Things to Keep an Eye On
TikTok memecoin, Vivek leaves DOGE, FBI and BOP resignations, Prince Harry gets a settlement, Stefanik's odd beliefs about the Bible, and more
Students for Trump TikTok memecoin
Ryan Fournier, the founder of Students for Trump best known for pistol-whipping his girlfriend, launched a memecoin the day before the inauguration and promptly rug-pulled, with him making a lot of money, based on his quickly-deleted tweet, while most lost theirs.
Vivek gets out of DOGE
Amid growing tension with Trump’s team, Vivek Ramascamy has left DOGE amid rumors he will run for governor of Ohio. Given the new Anduril factory moving in there—it’s a little unclear how cleaned up Anduril’s problems have been—it would be better for Warren Davidson to be the next governor, rather than another tech guy who’s going to give them the moon and sell out Ohioans.
There appears to be no FBI director at the moment
A week ago was Chris Wray’s last day as FBI director, and his acting successor Paul Abbate resigned the following day, so Brian Driscoll was appointed by Trump until, presumably, Kash Patel’s confirmation. The head of the Bureau of Prisons also departed on Inauguration Day. The acting U.S. Attorney for DC appears to have been Ed Martin over the last week.
Prince Harry gets apology and settlement from Murdoch
This is pretty big:
Prince Harry claimed a “monumental” victory Wednesday as Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. tabloids made an unprecedented apology for intruding in his life for years, and agreed to pay substantial damages to settle his privacy invasion lawsuit.
News Group Newspapers acknowledged its private investigators and journalists targeted Harry with phone hacking, surveillance and misuse of private information. The company offered him a “full and unequivocal apology” for intrusion by the now-defunct News of the World and its sister tabloid The Sun.
The statement, read out at the High Court in London by Harry’s attorney David Sherborne, even went beyond the scope of the case to acknowledge intruding on the life of Harry’s mother, the late Princess Diana, and the impact it had on his family.
There’s sort of the question here whether in Fox’s spying they are doing it on behalf of someone other than the company. They took out a big loan from China not too long ago, they’re heavily staffed by Israel first types, a lot of potential issues. And when the royal family is being targeted, everything needs to be considered.
Elise Stefanik tells the senate the Bible gives Israel the West Bank
As part of her confirmation as UN ambassador, a role whose sole purpose in Republican administrations is defending Israel, Elise Stefanik, who was fast-tracked to House leadership for some unaccountable reason, told the Senate that the Bible gives Israel the right to sovereignty over the West Bank. That’s not how the rest of the world sees it, and that’s probably a heretical proposition for a Catholic to hold. It’s a hard-right position in Israel itself.
What’s interesting about this is Stefanik is reported to have been a member of Teneo, a networking group recently taken over by Leonard Leo. And if they have a role in this confirmation process as he’s had a role in confirming judges, one must ask whether Opus Dei is encouraging nominees to publicly espouse views at odds with Catholic teaching.
Chief psychiatrist of Ukraine’s armed forces arrested
For illegal enrichment:
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) detained the chief psychiatrist of the Armed Forces over suspected illicit enrichment in the amount of over $1 million, the agency reported on Jan. 21.
According to charges, the official has acquired substantial undeclared assets since the outbreak of the full-scale war in 2022, including a house in Kyiv Oblast, apartments in Kyiv and Odesa, luxury cars, and plots of land.
The detainee also serves as the deputy head of the central medical commission that determines the suitability of potential recruits for military service.
There were also raids over the illicit weapons trade throughout the country:
Ukrainian law enforcement agencies were conducting some 1,000 raids nationwide on Thursday to stop the illegal sale of weapons and ammunition, police said.
The proliferation of arms in the war-battered country since the Russian invasion in early 2022 has raised concerns about weapons smuggling both inside Ukraine and among its Western-backed allies.
“The main goal is to shut down sales and storage channels as well as to seize trophy weapons” taken from Russian soldiers as well as “ammunition and explosives from illicit trafficking,” the national police force said in a social media post.
Microsoft and Israel’s ethnic cleansing
There are a lot of questions that remain to be sorted out about Israeli weapons systems, some of which are probably more Russian than we yet know. But +972 continues to do strong work on this subject, with a big piece this week on Microsoft’s complicity in the ethnic cleansing:
Microsoft has a “footprint in all major military infrastructures” in Israel, and sales of the company’s cloud and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli army have skyrocketed since the beginning of its onslaught on Gaza, according to leaked commercial records from Israel’s Defense Ministry and files from Microsoft’s Israeli subsidiary.
The documents reveal that dozens of units in the Israeli army have purchased services from Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, in recent months — including units in the air, ground, and naval forces, as well as the elite intelligence squad, Unit 8200. Microsoft has also provided the military with extensive access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model, the engine behind ChatGPT, thanks to the close partnership between the two companies.
Insider trading indictment over cannabis merger
This is interesting:
A former cannabis executive used insider information obtained from his employment to purchase shares of a rival cannabis company that was privately the target of an acquisition, according to an indictment returned in federal court in Chicago.
The indictment accuses ANTHONY MARSICO of obtaining material, non-public information about his company’s agreement to purchase the rival company. Prior to the public announcement of the agreement, and while the two companies were privately negotiating the proposed acquisition, Marsico used the information to purchase more than 900,000 shares in the rival company’s stock, resulting in illegal profits of approximately $607,338, the indictment states. Marsico later sold all of the stock before it was publicly announced that the potential acquisition was canceled, the indictment states.
More mortuary services trafficking body parts
A gruesome subject, but an important one:
Candace Chapman Scott, 37, of Little Rock, will serve a total of 15 years in federal prison for transporting stolen human body parts—including fetuses—out of Arkansas and conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Jonathan D. Ross, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, announced the sentence, which was handed down on Thursday, January 16, 2025, by United States District Judge Brian S. Miller.
The investigation revealed that Scott, while an employee at a mortuary services provider between October 2021 through approximately July 15, 2022, stole human body parts and fetal remains. Scott would then sell the body parts and fetal remains to a purchaser in Pennsylvania.
Fake escort extortion scheme in DMV busted
This is pretty interesting:
A Washington man pled guilty today to using phony online escort profiles to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from clients.
According to court documents, from at least August 2020 through October 2024, Abdul Kareem Kabba, 29, used photos and videos of women purchased from OnlyFans to create fake escort profiles on websites such as TheEroticReview.com. Kabba then would assume the identity of the “escort” and communicate with people interested in acquiring services. Kabba would typically ask them to send a deposit using peer-to-peer payment platforms or through websites that are commonly used by adult content creators to receive money. Kabba also would ask clients to verify their identities by sending a picture of themselves holding a form of identification such as a driver license and sending him a link to their social media profiles.
Guilty plea in crypto wash trading scheme
A not small Emirati crypto company:
CLS Global FZC LLC, a financial services firm known in the cryptocurrency industry as a “market maker,” has agreed to resolve criminal charges relating to its fraudulent manipulation of cryptocurrency trading volume.
As part of the criminal resolution, CLS Global will plead guilty to the charges in a September 2024 indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Boston, including one count of conspiracy to commit market manipulation and wire fraud and one count of wire fraud. If its plea is approved by the court, CLS Global will also pay a total of $428,059 to the government, representing both seized cryptocurrency and a fine and will be prohibited from participating in U.S. cryptocurrency markets.
Real estate investment embezzlement indictment in New Jersey
If you have a real estate firm promising double-digit returns for investors, it’s almost certainly fraudulent or criminal in some way, that’s a good rule of thumb:
Turner was previously employed as Vice President of Project Management for NRIA, which held itself out as a real estate investment management fund with over $1.25 billion in assets under management. NRIA promised investors guaranteed returns of at least 12 percent per year for a period of five years, a full return of their investments, and monthly distributions of between six and ten percent of their original investments. Turner had access to NRIA’s PPM, which made many such representations pertaining to NRIA’s purported returns on investment and distributions.
In April 2020, while still employed at NRIA, Turner incorporated Oasis Realty Investment Group (“ORIG”). Turner, through ORIG, solicited real estate investors to purchase, finance, and co-develop residential units in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. Turner used NRIA as a model for ORIG.
Fraud scheme in San Diego surrogacy business
There’s probably a lot of this kind of thing:
Lillian Arielle Markowitz, former owner of three San Diego-based surrogacy consulting businesses, pleaded guilty in federal court today to fraud charges, admitting that she stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in client funds from escrow accounts set up to pay for surrogacy-related services.
According to her plea agreement, Markowitz admitted that she owned three businesses — My Donor Cycle, Surrogacy Beyond Borders, and Expecting Surrogacy — through which she marketed herself as a surrogacy consultant to those seeking to realize their dreams of becoming surrogate parents. Beginning around 2018, when Markowitz and her businesses began to experience financial distress, she devised a scheme to steal money from her surrogacy clients by, among other things, submitting fraudulent requests to the escrow company where her clients’ funds were maintained.