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[Leo Enticknap]

From the Daily Wail:

Yale School of Medicine administrator stole $40 million in computers and electronics over eight years from school to fund her lavish lifestyle that included six luxury cars, at least four homes and European vacations

A former Yale University School of Medicine administrator has admitted to stealing $40 million worth of computers and electronic equipment from the institution, which she then sold to fund her lavish lifestyle, including on multiple homes, a fleet of luxury cars, and international vacations.

Jamie Petrone-Codrington, 42, from Lithia Springs, Georgia, on Monday pleaded guilty to federal wire fraud and tax charges related to her years-long scheme.

She could face up to 23 years in prison when she is sentenced for her crimes on June 29, the US Attorney's Office for the District of Connecticut said in a statement.

According to court documents and statements, beginning in 2008, Petrone-Codrington worked at the Yale University School of Medicine's Department of Emergency Medicine. She most recently served as the director of finance and administration.

As part of her job, Petrone-Codrington was authorized to make purchases for her department below $10,000.

Beginning in 2013, Petrone-Codrington ordered, or had her staffers order, millions of dollars in of electronics, including Microsoft Surface Pro tablets and iPads, from Yale vendors using the school's funds and arranged to ship the goods to an out-of-state business in exchange for money, which she then pocketed, according to documents.

As part of the scheme, Petrone-Codrington falsely represented on Yale internal forms and in emails that the equipment was for Yale Med needs, such as medical studies.

To cover up her crimes, Petrone-Codrington broke up the fraudulent purchases into orders below the $10,000 threshold that would require additional approval.

The out-of-state business, which resold the electronic equipment to customers, paid Petrone-Codrington by wiring funds into an account for Maziv Entertainment, a photography and video production company co-owned by her husband, in which she is listed as a principal.

'In total, Petrone caused a loss of approximately $40,504,200 to Yale,' the US Attorney's Office stated. 'Petrone used the proceeds of the sales of the stolen equipment for various personal expenses, including expensive cars, real estate and travel.'

Specifically, according to court records, Petrone-Codrington used some of her misbegotten funds to purchase three homes in Connecticut and one in Georgia, a 2014 white Mercedes-Benz G550, a 2017 red Land Rover Sv Autobiography, a 2015 black Cadillac Escalade Premium, a 2020 red Mercedes Benz, a 2016 white Cadillac Escalade and a 2018 Dodge Charger.

Petrone-Codrington's husband of nearly 19 years, Jameys Codrington, displayed the family's impressive collection of cars on his business' Instagram page, which also features photos of the couple enjoying dinner at Gucci Garden in Florence, Italy, in July 2021.

Jameys Codrington, 44, has not been charged in connection with his wife's scheme.

Petrone-Codrington also failed to pay taxes on the tens of millions of dollars she received from selling the stolen equipment.

She filed false federal tax returns for the 2013 through 2016 tax years, in which she falsely claimed as business expenses the costs of the stolen electronics, and failed did not file any federal tax returns for the 2017 through 2020 tax years, costing the US Treasury more than $6.4million.

The FBI launched an investigation into Petrone-Codrington in late August 2021 after receiving information from Yale officials, and she was arrested a week later.

As part of the plea agreement, Petrone-Codrington has agreed to forfeit $560,000 that was seized from the Maziv Entertainment's bank account, along with the six high-end vehicles.

She also has agreed to sell the three homes she owns and co-owns in Naugatuck and Stratford, Connecticut, and use the money to make restitutions to Yale University and the government.

Her home in Lithia Springs, Georgia, is also subject to seizure and liquidation. According to Zillow.com, the five-bedroom, five-bath home has an estimated value of more than $580,000.

Petrone-Codrington is currently free on $1 million bail pending her sentencing.

$40m over eight years is $5m a year. It boggles the mind to think about how even an institution the size of Yale took that long to become aware that this much money was not being properly accounted for. I worked for two universities over 12 years before I regained my sanity and left that world (though admittedly, neither of them in this country). When I think about the amount of bureaucracy that was needed simply to replace the toner cartridge in my office printer, I can't figure out how theft on that scale could even have been possible.

But it is. Someone in the university my wife works at was caught doing the same thing a few years ago, but after "only" $360k-worth of fraudulent electronics purchases that she then sold. Ironically, the bureaucracy around equipment and consumables purchasing seems to be far less prevalent in the private sector, yet this kind of fraud seems to affect it a lot less often.

[Jon Dent]

Hell, they could cut out all the "Aren't we just awesome!" clip shows and that would cut running time in half.

[Leo Enticknap]

And 66 years later, AMPAS clearly have decided to agree with the claim that "film splicing, sound effects, set designing, and other such trivia (to the layman)" are just that. I doubt they will take the author's advice on cutting down the ads, though.

[Martin McCaffery]

The Oscars are too long and boring. 1956...
Atmore (AL) Advance
May 3, 1956

AtmoreAdvance_5_3_1956.jpg

[Jon Dent]

Earlier this month, a 37-year-old virgin got 6 feet of string lodged in his penis during a botched attempt at sexual gratification.

Damn, talk about kicking a guy when he's down.

[Leo Enticknap]

First it was a USB cable; now, courtesy of the New York Post:

Man hospitalized after shoving AA battery into his penis

It was a case of self-assault and battery.

An Iranian man was forced to go to the emergency room after shoving a AA battery down his penis in a grotesque stunt worthy of the new Discovery+ series “This Came Out of Me.”

The fiasco came to light after the unnamed 49-year-old reported to a hospital in Tehran, where he informed doctors that he had the charging device lodged in his genital organ for 24 hours, according to a new case study published in the medical journal Urology Case Reports.

During a followup visit, the patient complained of a “recurrence of obstructive and irritating urinary symptoms including dysuria, decreased urinary force.” He also reportedly experienced a burning sensation whenever he tried to urinate.

Meanwhile, subsequent X-rays revealed “severe and progressive” scarring to his urethra, which mitigated the amount of fluids that could flow through the tube. Doctors surmised that the scar tissue build-up could’ve been caused by toxic chemicals in the battery.

The patient never revealed his inspiration for the log jam, however surgeons observed that patients shove items in their urethras for a number of factors, including “psychiatric illness, autoeroticism, intoxication and perceived contraception.”

However, medics found the man’s case particularly odd as he didn’t have a history of mental illness.

Inspiration notwithstanding, leaving batteries in one’s privates for extended periods can reportedly cause infection, gangrene and even erectile dysfunction, per the study.

To prevent permanent damage, surgeons sliced open the patient’s perineum — the tissue connecting his penis and anus — so they could access the urethra without harming his testicles.

They then removed the energizing infiltrator and used a skin graft from the inside of his cheeks and lips to repair the urethral damage.

The man was discharged from the hospital after a three-week observation period, whereupon a six-month checkup revealed that he had fully recovered from the phallic fiasco.

This isn’t the first time a patient has reported to the hospital with an unlikely item in their willy. Earlier this month, a 37-year-old virgin got 6 feet of string lodged in his penis during a botched attempt at sexual gratification.

[Leo Enticknap]

From The Daily Telegraph (UK):

Cats Protection chief steps down after row over chairman’s 18 pets

Charles Darley said number of pets kept by Linda Upson had horrified senior staff and left colleagues despairing

The head of the UK's biggest cat charity has stepped down after an extraordinary welfare row with its chairman, whom he learnt was keeping 18 cats in her three-bedroom house.

Charles Darley, who was three months into a 12-month contract as the interim chief executive of Cats Protection, said the number of pets being kept by Linda Upson had long horrified senior staff.

Cats are considered to be solitary animals, and research by Cats Protection has found that insufficient space in a multi-cat household can be a major source of stress.

Mr Darley, who has one cat, claimed Ms Upson's living situation had left colleagues despairing, with many feeling "nervous about using her as a spokesperson for the charity".

When confronted with the concerns, however, she said she "didn't think it was a problem", according to Mr Darley.

The interim chief executive said he reached breaking point after an internal investigation, led by Angela Swarbrick, the vice-chairman of the board, concluded that Ms Upson should retain her role and "simply sought assurances that she would not add more cats" to her house.

He told The Telegraph: "I've been in and out of more than a dozen charities, and I've never encountered a position like this before. To be honest, I think it's the lack of experience among trustees in what good governance is – I would say it is blind to the reputational impact of owning this many cats.

"Many of them are passionate cat lovers, so they may see this behaviour through a different lens from people who love cats but don't love them in quite the same way."

Official guidelines on welfare from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) state that cats must have "enough space so that they can get away from one another if they want to".

Fears that Ms Upson may be in breach of this guidance led Cats Protection to consult five other animal welfare charities and a cats home charity.

All concluded that keeping 18 cats in a three-bedroom house was something they would not generally be able to defend, Mr Darley said, but the decision to keep Ms Upson in her job was allegedly taken before the responses came back.

Widespread knowledge of the chairman's cats was also said to have caused problems among volunteers. Several staff who had as many as eight to 10 cats cited Ms Upson when challenged on the wisdom of keeping so many pets in a small house, according to Mr Darley.

He said: "The negative impact Linda Upson's behaviour has on maintaining widespread volunteer compliance with Defra welfare standards is potentially very damaging to the charity and disastrous for staff morale."

Suggestions that a code of conduct should be established for trustees were rejected, according to Mr Darley, but the charity said in a statement that its most recent governance review, in 2019, did not recommend one.

A spokesman for Cats Protection said: "In the case of our chair of trustees, herself a volunteer fosterer, we found the six foster cats in her care were kept in a separate, clean and well-kept area of her house away from her pet cats.

"All were happy, healthy and had sufficient resources for them to express their natural behaviour, such as separate food and water bowls, scratching posts, hiding places and so on. Such conditions are in line with Cats Protection's guidance, and therefore there are no welfare issues of concern.

"In common with other Cats Protection fosterers, the chair has undergone regular training and is aware of the health and wellbeing requirements for cats in her care.

"Further, a sub-group of trustees carried out a review of the chair's cat ownership and concluded that no legislation in relation to cat welfare had been breached and no Cats Protection policies had been breached."

Agreed completely with the guideline. We have four, which, IMHO, is the absolute limit of what our house can comfortably take. Sometimes up to three of them will snooze on the couch next to each other, but at others they disperse to separate rooms, and get annoyed (tail swishing, growls, etc.) if another comes too close. 18 is frickin' insane. The thought of the smell of saturated kit lit in that house makes me not want to have lunch right now!

[Jon Dent]

I read that and think to myself "yeah that scam makes sense".

I always imagine the utopia we'd live in if these people ever did something positive with their skills.

[Frank Cox]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...kers-payments/

Scammers in a few big Texas cities have been putting fake QR codes on parking meters to trick people into paying the fraudsters. Parking enforcement officers recently found stickers with fraudulent QR codes on pay stations in Austin, Houston, and San Antonio.

San Antonio police warned the public of the scam on December 20, saying that "people attempting to pay for parking using those QR codes may have been directed to a fraudulent website and submitted payment to a fraudulent vendor." Similar scams were then found in Austin and Houston.

The Austin Transportation Department started examining their own meters after being "notified of a QR code scam by the City of San Antonio in late December—when more than 100 pay stations were stickered with fraudulent codes," Fox 7 Austin reported last week. Austin officials checked the city's 900 or so parking pay stations and found fraudulent QR codes on 29 of them, according to a KXAN article.

The fake QR codes reportedly directed people to a "Quick Pay Parking" website at the domain passportlab.xyz, which is now offline. It's not clear how many people—if any—were tricked into paying the fraudsters.

"We don't use QR codes at all for this very reason, because they are easy to fake or place on the devices," Austin parking division manager Jason Redfern told KXAN. "And we heard from industry leaders that this would be a possibility." Austin accepts payments directly at the meter with coins or credit or with the Park ATX mobile payment app.

Austin city officials said in a press release that they are "continuing to inspect the City's more than 900 pay stations to ensure there are no additional QR codes in use." Austin urged people to call 911 if they see someone without a city employee badge tampering with a pay station. "Any person who believes they were a victim of a credit card breach due to recent parking meter payments should file a police report and notify their card issuer immediately," the city also said.

Houston officials found five meters with fake QR codes and removed the stickers. Like Austin, Houston does not use QR codes on parking meters but does offer a payment app.

While the scam seems to have been centered in Texas, it could be repeated anywhere. If you see a QR code on a parking meter, ignore it and make sure you pay the city directly.

[Leo Enticknap]

We have a winner for the moron of the week award, courtesy of the Daily Wail...

Drink-driver, 29, tried to fool police by swallowing hand sanitiser before a breath test – without realising anti-bacterial gel contained alcohol

A drink-driver tried to fool police by swallowing hand sanitiser before a breath test – without realising that the anti-bacterial gel contained alcohol.

Shop assistant Sophie Nutter, 29, was told by a judge she was lucky not to be spending Christmas behind bars after the test showed 52 micrograms of alcohol in 100ml of breath. The legal limit is 35 micrograms.

She had been spotted swerving across the road in her Suzuki Swift with four flat tyres and a broken windscreen.

Police found her slurping from a bottle of hand sanitiser.

The mother from Beverley, East Yorkshire, admitted drink-driving and using a vehicle likely to cause danger of injury on April 7 when she appeared at Hull Crown Court.

Recorder Alex Menary told the court that Nutter had tried to swallow sanitiser, which contains 60 per cent alcohol, in a failed effort to reduce her breath test reading.

She had breached a two-year suspended sentence for drug offences imposed in October last year.

She was given a one-year community order and a 23-month driving ban and must pay £100 costs.

[Leo Enticknap]

Do you mean that there should be a law against a woman putting her tit in a cat's mouth?

No; I was just observing that despite the fact that politicians work overtime making up laws to restrict our lives, occasionally, someone does something so bizarre and stupid that even they didn't think to ban that specific act.

And another interaction between man and beast that did not end well, courtesy of NBC News...

Maryland home burns down during owner's ill-fated snake fight

The homeowner was reportedly trying to clear his Montgomery County home of a snake infestation with smoke, but a fire spread and destroyed the building.

A large structure fire that destroyed a Maryland home in November was caused by the homeowner's ill-fated attempt to clear a snake infestation by smoking them out, according to local fire officials.

According to a tweet from Pete Piringer, public information officer for the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service, an investigation revealed that the fire on Big Woods Road near Poolesville on Nov. 23 was accidentally caused when the anti-snake smoke source — coals — came too close to combustibles.

The fire started in the basement walls and floors and then spread upward, eventually causing over $1 million in damages.

Neighbors saw and reported the fire; nobody was injured.

"It is believed that the heat source was too close to the combustibles and caused fire in the walls and ceiling area, unknown and unbeknownst to the homeowner at that time," Piringer said, describing the destroyed building as a "very large home."

“The snakes — the original culprits of this process — which the homeowner was trying to eradicate from this space using smoke apparently did not go as planned,” Piringer said in a recorded statement on Dec. 3.

Piringer said that insurance investigators have taken over after Montgomery County investigators determined the fire to be accidental in nature.

As for the snakes, Piringer thinks they have likely left "at least temporarily."

"I’m not a wildlife expert but at the time of the fire some firefighters did see some snake skins while others found one coming out of the foundation," Piringer said in a text message to NBC News.

Firefighters moved the snake that emerged from the burned-down home and "were able to retrieve it and move it safely to a different environment."

[Frank Cox]

https://canoe.com/news/world/anti-va...id-vaccination

Fake it ‘til you make it!

That’s what an anti-vaxxer in Italy hoped would happen when he used a silicone arm to avoid getting jabbed.

Spoiler alert – his attempt failed.

The 50-year-old man was armed with the fake arm at a clinic in Biella in the northern part of the country.

However, since medical staff at the clinic know what an actual arm feels and looks like, they caught on quick when the saw the texture did not match a normal arm. The skin colour was realistic, though, so he gets an A for effort on that front.

Local media reported the man tried to convince the medic to jab his fake arm, even after they realized it was fake.

“A stage costume,” was how he defined it, according to nurse Filippa Bua, who first noticed the man.

“He arrived late in the morning,” Bua told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera , “I reported to the doctor and then we made a report to communicate it to the superiors.”

It is believed the man was trying to fool medical staff into giving him a Green Pass, which proves the holder has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or tested negative or recently recovered from the coronavirus.

Thursday’s fake-arm incident comes as Italy is set to tighten up the rules for unvaccinated citizens.

The man, whose name has not been released, was reported to local police. He now faces fraud charges.

I guess they couldn't charge him for committing a crime while armed.

[Randy Stankey]

Specifically? Do you mean that there should be a law against a woman putting her tit in a cat's mouth? I can't think of any time in my life when somebody said it was illegal to breastfeed a cat. I've seen and heard a lot of strange things in my life but I have never heard of anything like this before. I would never imagine that such a thing should be called out, by name, to say it's illegal. I'd kind of figure that existing laws about bestiality and public indecency should cover it.

I think that the same goes for the duck incident. Does a university need to have a specific rule about hunting ducks? I think that the local game laws would cover the situation.

It's illegal to hunt game without a license. Ducks are game. Aren't they?
How did they catch the duck? Did they use a shotgun? IF they did, that could set them up for charges on discharging a firearm in a prohibited area.
If they used a trap, it could set them up for charges on possession of a "harmful device" or "instrument of mayhem."
Besides, if they were "tame" ducks that were bought to be put in that lake, they would be "property" and anybody who harmed them would be liable to the owner to repay the loss. (Civil tort.)

We already have a lot of "loony laws" on the books and I don't think we need more of them. If we have to write laws that say you can't breastfeed a cat on an airplane or that you can't hunt ducks on University Lake, we are venturing into that territory.

What would be next? You can't ride a zebra down Main Street on a Sunday?

[Leo Enticknap]

I did write "specifically." Agreed that all the generic rules in the book you mention could be thrown at her if prosecutors so wish.

Reminds me of when I was a student, living in a hall of residence with a large lake in the grounds. One Sunday afternoon, some international exchange students caught, cooked, and ate a duck from it. The rules 'n regs for on campus living totaled tens of thousands of words, but they successfully argued that they did not violate any of them, and in the end escaped any sort of sanction. Needless to say, a new rule, with broad brush wording along the lines of disturbing or harming wildlife, was very quickly added.

[Randy Stankey]

Are there any airline regulations or federal laws that specifically prohibit this? ...

A woman forcing her breast into a cat's mouth isn't bestiality? The legal definition of bestiality does include frottage. Rubbing a breast on a cat's face is frottage.

Besides, how can using force that makes a cat scream in public NOT be considered animal abuse?
Human milk is simply not fit for consumption by cats. It doesn't have the right fat content. It doesn't have the correct nutrition. It doesn't contain the right antibodies. If you forced a human to drink cat's milk, that would be considered abuse. It could easily be argued that force feeding human milk to a cat is abuse.

Public nudity? Although normal breastfeeding between a human mother and child is not considered nudity, this is not considered breastfeeding and, therefore, would be public nudity or exhibitionism. Rules, laws, ordinances or social customs regarding breastfeeding only apply if it's human-human breastfeeding. Human-feline breastfeeding would not be protected.

Let's see...what else?....
Creating a public disturbance? Disobeying a lawful order? There are circumstances where, under F.A.A regulation, disobeying the reasonable, lawful orders of a member of a flight crew could be considered an offense. I'm sure that some sort of "lewd conduct in presence of a minor" could also be cooked up if there were any children on board the plane.

Owning or possessing a hairless cat should get the death penalty! They are not normally found in nature, except for rare cases which usually don't live very long in the wild. They were cross-bred for the purpose of creating a cat without hair. That kind of crap should be illegal!
If you want a cat or a dog with a certain color hair and you can breed for that trait, I suppose that's okay because such a thing can happen in nature.