truesee's Blog

http://www.wkrn.com/global/story.asp?s=11019506

FBI: Fort Lauderdale bank robber also tried to steal a kiss from teller

 

 

Fort Lauderdale police investigators, along with bank security guards at the Bank of America on the 3000 block of Davie Boulevard after the bank was robbed last week.

Alexia Campbell

South Florida Sun Sentinel

3:25 p.m. EDT, August 31, 2009

FORT LAUDERDALE - First, he tackled the Bank of America security guard. Then, he punched the manager in the face. And before fleeing with $9,000, the armed robber asked a teller for a kiss, authorities say.

Police found Deatrick Daniel, 27, moments later in a nearby yard Friday with the help of a bank customer and employees, according to a criminal complaint filed by the FBI.

Daniel, of Fort Lauderdale, is accused of robbing the bank at 3030 W. Davie Blvd. around lunchtime Friday.

On Monday, he appeared at the federal courthouse and was charged with bank robbery.

According to the criminal complaint:

Daniel allegedly fought with the bank security guard in the parking lot and tried to take his gun away.

He then ran inside while the bank manager tried to call 911 and got in a scuffle with him, too. Daniel punched the manager in the face, pulled out a semiautomatic handgun and jumped over the counter.

He forced one of the tellers at gunpoint to open the cash drawers for him. Before fleeing with $9,000, Daniel took the teller into the breakroom and asked her to kiss him. The complaint didn't mention whether she did.

The bank guard, manager and a customer followed Daniel and told police he went into a neighborhood nearby. Police found him about 50 yards away hiding in a backyard.

Police were able to recover $2,000 from the yard, plus some cash scattered between the bank and the home.

Daniel was charged with bank robbery and is being held at the Broward Main Jail. He will later be taken to the Federal Detention Center in Miami

Bank wants thumbprint from man with no hands

Mike Deeson

10 Connects

August 31, 2009

6:48 pm

Tampa, Florida -- While most banks require a thumbprint to cash a check from someone who doesn't have an account, a Tampa man says that policy was impossible to comply with.

Steve Valdez says he was shocked when he was told he had to put his thumbprint on a check written on his wife's Bank of America check. Valdez says the check was written to him with the same address he has on his driver's license. Although he had two forms of identification both with pictures, the bank still required Valdez to give a thumbprint before it would cash the check.

But that was impossible, because Valdez was born without arms and wears prosthetic devices.

According to Valdez, when he gave the teller the check, she said "Obviously you can't give a thumbprint." But Valdez says the manager refused to cash the check unless he did.

When Valdez told the manager giving a thumbprint would be impossible, she suggested he either bring in his wife or open an account. Valdez says that's not the way the bank would treat someone without prosthetic arms, and he refused.

Valdez says he asked the bank if it had ever heard of the American with Disabilities Act and he says they told him they were accommodating him by offering the choices. But the ADA says businesses must comply with basic nondiscrimination requirements that prohibit exclusion, segregation, and unequal treatment.

A spokesman for Bank of America says while the thumbprint is a requirement for those who don't have accounts, the bank should have made accommodations.

 

LINK TO PHOTO AND VIDEO:

http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=112587&catid=8

http://www.mixx.com/videos/7337639/youtube_drunk_vegas_lawyer_part_3_arrested_by_judge

Victim uses GPS to track robbers

 

 

                        RELATED STORY

 

Pittsburgh police track down, arrest robbery suspects

By The Tribune-Review
Saturday, August 29, 2009

Pittsburgh police say they used the GPS service on a stolen cellular telephone to track down and arrest a pair of robbery suspects.

The incident began at about 1 a.m. on Saturday morning when officers from the city's Zone 4 station responded to a report of an armed robbery in the 400 block of Amberson Avenue in Shadyside.

The victim, whose name was not released, told police that he was walking home when two men approached him and demanded his wallet. One of the robbers displayed a gun and asked him for the personal identification number for his bank card while the other robber took his wallet and cell phone out of his pockets.

While police were at the scene, the victim logged onto his computer and was able to identify the location of his stolen telephone.

The man was able to tell police that his credit cards had been used to buy items at the Wal-Mart in North Versailles and then at the Eat n Park restaurant along Lincoln Highway.

North Versailles police were contacted and given a description of the suspects and the weapon that was used in the robbery.

North Versailles police arrested the suspects in a 2004 Dodge Caravan in the parking lot at the BP gas station across from the Eat 'n Park.

Police confiscated a black pellet gun in the van along with the victim's identification and credit cards.

Bryant Rather, 22, of West Mifflin, and Brent Ray Potter, 22, of Swissvale were charged with robbery. Also arrested was Myron Knox Jr., 22, of Homewood, who was charged along with Rather and Potter with two counts each of access device fraud, criminal conspiracy, receiving stolen property and possessing instruments of crime.

Man accidentally shoots himself in road-rage incident

 

A road-rage incident late Wednesday night in Lancaster led to a scuffle that ended when one of the combatants pulled out a gun and accidentally shot himself in the leg, Lancaster police said today.

The man who was shot was scheduled to undergo surgery in Erie County Medical Center, but police said the wound was not considered life-threatening.

Detectives believe the incident started at about 10:30 p.m., when someone reportedly cut someone else off in traffic on Ransom Road. A chase ensued, involving two individuals on motorcycles and one in another vehicle.

A short distance away on Ransom, at least one of the motorcyclists and the motorist confronted each other, and the motorist pulled out a gun.

"The one male points the gun at the second male," Capt. Timothy R. Murphy said. "The second male punches him in the face. As the first male is falling backwards, he discharges the gun and shoots himself in the left leg."

Police have not identified either of the combatants, both of whom are in their 20s. While no charges have been filed, detectives are considering possible charges, including weapons possession, against the man with the gun.

Capt. Murphy, Lancaster's chief of detectives, used the violent incident as a reminder of what can happen when people try to settle disputes with someone they don't know.

"If you have a problem on the road, call the police," he warned. "Don't confront an individual. You don't know what's going to happen. The individual without the gun is lucky that he didn't get shot."

20-year-old dream taking shape in backyard

Tyler Treadway

Sunday, August 30, 2009

GIFFORD — That thing in Dennis Schaller’s back yard off 45th Street looks like:

A. A scaled-down version of Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon from “Star Wars.”

B. An Airstream trailer on steroids.

C. A DeLorean sports car from the early ’80s on some really serious steroids.

D. Absolutely nothing else at all.

“Most people think it’s a spaceship,” Schaller said of his silver creation that measures 56 feet long, 20 feet wide and 17 feet tall. “It was originally designed to be a hovercraft. Now it looks like it’s going to end up as a houseboat. I won’t live long enough to get enough money to make it a hovercraft — not unless I went back to work full time; and then I wouldn’t have the time to work on it.”

 

 

 

 

 

Given Schaller’s background, the spaceship guess isn’t so far-fetched.

Schaller started building rockets when he was a kid. He made a solid-fuel jet engine in high school shop class and, at age 15, took first place in the engineering division of the 1960 Georgia State Science Fair for a rocket he’d built.

He was a rocket engine mechanic in the Air Force before becoming an electrical engineer with North American Aviation, where he worked on several Apollo missions, including the Apollo 11 craft that landed on the moon, and the early Space Shuttle program. He’s lived in Gifford since 1989.

That’s about the time he started working on his hovercraft/houseboat.

“It’s been a 20-year project,” the 65-year-old Schaller said. “So far.”

At the center of the craft is a travel trailer Schaller found in the woods in Fellsmere and bought for $100.

“I put a deck around the trailer, then a roof on the deck,” he said, “and then, well, it just kind of took off. Unfortunately, my dreams are bigger than my life is long and my pockets are deep.”

The vessel, for lack of a better word, is a mixture of the practical and the fanciful. The front door, for example, opens hydraulically like the alien spacecraft from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

“Not being a rich man, I’ve had to build a lot of it out of junk,” he said, noting the lifeboat is made from a former acid dipping vat from the Piper Aircraft plant in Vero Beach and an old satellite dish.

Schaller said he’d like to float the boat in Lake Okeechobee.

“I’ve got two more years to go if I keep working steady every day,” Schaller said. “Of course, I’ve been saying ‘two more years’ for about 10 years now.”

 

 

LINK TO VIDEO:

http://www.tcpalm.com/videos/detail/space-ship

Bernanke personal bank account struck by ID theft

(08-27) 17:05 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --

No one is safe from identity theft, not even the chairman of the Federal Reserve

Ben Bernanke's personal checking account became entangled in an elaborate identity-theft scheme after his wife Anna's purse was stolen last August at a Capitol Hill Starbucks. According to a District of Columbia police report, it contained her Social Security card, checkbook, credit cards and IDs.

It's not been revealed how much money was stolen from the Bernankes' account. But someone started cashing checks on their bank account just days after the purse was stolen from her chair. The thefts helped fuel an ongoing investigation into a sophisticated ring.

Losses from the fraud totaled more than $2.1 million and involved at least 10 financial institutions, court document said. Clyde Austin Gray Jr. of Waldorf, Md., a suspected ringleader in the scheme, pleaded guilty on July 22 in Alexandria, Va., federal court.

The banks bore primary responsibility for the losses and the victims' accounts, including the Bernankes, were most likely made whole.

"Identity theft is a serious crime that affects millions of Americans each year," Bernanke said in a statement. "Our family was but one of 500 separate instances traced to one crime ring. I am grateful for the law enforcement officers who patiently and diligently work to solve and prevent these financial crimes."

Prosecutors wrote that Gray hired pick pockets then made counterfeit IDs for the participants. The coconspirators conducted the bank transactions, and Gray took a cut of the proceeds.

At least one check from the Bernanke account for $900 was deposited Aug. 13, 2008, into the account of another identity theft victim at a Bank of America branch in suburban Maryland, according to an affidavit filed in D.C. Superior Court. Authorities alleged that George L. Reid, 41, of Washington, cashed checks that day amounting to at least $9,000 in a string of transactions after the fake deposits inflated the related account balances.

Bank of America spokeswoman Tara Burke said Thursday, "We're looking into it. We're still gathering facts."

Brian Lapidus, an identity theft expert with Kroll Fraud Solutions, said it's not unusual to hear of high-ranking officials caught up by identity theft. His firm has worked with celebrities, senators and others who have been victims.

"To an identity thief, we're all just names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth," Lapidus said. "Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in America."

Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearing House in San Diego, agreed, saying some Fortune 500 executives have been targeted because they have considerable financial resources. Still, she said, the Bernanke case sounds unique.

"I find this case interesting because it's a crime ring engaged in activities that have been primarily the purview of petty individual criminals — purse snatching," she said.

Ten defendants, including Reid, have been identified in the investigation conducted by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Secret Service and D.C. police. The scheme involved using stolen IDs, bank records, personal checks and other items to impersonate victims at bank branches, according to an affidavit signed by Postal Inspector William J. Aiello.

Victims were targeted in D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Illinois and elsewhere. Part of the scheme involved checks stolen from the Combined Federal Campaign for the National Capital Area, an official federal government-sponsored charity.

Court filings show Reid has confessed to depositing checks from an account that belonged to someone named "B.B." He was first charged in D.C. Superior Court for identity theft and had confessed to law enforcement officials, according to the June 8 affidavit filed in Alexandria, Va., federal court where the case was transferred.

An arrest warrant for Reid, though, is outstanding in the current case, according to court records. Sylvester Vaughn pleaded guilty on July 6 and is scheduled for sentencing with Gray in September.

A message to an attorney who represented Reid in the D.C. case was not immediately returned. Court records didn't show an attorney for Reid in the current case.

Aspirin does more harm than good in healthy people: research

Healthy people who take aspirin to prevent a heart attack are doing themselves more harm than good, researchers have said.

At the same time they found it almost doubles the risk of being admitted to hospital due to internal bleeding.

The findings show that for otherwise healthy people the risks of taking aspirin outweigh the benefits. The doctors stressed that patients who had already suffered a heart attack should continue to take the drug.

It has been suggested that aspirin could be included in a so-called 'polypill' with an anti-cholesterol statin and a blood pressure drug which could be taken by everyone aged over 50.

Experts said substantial numbers of 'worried well' take aspirin as a 'just in case' measure believing that because it has been around for such a long time it is completely safe.

The results of a study carried out in Scotland and presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Barcelona has added to the growing evidence that the risks outweigh the benefits for healthy people.

Prof Gerry Fowkes of the Wolfson Unit for Prevention of Peripheral Vascular Disease in Edinburgh, said: “Our research suggests that aspirin should not be prescribed to the general population at this stage.

“Aspirin probably leads to a minor reduction in future events but the problem is that has to be weighed against an increase in bleeding. Some of that bleeding can be quite serious and lead to death.”

Prof Peter Weissberg, Medical Director of the British Heart Foundation, which part-funded the study, said: "A lot of the worried well buy a small dose of aspirin over the counter not understanding that they are increasing their risk substantially of a major bleed."

He said it is known that aspirin does reduce the risk of cardiovascular problems but this must be countered against the increased risk of internal bleeding.

In patients who have already had a heart attack the risk of a second is so much higher that the balance is in favour of taking aspirin.

However, for people who have not had a heart attack the risks do not normally outweigh the benefits.

Prof Weissberg added: "If you have not got clear cut vascular disease that has caused an event while it does reduce the risk (of a heart attack or stroke) that benefit is offset by a worse risk of haemorrhage and potentially fatal haemorrhage."

In the study conducted in Scotland 29,000 men and women aged between 50 and 75 were screened to see if they had furred arteries in the legs, which means they are at high risk of developing heart disease but do not yet have symptoms.

More than 3,000 men were randomly assigned to receive a daily dose of aspirin or a dummy pill and were followed up for an average of eight years.

There was no difference in the rate of heart attacks or stroke between the two groups and deaths from any cause were similar.

However there were 34 major bleeds in people taking aspirin, or two per cent, compared with 20 or 1.2 per cent of those on the placebo.

He said the tablets were only taken 60 per cent of the time during the trial which reflects real life experience in people who have not had a heart attack.

He said in secondary prevention, where people have already had one attack and are trying to prevent a second one, compliance is usually better.

Earlier this year Oxford scientists found that although aspirin could cut the chances of a heart attack in patients who had never suffered one by a fifth, it also increased the risk of stomach bleeding by a third.

Nick Henderson Executive Director of the Aspirin Foundation said: "Aspirin use to prevent primary cardiovascular events is only appropriate where individual patients are considered by their doctor to be at special risk from particular factors such as obesity, lifestyle, stress and a familial history.

"The Aspirin Foundation continues to counsel individuals always to seek medical advice before embarking on a self medication prophylactic regime with Aspirin for whatever reason.

"Medical advocates of prophylactic Aspirin in the absence of previous cardiovascular events accept that potential benefits should be weighed against potential risks such as the bleeding demonstrated in the study by Professor Fowkes."

 

Rebecca Smith

Daily Telegraph

Medical Editor in Barcelona
10:00PM BST 30 Aug 2009

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/30/TREF19AT3N.DTL

Man gets 15 years for biting off finger

A 30-year-old Staten Island man was sentenced yesterday to 15 years in prison for biting off the finger of an Atlantic City police officer and assaulting two other officers attempting to subdue him at a casino nightclub.

Superior Court Judge Bernard DeLury sentenced Rafael Pichardo to seven years in prison for the biting incident and another eight years for the two assaults, Atlantic County Prosecutor Ted Housel said.

Pichardo was convicted May 1 on three counts of aggravated assault from the Feb. 11, 2007, altercation at the Casbah nightclub in the Trump Taj Mahal Casino.

During the incident, he bit off nearly half of Officer Dean Dooley's left index finger, which could not be reattached.

The jury also found him guilty of spitting at officer Patrick Yarrow and Lt. Christopher Applegate in addition to resisting arrest, obstruction and terroristic threats.

The officers were summoned to the club around 5 a.m. to subdue an unruly patron. Housel said Pichardo became combative as Dooley and Applegate escorted him from the bar.

Applegate, who spoke on behalf of the other officers who did not attend yesterday's sentencing, said the incident prompted him to retire.

"It is open season on our police officers,'' Applegate said. "There needs to be a deterrent. Respect for officers has gone out the window.''

Before imposing sentence, DeLury told Pichardo he was to blame for his own actions.

"There were plenty of poor choices made that night at

the Casbah, and they were all made by Mr. Pichardo,'' DeLury said.

Pichardo in October attempted to file aggravated assault charges against the officers.

He alleged they attacked him after he made an obscene gesture to them at the nightclub and then beat him after he was taken to the police station.

The claims were dismissed after an investigation by the prosecutor's official corruption unit determined they were unsupported by the facts of the case.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2Ycy4_uKw8

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/6110742/Chicken-dance-teacher-Youtube-clip-promps-warnings-of-new-technology-in-classrooms.htm

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/top5_haunted_places.html