FBI
Black Friday Gun Sales Are So Popular They Crash the FBI’s Background Check System
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Record gun sales on Black Friday this year caused the FBI’s background check system to crash twice, ABC News reports. The FBI checked 154,873 backgrounds, a 20% spike over last year. “The call centers experienced two short outages – one of 14 minutes and one of 18 minutes,” FBI spokesman Stephen Fischer…
FBI Documents: Ex-Boston Mayor Kevin White Was Targeted for Payoff Schemes
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Recently uncovered FBI files on former Boston Mayor Kevin White show his administration was the target of a federal corruption probe in the 1970s, the Boston Globe reports. Among the claims, which never led to charges, were that White pressured businesses to donate money in exchange for work in the city. The…
DEA Agents Find Crack-Smoking Doctor in Filthy House
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com DEA agents are used to low-life criminals. But during a raid this week in a New York house riddled with needles and crack, agents found Dr. Daniel Gillick, a 62-year-old emergency room doctor, lighting up a crack pipe with a young female companion, Buffalo News reports. Gillick’s status as a doctor prompted…
Santa’s Helper, a Giant Elf, a Cuban Inmate Uprising and the Salvation Army
By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com This is a Christmas story, but it really began just before Thanksgiving in 1987, at the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta. The Cuban inmates had rioted and had taken control of a sizeable portion of the penitentiary. The catalyst for the riots happened years before that in 1980. The Mariel boatlift,…
FBI Probes Dozens of Bomb Threats that Shut Down Buildings in 30 Tennessee Counties
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com The FBI is investigating a rash of telephone bomb threats to buildings in 30 counties in Tennessee, Reuters reports. Public facilities such as courthouses were shut down Tuesday following the threats. “There were no devices found,” Dayla Qualls, spokeswoman for the state Department of Safety and Homeland Security, told Reuters. Among the…
FBI Busts Menacing Trio in Loan-Sharking Ring in Brooklyn
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com An unlikely alliance between gangsters and the mafia was discovered by the FBI during an investigation of a loan-sharking ring, the New York Post reports. The newspaper wrote that the Brooklyn-based FBI arrested purported Gambino crime family member James Ferrara, alleged Westies gang member Daniel Hanley and reputed Demon Knights motorcycle gangster…
Terror Suspects Claim FBI Agents Assaulted Them During Interrogation
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Four men accused of killing 76 people who were watching a 2010 World Cup soccer game on TV in Uganda claim FBI agents beat them up during questioning, the Huffington Post reports. The suspects were punched, kicked and ridiculed, according to complaints to the Open Society Justice Initiative, an international rights group….
Retired FBI Agent Mark Stephen Jimerson Dies at Age 59
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Mark Stephen Jimerson, a retired FBI supervisory special agent, died last Thursday at his home in Mitchellville, Md., from a brain-related cancer. He was was 59. In February 1985, Jimerson was assigned to the FBI’s Tampa office, his first posting in the agency. While in Florida, he studied intensive Russian, according…