let you smoke and then they send you back to Occupy [demonstration in Peavy Plaza]. You smoke right in front of them.”

One man featured in the video is seen discussing the scheme with another who has apparently just returned from a police facility where the training was taking place. The man says “Can I do it?” and is then shown being introduced to officers by the supposed previous participant, before getting into a Kanabec County Sherrif’s Department cruiser and leaving with officers.

Citypages.com reports that police patrol downtown Minneapolis looking for impaired people, then drive them to a testing facility in Richfield for examination of their capabilities while intoxicated. But in some cases where no previously impaired people could be found, police are alleged to have seduced prospective participants with drugs.

People in the video are seen discussing police officers giving them marijuana to smoke for evaluation purposes. However, one subject also said officers were interested in obtaining subjects already under the influence of harder drugs.

He says “One of them [police officers] told me “I’m looking for something more harder [sic]. Someone to do meth or coke or something like that.”

Officers are certified as Drug Recognition Experts as part of the Drug Recognition Program. According to one Minnesota Sherrif’s Department website, the program is designed to help officers “better recognize and remove drug impaired drivers from our roadways.”

Working with people under the influence of drugs is standard training for officers being trained under the drug recognition program.

The same website describes what DRE training entails:

Training to be a DRE is difficult and extremely extensive. Many officers say that it is the most difficult training that they have ever attended (including their academy). The training consists of nine days of classroom training. Here, you will learn about human physiology, the 12 step process, documentation of your observations, courtroom testimony, medical conditions, indications of each specific drug category, and enhance your SFST skills. Step 2 is certification training. During this phase, the newly trained DREs will sharpen their detection and interpretation skills on actual drug impaired subjects. This portion of training was completed in Minneapolis, MN. There are also several tests and quizzes during the process.

The Drug Recognition Program began in the The Los Angeles Police Department in the early 1970s and is widely in use throughout the United States.

Minnesota law enforcement has a history of reaching out to the drug-using community for help with DRE training. CBS News reports that when the State Patrol needed a real-life laboratory, the state’s Needle Exchange program — part of the Minnesota AIDS Project — lent a hand.

The organization put out an ad to its clients, many who used drugs. It asked them to show up under the influence, and advertised that they would receive rewards and incentives in return. Officers noted that users were not offered money or any illegal incentives.

UPDATE: Lieutenant Eric Roeske, Public Information Officer/Spokesperson for the Minnesota State Patrol, denied the accusations. “It is against our policies and against the law to provide people with any sort any sort of illegal drugs or to allow them to use them in our presence,” he said. “We have found no evidence or information that substantiated the allegations made in the video.”

Mother And Son Die Hours Apart In Separate Car Accidents

Fri, 04 May 2012 06:08:33 -0500

WEST ALLIS, Wis. — A Wisconsin woman and her adult son were killed in separate accidents just hours apart in a Milwaukee suburb.

West Allis police say 45-year-old Mary Moore was struck and killed while lying in the street about 1 a.m. Sunday. The driver that hit Moore fled from the scene.

Then, Moore’s 22-year-old son, Thomas Olson, died in a car crash as he rushed to the hospital to see his mother. Olson was a passenger in a car that struck three parked cars and overturned about 5:30 a.m. The driver suffered non-life-threatening injuries and has been arrested on suspicion of drunken driving.

West Allis Deputy Chief Charles Padgett says Moore had been drinking before she was hit, but it’s not clear how much. An autopsy was expected to be done Monday.

Mystery Behind Man Found Dead On Platform With $180,000 Bundled Cash

Fri, 04 May 2012 06:06:56 -0500

This black and white inmate booking photo released by the New Hampshire Department of Corrections shows William P. Coyman, of Boston, who had been sentenced to prison for theft and drug possession.

NEW YORK — The mystery began with a heart attack, a man with a past, and a bag of money that federal authorities now want to keep.

In August, a retired Teamster from Boston stepped off an Amtrak train in New York City and collapsed on the platform at Pennsylvania Station. As medics tried to revive him, police searched his backpack for identification. Inside, they found the stuff that “Law & Order” episodes are made of: $179,980 in cash, bundled with rubber bands and tucked inside two plastic bags.

That raised some eyebrows. So did the dead man’s background.

William P. Coyman, 75, a lifelong resident of Boston’s Charlestown section, had a criminal history dating to 1955. His record included prison time in New Hampshire after he was caught with a pile of cocaine and $20,000 that had just been stolen from a department store.

Coyman’s old union, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 25, was notorious for its organized crime ties in the 1990s. Years ago, Coyman’s name was mentioned in news articles about allegations that union officials were shaking down Hollywood film crews and forcing producers to give cushy film set jobs to gangland hoodlums. He’d worked as a driver on some of the films in question.

Police brought in a drug-sniffing dog, which indicated traces of narcotics in both Coyman’s backpack and briefcase, according to a court filing. Investigators contacted one of Coyman’s relatives, who said he had been working as a courier for a company called 180 Entertainment and was supposed to have been delivering cash from Boston to Philadelphia when he died.

Agents looked into the company and found that its registered headquarters was a small house in a blue-collar section of Philadelphia, with personal watercraft and two luxury cars parked in the driveway.

All this made the Drug Enforcement Administration very suspicious.

In February, federal prosecutors in New York asked a judge for permission to keep the cash as the suspected proceeds of drug dealing.

Reached by the AP in California, Coyman’s son, also named William, declined to speak about the situation, other than to say that the money didn’t belong to the family.

“The people connected to that money are probably not good people,” he said. “My dad was a great man. But clearly he had a colorful history. … As a kid growing up, my father was in the newspaper and it was embarrassing. It has been embarrassing my whole life.”

Friends and relatives who posted remembrances of Coyman on websites after his death recalled the brighter side of his life, including a fondness for Irish song, loyalty to family and an affinity for the local horse track.

A lawyer from Providence, R.I., has filed court papers claiming the cash on behalf of 180 Entertainment. In the filings, the attorney, Steven D. DiLibero, identified his client as a man named Joseph Burke but didn’t explain the company’s business or say where the money was headed.

Court records obtained by The Associated Press show that Burke is another longtime Charlestown resident with a colorful past.

In 1988, he was sent to prison for a string of six bank robberies in Florida. At the time, he told FBI agents he had been involved in as many as 18 heists of banks and armored cars, in several states, before being captured in Minnesota.

Prison didn’t rob him of his criminal impulses. While still incarcerated, in 1994, Burke was caught in an FBI sting conspiring to distribute 5 kilograms of cocaine in Charlestown with the help of some associates. He had more time tacked on to his sentence and was finally released on a combination of probation and parole in October 2010.

Contacted by The AP, DiLibero said he wouldn’t talk about Burke or give any information about the mysterious $180,000.

On April 20, Burke was arrested on an alleged probation violation. Since his release from prison, he had failed a drug test and also had been accused of leaving the country without permission, according to remarks made by lawyers and a judge at an initial hearing on the matter.

Prosecutors involved in Burke’s cases in New York and Boston didn’t return phone calls. A spokeswoman for the DEA declined to comment.

Real estate documents show that the Philadelphia house listed in some records as the headquarters of 180 Entertainment is owned by Anthony Fedele, a former business partner of the late Philadelphia music producer Stephen Epstein. Before his death, Epstein was known for being a close friend and occasional business partner of Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino, the onetime boss of the Philadelphia mafia.

The courts have yet to rule on whether the DEA will get to keep the money.

Coincidentally, A&E announced in March that it had teamed up with Boston-born actor Mark Wahlberg to make an unscripted docudrama about Coyman’s old union, Teamsters Local 25. The union says it cleaned up its act years ago after top officials were convicted in a series of federal racketeering investigations.

Tenn. Man Arrested For Paying With Real $50

Fri, 04 May 2012 06:06:03 -0500

Tennessee police are apologizing after arresting a man for using a $50 bill they thought was fake but that turned out to be real. Police in Shelbyville thought the bill was counterfeit after a convenience store clerk called them. The clerk said a marker used to detect false money didn’t show the bill was real.

SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee police are apologizing after arresting a man for using a $50 bill they thought was fake but that turned out to be real.

Police in Shelbyville thought the bill was counterfeit after a convenience store clerk called them. The clerk said a marker used to detect false money didn’t show the bill was real.

But a police evidence technician told the arresting officer that some old bills don’t react to the markers. So police gave the money to two banks to check, and they said it was real but just very old.

Gaspar was released from jail and police apologized to him.

Cops: Woman Had Sex With 16-Year-Old Biological Son

Fri, 04 May 2012 06:05:17 -0500

Mistie Atkinson is accused of having sex with her 16-year-old biological son several times, and videotaping the crime.

A Calif. woman faces incest charges after she allegedly had sex with her 16-year-old biological son.

Police said they found Mistie Atkinson with the boy in a hotel room in March as they were serving a warrant, the Napa Valley Register reported.

Atkinson pleaded not guilty on March 9 to incest and oral copulation of a minor among other charges.

Napa police said that videos captured on the boy’s phone show Atkinson allegedly performing oral sex and having sexual intercourse with the teen in February. She’s also accused of sending sexually explicit images to the boy electronically.

“Atkinson and the victim are aware they are biological mother and son,” cops said in a release.

The boy’s father, who has sole custody, obtained a restraining order against Atkinson, The Weekly Vice reported.

Atkinson is being held on $200,000 bail until her next hearing on May 10.

Capone's Suburban Hideout For Sale For $2 Million On eBay

Fri, 04 May 2012 06:03:52 -0500

In this Jan. 19, 1931 file photo, Chicago mobster Al Capone is seen at a football game in Chicago (left). The eBay photo of the Mineola Hotel and Marina, Capone’s old hideaway.

The northern Illinois historic hotel that previously served as a hideout for notorious mobster Al Capone is now up for auction on eBay.

The Mineola Lounge and Marina, located in Fox Lake, Ill., was listed Monday on eBay with a starting bid of $2 million, the Daily Herald reports.

The listing, which thus far has not attracted any bids, claims that the lakefront hotel was built in 1884 and placed on the National Register of Historical Places in 1979. The property is on a 17-acre lot and includes the hotel, a full-service marina and a home which has five bedrooms, three full bathrooms and three half bathrooms.

Pete Jakstas, the property’s owner, told the Herald he chose to turn to eBay in order to “draw some bids from around the country” and attract the right bidder.

According to the Associated Press, Jakstras has been trying to sell the property for a couple of years now.

The Lake County History blog reports that the 100-room hotel was popular among Chicago mobsters during the Prohibition era. Capone and his pals would gamble and drink the nights away at the hotel, which the Chicago Tribune once described as “the most vicious resort” when it came to suburban drinking and gambling.

The building is reportedly Illinois’s largest wooden structure.

Husband Accused Of Stuffing Wife's Body In Well Decades Ago

Fri, 04 May 2012 06:02:53 -0500

John Heath pleaded not guilty on May 1, 2012 to the 1984 murder of his wife Elizabeth.

A 68-year-old man has pleaded not guilty to killing his wife, who vanished days after he filed for divorce three decades ago.

Elizabeth Gough Heath went missing in 1984 at age 30. Her remains were discovered stuffed into a well under a Connecticut barn in 2010, the News-Times reported.

Her husband John Heath, 68, of Bridgewater, was wheeled into Newtown court breathing through oxygen tubes and pleaded not guilty on Tuesday.

HIs wife’s body was discovered by a father and son in 2010 who were renovating the property that was once a dairy farm. They broke through a floor and found pillows, blankets and a bag containing what proved to be a femur.

Among the debris were Elizabeth’s remains. According to records cited by NBC Connecticut, Elizabeth was shoved headfirst into the opening and her head was wrapped in plastic.

A medical examiner ruled that Elizabeth died from blunt force trauma.

The property in southwestern Connecticut changed hands because Heath — who has remarried — went into foreclosure, according to Reuters.

Heath reported his wife missing in 1984, telling cops that she abandoned their young daughter but took $600 with her, although friends said that he told them she left without a significant amount of money

Bond for the retired painting contractor was set at $1 million.

Police Seeing Red Over Mom Who Put 5-Year-Old In Tanning Booth

Fri, 04 May 2012 06:01:41 -0500

Patricia Krentcil allegedly brought her daughter in an artificial tanning booth, allowing the girl to get burned.

UPDATE MAY 2: A New Jersey mom denies that her 5-year-old daughter’s sunburn was caused by a trip to a tanning salon. Patricia Krentcil told NBC that she brought her child along to the salon, but the girl was never exposed to UV rays in the booth.

“I tan, she doesn’t tan,” Krentcil said on NBC. “I’m in the booth, she’s in the room. That’s all there is to it.”

The girl’s father Rich Krentcil said his daughter was sunburned from playing outside on a hot day.

PREVIOUSLY: A New Jersey mom is in hot water for supposedly putting her 5-year-old daughter in an artificial tanning booth, according to WABC.

The young girl’s body was burned from the stint in the salon’s tanning bed, NBC New York reported.

The Essex County Prosecutor’s office charged the mother, 44-year-old Nutley resident Patricia Krentcil, with second-degree child endangerment. If found guilty, Krentcil could wind up behind bars where the sun doesn’t shine.

Police arrested her on Tuesday after school officials reported that the kindergarten girl had a severe sunburn.

Krentcil’s father got temporary custody of the girl, according to ABC.

State law prohibits anyone younger than 14 from entering the booths.

UPDATE: The owner of the tanning salon was not charged, because police believe that Krentcil sneaked her child into the booth without the salon’s knowledge, according to WABC.

Forgotten Man In Holding Cell Files $20 Million Claim Against DEA

Fri, 04 May 2012 06:00:34 -0500

Daniel Chong, the student who spent 5 days in a DEA holding cell without food or water, seeks $20 million from the federal agency.

Daniel Chong, the 23-year-old UC San Diego student who spent nearly five days behind bars without food or water, wants $20 million from the Drug Enforcement Administration for the epic “accident.”

The Los Angeles Times reports that Chong — who had to drink his own urine to survive in his 5-foot-by-10-foot cell — filed paperwork on Wednesday because his treatment constitutes torture under United States and international law.

Chong was detained on April 20 while he was at the house of alleged ecstasy dealers. He wasn’t charged with any crime — though his lawyer told police he was at the house smoking marijuana — but he was forgotten and left in his holding cell.

He was found more than four days later when an agent randomly opened the door, the Associated Press reported. Chong told reporters that the bewildered agent asked, “Where’d you come from?”

The DEA apologized publicly for the flop, calling it an “accident.”

During his time inside the cell, Chong said he had drank his own urine to stay hydrated, considered suicide, ate glass and broke his own glasses to carve the words “Sorry Mom” into his arm.

“I pretty much lost my mind,” he said on Wednesday.

He spent five days in the hospital for dehydration, kidney failure, cramps and a perforated esophagus — an injury consistent with eating glass. He had lost 15 pounds.

“He is glad to be alive,” Chong’s lawyer, Gene Iredale told the Los Angeles Times. “He wants to make sure that what happened to him doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

Woman Gets Two Life Sentences For Raping Infant Daughter

Fri, 04 May 2012 05:58:51 -0500

CLAYTON, Mo. — A judge sentenced a Missouri woman to consecutive life prison terms for sexually assaulting her infant daughter along with a California man she met online.

Vanvlerah pleaded guilty in January to incest, statutory sodomy and statutory rape in the attacks against her daughter, who is 3 but who was 5 months old when the pair first attacked her. The woman who fostered and then adopted the girl said initially, the girl would scream when anyone bathed her or changed her diaper. She still has night terrors and asks at each bedtime to make sure nobody else comes into the home.

However, she said the girl is improving day by day and “is no longer Tessa’s plaything and she is no longer Tessa’s child.”

Vanvlerah was arrested in 2010 following the arrest of 49-year-old Kenneth Kyle, a California State University East Bay professor, on child pornography charges. Along with hundreds of child porn images on Kyle’s computers, investigators found information that led them to the St. Louis area, where Kyle had visited Vanvlerah four times in five months since meeting online. During those visits, prosecutors say the pair had sex with the girl and each other at various hotels.

Kyle pleaded guilty to a federal child sexual abuse charge and was sentenced in March to 37 1/2 years in prison.

Forensic psychologist Dr. Brooke Kraushaar testified at Vanvlerah’s sentencing hearing that Vanvlerah’s dependent-personality disorder caused her to participate in Kyle’s sexual fantasies, even though she knew sex acts involving the baby were wrong.

Kraushaar, who was hired by defense lawyers Brent Labovitz and Kevin Whiteley, described Vanvlerah as “a passive offender.” She said Vanvlerah was so afraid of being rejected by others that she also allowed Kyle to choke, burn and urinate on her.

But assistant prosecutor Kathi Alizadeh disputed the diagnosis, pointing out that Vanvlerah exercised free will in electronic communications with another man. Vanvlerah carved her nickname for the man, “Lord Nikon,” into her skin at his request, the prosecutor said, but drew the line at one of his suggestions involving bestiality.

Alizadeh said police learned that Vanvlerah and another man, from Avon, Mo., exchanged child porn and discussed plans for him to come to St. Louis to have sex with the infant, but it was never acted upon.

In 2008, when Vanvlerah was 18, a woman obtained a court order of protection against her, accusing her of seducing and having sex with the woman’s 16-year-old autistic son. Alizadeh said it resulted in Vanvlerah’s pregnancy.

Woman Accused Of Cutting Kids' Throats, Setting Apartment On Fire Not 'Psycho,' Cousin Says

Fri, 04 May 2012 05:57:40 -0500

Tanicia Goodwin is arraigned in Salem District Court on 2 counts of armed assault with intent to murder, 2 counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and 1 count of arson on Monday, March 19, 2012 in Salem, Mass. Goodwin is accused of slashing the throats of her 8-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter and deliberately setting her apartment on fire on Sunday, March 18, 2012. Goodwin, 25, was ordered held without bail pending an appearance in court next week. (AP Photo/The Boston Globe,

BOSTON — She has no doubt what prosecutors say is true: Her step-cousin doused her own children with lighter fluid, slashed their throats and set their apartment on fire. She’s also adamant that Tanicia Goodwin should never again be near the two children, who somehow survived.

But Isis Haraty also knows Goodwin’s encouragement is the main reason Haraty is now attending community college, despite having dropped out of middle school. That’s just as real to Haraty as her anger at Goodwin for the horror of March 18.

“A person isn’t one-dimensional,” said Haraty, 22.

A status hearing was held Thursday in Goodwin’s case and a probable cause hearing was scheduled for June. Goodwin faces charges including the attempted murders in Salem of her 3-year-old daughter, Erica, and her 8-year-old son, Jamaal, who lived even though Goodwin allegedly cut his throat so deep the boy’s trachea was exposed.

The sickening allegations disgust and baffle those who knew Goodwin.

But Haraty still wants people to know there’s more to Goodwin than the woman with the wild hair and dead eyes photographed during her initial court appearance.

“It’s not `Psycho Mom,’” Haraty said. “She’s also my cousin. She’s also my friend. She’s also all these other things, too.”

Goodwin’s attorney, Steven Van Dyke, declined to comment for this story.

Goodwin, 25, never knew her father, and her mother died of natural causes when she was pregnant with Jamaal, said Makeda Haraty, Haraty’s mother and Goodwin’s aunt.

Isis Haraty knew Goodwin best shortly after Jamaal was born, when Goodwin was a teen mother and Haraty was a middle school dropout, so gripped by a fear of crowds she sometimes couldn’t step on a train.

“She felt isolated, I felt isolated and we found solace together,” Haraty said. “We were both like statistics: … `Black kids who can’t make it to school.’ But we didn’t want to stay like that.”

Goodwin eventually got her GED, and encouraged Haraty to do the same.

“She was like, `You are going to get your (butt) out this house. … You can’t stay in here, the world is out there,’” Haraty said.

“Without her, I would not be in college right now,” added Haraty, who studies English at Bunker Hill Community College.

When Jamaal was about 3, Goodwin gave custody to her cousin, Wayne Cox, who then lived in the same building, so she could continue her schooling. Goodwin petitioned successfully in 2010 to get Jamaal back when Cox planned to move to Georgia, telling the court her life had stabilized.

In fact, things would soon fall apart. Goodwin had moved to Salem after she had Erica in 2008. But Goodwin didn’t have a job, and family members say they heard increasingly less from her.

In May 2011, state social workers were notified after Jamaal told teachers Goodwin hit him, including once so hard in the forehead that his nose bled, prosecutors said in court.

In August, Goodwin received an eviction notice after failing to pay two months’ rent. The case was later settled.

Haraty said she would call Goodwin every few weeks, but Goodwin rarely picked up.

Her cousin Shannon Suttles, who’d had a falling out with Goodwin, reached out around Christmas by texting her a picture of her baby son. Goodwin never acknowledged it.

On March 18, a responding firefighter found Goodwin naked and wet outside her smoking apartment, according to police reports. Jamaal was sitting inside against a wall, covered in lighter fluid and struggling to breathe through the hole in his throat. Erica was bleeding and abandoned on a neighbor’s couch.

Goodwin, meanwhile, walked barefoot to the Salem police station and allegedly told officers she’d hurt her children to protect them. In her cell that night, she continuously repeated, “I’m sorry, my babies,” according to a police report,

Six weeks later, Erica is living with her father and Jamaal is with family members, according to the state Department of Children and Families. Erica is laughing, talking and playing, said Makeda Haraty. She’s more worried about Jamaal, who’s old enough to remember that night.

Jamaal is able to talk and “doing very well,” according to attorney Courtney Linnehan, who’s representing Cox as he tries to regain custody of the boy.

Suttles, 26, thinks her cousin needs treatment more than just incarceration. That doesn’t mean things will be right between them. “I don’t think I could ever forgive that,” she said.

Isis Haraty hopes to talk to Goodwin, to find out how she could do what she allegedly did.

Still, Haraty admits, “I’m afraid of the answer.”

Would You Bang It Pt. 57

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 06:01:57 -0500

Would You Bang It Pt. 57

Student's Eyewitness Account Of Car Sex May Shed Light On Shaima Alawadi Murder

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 05:53:33 -0500

Enrique Cervantes, a college student in El Cajon, Calif., had an experience with the daughter of murdered Iraqi refugee Shaima Alawadi that may shed new light on the investigation.

When college student Enrique Cervantes wrote an essay about seeing two people having sex in a car in front of his house, he never expected that it might shed light on a murder investigation.

However, that story — submitted as part of an oral history of El Cajon, a city just east of San Diego — may help explain the murder of Iraqi refugee Shaima Alawadi, and offer a possible motive for her family members.

Alawadi, a 32-year-old mother of five and an Iraq-born Muslim, was attacked March 21 in her home near Lakeside, Calif. She suffered at least six blows to the head, possibly from a tire iron. Fatima Alhimidi, her 17-year-old daughter, said there was a note found next to her mom’s body reading, “This is my country. Go back to yours, terrorist.”

Alawadi died three days later and, initially, there was speculation that it was a hate crime.

Further investigation hasn’t confirmed that theory, but the release of an affidavit by the El Cajon Police Department on April 5 to the San Diego Union-Tribune reveals strife within the family. Alawadi was planning to divorce her husband, the document says, and Alhimidi had been caught having sex in a car with a 21-year-old Chaldean man some months prior.

Months before Alawadi’s death, after being picked up by her mother, a police report said Alhimidi leapt out of the car while it was moving at 35 mph. “Police were informed by paramedics and hospital staff that Fatima Alhimidi said she was being forced to marry her cousin and did not want to, so she jumped out of the vehicle.”

But beyond public records, Cervantes has brought a unique perspective to that sex scene.

A few months after the vehicle incident and two months prior to Alawadi’s death, Cervantes wrote about seeing Alhimidi in the car for SoSayWeAll.com, a San Diego-based nonprofit that is currently collecting “a people’s history of East San Diego County.”

“The story was written before (the murder) happened,” Cervantes told The Huffington Post. “I submitted and then found out that the girl’s mother had been murdered.”

The piece, “Her Skin, Brown Like Mine,” appears on the site of the alternative newsweekly San Diego Citybeat, and details Cervantes’ encounter with Alhimidi and her boyfriend, later identified as Rawnaq Yacub.

Cervantes said he saw two people having sex in front of his house in the middle of the day and called the police.

Before police arrived, Cervantes went to the car to warn them and saw a teenage girl in a hijab with a man who looked to be in his early 20s. His piece describes the encounter:

The guy saw me coming and adjusted his pants. The girl pulled a blanket over her legs and smiled, her cheeks blossoming into red. What the f***, I almost said out loud. She was wearing one of those things on her head that Muslims wear. It was light purple; it looked nice on her skin. Her skin was brown as mine. It looked nice with that shade of purple, like an Egyptian princess.

Cervantes said the couple stayed and eventually the police arrived. Shaima Alawadi also came to the scene to take her daughter away and was seen screaming at the girl, in part, because the Alawadi family is Muslim and Yacub was Chaldean, a Christian Iraqi.

“They all left and later we found out that the girl had jumped out of the car,” Cervantes said.

SoSayWeAll director and Huffington Post blogger Justin Hudnall said he was shocked when he read the story.

“It was an eerie moment when we realized we had gone from reporting on the past and collecting histories, to being in the thick of an unfolding human drama making international headlines,” Hudnall told The Huffington Post.

The murder remains top news in San Diego and Hudnall said Cervantes’ account sheds light on the relationship between Alawadi and her daughter as well as that between Alhimidi and Yacub, 21. The story also possibly contradicts Yacub’s claim that Alhimidi and he were “just talking” that morning.

“Enrique’s story, combined with the contents of the accidentally released police affidavit, suggests that the El Cajon Police Department may have been aware from the very beginning that Alawadi’s family was, using their own words, ‘in turmoil,’” Hudnall said. “They were aware of Fatima’s impending arranged marriage with her own cousin, her relationship with a man outside of that arranged marriage, and Shaima’s intentions to divorce her husband. It begs the question, why then did the El Cajon P.D. and the FBI allow the family to take her body back to Iraq, where extradition could be difficult if not impossible?”

Hudnall said if Alawadi’s murder turns out not to be a hate crime, then the note found next to her body may have placed there by a killer trying to throw off a murder investigation.

“That struck me as a very cynical and self-aware thing to do, and makes us (wonder) how much is truth and how much is manipulation of stereotypes,” he said.

Cervantes may have shed new perspective on the case, but he’s not necessarily happy about it.

“I was almost ashamed of writing the story, even though I was trying to express some form of solidarity,” he said. “I almost felt like, ‘Man, you’re doing something creative out of someone’s suffering and something bad happening,’ and I feel bad about that.”

Judge Tosses Death Penalty Over Racist Prosecution

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 05:51:41 -0500

Marcus Robinson, convicted in 1994 of killing teenager Erik Tornblom, disputed his death sentence through the Racial Justice Act, which allows inmates to challenge execution rulings if race was a significant factor.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — A condemned killer’s trial was so tainted by the racially influenced decisions of prosecutors that he should be removed from death row and serve a life sentence, a judge ruled Friday in a precedent-setting North Carolina decision.

Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks’ decision in the case of Marcus Robinson comes in the first test of a 2009 state law that allows death row prisoners and capital murder defendants to challenge their sentences or prosecutors’ decisions with statistics and other evidence beyond documents or witness testimony.

Only Kentucky has a law like North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act, which says the prisoner’s sentence is reduced to life in prison without parole if the claim is successful.

“The Racial Justice Act represents a landmark reform in capital sentencing in our state,” Weeks said in Fayetteville on Friday. “There are those who disagree with this, but it is the law.”

Race played a “persistent, pervasive and distorting role” in jury selection and couldn’t be explained other than that “prosecutors have intentionally discriminated” against Robinson and other capital defendants statewide, Weeks said. Prosecutors eliminated black jurors more than twice as often as white jurors, according to a study by two Michigan State University law professors Weeks said he found highly reliable.

Robinson’s case is the first of more than 150 pending cases to get an evidentiary hearing before a judge. Prosecutors said they planned to challenge Weeks’ decision, and District Attorney Billy West declined further comment.

Weeks ruled race was a factor in prosecution decisions to reject potential black jurors before the murder trial of Robinson, a black man convicted of killing a white teenager in 1991. The jury that convicted Robinson had nine whites, two blacks and one American Indian.

Robinson and co-defendant Roderick Williams Jr. were convicted of murdering 17-year-old Erik Tornblom after the teen gave his killers a ride from a Fayetteville convenience store. Tornblom was forced to drive to a field, where he was shot with a sawed-off shotgun.

Robinson came close to death in January 2007, but a judge blocked his scheduled execution. Williams is serving a life sentence.

Nearly a dozen members of Tornblom’s family left the courtroom without commenting. Robinson’s mother, Shirley Burns, said she would advocate for the law, which a new Republican majority in the state’s General Assembly is trying to eliminate.

“Everybody is not guilty, everybody is not innocent, but at least be fair,” Burns said after the ruling. “It wasn’t all about Marcus. It’s about anyone who suffers discrimination.”

Central to Robinson’s case was the Michigan State University study. It reported that, of almost 160 people on North Carolina’s death row, 31 had all-white juries, and 38 had only one person of color.

Study co-author and Michigan State professor Barbara O’Brien told a North Carolina legislative panel last month the review of more than 7,400 potential capital jurors couldn’t find anything other than race to explain why potential black jurors were rejected by prosecutors more than twice as often as whites.

Robinson defense attorney James Ferguson of Charlotte told Weeks, who decided the case without a jury, that the study showed race was a significant factor in almost every one of North Carolina’s prosecutorial districts as prosecutors decided to challenge and eliminate black jurors.

“This case is important because it provides an opportunity for all of us to recognize that race far too often has been a significant factor in jury selection in capital cases,” Ferguson said when the hearing opened in January.

Union County prosecutor Jonathan Perry, who helped the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office argue the case against Robinson, said the study was untrustworthy because it was based on a too-limited sample of death penalty cases to provide meaningful results. The study also failed to detect numerous nonracial reasons that a person might be struck from a jury, Perry said.

The Republican-led Legislature tried to repeal the Racial Justice Act earlier this year, but lawmakers failed to override a veto by Gov. Beverly Perdue, a Democrat.

In 1998, Kentucky was the first state to enact a similar law. But the American Bar Association said in a report it was unclear exactly how often it has been used except for during the 2003 trial of an African-American man accused of kidnapping and killing his ex-girlfriend, who was white. In that case, the defendant’s lawyers used the Kentucky Racial Justice Act during jury selection to include questions that would address the issue of racial discrimination. The defendant, Nathaniel Wood, was convicted of wanton murder and other crimes and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Young Mother Dies From 2-Gallon-A-Day Coca-Cola Habit

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 05:50:17 -0500

Natasha Harris

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Experts say a New Zealand woman’s 2-gallon-a-day Coca-Cola habit probably contributed to her death, a conclusion that led the soft-drink giant to note that even water can be deadly in excessive amounts.

Natasha Harris, a 30-year-old, stay-at-home mother of eight from Invercargill, died of a heart attack in February 2010. Fairfax Media reported that a pathologist, Dr. Dan Mornin, testified at an inquest Thursday that she probably suffered from hypokalemia, or low potassium, which he thinks was caused by her excessive consumption of Coke and overall poor nutrition.

Symptoms of hypokalemia can include abnormal heart rhythms, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Mornin said that toxic levels of caffeine, a stimulant found in Coke, also may have contributed to her death, according to Fairfax.

Harris’ partner, Chris Hodgkinson, testified that Harris drank between 8 and 10 liters (2.1 and 2.6 gallons) of regular Coke every day.

“The first thing she would do in the morning was to have a drink of Coke beside her bed and the last thing she would do at night was have a drink of Coke,” Hodgkinson said in a deposition. “She was addicted to Coke.”

Hodgkinson also said Harris ate little and smoked about 30 cigarettes a day. In the months before her death, he said, Harris experienced blood pressure problems and lacked energy.

He said that on the morning of her death, Harris helped get her children ready for school before slumping against a wall. He called emergency services and tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation but couldn’t revive her.

Another pathologist, Dr. Martin Sage, said in a deposition that “it is certainly well demonstrated that excessive long or short term cola ingestion can be dramatically symptomatic, and there are strong hypothetical grounds for this becoming fatal in individual cases.”

Inquests such as this are sometimes held for unusual or unexplained deaths in New Zealand, and can help shape future health policies. With the evidence in the case now complete, the coroner’s office will compile and issue a final report into the death.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Lisa Te Morenga, a nutritionist at the University of Otago, said excessive consumption of any type of liquid in a cool climate would be likely to play havoc with the body’s natural systems and balance.

Karen Thompson, a spokeswoman for Coca-Cola Oceania, said in a statement that its products are safe.

“We concur with the information shared by the coroner’s office that the grossly excessive ingestion of any food product, including water, over a short period of time with the inadequate consumption of essential nutrients, and the failure to seek appropriate medical intervention when needed, can be dramatically symptomatic.”

Newborn Baby Killed, Dismembered By Family Dog. LEAVE THE ANIMALS ALONE PEOPLE.

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 05:49:09 -0500

SUMMERVILLE, S.C. — A 2-month-old child was killed and dismembered by a dog in his family’s South Carolina home Friday as his father slept, authorities said.

Aiden McGrew’s mother called 911 when she got home around 11 a.m. and discovered the boy’s leg was severed by a retriever mix the family had taken into the home a few weeks earlier, Dorchester County deputies said.

The boy died at the hospital a short time later, Coroner Chris Nisbet said in a news release.

Nisbet said the boy was bitten and dismembered, but he refused to answer additional questions about the infant’s injuries. He said he hopes an autopsy scheduled for Saturday will determine if the boy was dead before the dog dismembered him.

“Today is one of the saddest days in my 20+ years of being in the Dorchester County Coroner’s Office as I report to all of you one of the worst deaths I have ever handled,” Nisbet wrote in his email to the media, which had the subject line “Today’s Nightmare.”

When the infant was injured, McGrew’s mother was taking the family’s 7-year-old child to the doctor. The father was sleeping in a bedroom with a 3-year-old child, while the baby was in a baby swing outside that room, Dorchester County Sheriff L.C. Knight said.

Investigators are still trying to sort out how the attack unfolded. The father was being questioned by deputies Friday afternoon, Knight said.

“It’s terrible. I don’t want to go into details about exactly what happened because the investigation is still ongoing,” Knight said. “It was a real bad scene.”

The two other children in the home have been taken into protective custody, Knight said. Prosecutors are also following the case and the sheriff expects all the investigators will meet next week to discuss if any charges should be filed.

The sheriff said that the family apparently had two dogs, one they had for some time and the dog that attacked the child which they adopted in recent days. The dog that mauled the child was in a holding pen behind the sheriff’s office late Friday.

A woman answering a number listed for the home refused to talk about what happened and told a reporter to not call her back.

No one answered the door at the white mobile home in a wooded area with a cluster of similar homes about 30 miles northwest of Charleston on Friday evening. The home had a small doghouse and a small wooden porch in front.

Neighbor Shirley Pargiello said she did not really know the McGrew family who had to drive past her house on the driveway to their home set back from the road.

“I only saw them getting in and out of their car but they were very loving to their children,” she said. She said the family’s second dog was a yellow lab and she had never seen the smaller dog that had been taken away by deputies.

“I know they have to be in shock,” she said. “I know what it’s like to have children and grandchildren.”

One In Two College Grads Can't Find Work

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 05:47:52 -0500

WASHINGTON — The college class of 2012 is in for a rude welcome to the world of work.

A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don’t fully use their skills and knowledge.

Young adults with bachelor’s degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs – waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example – and that’s confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans.

An analysis of government data conducted for The Associated Press lays bare the highly uneven prospects for holders of bachelor’s degrees.

Opportunities for college graduates vary widely.

While there’s strong demand in science, education and health fields, arts and humanities flounder. Median wages for those with bachelor’s degrees are down from 2000, hit by technological changes that are eliminating midlevel jobs such as bank tellers. Most future job openings are projected to be in lower-skilled positions such as home health aides, who can provide personalized attention as the U.S. population ages.

Taking underemployment into consideration, the job prospects for bachelor’s degree holders fell last year to the lowest level in more than a decade.

“I don’t even know what I’m looking for,” says Michael Bledsoe, who described months of fruitless job searches as he served customers at a Seattle coffeehouse. The 23-year-old graduated in 2010 with a creative writing degree.

Initially hopeful that his college education would create opportunities, Bledsoe languished for three months before finally taking a job as a barista, a position he has held for the last two years. In the beginning he sent three or four resumes day. But, Bledsoe said, employers questioned his lack of experience or the practical worth of his major. Now he sends a resume once every two weeks or so.

Bledsoe, currently making just above minimum wage, says he got financial help from his parents to help pay off student loans. He is now mulling whether to go to graduate school, seeing few other options to advance his career. “There is not much out there, it seems,” he said.

His situation highlights a widening but little-discussed labor problem. Perhaps more than ever, the choices that young adults make earlier in life – level of schooling, academic field and training, where to attend college, how to pay for it – are having long-lasting financial impact.

“You can make more money on average if you go to college, but it’s not true for everybody,” says Harvard economist Richard Freeman, noting the growing risk of a debt bubble with total U.S. student loan debt surpassing $1 trillion. “If you’re not sure what you’re going to be doing, it probably bodes well to take some job, if you can get one, and get a sense first of what you want from college.”

Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University who analyzed the numbers, said many people with a bachelor’s degree face a double whammy of rising tuition and poor job outcomes. “Simply put, we’re failing kids coming out of college,” he said, emphasizing that when it comes to jobs, a college major can make all the difference. “We’re going to need a lot better job growth and connections to the labor market, otherwise college debt will grow.”

By region, the Mountain West was most likely to have young college graduates jobless or underemployed – roughly 3 in 5. It was followed by the more rural southeastern U.S., including Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee. The Pacific region, including Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington, also was high on the list.

On the other end of the scale, the southern U.S., anchored by Texas, was most likely to have young college graduates in higher-skill jobs.

The figures are based on an analysis of 2011 Current Population Survey data by Northeastern University researchers and supplemented with material from Paul Harrington, an economist at Drexel University, and the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. They rely on Labor Department assessments of the level of education required to do the job in 900-plus U.S. occupations, which were used to calculate the shares of young adults with bachelor’s degrees who were “underemployed.”

About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor’s degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41 percent, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.

Out of the 1.5 million who languished in the job market, about half were underemployed, an increase from the previous year.

Broken down by occupation, young college graduates were heavily represented in jobs that require a high school diploma or less.

In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).

According to government projections released last month, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor’s degree or higher to fill the position – teachers, college professors and accountants. Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and truck driving, jobs which aren’t easily replaced by computers.

College graduates who majored in zoology, anthropology, philosophy, art history and humanities were among the least likely to find jobs appropriate to their education level; those with nursing, teaching, accounting or computer science degrees were among the most likely.

In Nevada, where unemployment is the highest in the nation, Class of 2012 college seniors recently expressed feelings ranging from anxiety and fear to cautious optimism about what lies ahead.

With the state’s economy languishing in an extended housing bust, a lot of young graduates have shown up at job placement centers in tears. Many have been squeezed out of jobs by more experienced workers, job counselors said, and are now having to explain to prospective employers the time gaps in their resumes.

“It’s kind of scary,” said Cameron Bawden, 22, who is graduating from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas in December with a business degree. His family has warned him for years about the job market, so he has been building his resume by working part time on the Las Vegas Strip as a food runner and doing a marketing internship with a local airline.

Bawden said his friends who have graduated are either unemployed or working along the Vegas Strip in service jobs that don’t require degrees. “There are so few jobs and it’s a small city,” he said. “It’s all about who you know.”

Any job gains are going mostly to workers at the top and bottom of the wage scale, at the expense of middle-income jobs commonly held by bachelor’s degree holders. By some studies, up to 95 percent of positions lost during the economic recovery occurred in middle-income occupations such as bank tellers, the type of job not expected to return in a more high-tech age.

David Neumark, an economist at the University of California-Irvine, said a bachelor’s degree can have benefits that aren’t fully reflected in the government’s labor data. He said even for lower-skilled jobs such as waitress or cashier, employers tend to value bachelor’s degree-holders more highly than high-school graduates, paying them more for the same work and offering promotions.

In addition, U.S. workers increasingly may need to consider their position in a global economy, where they must compete with educated foreign-born residents for jobs. Longer-term government projections also may fail to consider “degree inflation,” a growing ubiquity of bachelor’s degrees that could make them more commonplace in lower-wage jobs but inadequate for higher-wage ones.

That future may be now for Kelman Edwards Jr., 24, of Murfreesboro, Tenn., who is waiting to see the returns on his college education.

After earning a biology degree last May, the only job he could find was as a construction worker for five months before he quit to focus on finding a job in his academic field. He applied for positions in laboratories but was told they were looking for people with specialized certifications.

“I thought that me having a biology degree was a gold ticket for me getting into places, but every other job wants you to have previous history in the field,” he said. Edwards, who has about $5,500 in student debt, recently met with a career counselor at Middle Tennessee State University. The counselor’s main advice: Pursue further education.

“Everyone is always telling you, `Go to college,’” Edwards said. “But when you graduate, it’s kind of an empty cliff.”

Cockfight Shooting Believed To Be Sloppy Hit

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 05:46:53 -0500

McALLEN, Texas — Frantic calls to emergency responders described a chaotic scene with people frightened, wounded and fleeing in all directions after masked gunmen opened fire on a Texas cockfight near the Mexico border.

Authorities believe the wild shooting that left three dead and eight wounded early Thursday was a sloppy hit on two brothers.

Three people were charged with cockfighting and engaging in organized criminal activity Friday just before officials identified the victims, who all had criminal pasts. The brothers believed to be the target of the shooting were among those killed. The gunmen remained at large.

A recording of the 911 calls obtained by The Associated Press details the pandemonium that ensued when two to four masked gunmen opened fire at a cockfight near Edcouch, about 15 miles northeast of McAllen, where as many as 200 people were present.

“My husband is shot and he has a cellphone, but he says he was dying,” said a woman on the 911 tape who had received a call from her wounded husband. “He says he doesn’t know exactly where he’s at. I think he ran.”

The man was critically wounded, but survived.

Another woman called as she was escaping the shooting. She tried to explain the location.

“We had to take off, ma’am,” she told the dispatcher. “We have kids. There was a machine gun. There’s everything, ma’am. There’s a shootout.”

Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino said Friday it was “the crime scene from hell.” Some 300 beer cans and about 20 dead roosters littered the ground.

“Obviously they’re amateurs,” Trevino said of the shooters.

Killed in the fray were 49-year-old Ramiro Garcia and his brother, 53-year-old Juan Santos Garcia, and 42-year-old Arturo Buentello Garza.

Trevino said Garza was likely a bystander, but the Garcias were well known to authorities for previous criminal activity, including drug possession. Trevino said one possibility is that it was revenge for a previous drive-by shooting, though he did not provide details.

“We believe there are a lot of different groups that had it in for the Garcias,” which will make it difficult to pinpoint the group responsible for the attack, Trevino said.

The shooting had no connection to violence in Mexico, he said. “This was strictly a local issue.”

Trevino’s comments came shortly after arraignment hearings Friday for 51-year-old Heriberto Leandro; his wife, 52-year-old Leticia Leandro; and 37-year-old Humberto Blanco. They were taken in for questioning the night of the attack and arrested later Thursday morning.

The Leandros owned the small ranch. Heriberto Leandro built the corrugated metal pavilion that covered the bleachers and ring. He told investigators he had tried his hand at running the fights but didn’t make money at it so instead rented the facility to Blanco.

All three were held on $1 million bonds, each charged with one count of cockfighting and one count of engaging in organized criminal activity. None spoke at the hearing or had an attorney present.

Trevino said the eight people injured, including two who remained in critical condition, would eventually face misdemeanor cockfighting charges.

The crowd is usually highly scrutinized at the gate and witnesses told investigators the shooters jumped out of a vehicle, leading Trevino to suspect they may have been smuggled in. Their masks led investigators to speculate that people at the event probably knew their attackers.

Cockfights showcase battles between birds that have been fitted with sharp metal blades or curved spikes on their legs. Spectators gamble on which bird will be victorious in the sometimes hourlong fights that end when one or both of the birds are dead or maimed. The last state to ban cockfighting was Louisiana, in 2008.

The operation makes its money off the entrance fee paid by participants and the beer and tacos sold at the concession stand, Trevino said. The house does not typically take a cut of the bets made among attendees.

“This is a big, big business,” Trevino said. “You can generate a lot of money in this.”

In addition to the gunmen, investigators are focusing their attention on two figures Trevino said are at the top of the area’s cockfighting scene. One is a local business owner, and the other is a major broker of cockfights. Trevino did not identify either person.

Authorities are also pursuing forfeiture of the property involved.

Anonymous callers have offered authorities numerous tips since the shooting, but Trevino expressed frustration that no one reported the cockfighting earlier.

“What upsets me is that the neighbors have known about this for years,” Trevino said. “All they had to do was pick up the phone and say, `Hey we have a heck of an illegal activity next door. Please don’t use my name, but do something about it,’ and I guarantee we would have.”

FBI: Hundreds Of Thousands May Lose Internet In July

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 05:45:00 -0500

WASHINGTON (AP) — For computer users, a few mouse clicks could mean the difference between staying online and losing Internet connections this summer.

Unknown to most of them, their problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of infected computers around the world. In a highly unusual response, the FBI set up a safety net months ago using government computers to prevent Internet disruptions for those infected users. But that system is to be shut down.

The FBI is encouraging users to visit a website run by its security partner, http://www.dcwg.org , that will inform them whether they’re infected and explain how to fix the problem. After July 9, infected users won’t be able to connect to the Internet.

Most victims don’t even know their computers have been infected, although the malicious software probably has slowed their web surfing and disabled their antivirus software, making their machines more vulnerable to other problems.

Last November, the FBI and other authorities were preparing to take down a hacker ring that had been running an Internet ad scam on a massive network of infected computers.

“We started to realize that we might have a little bit of a problem on our hands because … if we just pulled the plug on their criminal infrastructure and threw everybody in jail, the victims of this were going to be without Internet service,” said Tom Grasso, an FBI supervisory special agent. “The average user would open up Internet Explorer and get ‘page not found’ and think the Internet is broken.”

On the night of the arrests, the agency brought in Paul Vixie, chairman and founder of Internet Systems Consortium, to install two Internet servers to take the place of the truckload of impounded rogue servers that infected computers were using. Federal officials planned to keep their servers online until March, giving everyone opportunity to clean their computers. But it wasn’t enough time. A federal judge in New York extended the deadline until July.

Now, said Grasso, “the full court press is on to get people to address this problem.” And it’s up to computer users to check their PCs.

This is what happened:

Hackers infected a network of probably more than 570,000 computers worldwide. They took advantage of vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Windows operating system to install malicious software on the victim computers. This turned off antivirus updates and changed the way the computers reconcile website addresses behind the scenes on the Internet’s domain name system.

The DNS system is a network of servers that translates a web address — such as www.ap.org — into the numerical addresses that computers use. Victim computers were reprogrammed to use rogue DNS servers owned by the attackers. This allowed the attackers to redirect computers to fraudulent versions of any website.

The hackers earned profits from advertisements that appeared on websites that victims were tricked into visiting. The scam netted the hackers at least $14 million, according to the FBI. It also made thousands of computers reliant on the rogue servers for their Internet browsing.

When the FBI and others arrested six Estonians last November, the agency replaced the rogue servers with Vixie’s clean ones. Installing and running the two substitute servers for eight months is costing the federal government about $87,000.

The number of victims is hard to pinpoint, but the FBI believes that on the day of the arrests, at least 568,000 unique Internet addresses were using the rogue servers. Five months later, FBI estimates that the number is down to at least 360,000. The U.S. has the most, about 85,000, federal authorities said. Other countries with more than 20,000 each include Italy, India, England and Germany. Smaller numbers are online in Spain, France, Canada, China and Mexico.

Vixie said most of the victims are probably individual home users, rather than corporations that have technology staffs who routinely check the computers.

FBI officials said they organized an unusual system to avoid any appearance of government intrusion into the Internet or private computers. And while this is the first time the FBI used it, it won’t be the last.

“This is the future of what we will be doing,” said Eric Strom, a unit chief in the FBI’s Cyber Division. “Until there is a change in legal system, both inside and outside the United States, to get up to speed with the cyber problem, we will have to go down these paths, trail-blazing if you will, on these types of investigations.”

Now, he said, every time the agency gets near the end of a cyber case, “we get to the point where we say, how are we going to do this, how are we going to clean the system” without creating a bigger mess than before.