All posts tagged: smuggled

Man Who Smuggled Mosaic from Syria Sentenced to Three Months in Prison

Man Who Smuggled Mosaic from Syria Sentenced to Three Months in Prison

Published by skeptic

A California man was sentenced to three months in federal prison today for illegally importing a 2,000-pound ancient floor mosaic from Syria to the US. Judge George W. Hu of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California gave the sentence to 57-year-old Mohamad Yassin Alcharihi. Judge Hu also granted the government’s application for a preliminary order of forfeiture for the 15-foot-long, 8-foot-tall Roman mosaic. The sentence occurs more than a year after a five-day trial in June 2023, in which a jury found Alcharihi guilty of one count of entry of falsely classified goods. The charge carried a statutory maximum sentence of two years in federal prison. Related Articles “It is unusual for smugglers of antiquities from the Middle East to be caught and prosecutions of such smugglers are rare,” United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles spokesman Ciaran McEvoy told ARTnews in an email statement. “We hope today’s sentence will show antiquities dealers, smugglers, the museum community, and the general public that there are consequences—including prison time—for these crimes.” The mosaic, estimated …

Two poems, four years in detention: the Chinese dissident who smuggled his writing out of prison | Censorship

Two poems, four years in detention: the Chinese dissident who smuggled his writing out of prison | Censorship

Published by skeptic

Most of my manuscripts are locked up in the filing cabinets of the ministry of security, and the agents there study and ponder them repeatedly, more carefully than the creator himself. The guys working this racket have superb memories; a certain chief of the Chengdu public security bureau can still recite the poems I published in an underground magazine in the 1980s. While the literati write nostalgically, hoping to go down in literary history, the real history may be locked in the vaults of the security department. The above is excerpted from my book June 4: My Testimony, published in Taiwan in 2011. I wrote that book three times, the later drafts on paper much better than the paper I used for writing in prison, which was so soft and brittle I had to write very lightly. Paper outside prison is solid and flexible enough that you don’t have to worry about puncturing it with the tip of a pen. Thus, I restrained myself and filled in a page of paper, and then how many thousand – ten …

Luxury handbag designer smuggled bags made out of protected python and caiman into U.S.

Luxury handbag designer smuggled bags made out of protected python and caiman into U.S.

Published by skeptic

A Colombian handbag designer has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after federal prosecutors said she illegally smuggled handbags made from caiman and python skin — both protected species — to New York.  Nancy Teresa Gonzalez de Barberi, the founder of luxury handbag company Gzuniga Ltd., had been indicted in April 2022 on a charge of conspiracy and two counts of smuggling into the U.S. for illegally importing the bags from February 2016 to April 2019.  Gonzalez and her company had pleaded guilty to the federal charges in November 2023.  The Department of Justice said in a news release that Gonzalez made bags of caiman and python skin — both of which are protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, an international agreement to protect wildlife signed by both the U.S. and Colombia. Under the Endangered Species Act, the trade of such species isn’t fully banned, but requires a permit issued by the host country to be cleared by U.S. officials upon importation.  Gonzalez, her company, …

What is “pink cocaine” or “tuci,” the drug Diddy allegedly had smuggled on a jet?

What is “pink cocaine” or “tuci,” the drug Diddy allegedly had smuggled on a jet?

Published by skeptic

Among the many drugs Sean “Diddy” Combs allegedly consumed — and had his staff procure for him — was tuci, an obscure street drug concoction nicknamed “pink cocaine,” according to a lawsuit filed by his former producer Rodney Jones.  Jones, who alleged Combs sexually assaulted him while he was producing Comb’s “The Love Album,” filed the $30 million lawsuit in Federal District Court in Manhattan in February, amending it with additional allegations earlier this week. Jones saId Combs’ chief of staff Kristina Khorram “required all employees, from the butler to the chef to the housekeepers, to walk around with a black Prada pouch or fanny pack filled with cocaine, GHB [a depressant drug], ecstasy [sometimes sold as MDMA], marijuana gummies (100 – 250 mg’s each), and tuci (a pink drug that is a combination of ecstasy and cocaine).” “Khorram wanted Mr. Combs’ drug of choice immediately ready when he asked for it,” the lawsuit alleges. Last April, Combs and Jones were rehearsing for the Something in the Water music festival in Virginia, when Jones alleged …

Prosecutors target smuggled people who were forced to pilot small boats | Immigration and asylum

Prosecutors target smuggled people who were forced to pilot small boats | Immigration and asylum

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Ibrahima Bah will spend at least the next six years and three months in custody. He will do so for manslaughter, and for smuggling dozens of people into the UK on a perilous small-boat journey across the Channel during which at least four died. In the words of the migration minister Michael Tomlinson, it was “right that he has been brought to justice” because Bah “put dozens of lives in extreme danger by taking charge of a perilous and illegal small boat crossing”. Bah was not part of a people-smuggling gang – not even the prosecutor claimed that. As he passed sentence, the judge accepted Bah was, in fact, one of the people being smuggled. Bah, who is Senegalese, was targeted by prosecutors because he had been picked from among the passengers to steer the boat. As prosecutors noted, members of the people-smuggling gangs do not ordinarily put themselves in harm’s way to steer boats; on Bah’s evidence, he was forced into it. It is for that reason that some campaigners see Bah, now 20, …

‘Our gods were locked in the basement.’ Now Nepal is pursuing sacred items once smuggled abroad

‘Our gods were locked in the basement.’ Now Nepal is pursuing sacred items once smuggled abroad

Published by Sam

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Nepal’s gods and goddess are returning home. An unknown number of sacred statues of Hindu deities were stolen and smuggled abroad in the past. Now dozens are being repatriated to the Himalayan nation, part of a growing global effort to return such items to countries in Asia, Africa and elsewhere. Last month, four idols and masks of Hindu gods were returned to Nepal from the United States by museums and a private collector. Among them was a 16th century statue of Uma-Maheswora, an avatar of the gods Shiva and Parvati, that was stolen four decades ago. It was not clear who took it or how it ended up at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, which handed it over to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Devotees celebrated its return in Patan, south of the capital, Kathmandu. The stone-paved alleys were crowded with devotees offering money and flowers. Men in traditional attire played drums and cymbals and chanted prayers. “I cannot say how extremely happy I am right now,” said Ram Maya …

No, fentanyl isn’t being smuggled over the border by migrants

No, fentanyl isn’t being smuggled over the border by migrants

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Two unrelated facts combined with a lie form a powerful and dangerous piece of misinformation that is spreading virally. The facts are that a drug overdose epidemic is killing more than 100,000 Americans a year and that far more migrants are crossing the country’s southern border than ever before. The lie is that the migrants are bringing fentanyl, the highly addictive opioid behind most lethal overdoses. Most illicit fentanyl is indeed made abroad and smuggled over the southern border. But it’s largely transported by U.S. citizens, not migrants. About 90% of the fentanyl seized at the border in recent years was at legal crossings, which undocumented migrants generally avoid, and 91% of the seizures were from U.S. citizens, according to Border Patrol data. It’s much easier to transport fentanyl pills or powder in one of the thousands of vehicles that pass through legal ports of entry every day than with the bedraggled people walking, wading and climbing across the border. Former President Trump and other politicians and pundits have nevertheless been relentlessly linking migrants with …

Stripped GeForce RTX 4090 cards from pre-built PCs are smuggled into China

Stripped GeForce RTX 4090 cards from pre-built PCs are smuggled into China

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Despite US sanctions prohibiting the activity, a report published by tomshardware, claims that individuals in nations bordering China have been purchasing complete pre-built PC systems with GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs, only to remove the graphics cards and resell them in China. For instance, it claims that in an attempt to make quick money, someone purchased 20 robust PC systems with RTX 4090 graphics for more than US$4,500 each (a total of more than US$91,000). The GeForce RTX 4090D that Nvidia offers as a substitute and the U.S. tech sanctions against China are the main culprits behind these actions. Asian small-business entrepreneurs appear to purchase desktop GeForce RTX 4090 cards as soon as they become available to resell them to sanctioned China. Retailers thought they could avoid this disturbance in the market when customers sought to upgrade to the greatest graphics cards 2024 had to offer by employing whole-system bundling tactics. However, it doesn’t seem like the requirement to buy expensive, high-end hardware to acquire an RTX 4090 has diminished interest in the flagship GPU. By …

Martha Stewart “smuggled food” from prison cafeteria to bake for fellow inmates

Martha Stewart “smuggled food” from prison cafeteria to bake for fellow inmates

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The new CNN miniseries, “The Many Lives of Martha Stewart,” explores how the homemaking mogul came to be, chronicling the highs and lows of her far-reaching career — including the five months she spent in federal prison after being found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction and two counts of lying to federal investigators regarding the sale of a stock in 2004.  The final episode of the series airs on Sunday and, according to an exclusive clip published by PEOPLE Magazine, it will feature accounts from Stewart’s fellow inmates at the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia. The most interesting, perhaps, being that Stewart would smuggle food from the cafeteria and transform it into sweet treats. One of the women who was incarcerated along Stewart, Mag Phipps, described receiving a note from Stewart accompanied with a baked apple, “which meant she had already tackled the idea of cooking in your dorm or cottage by using the microwave and what resources that you could find,” Phipps said. “Because the baked apple had caramel on it and probably …