Michael Brown

A Franklin, Tenn. man says Secret Service agents knocked down his door in September as part of a probe into the theft of Mitt and Ann Romney’s tax returns from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Problem is, suspect Michael Brown says he has no idea why they’ve come after him.

The station reported that Brown said on Sept. 14 at 6:14 a.m. Secret Service agents kicked down the door to his home and forced him and his wife out of their bed in handcuffs.

“They said they’re here to serve a search warrant for Romney’s tax returns,” Brown told the station. “My first reaction was, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.'”

To read full story click here. 

Steve Neavling

Saying the FBI is more equipped to search for human remains, the San Joaquin Sheriff’s Office in California is asking for federal help in the hunt for victims of the so-called Speed Freak Killers, the Stockton Record reports.

Sheriff Steve Moore said Tuesday his office is inviting the FBI to take over the search after some county officials and the mother of a murder victim said federal agents should handle excavating sites, the Stockton Record wrote.

The serial killer duo of Loren Herzog and Wesley Shermantine are believed to have killed as many as 15 people. The’ methamphetamine-fueled killers ended their murder spree 1999 after authorities caught the childhood friends, the paper reported.

The FBI and local authorities recently identified locations where they think more bodies of victims may be found.

Steve Neavling

 Border Patrol agents have rescued 14 undocumented immigrants and found the bodies of seven more in South Texas during a hot past week, the Associated Press reports.

The AP said the immigrants were dehydrated and exposed to harsh weather.

The Border Patrol’s Rio Grand Valley Sector is reporting a spike in immigrant deaths and rescues.

Temperatures were expected to remain in the upper 80s for the rest of the week in South Texas, with temperatures reaching the 90s during the weekend.

By Kelly Holt 

Texas has a problem. It is incumbent on the Lone Star State, along with New Mexico, Arizona, and California, to secure the nation’s southern border when federal resources fail. Of these states, Texas has the lion’s share — over 1,200 of the border’s total of nearly 2,000 miles. It is the most frequently crossed border in the world with nearly 350 million annual crossings. Protection of the border has become a political prize, with all sides claiming to have the answer, and the will, to get the job done. But Texans on the front line aren’t buying it. Take border cameras, for instance.

In Texas Governor Rick Perry’s 2006 run for re-election (Perry is the longest-running Texas governor ever, assuming the office when Governor George Bush resigned to become president in 2000), border security played a key role in his campaign. He promised an expensive and complex plan that included hundreds of additional surveillance cameras.

After several incarnations of Perry’s plan, the promised cameras didn’t materialize as expected. Fox News reported in October 2011 that the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) introduced “a new high-tech, low-cost camera system [that] is helping to detect illegal immigrants.” The report pictured a high-tech and very visible camera set-up, suggesting that the new system was comprised of such cameras.

It turns out that the cameras are simple wildlife cameras.

To read more click here.

STORIES OF OTHER INTEREST

• Wife of FBI Agent Raises Questions of Conflicts of Interest
• -husband/article_2b10da7a-063b-5596-b051-ae3eb56c9a15.html
•  State Island Congressman Re-Elected Amid FBI Probe
• FBI to Tip Off Against U.S. Marshals in Charity Basketball Game
• FBI’s Crackdown on Insider Trading Yields First Trial
• ICE Sweep Nets 31 Arrests of Repeat Criminal Offenders

Steve Neavling

 A former General Motors engineer and her husband, both accused of trying to steal secrets from the domestic automaker and pass them on to a Chinese competitor, threw out bags of shredded documents at a suburb in Detroit, FBI agents said Tuesday, Reuters reports.

Trial in U.S. District Court in Detroit began Monday in the case of former GM employee Shanshan Du, 53, and her husband Yu Qin.

During testimony Tuesday, FBI agents described watching the defendants dump bags of shredded documents, Reuters reported.

Qin’s lawyer maintains the documents were not trade secrets.

The pair is accused of passing along confidential GM information on hybrid technology to China’s Chery Automobile.