Feature Stories

By Deepti Govind Just three weeks ago, the Department of Justice said a 53-year old Maryland resident, Jeffrey John White, was sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison for possessing thousands of files of child pornography. When the case was...

By a Biometrica staffer Towards the end of June, as part of an investigative series, FreightWaves asked many transportation professionals whether "double brokering" is legal. The most common answer? It's complicated. Double brokering, which we will explain further through this piece, has been...

By Aara Ramesh Less than 60 days from now, on Sept. 30, the World Series of Poker (WSOP) will make its return to the Rio in Las Vegas after a hiatus of over two years. Operators and spectators alike are hoping for...

By a Biometrica staffer It would not come as any surprise to say that the Covid-19 pandemic pushed most of the world online, particularly children, as schools went virtual under lockdowns and restrictions. This increased children's use of the internet, and has...

By Charlotte Spencer There have been nearly 100 bills introduced so far this year that address the opioid epidemic. It seems everyone can agree this is an issue that needs to be addressed, but very few have managed to get any support...

By Aara Ramesh Next month marks 20 years since the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) conducted a series of raids and arrested eight individuals for a racketeering plot in which they defrauded McDonald’s Corp of $24 million dollars over a 12-year period. ...

By Aara Ramesh Last week, the National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA) held its Indian Gaming Tradeshow & Convention in Las Vegas, drawing a record crowd of 7,000 according to its own estimates. The four-day conference’s success was attributed to tribes and even...

By a Biometrica staffer Transportation was one of four industries that suffered the highest percentage of malicious attacks last year, according to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report 2020, along with the technology, retail, and financial sectors. As transportation becomes more...

By a Biometrica staffer On Wednesday, July 21, a legislator in Wisconsin proposed what's known as "Kayleigh's Law" in the state legislature to help protect certain sexual assault victims from their attackers. The proposed bill would allow those who have been victims...

By a Biometrica staffer In 2019, lower percentages of students aged 12-18 reported any kind of criminal victimization during the previous six months, compared with 2009, and that included theft and non-fatal violent victimization, a report published by the National Center for...

By a Biometrica staffer Late last week, Massachusetts' Encore Boston Harbor Casino said it did not have any plans to bring poker back to its gaming floor any time soon, though a final decision would likely be made by the end of...

By a Biometrica staffer The Covid-19 pandemic turned the whole world upside down in a manner of speaking, but for some sections of global society, the impact was darker and more pronounced. Last Tuesday, we gave you a brief overview of the...

By Aara Ramesh With the world slowly beginning its journey back to some semblance of normal, after a trying 18 months, climate change is jostling its way back into the limelight. Debates have recently been spurred by the two-front war America was...

By Deepti Govind America's obsession with true crime isn't new by any means. It's no wonder, then, that internet sleuthing is real, has many loyal, passionate practitioners, and is a somewhat well-established past-time by now. But before we talk about how armchair...

By Aara Ramesh Among the many verdicts handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court last month was the unanimous affirmation of the right of tribal law enforcement officers to detain non-Native people who they reasonably suspect to have been involved in a...

By a Biometrica staffer A total of 1,864 suspects in matters involving violations of federal hate crime statutes were investigated by U.S. attorneys during the fiscal years 2005 to 2019, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) said in a report published last...

By Charlotte Spencer Plenty of bills are proposed that never become law. This summer, however, several crime and law enforcement bills have made progress in the process of becoming law. Here are the summer’s top movers so far in terms of bills...

By Deepti Govind It's been more than three decades now since two men dressed as Boston Police Department officers ended up pulling off what's still considered the single largest property theft in the United States, and possibly the world. Despite this unprecedented...

By a Biometrica staffer Over the years, American attitudes towards gambling have changed significantly. According to the American Gaming Association (AGA) about nine in ten Americans “view gaming as a mainstream and acceptable form of entertainment,” and, as of 2020, just about...

By Charlotte Spencer Federal gaming law may be changing soon if any of the several proposed pieces of legislation currently in front of Congress pass this year. In this article, we review a few notable pieces of proposed legislation that touch on...

By a Biometrica staffer This time last week, we established that yes, terror groups were very much active during 2020, even when much of the world was closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, as the Europol Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2021...

By Aara Ramesh Last week on June 22, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced the “Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative,” at a conference of the National Congress of American Indians, the country’s largest coalition of Indigenous Peoples. The Initiative will undertake...

By Deepti Govind Child abductions are, thankfully, rare in the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said in its "Inside the FBI" podcast on May 25, Missing Children's Day. But when it does happen, the statistics tell a terrifying story:...

By a Biometrica staffer President Joe Biden has repeatedly said that the United States is experiencing an epidemic of gun violence. On Wednesday, June 23, his administration unveiled an extremely detailed plan to combat this epidemic. The Biden-Harris Comprehensive Strategy to Prevent...

By Deepti Govind Despite the Covid-19 pandemic leading to travel bans and restrictions world over in 2020, a new Europol report shows that in the European Union (EU), at least, terrorists were still very much active during the year. Like the rest...

By Aara Ramesh In January 2017, one 20-day tournament sent ripples of shock through the tech industry, when Libratus, an AI-powered robot, beat four of the world’s best poker players in a series of no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em games. This was seen...

By Aara Ramesh Despite many countries closing their borders and restricting travel during the Covid-19 pandemic, the United Nations (UN) has said that the plight of refugees and asylum-seekers actually worsened in 2020. As of the end of the year, over 82.4...

By Charlotte Spencer Earlier this year we discussed pending legislation in an article titled, “Pending Hate Crime Legislation in Front of Congress,” published April 22, and a February 4 article titled, “More Legal Firepower Proposed in Battle Against Child Abuse.” More has...

By Deepti Govind "The true art in art theft is not in the stealing, it’s in the selling," Robert Wittman, who led the FBI’s Art Crime Team, told NBC News after the discovery of two stolen paintings by Dutch master Vincent van...

By Aara Ramesh The sport of horse racing is a unique one due to its long-standing, storied relationship with wagering. It is one of the few forms of entertainment whose inception and endurance is directly linked to betting on the outcome of...

By Aara Ramesh Earlier this month, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released its report concerning the application and execution of capital punishments in the U.S. in 2019. As of the year under review, capital punishment was legal in 32 states and...

By a Biometrica staffer Even one incident of mass violence at a school is one too many. Going by that metric, the United States has had far too many to ignore over the course of the last two decades: from Virginia to...

By Charlotte Spencer The Combating Human Trafficking in Commercial Vehicles Act (hereafter, the Act) is a relatively new law designed to help do exactly what its title suggests. The Act — S. 1536 — passed the House and Senate in 2017, and...

By Deepti Govind Sometime between Friday night and Monday morning over this weekend, the Chabad on River synagogue was vandalized with a swastika and an antisemitic slur. A congregant found the hate symbols at 8 a.m. Monday, June 7, when they arrived early...

By Aara Ramesh The Covid-19 pandemic may yet add another casualty to its list. The days of smoke-filled casino floors might just be a relic of the past. As cities like Las Vegas begin the long road to recovery, stakeholders in the...

By Deepti Govind Even in the bloody world of the most violent crimes, dogfighting is considered particularly heinous. Why? First, dogs used for fighting are brought up and trained in rather cruel ways. They are typically kept in isolation and spend most...

By Dmitry Shifrin, Mary Tobin & Lindsay Dailey Polsinelli PC, Chicago, Illinois Biometric information and biometric identifiers are becoming more highly regulated in today’s data privacy and cybersecurity conscious landscape. Like other types of personal data, biometrics have the potential to identify...

By Jan Edwards May 25 was International Mission Children’s Day. Globally, more than one million children are reported missing every year. ICMEC considers any child under the age of 18 whose whereabouts are unknown to be “missing.” This includes children who have...

By a Biometrica staffer This Memorial Day weekend, Indigenous Americans from all over the U.S. headed to Pawhuska, Oklahoma, to be part of an important tradition: The Indian Relay, a horse racing competition. To say horses are a critical part of the...

By Charlotte Spencer The United States’ DNA database laws, many may be surprised to find, are not uniform across the country. Rather, they are a patchwork of laws that vary in when DNA can be taken, why DNA can be taken, how...

By a Biometrica staffer Source: Screengrab from the DOJ-OJP report showing total juvenile arrests since 1980 In 2019, the number of arrests involving juveniles — persons younger than 18 — was estimated to be less than 700,000. That's the lowest level since...

By a Biometrica staffer Today, May 25, is International Missing Children's Day. Over one million children are reported missing every year, the International Centre For Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) says on its website. In 2020, the National Center For Missing &...

By a Biometrica staffer Summer is almost upon us and the country seems to be gearing up for a truly lively few months. With around 39% of the population fully vaccinated and the Covid-19 case count dropping to its lowest level yet...

By Charlotte Spencer On Monday May 17, 2021, the Supreme Court issued a ruling further clarifying fourth amendment rights. The Fourth Amendment, and the long history of case law surrounding it, deals with search and seizure, specifically when it is allowed, and...

Even as Bitcoin, the world’s largest digital token, and other cryptocurrencies continued their dramatic free fall Wednesday, we thought it would be a good day to remind people as to why Bitcoin remains a perfect tool for regulators, investigators, banks and nonbank...

By Aara Ramesh On Monday, May 17, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released data about cryptocurrency investment scams, as reported by consumers in October 2020–March 2021. In that six-month period, the FTC received almost 7,000 complaints, amounting to a total of $80...

By a Biometrica staffer The Covid-19 pandemic has, undoubtedly, disrupted everyone's lives across the world. Yet, most of us have managed to find a semblance of normal and continue to follow our routines. So, it would be folly to assume that criminal...

By a Biometrica staffer Every year, as the tax season begins, so does an uptick in tax related frauds and scams. The season began on Feb. 12 this year, when the window for taxpayers to start filing their returns to the Internal...

By Charlotte Spencer On Wednesday, we ran a short article going over the basics of the recent court decision in the Northern District of Texas which granted a motion to dismiss the National Rifle Association's (NRA) attempt to file bankruptcy. This article...

By Kacy Robinson Search dog handlers have a unique advantage simply because we have highly trained and very specialized canines to aid us in our work, but that doesn’t mean we can allow all the other skills we have spent decades gaining...