The threat of cybercrime is rising sharply, experts have warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
They called for a new system to tackle well-organised gangs of cybercriminals.
Online theft costs $1 trillion a year, the number of attacks is rising sharply and too many people do not know how to protect themselves, they said.
The internet was vulnerable, they said, but as it was now part of society’s central nervous system, attacks could threaten whole economies.
The past year had seen “more vulnerabilities, more cybercrime, more malicious software than ever before”, more than had been seen in the past five years combined, one of the experts reported.
Rise of the Footsoldier is based on the true story of Carlton Leach, a former football hooligan heavy with the notorious ICF (Inter City Firm) who later moved up the criminal underworld by bouncing, minding, and muscling.
The first part of the movie is like Green Street Hooligans times 100. So if you liked Green Street Hooligans you will love Rise of the Footsoldier. Plus in Rise of the Footsoldier, there is no Elijah Wood. Hell, Elijah Wood hasn’t been good in a movie since The Good Son with Macaulay Culkin! Just playing.
Never Die Alone by Donald Goines is one of my favorite books. Goines is a master of the visual, gritty drug infested street life. A world that I have more than a passing knowledge of. And with Goines it is always based on a true story.
Keep in mind, Donald Goines wrote 16 novels in 5 years. Goines himself kept it moving in this world of the urban street as he was a hustler, Pimp and heroin addict. A perspective that gives him uncanny authority and authenticity to write about it.
Never Die Alone’s “hero” is King David, the coldest cat in all of literature. And when I say “coldest cat” I mean cold, like dry ice on the South Pole. Close to pure Evil.
King David, sharp dressed and Caddy driving, is also one of the original East Coast-West Coast G’s. Villainous. And Poisonous.
A must read for all up and coming G’s. They should also make this a must read for schools to keep kids out of the Drug Game.
Squat, bull-necked and sullen-looking, Enrique Portocarrero hardly seems a dashing character out of a Jules Verne science fiction novel.
But law enforcement officers here have dubbed him “Captain Nemo,” after the dark genius of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” They say the 45-year-old has designed and built as many as 20 fiberglass submarines, strange vessels with the look of sea creatures, for drug traffickers to haul cocaine from this area of southern Colombia to Central America and Mexico.
Capping a three-year investigation that involved U.S. and British counter-narcotics agents, Colombia’s FBI equivalent, the Department of Administrative Security, arrested Portocarrero last month in the violent port city of Buenaventura, where he allegedly led a double life as a shrimp fisherman.
A day later, they descended on Portocarrero’s hidden “shipyard” in a mangrove swamp 20 miles south of here and destroyed two of the vessels, which police say were each capable of carrying 8 tons of cargo.
“He had a marvelous criminal vision,” Colombian navy Capt. Luis German Borrero said. “He introduced innovations such as a bow that produced very little wake, a conning tower that rises only a foot above the water and a valve system that enables the crew to scuttle the sub in 10 minutes. He is very ingenious.”
Authorities say they know little about Portocarrero except that he was arrested in 2003 on drug charges and soon released, a fact he relayed with a smirk when he was nabbed last month. Most important, he once worked at a dry dock in Buenaventura, where he apparently learned his craft.
Portocarrero was living well. Police, who reported finding $200,000 hidden in the spare tire of his car, say he had invested his reputed $1-million-per-vessel fees in the purchase of five shrimp boats.
I was a little slow on this one. I have been spending time going to charity events, donating toys for kids, and seeing nightclubs with no one stepping to Bottle Service. And swooping a fly Chilanga Mexican girl. All of which makes me happy.
Anyway, here it is:
“I still can’t quite get my head around the enormity of the numbers in the Madoff case. For one thing,
Madoff’s investment advisory business served between 11 and 25 clients and had a total of about $17.1 billion in assets under management.
Now that’s what I call high net worth individuals! And then you read the indictment, and you think you know what to expect, until:
On Dec. 10, 2008, Madoff informed the Senior Employees, in substance, that his investment advisory business was a fraud. Madoff stated that he was “finished,” that he had “absolutely nothing,” that “it’s all just one big lie,” and that it was “basically, a giant Ponzi scheme. Madoff stated that the business was insolvent, and that it had been for years. Madoff also stated that he estimated the losses from this fraud to be at least approximately $50 billion.
Yep, $50 billion. In other words, that $17.1 billion is only the beginning: presumably Madoff’s clients had invested much more than that, and Madoff was sending statements to them, on the one hand, while reporting different numbers to the SEC, on the other — none of which were true.
If the total losses are really $50 billion, that means that the average loss to Madoff’s clients is a minimum of $2 billion, and perhaps as much as $4.5 billion. After all, in a Ponzi scheme, everybody comes out fine, except the last people out: the 11 to 25 clients still with Madoff to this day.
The one thing this does do is get me a little bit more comfortable with Jeffrey Epstein’s business plan of managing billionaires’ money. Clearly there are actually quite a lot of people with a few billion dollars to invest and who feel perfectly comfortable entrusting it to individuals like Madoff and Epstein. Who knew?
Right now, there are a handful people whose world has suddenly been turned upside-down: who have, overnight, suddenly lost billions of dollars of dynastic wealth to a Wall Street con man. I’m sure that their names will appear sooner or later. But there really is no precedent that I can think of: when has one man ever managed to steal $50 billion dollars? If the $100 million Harry Winston heist in Paris was the “steal of the century”, what’s this?”
I have said it before, that G’s and heistmen don’t make the long coin these days. It’s the “tech crims”. It’s the Bankers. It’s the Politicians. It’s the Lawyers. They are the real crooks.
Sometimes I feel like I am being hustled only knowing half the Game.
But my crew hanging with the Wu-Tang Clan, sitting ringside watching Manny Pacquiao destroy Oscar De La Hoya , and swooping the above mentioned Chilanga has softened the blow.
So to speak.
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
