Free Republic

China has executed four leading members of Myanmar-based scam syndicates, a Chinese court said on Monday (Feb 2), the second such announcement in less than a week as Beijing ramps up a crackdown on cross-border telecom fraud. Fraud compounds where scammers lure internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Cambodia and the lawless borderlands of Myanmar. Initially, largely targeting Chinese speakers, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal billions of dollars from victims around the world.

China executed 11 people convicted of intentional homicide, fraud and other crimes linked to a cross-border scam operation, after the country’s top court approved their death sentences, authorities said Thursday. The announcement was published on the website for the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, China’s highest state body responsible for criminal prosecution and oversight. The executions followed a ruling and execution order from the Supreme People’s Court, which upheld lower court judgments against members of the so-called Ming family criminal group.

A Chinese court has sentenced to death 11 members of a notorious family that ran scam centres in Myanmar, according to Chinese state media. Dozens of members of the Ming family were found guilty of conducting criminal activities, with many receiving lengthy jail sentences. The Ming family worked for one of the four clans that ran Myanmar's sleepy backwater town of Laukkai, close to the border with China, and turned it into a hub for gambling, drugs and scam centres. Myanmar eventually cracked down, arresting many members of these families in 2023 and handing them over to Chinese authorities. A...

China has executed 11 members of a notorious Myanmar mafia family that was infamous for duping victims in fake online romances. The Ming crime family was sentenced to death in September by a court in the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou, with the same court also carrying out the executions on Thursday. Residents in the UK and the US have fallen victim to similar, sophisticated schemes, after being lured into romantic relationships that resulted in the loss of large amounts of cash. The clan members were executed for crimes including 'intentional homicide, intentional injury, unlawful detention, fraud and casino establishment',...

Office buildings across Maine are packed with home health care companies that rarely have anyone present, raise red flags similar to fraud patterns discovered in Minnesota and, in some cases, have overbilled the state by hundreds of thousands of dollars before vanishing, a NewsNation investigation has found. One Portland office building houses 10 home health care businesses — about half the building’s tenants — with the landlord saying he rarely sees anyone from most of the companies except when they pay rent. “One guy I see coming and going, and the rest of them, I never see them, only when...

n 2025, my wife and I received 478 direct mail appeals from charitable organizations and other non-profits. That’s right — 478. That is an average of slightly over nine a week. How do I know the exact number? In 2024, I noticed that the number of letters from charities was increasing. There was always one or two in the mail, sometimes more. The only way to see what was really happening was to collect these mailings for a year and count them. So, after Christmas in 2024, I found an empty box I thought might hold a few hundred letters,...

Walter Curt @wcdispatch This is the listed location of the auditing firm that performed the audits for both the Minnesota and Ohio on the NGOs we have linked to potential fraud. You cannot make this stuff

musk26.com is a recently registered website with a low trust score, flagged as suspicious due to several red flags identified by online security evaluators. The domain was registered on January 3, 2026, making it very new as of January 4, 2026. It claims to be associated with Elon Musk and Tesla, promoting a cryptocurrency giveaway under the title "Elon Musk & Tesla: Giveaway". The site uses a valid SSL certificate issued by Google Trust Services, indicating encrypted communication, but the certificate is of the basic Domain Validated (DV SSL) type, which is commonly used even by scammers. The domain is...

Former left-wing congresswoman Cori Bush’s husband was charged on Thursday with defrauding the federal government to illegally collect tens of thousands of dollars in loans under COVID-era small business relief programs. Cortney Merritts, who secretly married Bush in 2023, falsified details about his purported businesses in order to obtain more than $20,000 in loans from the Small Business Administration in 2020 and 2021 under the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, the Department of Justice said in a statement. Bush represented St. Louis before suffering a primary loss last year that she blamed on the Jews. She...

The Washington state attorney general released a statement on X Tuesday evening warning independent journalists to stop investigating fraudulent Somali daycare centers or they could be charged with a hate crime. “My office has received outreach from members of the Somali community after reports of home-based daycare providers being harassed and accused of fraud with little to no fact-checking,” State AG Nick Brown stated. “We are in touch with the state Department of Children, Youth, and Families regarding the claims being pushed online and the harassment reported by daycare providers. Showing up on someone’s porch, threatening, or harassing them isn’t...

United States District Judge Nancy E. Brasel sentenced Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, age 36, to 28 years in prison followed by three years of supervised release for his role in a $300 million fraud scheme that exploited a federally program to feed hungry kids during the COVID-19 pandemic. Farah helped orchestrate the largest known COVID-19 fraud scheme called Feeding Our Future in Minnesota. Farah and his co-defendants stole more than $47 million by claiming to serve 18 million meals to kids at more than 30 food distribution sites. Farah was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $47,920,514. He's...

🚨 BREAKING: OVER 40 “daycare centers” in Columbus, OH opened up using the SAME defunct Somali shell company on the SAME day, and collected $14 MILLION in subsidies in 2024 alone Just CUT OFF the subsidies all together! It’s OUT OF CONTROL!

The sprawling fraud scandal tied to taxpayer-funded childcare and welfare programs is no longer confined to Minnesota. New evidence suggests the same red flags are now flashing in Washington State, where hundreds of Somali-run childcare centers allegedly operate without even listing a physical address. The Gateway Pundit previously reported on independent journalist Nick Shirley and his explosive investigation into alleged large-scale fraud involving Somali-run daycare centers in Minnesota. Shirley shared clips from his reporting on X, including footage of a childcare facility that claimed to serve 102 children—yet appeared completely empty—before staff abruptly slammed the door in his face. Shirley...

Agents with the Department of Homeland Security are on the ground going door-to-door at suspected Somali fraud sites in Minneapolis following journalist Nick Shirley’s viral video revealing rampant fraud in the Somali community. As previously reported, an angry Somali woman ‘working’ at a daycare – with no children inside – slammed the door as journalist Nick Shirley asked some simple questions about the so-called children’s center. Minnesota Childcare Center claims it takes care of 102 children, however, the facility is empty. “We’re just wondering where the children are,” David, a man who has been investigating the Somali fraud for years,...

Air travel has grown more chaotic in recent years, and one trend stands out for its brazenness: passengers requesting wheelchair assistance to board early, only to walk off the plane unaided at their destination. Social media has dubbed these “miracle flights,” with the sudden recoveries credited to a tongue-in-cheek figure called “Jetway Jesus.” The practice exploits a system meant to help those with genuine mobility needs, and it’s drawing sharp criticism from fellow travelers and industry observers. The issue gained fresh attention this Christmas season with reports of passengers faking mobility problems to skip security lines and claim priority boarding....

A staggering $9 billion may have been stolen in Minnesota’s sprawling social-services scam orchestrated mainly by members of its Somali community — a figure nearly equivalent to the entire economy of Somalia. The enormous new estimate is a nearly nine-fold increase from the swiped $1 billion previously suspected, according to federal prosecutors. It also accounts for roughly half of the $18 billion in total federal funds provided to the Minnesota-run services since 2018, the feds said — as Democratic Gov. Tim Walz continues to take heat for his handling of the debacle. By comparison to the $9 billion figure, Somalia’s...

A BLM activist has been charged over a huge fraud which is said to have included blowing a grant intended for young men at risk of violence on trips to Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Shake Shack and a nail salon. She is accused of using much of the $1 million raised by her nonprofit Violence in Boston Inc for good causes. Her salary jumped from $25,000 in 2020 to $170,000 in 2021. Cannon-Grant - once named a Bostonian of the Year by the prestigious Boston Globe newspaper - was arrested at her spacious home last week. She appeared in a...

FIRST ON FOX: The Department of Education thwarted more than $1 billion in student aid fraud under President Donald Trump's first year in office, including stopping suspected bots and "ghost students" from obtaining taxpayer-funded loans, Fox News Digital learned. Officials say the savings come from new "enhanced fraud controls" the department implemented in June to combat fraudsters from working to obtain financial assistance loans from colleges. College officials and cybersecurity experts in recent years have pointed to a new scam trend of "ghost students," which are fabricated or stolen identities created solely to enroll, trigger financial aid disbursements and then...

California just teamed up with Nigeria on a new climate partnership at #COP30 — focused on cleaner transportation, climate adaptation, and cutting pollution. Real action, global collaboration!

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Officials from countries most vulnerable to global warming offered searing dispatches of life on the front line of a warming planet Friday, as world leaders gathered on the edge of the Amazon rainforest for the annual United Nations climate talks. Haitian diplomat Smith Augustin, whose country was pummeled by Hurricane Melissa, appealed to wealthier countries that produce the greatest share of the world’s emissions to support Haiti in preparing for bigger storms. Developed countries pledged $300 billion to help poor nations cope with climate shocks at last year’s summit, but the money has yet to be...