By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The FBI has opened an inquiry into daily fantasy sports websites amid complaints about insider information and predatory lending, the New York Times reports. 

The focus, according to players contacted by the FBI, was on Boston-based DraftKings, where an employee won $350,000 at a rival site.

The FBI also wants to know whether money was involved in states that prohibited betting on fantasy games.

Fantasy sites have become part of a billion-dollar industry that is unregulated but exploding in popularity.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

President Obama incensed FBI agents when he downplayed the classified information from Hillary Clinton’s personal email before an investigation was even complete, the New York Times reports.

“I don’t think it posed a national security problem,” Mr. Obama said Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” “This is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”

Trouble is, the FBI is still trying to determine the contents of the email and whether the information posed a national security risk.

“Injecting politics into what is supposed to be a fact-finding inquiry leaves a foul taste in the F.B.I.’s mouth and makes them fear that no matter what they find, the Justice Department will take the president’s signal and not bring a case,” said Ron Hosko, a former senior F.B.I. official who retired in 2014 and is now the president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.

Eric Garner with his children, via National Action Network

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Their killings prompted nationwide protests about the use of force by police but their names are missing from a federal government’s official database of homicides by officers, the Guardian reports. 

The absence of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and John Crawford’s names raises new questions about the government’s official record of police shootings.

FBI spokesman Stephen Fischer said the database is voluntary for police departments.

“We have no way of knowing how many incidents may have been omitted,” Fischer told the Guardian in an email.

A review by the Guardian found many flaws and omissions.

“It’s just another part of the cover-up and erasing of his murder from the record,” said Eric Garner’s daughter, Erica Garner.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

A Homeland Security computer system designed to raise red flags about airline passengers on the terrorism watch lists stopped working at five airports on Wednesday night, The Christian Science Monitor reports. 

The system went down for about 90 minutes but did not appear to be malicious, according to CBP.

CBP officers used alternative methods to check for suspicious passengers.

It wasn’t immediately clear which airports were impacted, by NBC News reported security screening problems at John F. Kennedy Airport and airports in Boston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Baltimore.

Other Stories of Interest

• FBI Seizes Cell Phone of Cook County Circuit Clerk Dorothy Brown
• Facebook ‘Friend’ Held 14-Year-Old Captive for 14 Months, FBI Says
• FBI Corruption Probe Targets Detroit Public Schools And EAA
• Navy Civilian Engineer Sentenced to 11 Years for Attempted Espionage
• ACLU Claims Border Patrol Abuse at ‘Epidemic Levels’