By a Biometrica staffer On Tuesday, Nov. 16 the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced the creation of a new Secretary’s Tribal Advisory Committee (STAC), which formally establishes a mechanism for Tribal leaders to engage in routine and robust conversations directly with DOI Secretary...
By Deepti Govind & Aara Ramesh At Biometrica, we've repeatedly written about an epidemic that many in the country have been quietly dealing with: of missing and murdered Indigenous persons. There is no doubt that it is a public safety epidemic demanding...
By a Biometrica staffer Gang activity in the United States is said to have declined in the mid-1990s to 2000. But between 2001 and 2005, it increased again and stayed constant until around 2012, per government estimates. From around 2002-2012 annual estimates...
By a Biometrica staffer Terror actors are continuing to exploit online forums to influence and spread violent extremist narratives and promote violent activity, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a terror threat bulletin on Wednesday, Nov. 10. These threats are...
By a Biometrica staffer Halloween 2017 turned out to be one the city of New York will never forget. At some point before 3 p.m. on the day, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov took the white Home Depot pickup truck he had rented in...
By Deepti Govind It's a story that everyone in today's legitimate U.S. casino industry knows. But some stories never grow old, no matter how many times you revisit them. So, in today's feature, we introduce you to a timeless tale: Of powerful...
By a Biometrica staffer Nationwide commercial gaming revenue smashed all quarterly records for the second consecutive quarter and reached $13.89 billion in the third quarter of 2021 (Q3 2021), according to the American Gaming Association’s (AGA) Commercial Gaming Revenue Tracker. With $38.67 billion...
By Deepti Govind The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Monday, Nov. 8 recent actions taken against two foreign nationals charged with deploying Sodinokibi/REvil ransomware to attack businesses and government entities in the United States. On the same day, investing app Robinhood...
By Deepti Govind We set the stage in a piece published about two weeks ago, on examining the kind of threats surface transportation around the world has faced from terror actors over time. To quickly recap what we said then: While the...
By a Biometrica staffer Casino news from the weekend includes reports of shootings and other crimes on properties, and a cyber crime warning. On Saturday, Nov. 6, a shooter fatally wounded two people before turning the gun on himself at Stateline Casino...
By a Biometric staffer Only yesterday, Nov. 4., we wrote about how the Justice Department had said in an interview with the Associated Press that they are stepping up firepower in the battle against ransomware attacks and cybercrime. The number of cybercrime...
By a Biometrica staffer The Department of Justice (DOJ) is stepping up its firepower in the fight against the rapidly growing threat of ransomware attacks and cybercrime. This news comes as President Joe Biden's administration escalates its response to what it considers...
By Deepti Govind From around the end of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century, a French forensic scientist developed several key scientific methods of analysis that are still in use and remain one part of the bedrock of...
By Deepti Govind The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), along with its law enforcement partners, said it removed nearly 745,000 lbs of unneeded prescriptions from medicine cabinets across the country under its National Prescription Drug Take Back Day program, which was held on...
By a Biometrica staffer Early estimates of traffic fatalities for the first half of 2021 show that an estimated 20,160 people died due to motor vehicle crashes, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Transport's (DOT) National Highway Traffic Safety...
By a Biometrica staffer If you are planning to apply for a new job, especially a federal one, or are planning to foster or adopt a child, or are considering other similar new opportunities or decisions in your life, it's very likely...
By a Biometrica staffer In 2018, there were around 1.6 million applications for firearm transfers and permits that were subject to background checks under the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Brady Act). About 230,000 (1.4%) of these applications were denied, the Bureau...
By Deepti Govind Transportation is known to be a "coveted" target among terror actors worldwide, even though certain modes have become increasingly — and thankfully — extremely hard targets to crack. Aviation, of course, is the first mode of transport that comes...
By Deepti Govind Earlier this month, there were reports of a 12-state human trafficking, joint undercover sting, called Operation United Front, that led to the arrests of 102 people. Through the operation, 47 victims were rescued, including two minors. As part of...
By a Biometrica staffer Nurses in the United States experience suicidal thoughts "in greater numbers" than other general workers, a study published in the American Journal of Nursing said. Among nurses, those who do have suicidal thoughts are also less likely to...
By a Biometrica staffer The inmate population at Indian country jails fell 30% at mid-year 2020 to a total of 2,020 inmates held in 82 jails, from 2,890 inmates held in 83 facilities at mid-year 2019, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)...
By a Biometrica staffer The United States has repeatedly faced various kinds of cyberattacks in recent times, with targets ranging from infrastructure to education, and mostly due to criminals wielding ransomware. At the Justice Department Criminal Division’s fifth Cybersecurity Roundtable, Assistant Attorney...
By a Biometrica staffer Out of the total federal caseload, child sex abuse material (CSAM) production cases account for only a small percentage. Even so, the expansion of digital and mobile technology has led to a 422% spike in the number of...
By a Biometrica staffer Cultural property crime continued unabated throughout the global Covid-19 pandemic, and in some cases even surged to new heights, according to INTERPOL’s 2020 Assessing Crimes Against Cultural Property survey findings. In the Americas, the number of offences reported...
By Deepti Govind One in 10 people aged 18–25 and one in 30 people aged 13–17 experience homelessness each year. To put it another way, in a classroom of 30 students, at least one will experience homelessness this year, which means they...
By a Biometrica staffer A paper published in 1999 stated, in very simple terms, that fraudulent and abusive practices in the home healthcare space are costly. They damage the integrity of the home health agency, the home care industry, and home care...
By a Biometrica staffer Just days after the Boston Marathon took place for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic began, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments over whether the death sentence should be reinstated for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber. Tsarnaev...
By a Biometrica staffer A majority of contacts between law enforcement officers (LEO) and the public only happens during emergencies, or situations that are highly charged and emotional. But these are not the most ideal circumstances for LEOs and the community they...
By a Biometrica staffer Gun violence has steadily been claiming the lives of, or injuring, an increasing number of American children and teenagers over the years, the Associated Press reported, citing data from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA). Shootings involving the young...
By a Biometrica staffer A shootout at a bar in St. Paul, Minnesota, early on Sunday, Oct. 10, left one woman dead and 14 other people wounded, AP News reported. Three men are said to be in custody after the shooting. The...
By a Biometrica staffer September became the deadliest month for employees of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice since the Covid-19 pandemic began, even as coronavirus fatalities dropped across the state, a Dallas Morning News report said. Covid-19 led to the death...
By a Biometrica staffer Well over 700 years ago, Song Ci, a Chinese judge, is said to have personally examined the crime scenes of physical assaults or difficult murders. His book, The Washing Away of Wrongs, was written around the year 1247...
By a Biometrica staffer October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month and the Department of Justice (DOJ) is kicking that off by announcing more than $476 million in Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) grants, it said in a statement on Tuesday,...
By a Biometrica staffer In what bodes well for the industry, two-thirds of American adults view gaming as a positive economic contributor that provides high-quality jobs and 73% support legalized sports betting in their state, new research by the American Gaming Association...
By a Biometrica staffer An electrician who got into a fight with coworkers killed three and left one more injured in Florida, authorities said. Shaun Runyon was temporarily working at a public supermarket for a Pennsylvania-based electric company, and was living with...
By a Biometrica staffer The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has seized nearly 1.8 million fentanyl-laced pills, approximately 712 kilograms of fentanyl powder and arrested more than 800 individuals involved in the illicit drug trade in a two-month operation. Additionally, 4011 kilograms of...
By a Biometrica staffer In July, we wrote about how millions of elderly Americans become the victims of some kind of financial fraud or internet scam each year. And those numbers are not inclusive of the kind of abuse and neglect senior citizens...
By a Biometrica staffer The Global Organized Crime Index paints a "worrying picture of the reach, scale and impact of organized crime in 2020." The data driven analytics tool evaluated 193 United Nations member states. The 2020 report, the first published by Global Initiative,...
By a Biometrica staffer The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released its Unified Crime Report for 2020 on Sept. 27, and it showed that the number of homicides increased by 30% from the previous year. There were more than 21,500 homicides reported, a height...
By Deepti Govind At Biometrica, one of our key areas of focus is missing persons. We've repeatedly published pieces on this tragic epidemic — from the intersection of internet vigilantism and missing persons of color, to federal government measures, to how the...
By a Biometrica staffer There's been a large increase in the number of sextortion complaints made to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Bureau's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) warned at the start of this month. As of July 31, 2021,...
By a Biometrica staffer The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have observed the increased use of Conti ransomware in more than 400 attacks on U.S. and international organizations. In Conti attacks, malicious cyber actors...
By a Biometrica staffer As of June 30, 2021, 155 federal, state, tribal, and local law enforcement officers (LEOs) died in the line of duty, according to preliminary data compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF). That's roughly a...
By a Biometrica staffer Evidence in the alleged murder of a federal security officer in Oakland was destroyed by four Northern California members affiliated with the far right boogaloo movement, authorities said on Sep. 20. Jessie Rush, Robert Blancas, Simon Ybarra and...
By a Biometrica staffer In late 2020, much before anyone ever imagined that a deadlier variant of the Covid-19 virus would sweep across the world and wreak renewed havoc on healthcare and governance systems, organizations like the United Nations Office on Drugs...
By a Biometrica staffer Between 2015 and 2017, two ringleaders of a gang in New Orleans allegedly staged at least 100 accidents in a scam that was targeted at defrauding trucking and insurance companies. As part of a federal investigation into intentional...
By Deepti Govind On Sept. 17, 2020, in recognition of National Physician Suicide Awareness Day, the Physicians Foundation published the alarming results of a new survey that found that nearly one in four physicians (22%) know another physician who has committed suicide,...
By Deepti Govind It's the first week of the National Football League (NFL) and the season is already smashing some non-football records. The games have generated a record volume of legally placed sports bets since the season began on Thursday night, i.e.,...
By Deepti Govind You don't need to be a poker player to have come across the phrase "Dead Man's Hand." References to it are scattered across popular culture says Casino.org. From books, like James Patterson's Along Came a Spider; to movies and...
By a Biometrica staffer In 2018, there were 1.2 million emergency department visits for assault in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says on its website. Over 19,000 people died due to homicides, more than 14,000 of...