Keyword: ransom
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U.S. Sent Cash to Iran as Americans Were Freed Obama administration insists there was no quid pro quo, but critics charge payment amounted to ransom By Jay Solomon and Carol E. Lee Aug. 2, 2016 7:51 p.m. ET 52 COMMENTS WASHINGTON—The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward. Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane,...
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WASHINGTON—A post on a hacker forum popular with cybercriminals has claimed UnitedHealth Group paid $22 million in a bid to recover access to data and systems encrypted by the “Blackcat” ransomware gang, according to two researchers. Neither UnitedHealth nor the hackers involved have commented on the alleged ransom payment, but a cryptocurrency tracing firm partially corroborated the claim on Monday. It is not uncommon for large companies that have been victimized by ransomware gangs to decide to pay the hackers to regain control of their networks, especially in instances where a significant disruption to customers and partners occurred. The forum...
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The Biden administration suppressed information about Iran’s efforts to assassinate U.S. officials to ensure Congress and the American public were kept in the dark, according to a lawmaker on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "What Americans don’t know is that the Biden administration has gone to great lengths to hide the extent and persistence of those threats" from Iran, Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) said during a Senate hearing Wednesday on Tehran’s network of terror proxies. Those threats include active plots to assassinate former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and other top U.S. officials. The administration has been "abusing the...
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Just hours after reports that embattled Democratic Dolton, Illinois Mayor Tiffany Henyard was under investigation by the FBI, multiple local businesses were said to be raided by local police. On Tuesday, FOX 32 reported that six individuals have spoken to the FBI about Henyard’s conduct, including business owners, a former village employee and one or more public officials. One complained of difficulties renewing his business license, claiming to suffer from harassment, a raid on his business and being shut down by Dolton police. The U-Haul rental and trucking business owner believed it was retaliation after he refused to donate to...
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Twenty humanitarian aid trucks entered the Gaza Strip via Egypt on Saturday morning, after Hamas terrorists released two U.S. citizens that they captured in a brutal terror attack on Israel on October 7. It was the first aid to reach Gaza in two weeks. Israel had said it would not allow humanitarian aid into Gaza until the hostages were released. Hamas still holds 201 hostages, including Americans and other international citizens. The Times of Israel reported: Twenty trucks carrying aid cross into the Gaza Strip this morning as the Rafah crossing with Egypt opens for the first time since the...
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After years of appeasing Iran and empowering the regime to fund its terrorist proxies, including Hamas, Joe Biden traveled to Israel and delivered an Oval Office address this week in a shameless attempt to paint himself as the hero of a crisis he created. Following a series of brutal attacks on Israeli civilians that began on October 7, Biden has sought to publicly portray himself as a staunch ally of Israel. Shortly after the attacks, Biden stated in an X post that his “support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering.” In Tel Aviv on Wednesday, and again on...
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Israeli troops on Saturday were hunting a Hamas commander described as Palestine's Osama bin Laden, vowing to find him wherever he was hiding and insisting his days were numbered. Yahya Sinwar, 60, is the current head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. He has been arrested by Israel multiple times and spent 24 years in Israeli prisons: he was freed in 2011, as part of a prisoner swap in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Sinwar is being held responsible for the murder of 1,300 Israelis in the October 7 attack. The U.S. death toll rose to 29 on Saturday,...
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Former President Donald Trump on Monday accused his successor Joe Biden of betraying one of the nation's closest allies amid the chaos and tragedy in Israel. Trump touted his own withdrawal of the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal, and his Muslim travel ban, as examples of why he would have handled the crisis better. He said: 'When I was Commander in Chief, we reduced the Iranian economy to rubble, I withdrew from the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, imposed the toughest-ever sanctions on the regime, and imposed a strict TRAVEL BAN to keep Radical Islamic Terrorists the hell out of...
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We've honestly lost count of the number of Leftists, Democrats, and actual Biden toadies trying to pretend the $6 billion in question had nothing to do with the attacks on Israel. It's as if talking points went out near and FAR to cover this administration's backside. There's just one problem with this ... most people understand what the word 'fungible' means. Oh, and then there's this thread as well: 🧵I'm sorry Jen but you are simply unfamiliar with Iranian budgeting practices and how the Iranian regime and Hamas make decisions. 1. Iran normally has to allocate its limited foreign exchange...
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Charlotte Sena, the 9-year-old girl who went missing while on a camping trip at a New York state park two days ago, has been found safe and a suspect has been detained, authorities said Monday evening. Police didn’t give specifics about where Charlotte was found, nor any additional details about the suspect. “Charlotte Sena has been located and in good health,” New York State Police said in a news release Monday. “A suspect is in custody. This is still an active investigation.” Charlotte, who was camping in Moreau Lake State Park with her family, went on a bike ride with...
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On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby maintained that the U.S. isn’t paying Iran a ransom in the prisoner swap with the country, it’s just allowing Iran access to funds they couldn’t access before for “discreet, targeted purposes.” And said that the Biden administration is still holding Iran accountable for its treatment of its own citizens, attacks on shipping, support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and support of terrorists. Kirby said, “I think it’s important to remember, this is not U.S. taxpayer dollars, this is not ransom. These...
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After it was reported on Thursday that Iran had transferred five Iranian Americans from prison to house arrest, it became clear that a deal between the Biden administration and the radical Islamist state had been reached — which would include billions of dollars of frozen Iranian assets in exchange for the Americans.This again raises the question — which we’ll tackle later in the article: Should the United States pay ransom to rogue states and others for the release of captured Americans?Anyway, sure enough, the United States and Iran have reached an agreement in which the Islamist regime will free the...
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The hackers had claimed to have stolen more than 500 gigabytes of data from the school district during last month’s hack, although authorities have not yet verified that claim. The crime group originally set Monday as the deadline for the school district to pay a ransom to keep the data off of the internet, but the data was published ahead of time late Saturday night. The motive for publishing two days ahead of the established deadline appears to be related to Superintendent Alberto Carvalho publicly announcing that the school district would not pay any ransom to the hackers. The attack...
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The hackers who targeted the Los Angeles Unified School District have made a ransom demand, officials confirmed Tuesday, an indication that the attackers have extracted sensitive data or believe they can bluff the district into thinking that they have. “We can confirm that there was a demand made,” L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho said. “There has been no response to the demand.” Carvalho declined to disclose the amount of the ransom demand or any further information about what information, if any, the attackers may be holding. He said that there have been “no new security breaches” and that the school...
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Among many claimed benefits, cryptocurrencies supposedly offer two significant benefits over fiat currencies: 1) autonomy and 2) discretion. This past week, the U.S. federal government took them both down. The U.S. Department of Justice issued a press statement that it had seized $2.3 million in cryptocurrency. The seizure was the result of the FBI's Colonial Pipeline investigation. As a reminder, Colonial Pipeline, the U.S.'s largest pipeline for refined oil products, was the victim of a cyberattack. Against the U.S.'s wishes and policies, Colonial Pipeline paid millions in ransom to retake control of the pipeline. According to the FBI, they had...
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A 70-year-old man imprisoned for the 1976 kidnapping of a bus full of children has been approved for parole, according to spokesperson Joe Orlando of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Frederick Newhall Woods, 70, was one of three men who kidnapped 26 children and their bus driver in Chowchilla, a small city in Northern California's Madera County, more than 45 years ago. All 27 captives were taken to Livermore, more than 100 miles away, placed into a moving truck and buried alive in a quarry owned by Woods' father. The kidnappers then demanded $5 million ransom while...
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President Joe Biden’s impending agreement to restore the Iran nuclear deal offers the regime access to $90 billion in foreign currency reserves and sanctions relief to some of the world’s worst terrorists, according to a former State Department official. Gabriel Noronha, writing in Tablet magazine, says the deal does not restore President Barack Obama’s old Iran deal, a weak agreement from which President Donald Trump withdrew, but goes much further in giving Iran money and sanctions relief.
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The Biden administration could sign in Vienna as early as Monday a new deal with the ayatollahs that would include a staggering hostage ransom sum totaling as much as 25 percent of Tehran’s entire annual budget.
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The Taliban on Tuesday thanked the international community for pledging more than $1 billion in emergency aid to Afghanistan — and called on the US to donate more. Amir Khan Mutaqi, the foreign minister in Afghanistan’s new Taliban-run Cabinet, asked Washington to show appreciation for the militant group allowing the US to complete its massive evacuation effort. “America is a big country, they need to have a big heart,” he said at a press conference. Muttaqi’s comments came a day after the United Nations said that $1.2 billion in humanitarian assistance had been promised to Afghanistan, with some $64 million...
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The seizure of funds paid by Colonial Pipeline to a Russian hacker ring, DarkSide, marks the first recovery by a new ransomware Justice Department task force.
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