The G Manifesto

The Big Heist that Almost Worked

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Click Here for The Man Who Robbed the Pierre: The Story of Bobby Comfort

Click Here for Secrets of a Superthief by Jack MacLean

Two men have been convicted for their part in trying to pull off a £229m heist at the Sumitomo Mitsui Bank in London.

In one of the biggest attempted bank thefts in Britain, they used hi-tech equipment to try to steal money from the accounts of big businesses.

Hugh Rodley, 61, of Twyning, near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, and sex shop owner, David Nash, 47, from Durrington, West Sussex, were foiled only at the last minute by the complexities of inter-bank money transfers.

On the early evening of 16 September 2006, two men arrived at the reception desk of the Sumitomo Mitsui Bank in London. One asked for the bank’s security supervisor, Kevin O’Donoghue.

He had a distinctive European, possibly Belgian, accent but the receptionist thought nothing of it. After all, this was the London branch of a major Japanese merchant bank with global interests and investments.
Hugh Rodley
Hugh Rodley, involved in the heist, is a self-styled lord of the manor

What she did not know was that the two men led upstairs by security chief O’Donoghue were expert hackers – and they had come to the bank to implement the first stage of the most audacious, and potentially lucrative, cyber snatch in history.

Police do not know how long the gang had been planning the operation. And those now convicted are certainly not those behind the plan.

When questioned, Kevin O’Donoghue, 34, from Birmingham, claimed that he had been coerced into helping and that his family had been threatened. He later admitted a charge of conspiracy to steal.

CCTV images showed him laughing and joking as he showed the two Belgian cyber-thieves to a terminal in one of the trading offices.

Jan Van Osselaer from Belgium and Gilles Poelvoorde from France, who admitted a charge of conspiracy to steal, had come prepared.

They used a USB memory stick to instal “keylogger” software on various workstations that recorded every button pressed by users.

‘No kingpin’

A few days later, they returned and downloaded the data from the keylogger programmes. They now had the usernames and passwords of every bank employee who had used the infected computers.

But Kevin O’Donoghue had made some mistakes. He had tampered with some of the CCTV cameras – even cutting the wires on one – in an effort to cover the gang’s tracks. Other employees started to wonder why he had started enquiring about creating extra access badges.

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The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK
The Guide to Getting More Out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

Black Milk & Bishop Lamont – Caltroit

Wynn’s Vegas Encore In Full Effect

Click Here for The Blueprint of a Perfect Night in Las Vegas

The view from the floor-to-ceiling windows in our room at the new Wynn Encore provides a distressingly clear picture of what’s going on in Las Vegas these days. To the south, there’s a casino project that has ground to a halt, half built, its steel skeleton an outline of a multibillion-dollar dream gone hungry. Across the street, there’s a Modernist chapel, a lonely vigil of virtue on the Strip — people seek salvation elsewhere in this town. Look west toward the mountains and you can trace the Vegas real estate developers’ dash toward the horizon with building projects. Now as far as you can drive, there are foreclosed homes and empty new developments offering come-ons to prospective buyers.

The Encore, which opened officially in January, stands like a luxurious monument of defiance to the recession. It is not; it cannot. Wynn Resorts boss Steve Wynn has cut room rates to as little as $169 a night — the original projected rates were something on the order of $350 — but he won’t cut service. That act of defiance means the Encore is a pretty astonishing value for any visitors in the mood to treat themselves to a Las Vegas fling in these tough times. The $2 billion, 2,034-room project adjoins the Wynn — the hotels are connected by a retail alley — completing Steve Wynn’s most recent move to reposition the Las Vegas mind-set. The man who brought you exploding volcanoes (the Mirage), pirate ships (Treasure Island) and over-the-top light shows, not to mention a zillion dollars’ worth of fine art (the Bellagio) has now fully assembled his antidote to overstimulation, which began with the Wynn Las Vegas in 2005. Here is a different kind of sensibility — dare we say classy? — a resort with gaming, rather than a gaming resort.

At ground level, the Encore, like its older sibling, is still all business, though Wynn had his decorator, Roger P. Thomas, nod to the Las Vegas of the past. The casino floor is dominated by a color that the company says used to be standard in casinos in the bad old good old days — just call it whorehouse red. But it works here, with the brilliant red chandeliers, the whole effect muted a bit by judicious use of off-white fabric. The other delicate touches are cast, oddly enough, by natural light streaming in from either end of the casino floor. And not only through windows — the main entrance to the Encore casino takes you through a lush, plant-and-tree-filled atrium over three stories tall. There’s a certain amount of whimsy at play here too: for instance, the brightly colored butterflies inlaid into the mosaic floors. It makes the contemplation of losing at the tables almost pleasant.

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Whorehouse Red.

I love that color.

Click Here for The Blueprint of a Perfect Night in Las Vegas

The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

Paper by Krayzie Bone

Tijuana: 6 New Bodies are Found

Click Here for Cocaine Trafficking in Latin America

Click Here for Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas

Click Here for Drug Lord: The Life & Death of a Mexican Kingpin

Click Here for The Tijuana Report: There is a War going on Outside

A lull in the drug-related violence that has gripped the region was shattered yesterday with the discovery of six corpses in three locations in Tijuana and Tecate.

The victims included three men whose mutilated corpses were found with a message near the U.S. border fence in Playas de Tijuana; two 16-year-old girls whose decomposed bodies were found off a road south of downtown Tecate; and a man whose body was found wrapped in a blanket on the side of a road in a central part of the Tijuana.

The sudden drop-off in violence since mid-January had led to reports of a truce between drug traffickers feuding for control of the region’s domestic market and smuggling routes to the United States. But the shifting scenario raises the question of whether the renewed violence could be connected to recent arrests of suspected gang members in Tijuana by members of Mexico’s Federal Police.

Drug gangs use killings as a way of punishing suspected informants and warning enemies. A message left with the three bodies found with their heads and limbs cut off was addressed to “balcon” – a word meaning blabbermouth.

Source

Tijuana might be loose, but there are fly girls there. And you can smoke and drink in bars all night.

Click Here for The Tijuana Report: There is a War going on Outside

Click Here for Cocaine Trafficking in Latin America

Click Here for Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas

Click Here for Drug Lord: The Life & Death of a Mexican Kingpin

The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

Arrieros De Tijuana – La Perra

Kid Frost – The Volo

Del Mar Race Track Considers Shortening Season

Click Here for Surf and Turf: The Race Track
Click Here for The Del Mar Racetrack Part II
Click Here for The Del Mar Race Track: How to Dress for the Horse Races
Click Here for The Del Mar Race Track: Dope Style, Wack Style
Click Here for Opening Day Del Mar Race Track Pictures

Click Here for Del Mar Racetrack

Track insiders and general fans who have opined that the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club summer meeting would be better with a reduction from its six-day racing week could get their wish this summer.

DMTC’s top officials acknowledged yesterday that the organization, which leases the facility from the state to run the race meeting, is exploring the possibility of dropping Mondays from the Wednesday-to-Monday format that has stood for decades.

“It’s certainly something we’ve been looking at and the more we look at it the better it gets,” said Joe Harper, DMTC president, CEO and general manager. “I feel confident saying it will be our recommendation that we go to a five-day week.”

The current state of the economy, a declining California thoroughbred horse population and perceived downturn in both the number and financial commitment of owners are all contributing factors in the decision to explore the five-day option.

“We’ve always been a big proponent of when you make a change here you better make it for the benefit of the patron,” Harper said. “I think this is certainly to the benefit of the patron. If we’re right, we’re going to have better (racing) cards, basically.”

Six-day racing weeks have been standard at Del Mar since 1946. The track, founded by Bing Crosby and some Hollywood friends, opened in 1937. It presented races on a Tuesday-to-Saturday basis before being closed from 1942-44 during World War II and maintained that schedule for the re-opening season in 1945.

A Monday-to-Saturday format was maintained from 1946 until 1973 when – sports competition on Sundays having gained social acceptance – conducting racing and betting on Sunday was legalized.

In recent decades many horsemen – who generally live and work in the Los Angeles area with the exception of two months in the summer – have said five-day weeks at Del Mar would be easier on them and their horses.

Source

My bet is that they do this.

The Track was slower than normal last year. And I don’t mean the horses either.

Click Here for Surf and Turf: The Race Track
Click Here for The Del Mar Racetrack Part II
Click Here for The Del Mar Race Track: How to Dress for the Horse Races
Click Here for The Del Mar Race Track: Dope Style, Wack Style
Click Here for Opening Day Del Mar Race Track Pictures

The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

Nas Pun Jada Raekwon Fat Joe ‘John Blaze’

Down Economy and Shylocks Up

Reader DG sent me this article on the increase of loan sharking in the Down Economy.

I mentioned this in The Top Ten ways to Make Money in a Down Economy.

“When the bills started piling up and the banks wouldn’t lend, the white-haired art dealer in the elegant tweed jacket said he drove to the outskirts of Rome and knocked on the rusty steel door of a shipping container.

A beefy man named Mauro answered. He wore blue overalls with two big pockets, one stuffed with checks and the other with cash. The wad of bills he handed over, the art dealer recalled, reeked of the man’s cologne and came at 120 percent annual interest.

As banks stop lending amid the global financial crisis, the likes of Mauro are increasingly becoming the face of Italian finance. The Mafia and its loan sharks, nearly everyone agrees, smell blood in the troubled waters.

“It’s a fantastic time for the Mafia. They have the cash,” said Antonio Roccuzzo, the author of several books on organized crime. “The Mafia has enormous liquidity. It may be the only Italian ‘company’ without any cash problem.”

At a time when businesses most need loans as they struggle with falling sales, rising debt and impending bankruptcy, banks have tightened their lending to them.

Italian banks, which for years had been widely criticized for lending sparingly to small and medium-size businesses, now have “absolutely closed the purse strings,” said Gian Maria Fara, the president of Eurispes, a private research institute.

That is great news for loan sharks. Confesercenti, the national shopkeepers association, estimates that 180,000 businesses recently have turned to them in desperation. Although some shady lenders are freelancers turning profits on others’ hard luck, very often the neighborhood tough offering fat rolls of cash is connected to the Mafia, the group said.”

Source

The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

Ricchi E Poveri – Acapulco