Category Archives: Victimless Crimes

Muskogee County Assistant District Attorney Jessie Heidlage earned recognition Thursday as Prosecutor of the Year for her prosecution of domestic violence cases.

Heidlage was recognized during the 13th annual Awards for Excellence in Action Against Domestic Violence presentation and press conference at the state Capitol in Oklahoma City. The event is sponsored by the Oklahoma District Attorneys Council, the Oklahoma Attorney General's Office, Oklahoma Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, and Native Alliance Against Violence.

Muskogee County District Attorney Larry R. Edwards, who nominated Heidlage for the award, said working domestic cases can be "difficult even under the best of circumstances." Victims of domestic violence, he said, often will not report crimes when they occur, don't assist prosecutors, or don't show up when subpoenaed to testify.

"Ms. Heidlage tries to build trust with victims early on so that when it comes time to prosecute they will come to court if necessary," Edwards states in his nominating letter. "Ms. Heidlage has work(ed) diligently with local law enforcement to ensure ... we can proceed without a victim victimless prosecutions are one (of) the best ways to break the cycle(s) of abuse."

Edwards described one example of a reluctant victim when Heidlage was "able to get past preliminary hearing through the use of the officer's body cams, 911 calls, and jail calls from the defendant." He credited Heidlage, her "creative thought process, and her use of the Rules of Evidence" for keeping the case alive.

"She understands that sometimes the circumstances that the victims are in leaves them to where they feel they have nowhere to turn," Edwards said. "She gives victims of domestic violence hope."

The annual awards are presented during October, which is recognized as Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

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Heidlage chosen Prosecutor of the Year - Muskogee Daily Phoenix

Cass County prosecutors and the defense team for 59-year-old Ronald Jeffrey Thompson wrapped up jury selection Tuesday, Oct. 12. Opening statements will begin at 9 a.m. Wednesday. Its unclear how long the trial will last.

Thompson was charged Feb. 24 with a Class B felony of luring a minor by computer. A detective from Florida who posed as a 14-year-old girl started chatting with Thompson online as early as Oct. 31, 2019, according to court documents.

Prosecutors alleged Thompson believed he was speaking with a 14-year-old but still had sexually explicit conversations that eventually moved to Google Hangouts after he requested an email from the undercover officer.

Thompson talked about having oral sex with the girl along with describing in detail how he would have sex with the female, a police report said.

The detective eventually learned Thompson was a West Fargo teacher, so he contacted the West Fargo Police Department, court documents said. Thompson taught at Sheyenne and West Fargo high schools.

Police claim Thompson admitted to talking with multiple females online, including more than one who was under the age of 18, when he was interviewed at a West Fargo high school, the report said. He denied having any hands-on offenses with anyone he has chatted with, the report said. He also said he did not have any inappropriate contacts or chats with anyone in the area, according to court documents.

The West Fargo Police Department confirmed in a news conference that their investigation revealed Thompson was not having relations with local students.

Thompson, who resigned as a career and technology education teacher in early February before being charged, has pleaded not guilty in the case.

The defense filed a motion on Monday to dismiss the luring charge. Prosecutors have to prove three elements of a luring charge: that an adult knows his communication is sexually explicit or implicit, that they use any computer communication system to initiate or engage in conversations with a minor, and the discussion importunes, invites or induces the child to engage in sexual activity.

Defense Attorney Jeff Bredahl argued in his request to dismiss the luring charge that the Cass County States Attorney's Office did not lay out the last element in charging documents.

On Tuesday, prosecutors withdrew a second charge from the case. In an amended charging document filed March 24, Thompson was charged with possession of certain materials prohibited by law after prosecutors alleged he had a photo of a young nude child.

Prosecutor Ryan Younggren said he agreed to drop the count after the defense said it should have been charged in a separate case. Its possible that he will refile the charge, he said.

Bredahl asked potential jurors if they considered themselves courageous, particularly if they had enough courage to make a decision that wasnt popular.

Another set of questions revolved around what types of books and movies people watched. One person watched Squid Game, a South Korean series recently released on Netflix about people in debt competing for a large cash prize.

Bredahl also asked if potential jurors had read the book Fifty Shades of Grey, an erotic romance novel in which a young businessman tries to develop a dominant relationship over a college graduate using bondage.

He also asked whether potential jurors would throw the baby out with the bathwater and find a person guilty if legal language was too difficult to decipher. At least one person said they would follow the letter of the law and not let other things distract them, adding having a persons life in their hands is a serious matter.

Younggren asked if the panel believed things that happen online are real, such as playing video games or poker. One person responded yes, noting in online poker that people form relationships online, exchange money and have to discern what others are doing.

Younggren also noted Datelines To Catch a Predator, a reality show where a host confronts men who believe they are meeting minors for sex in a sting-style interview.

Some people claim luring crimes are victimless when it involves police officers posing as children, Younggren noted. One potential juror said there may not be a victim, but the intent to commit a crime is there.

Thirteen people were chosen to sit on the jury, including one alternate.

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Former West Fargo teacher heads to trial on charge of luring minor - INFORUM

Two years after his indictment, a Madison Twp. man pleaded guilty today to 16 counts of child pornography after being initially charged with 101 counts, and he was sentenced to more than three decades in prison. It was a case Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones called one of the worst cases of child pornography investigated" by his agency.

Trevor Fraley, 26, of Dickey Road, was scheduled to go to trial in August in Butler County Common Pleas Court, but that trial was canceled and a plea and sentencing hearing was held Tuesday.

Fraley, of Dickey Road, pleaded guilty to 16 counts of pandering sexually oriented material involving a child, and Judge Michael Oster Jr. sentenced him to 31 to 35 years in prison. He faced a maximum of 76 to 80 years.

As part of the plea agreement, the remaining 85 counts were dismissed.

Fraley was indicted in November 2019 on multiple counts of pandering sexually oriented matter involving a child and illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material or performance. He has been free on bond awaiting litigation of the case.

Before sentencing, Fraley read a statement telling the judge he was addicted to methamphetamine at the time the crimes were committed, but is now sober and ashamed of his behavior.

He thanked God, and even the Butler County Sheriffs Office who arrested him, because he is no longer addicted to drugs.

There is no way a sober me would do something like this, Fraley said. Words can not explain how sorry and ashamed I am of my actions while an addict.

David Fraley, Trevors father, cried as he talked about his sons difficulties caused by his parents' separation and an injury he suffered while participating in school athletics.

He got introduced to drugs and it became a very serious problem, David Fraley said. After getting out of jail, Trevor went to work at his fathers business, where he was dedicated and excelled, David Fraley said.

In addition, Trevor has remained sober and is attending church, David Fraley said.

Defense attorney Chris Pagan pointed to Fraleys positive behavior since his arrest.

He committed his crimes in a haze of addiction that he been able to come out of. Not an excuse, but it is mitigation, Pagan said.

Assistant Prosecutor Kelly Heile read in detail the description of sex acts involving pre-pubescent children depicted on videos found in Fraleys possession. In some cases, it was noted the children were crying and trying to get away while being abused by the adults.

Oster said pornography involving minors is not a victimless crime and even the consumption keeps that enterprise of exploiting children moving forward.

I dont know if abhorrent is a strong enough word for what is depicted, the judge said. But he noted the sentence must also be about balance, noting Fraleys guilty plea, lack of previous criminal history and behavior since his arrest.

A computer believed to belong to Fraley contained a very large amount of child pornography over 1,200 videos depicting children engaged in sexual activity, much of which has been duplicated by defendants backing up the videos from his phone to his computer, Heile said in court documents.

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Butler County man sentenced in 'one of the worst cases of child pornography' - WCPO

Intelligence can be useful in war, but the bulk of what it does in peacetime is pointless

A long time ago now I was asked to do a television series about the world's intelligence services - and I turned it down flat. My main reason was a feeling that there was less to the whole intelligence world than met the eye, and the subsequent thirty years have only served to confirm that judgement.

The latest case in point is the recent revelations about the US CIA. In 2017, it turns out, the CIA flirted with the idea of kidnapping or killing Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, in his refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Wikipedia profoundly embarrassed the CIA in 2010 by putting a huge trove of secret US records about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the web. Fearing extradition to the United States, Assange (who is Australian), sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012.

The pace picked up in early 2017 when Donald Trump became president and Mike Pompeo heading the CIA convinced himself that the Russians were going to try to spirit Assange out of Britain into their own hands.

So, the CIA began planning to preempt the Russians by kidnapping Assange from the embassy and take him to the US - or, if that didn't work, kill him. Contingency plans were also discussed for thwarting a possible Russian attempt to get Assange out.

The Ecuadorian Government changed and Assange was expelled from the London embassy in 2019, but he still faced an American demand for extradition. A British court rejected that early this year, but he continues to sit in prison awaiting the outcome of a US appeal to a higher court.

And here's the thing. None of the information Assange released hurt anybody, and a lot of it needed to be revealed: war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and government surveillance of tens of millions of US citizens. The CIA made it all secret because it could, not because it was necessary or justifiable.

It's not just American intelligence agencies, of course, and they don't always think about killing those who spill their precious secrets. Thus Israeli Mordechai Vanunu, who confirmed the existence of Israel's nuclear weapons in 1986, was only kidnapped in Italy and jailed in Israel for 18 years (11 years in solitary).

Vanunu's revelation changed nothing: everybody already knew that Israel has nuclear weapons, even if it will never confirm it publicly. Thirty-five years after he was kidnapped, however, Vanunu is still not allowed to leave Israel. If he speaks to foreigners he is arrested, and sometimes jailed again for a few months.

Then there's Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who revealed huge amounts of data about the US National Security Agency's global surveillance programmes in 2013. Revealing that the US was hacking the phones of friendly foreign leaders like Germany's Angela Merkel was the right thing to do, but he can never go home again.

These people are not 'helping terrorists' or betraying their countries. The 'intelligence services' (the old term 'secret services' was less misleading) reflexively build bureaucratic empires and ceaselessly expand their reach because that's what bureaucracies do. They can be useful in war, but the vast bulk of what they do in peacetime is pointless.

I only suspected that in 1990, when the Cold War was just ending. By now, it is blindingly obvious. All these cases are victimless 'crimes' where things that should be known about the illegal, counter-productive, and even criminal behaviour of governments are finally revealed - and the intelligence services then relentlessly harass the whistle-blowers to frighten others into silence.

(Gwynne Dyer's new book is 'The Shortest History of War'. The views expressed are personal.)

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Destroy the WhistleBlowers! - Daily Pioneer

The Georgetown University Police Department (GUPD) has maintained a dangerous and imposing role on this campus for far too long.

As an organization, GUPD is not equipped to deal with emergencies beyond flexing muscle. GUPDs bloated force of 47 patrol officers should be slashed to 10, with the $1.7 million saved yearly used to develop alternative crisis response organizations.

At its core, GUPD actively harms. This is true with regards to their conduct around students of color, predominantly Black students. Throughout its history, GUPD received multiple reports of racially profiling and aggressively policing students of color, calling into question whether it actually increases student safety. The current organization still enshrines racist policing on campus.

GUPD even struggles to complete the most basic tasks associated with public safety work. On Sept. 19, a campus intruder tailed students and brandished a knife in New South. GUPD did not apprehend the intruder until the next day in a stunning failure of security.

The New South debacle was an isolated incidentthe vast majority of GUPD actions are in response to drugs or alcohol. According to public data, only eight arrests were made on campus from 2017-2019, all related to substances. This policy of policing victimless crimes results in an increased police presence on campus.

GUPDs own arrest data makes it clear the situations they respond to do not require law enforcement, just care and intervention. In cases with mental health concerns, GUPD are never the most qualified respondents. These services could be provided more effectively by someone trained to handle a crisis. Many studentsespecially students of colorwould feel safer seeing a clinician arrive at their apartment than a uniformed officer, thus encouraging people to actually seek help when they need it.

The remaining tasks of GUPDenforcing university COVID-19 policies, providing security at student events, and responding to after-hours facility callsalso do not require actual police.

Equally concerning is the lack of accountability that students have over the organization. GUPD is supervised by the Vice President for Public Affairs, Erik Smulson. This set-up frames policing as a PR issue rather than a community safety initiative, begging a critical question: Is the forces purpose truly to ensure safety, or the appearance of it?

We are not the first to point out these concerns; generations of student activists, especially Black and femme students, have highlighted these issues. Many of the following proposals are adapted from or inspired by the 2020 Healy Hall sit-in organized by the Black Survivors Coalition (BSC). Given a long history of racial harm, in any GUPD reform, the needs of students of color, especially Black students, must be centered.

The lowest-hanging reform is greater accountability. While students can submit concerns with officers, there are few opportunities for systemic oversight of the force. The Student Safety Advisory Board, designed to respond to worries about security on campus, meets only when administration calls it and suffers from low attendance.

Thus, the force does not receive much-needed oversight, not just in individual instances of

misconduct, but also as an institution that regularly terrorizes students of color and generally inflicts a culture of fear. Though past student review proposals, including a GUSA-initiated oversight board, have failed to come to fruition, some body must be implemented that has the power to handle long-term issues like staffing, training, and internal culture.

Any form of oversight board should have access to the forces hiring and bias training materials, demands made by BSC two years ago that were never met. Though the police force undergoes bias training and has completed an active bystander training, students have a right to know exactly what is being done to keep them safe. Bias training should not be seen as a fix-all; students have no indication of whether officers are receptive to the training, and anti-racial bias training can never change the fact that the police are, fundamentally, a racist institution.

Meanwhile, students rely on chronically underfunded vital services. Students must make mental health appointments months out to ensure a spot with CAPS. Survivors of trauma, especially Black survivors, have implored the university to provide more clinicians and wider specialization at Health Education Services. GERMS, the student-run emergency service that is able to respond to any substance-related medical concerns GUPD handles, receives comparatively little funding despite providing an essential function. Each of these services can handle 90 percent of what GUPD currently does and can do it in a more trauma-informed, accessible, and identity-aware way.

Though GUPD does not release budget information, their website lists different officers salaries, which indicate that our proposed cut to 10 officers would save the university $1.7 million annually from wages alone. This simple fact points to a reality the university has too long ignored: Policing is costing us other chances at community care.

Thats not to say students dont need emergency services on call 24/7but theres no reason for that service to be a uniformed police officer. Georgetown already runs Saferides to help students get home late at night and could continue to expand the program with non-police accompaniment.

To advance community care, Georgetown should follow the BSCs proposal and implement a 24/7 crisis center and hotline with trained professionals to respond to substance-related or interpersonal conflicts that are non-violent, which the vast majority are. Though in the past the university has cited cost concerns as a reason not to enact the proposal, the money saved through defunding GUPD would make this feasible.

Students have a role in this too. We must stop calling GUPD on fellow students or community members. For nearly any situation, RAs and GERMS are better resources, and if escalation is truly needed, they can help you make that decision. Know that when you call the cops, you could be exposing your fellow students to trauma and violence. Ask yourself if the situation truly demands the risk of that.

If you are a student who feels safe around GUPD, recognize that this is in itself a privilege, and avoid glorifying their work when they make so many of your fellow students feel unsafe. And call for the reforms that you agree with. Just a modicum of accountability required a week long sit-in, so if you are dedicated to reform, keep going.

Look out for each other, not just in the face of daily stress, but in response to systems of oppression and discrimination on our campus. The onus is on us to continue building mutual-aid-style networks and supporting systems that are student-centric and anti-racist.

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Defund GUPD. With the right response systems, we won't need them. - The Georgetown Voice

Law enforcement agencies submitted incident reports involving 7,759 criminal incidents and 10,532 related offenses motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity.

Further, the FBIs Hate Crime Statistics, 2020, reported 7,554 single-bias incidents involving 10,528 victims.

Percent distribution of victims by bias type shows that 61.9 percent of victims found themselves targeted because of the offenders race, ethnicity, or ancestry.

Further, 20.5 percent fell victim because of bias toward the offenders sexual orientation, 13.4 percent because of the offenders religion, 2.5 percent because of the offenders gender identity, 1 percent the offenders disability, and 0.7 percent because of the offenders gender bias.

Specifically, in its Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Programs latest compilation about bias-motivated incidents throughout the nation, the FBI noted that the number of hate crimes in the United States rose to the highest level in 12 years, driven by assaults targeting Black and Asian people.

The rise in hate crimes occurred in a year of renewed protests for racial justice in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and countless others.

The rise in hate crimes is sad but predictable given the well-documented efforts by elected officials and political candidates to foment hate and division for partisan gain, especially during the 2020 election season and amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, stated in a news release.

Hewitt noted that The Lawyers Committee filed several lawsuits within the last year to address hate incidents by people emboldened by an atmosphere in which blatant lies flourish and the truth often questioned.

Our clients were assaulted by racially motivated mobs, beaten by police using racially charged language, and targeted with thousands of racist robocalls delivering misinformation, Hewitt added.

While horrific on their own, all indications are that these incidents are still grossly underreported. Although hate crimes prey on historically disenfranchised groups, our government should treat these crimes as a threat to the very foundations of our democracy a threat that we dismiss at our own peril.

The FBIs report revealed that of the 7,426 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against persons in 2020, 53.4 percent were for intimidation, 27.6 percent were for simple assault, and 18.1 percent were for aggravated assault.

Of the 2,913 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against property, most (76.4 percent) were acts of destruction/damage/vandalism.

Robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, and other offenses accounted for the remaining 23.6 percent of crimes against property.

Law enforcement classified 193 additional offenses as crimes against society.

The FBI said this crime category represents societys prohibition against engaging in certain types of activity such as gambling, prostitution, and drug violations.

They said those crimes typically are victimless where property isnt the object.

Of the 6,431 known offenders, 55.2 percent were White, and 20.2 percent were Black or African American.

Other races accounted for the remaining known offenders:

1.1 percent were Asian. 1.1 percent were American Indian or Alaska Native. 0.5 percent were Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. 5.6 percent were of a group of multiple races.The race was unknown for 16.4 percent.

Of the 5,820 known offenders for whom ethnicity was reported, 39.3 percent were Not Hispanic or Latino, 10.7 percent were Hispanic or Latino, and 2.5 percent were in a group of multiple races.

Ethnicity was unknown for 47.5 percent of these offenders.

Of the 5,915 known offenders for whom ages were known, 89.1 percent were 18 years of age or older.

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FBI Reports Sharp Rise in Hate Crimes Targeting Black and ...

A long time ago now I was asked to do a television series about the worlds intelligence services and I turned it down flat. My main reason was a feeling that there was less to the whole intelligence world than met the eye, and the subsequent 30 years have only served to confirm that judgement.

Todays case in point is the recent revelations about the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. In 2017, it turns out, the CIA flirted with the idea of kidnapping or killing Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, in his refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Wikipedia profoundly embarrassed the CIA in 2010 by putting a huge trove of secret U.S. records about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the web. Fearing extradition to the United States, Assange (who is Australian), sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012.

The pace picked up in early 2017 when Donald Trump became president and made Mike Pompeo head of the CIA. Pompeo quickly convinced himself that the Russians were going to try to spirit Assange out of Britain into their own hands.

So the CIA began planning to pre-empt the Russians by kidnapping Assange from the embassy and take him to the U.S. or, if that didnt work, kill him. Contingency plans were also discussed for thwarting a possible Russian attempt to get Assange out by ramming the getaway vehicle, shooting out the tires of the getaway plane or, once again, killing him.

The Russians picked up on all this chatter, and started putting their own operatives in place around the embassy. It was beyond comical, said one former senior Trump official. It got to the point where every human being in a three-block radius (of the embassy) was working for one of the intelligence services whether they were street sweepers or police officers or security guards.

Comical and farfetched but this is also how the plan to kidnap or kill self-exiled Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabias embassy in Istanbul probably got started. The senior officials around Trump were at least grown-up enough to realize it was crazy and dropped the idea, whereas the ones around Muhammad bin Salman werent.

The Ecuadorian government changed and Assange was expelled from the London embassy in 2019, but he still faced an American demand for extradition. A British court rejected that early this year, but he continues to sit in prison awaiting the outcome of a U.S. appeal to a higher court.

And heres the thing. None of the information Assange released hurt anybody, and a lot of it needed to be revealed: war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and government surveillance of tens of millions of U.S. citizens. The CIA made it all secret because it could, not because it was necessary or justifiable.

Its not just American intelligence agencies, of course, and they dont always think about killing those who spill their precious secrets. Thus Israeli Mordechai Vanunu, who confirmed the existence of Israels nuclear weapons in 1986, was only kidnapped in Italy and jailed in Israel for 18 years (11 years in solitary).

Vanunus revelation changed nothing: everybody already knew that Israel has nuclear weapons, even if it will never confirm it publicly. Thirty-five years after he was kidnapped, however, Vanunu is still not allowed to leave Israel. If he speaks to foreigners he is arrested, and sometimes jailed again for a few months.

Then theres Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who revealed huge amounts of data about the U.S. National Security Agencys global surveillance programmes in 2013. Revealing that the U.S. was hacking the phones of friendly foreign leaders like Germanys Angela Merkel was the right thing to do, but he can never go home again.

The U.S. government trapped him in Moscow by cancelling his passport when he was en route from Hong Kong to Latin America, where he was seeking asylum. He is still stuck in Russia eight years later. His girlfriend joined him in Moscow in 2014, and they are now married with a three-year-old son, but going home would mean a lifetime in prison. The punishment never ends.

These people are not helping terrorists or betraying their countries. The intelligence services (the old term secret services was less misleading) reflexively build bureaucratic empires and ceaselessly expand their reach because thats what bureaucracies do. They can be useful in war, but the vast bulk of what they do in peacetime is pointless.

I only suspected that in 1990, when the Cold War was just ending. By now, it is blindingly obvious. All these cases are victimless crimes where things that should be known about the illegal, counter-productive, and even criminal behaviour of governments are finally revealed and the intelligence services then relentlessly harass the whistleblowers to frighten others into silence.

Read more here:

There's a concerted effort to destroy the whistleblowers - ObserverXtra

What initially attracted you to the world of financial crime prevention? What keeps you here now?

Until the 1980s, law enforcement agencies main policy was focusing on either revealing the crime or identifying the perpetrators of the crime.

However, no matter how better strategies were developed and how good operations were conducted, at the end of the operations, other organized crime groups were replacing the ones that disappeared.

Even though arrested organization members were serving some time in jail, they were spending their illegal gains (most of the time money) for the rest of their lives in prosperity.

Thus, serving the sentence was remaining as a small cost for them compared to their harm to both individuals and societies.

Furthermore, in most cases, only low-level members of criminal organizations were being punished while bosses were escaping from the justice system.

On the other hand, in victimless crimes (I am not sure if there is such a crime but at least it is stated in the literature), such as some type of corruption cases and white-collar crimes, criminals were also reaping the financial benefits of their crimes.

The justice most times couldnt be served or wouldnt be adequate enough compared to what the criminals deserved since there were no victims to follow their claims.

Having seen the above-mentioned situations and many others which couldnt be mentioned, international initiatives, including by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), financial institutions, etc., urged governments and international bodies to take further steps in fighting criminals and criminal activities by targeting both motivation and source of criminal activities, which is money, rather than the crime itself.

According to a new concept, criminals would not be only punished for their wrongdoings but also their financial gains, the proceeds of crime from their illegal activities, which would be taken away from them by related authorities to better serve justice.

During this time period, some additional concepts were also introduced to legal systems, including the crime of money laundering.

Thus, in the meantime, those who are at the upper link of the criminal syndicates who couldnt be related to the crime would be punished one way or another.

Although it is still under debate whether confiscation of proceeds of crime is punishment or preventive precaution, beyond these discussions, it is obvious that it is a serious deterrence from the criminal activity.

Therefore, I believe within the new concept of financial crime prevention policies, justice will be served more effectively, and crime-fighting policies will be more deterrent [by following the money, confiscating the assets bought with illicit finance and going after the leaders of organized criminal and corruption networks].

This is the reason why financial crime prevention attracted me.

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Fincrime Career Tips and Tricks: To rise in field, knowledge of rules must pair with practical tools, regulations align with investigations, practice...

The people who deal in antiquitiesand were talking about a socio-economic strata that you and I can never hope to attain, with their limousines waiting at the curb and with their bespoke suitsare capable of the same base criminality as common hoodlums in the streets of lower Manhattan. For me, honestly, theyre just the same.

This is what Matthew Bogdanos, the Manhattan assistant district attorney, the head of the New York Antiquities Trafficking Unit and former marine colonel, told me when I interviewed him for my podcast series Art Bust, about crimes and scandals in the art world. It was hardly an earth-shattering observation, just the typical put-down of white-collar crimes by a tough-talking cop.

I dont agree with him. As I made the series, I had the growing sense that there was something different about the mindset of the art detective and the art crook, even if I found it elusive to define. Sure, the art detective, like any other detective, likes to take the moral high ground and gets a kick out of getting the bad guys. There is a contempt, which I have recognised among other kinds of detectives on white-collar crime cases, for the airs, graces and activities of their wealthy targets, such as that familiar figure, the international antiquities scholar-dealer-smuggler, whether it be the late Douglas Latchford, charged by US authorities in 2019 with trafficking looted Cambodian antiquities, or Subhash Kapoor, indicted by the US in the same year for running an international smuggling ring for more than $143m worth of Indian and Asian antiquities. Just like other detectives today, the art cops will engage the relevant communities if the crime has wider cultural implications. So when the FBI raided the basement of the collector Don Miller and found in his private museum not only Chinese antiques and Pre-Columbian pottery but also the human remains of hundreds of native Americans, dug up from sacred burial sites, they consulted native American organisations about how to handle what they found.

But the art detective today differs even from the art detective of yesterday. Until recently, art crime was considered a low priority and a victimless crime. It was just rich people ripping each other off. Art crime squads were under-resourced. A job in the department was a way of putting someone out to grass. It was all about helping rich people get their stolen snuff boxes and Meissen porcelain back. This view was demolished by top-level detectives such as Vernon Rapley, who led Scotland Yards Art and Antiques Squad between 2000 and 2010. Now art crime is a way gangs launder their money. Looting antiquities is a way terrorists fund their operations. Stop the art crimes, and you put a spanner in the cogs of something much bigger.

Philosophical conception

But todays art detective has a larger, even a more philosophical conception of his mission. Detectives conceive of the victims of crime primarily as individuals, but the art detective believes he is fighting against crimes which are being committed against a culture in its entirety. Looting antiquities is a crime that erases a countrys history, thereby damaging the identity of a people, and destabilising their society and civil institutions in the present. Art is a barometer of the health of society, and therefore it is of value in itself to defend it against forgers and fraudsters. We are familiar with the term crimes against humanity, which have been prosecuted since the aftermath of the Second World War, but we may now be seeing the embryonic emergence of a new category: crimes against culture.

Perhaps, though, you might think this is all rather predictably self-interested. Have the cops merely fallen for the myth of the higher importance of art peddled by the art world itself?

Inigo Philbrick, who was arrested last year and is currently awaiting trial for fraud in the US, with Francisca Mancini Photo : Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images

Well, if this is the case, the (alleged) art crooks are guilty of the same sin. There is plenty generic to find in them, too, of course. Inigo Philbrick, the high-flying art dealer currently sitting in a US jail charged with fraud, might prove to be like other millennial con artists such as Anna Delvey and the Fyre Festival organisers, seduced by the glamour, convinced they didnt do anything everyone else wasnt or isnt still doing. On the other hand, art thefts are often carried out by organised crime gangs, whether it is the Johnsons in the UK, the mafia in Italy or Dutch drug cartels. The forgers are often unsurprisingly working-class, poor, down on their luck, with a grudge against society.

But like the art detective, the art crook believes they are serving a higher purpose. The successful forger believes he is dismantling the phoney values of the art world and cocking a snook at its snobbery. The antiquities trafficker will tell you that if they didnt get the artefacts out of this or that war-torn and failed state it would crumble through neglect or be destroyed by an extremist militia. Even the fraudulent art dealer with his ponzi scheme fantasises that he is shuffling his debts around for the long-term benefit of the reputation of the great, currently under-appreciated artist whose market he is invested in.

There is always this sense, to coin a phrase, that the art justifies the means. Its okay for us to do itbut not for people outside the fantastical, privileged realm of art.

Ben Lewiss Art Bust is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the usual podcast platforms. His book The Last Leonardo is published by William Collins, UK (9.99, pb) and Ballantine Books, US ($28, hb)

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What distinguishes an art criminal from a regular crook? - Art Newspaper

Police have been told to attend flashing cases in person, as it emerged forces failed to carry out proper investigations into Couzens' earlier alleged sex crimes.

The acts of indecent exposure that preceded Miss Everard's murder show these offences can be a sinister warning. Eleanor Mills explains why it is not a victimless crime.

Suzanne Moore wonders if the silent screams of women will now be heard. And Boris Starling says men need a seismic shift in behaviour, starting with banter.

Fuel supplies across much of the country are not improving despite government claims that the crisis is "back under control", say industry leaders. Petrol station bosses accused ministers of "gaslighting" the public after more than a quarter of forecourts ran dry and motorists were again stuck in long queues. Ministers continued to insist shortages were easing. But, as Bill Gardner reports, garages in some areas have been without fuel for five days and pharmacies are struggling to access vital medicines. It comes as European lorry drivers are being offered salaries of up to a fifth more than their British counterparts.

Around the world, the Down's syndrome population is plummeting - leading to suggestions we are witnessing the elimination of the condition. In countries where early screening is routinely offered, almost all women opt to abort the affected unborn baby. In this fascinating long-read, Lois Rogers says campaigners believe this is the road to eugenics.

Today's cartoon | View Matt's latest cartoon on a cunning idea for getting to see a GP.

'The more billionaires the more tax revenue' | Britain is taxed "as highly as the country can afford", a Cabinet minister has warned Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak ahead of the Budget later this month. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the House of Commons leader, said Britain was now as "highly taxed" as it had been since the Second World War and it was "false" to suggest more rises were necessary. Read more and listen to the full interview with today's Chopper's Politics podcast.

Leo Liu's image of two mudskippers gazing in apparent awe at a dancing companion in Singapore is the runner-up in the 2021 Mangrove Photography Awards, which were set up to highlight the ecosystem surrounding mangrove trees. View more world pictures of the day.

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Friday morning UK news briefing: All the missed chances to stop Wayne Couzens - The Telegraph