The Mob's IT Department

I have to counter your detractor(s). Your message is calm, to the point, and thought provoking in an almost disconnected way. If anything I would have a hard time with the measure of professionalism you speak of the situation with. In other words, if anyone is to say you are too callous, let ME clarify: you are not callous enough.

If anyone is stupid enough to get involved with such crimes as their selfish money-making empire, I will disrespect them and their choices for good reason. Leave kids out of it, or disrespect should be the mildest form of punishment to be endured, socially or formally. Try to bargain or reason with someone you care about making bad decisions, I'm all about trying to help friend or family, right up until they gamble with someone else's life.

I don't think you sound callousness. Life is too short to commit crimes and spend it in prison, or be killed because of those crimes... and worse than that bring your family into it.

You made the right call.

I know a few things that no one else does, as well as some that others are reluctant to discuss.

A few years ago I dropped a dime to the FBI to request they tap my phone. This led to my iPhone's return less than five minutes after it was stolen.

"Don't lose your iPhone," said the officer, "that's how we're keeping track of you."

I once threatened to murder a Vancouver PD officer when he refused to take my report when I wanted to report a drug informant hit. Hilarity ensued.

For unrelated reasons I am concerned that my days are numbered so tomorrow afternoon Im going to drop by the FBI field station here so I can sing like a bird.

I dont really know but speculate that my uncle died because he decided not to run for office rather than move legislation for Boswell Cotton Corporation. My father's older brother was VP of accounting.

Some people just can't understand what it's like to have a worthless human being in the family. You don't start out thinking they're worthless, out of callousness - they prove it to you, over and over and over again.

When he was younger, and long before I was born, my father used to hang out at a bar in Chicago after work. There was another regular there and eventually, after a few weeks, the two of them started up into friendly conversation and became good acquaintances. My father was running a small business at the time and easily joked about the agony of running a business, the other guy never really talked much about what he did.

One day my father came home, and his wife at the time mentioned that a delivery many had just come by and dropped off an age-appropriate gift for their son (my oldest brother) the day before his birthday.

My father had never mentioned where he lived, that he had a family or a son, his son's age, or birthday.

He never went back to that bar again.

My cousin's husband grew up with a few people that ended up a part of Whitey Bulger's operation. He never directly involved, as far as we knew, but he could make things happen.

One time my Aunt visited him and her daughter in Boston, a good 150 miles away for a week or so. On the last night her car was broken into, driver side window smashed and the stereo was stolen. The son-in-law said he would take care of it if they would stay for another couple of days. My Aunt had had enough of the city and didn't want to stay at all so they went back home as planned.

That night, back home, 150 miles away, the car was "broken into" again. This time, the driver window was replaced and a new stereo was installed.

Over the next couple of weeks a total of 8 car stereos randomly appeared overnight in the driveway, on the front steps or in the mailbox.

I honestly don't think it's limited to IT workers. Some people just aren't confrontational people and would rather make an easy life for themselves.

Plus, you have to only consider the repercussions of being confrontational in certain situations.

I'm pretty non-confrontational, but if someone beat me up in a business meeting, I'd change my cell phone and rat them out to the police as fast possible.

The article makes it sound a lot like they were innocent up until that point, but I'd put good money on them already having some skin in the game.

You can put it down to being non-confrontational but what kind of non-confrontational nerd happily goes straight back into a room where they were previously assaulted?

EDIT: Also it's worth keeping in mind that this is just their version of the story, it might be 100% lies.

No, that's just most people in general. There is a lot of difficulty getting people to testify even when the crime has been committed against them. They just want the problems to go away.

> I've noticed that a lot of IT workers tend to be non-confrontational and unwilling to stand up for themselves even if the situation calls for it.

"Standing up" to the mafia is not going to end well for most people.

I wonder if it was someone's "clever" way of referencing the man with the mustache.

When I was a teenager, several of my friends and I went to several businesses in our neighborhood to inquire about jobs. One place was "Folino Bros. Fruits & Vegetables", as I remember, it was a wholesale market. But, on the inside, we didn't see many fruits or vegetables. It was arid, dark and dusty with very little inventory. When we asked about jobs, we were led to a back room where this burly man wearing a three piece suit and a fedora was smoking a cigar, he explained to us that they weren't currently hiring then gave each of us an apple and thanked us for the interest.

When we walked away, we waited until long after we were out of earshot and we all stopped and looked at each other and confirmed that we were all wondering the same thing. "Is that a mafia front?"

The newsletter had many subscribers. The channel itself was much smaller.

I was a regular at that IRC channel back then (for a long time - when it was run from a member's home pc, on EFNet, and the new channel names later on), and was at several of the meets that came from it. The channel had 10-20 regular at most, few enough that I knew all of them by handle and their real names (but I haven't seen any of them for almost 15 years). The whole 'security' angle was a joke, yes it was fun to root some boxes when a sploit hit bugtraq or attrition, but I don't remember anyone got much further than some DoS 'advisories' (at that time). Already then there was more money in scaremongering than there was in actual work...

^This!

A long time ago, I worked in a computer store and I had a couple of customers whom I suspected were involved in organized crime. They were polite and personable but something about them made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I hated working with them. It was a great day when I found a new job and didn't have to deal with them again.

Does the law create the criminal by perverting incentives, driving up price due to risk in a market that refuses to go away even when made illegal (see Prohibition)... or are sociopaths simply drawn to any high-risk/high-reward/non-society-cooperative work, becoming criminals?

Or is it a bit of both?

It looks like "graphics" is their term/brand for articles that make essential use of "rich"/interactive content.

If I had to take a wild guess, the author/editor of the article might've wanted some fancy stuff (like the header videos and scroll behavior, for instance) and it was easiest to do that on this platform.

Traditionally at newspapers, the 'graphics desk' handled any charts or data viz.

Many journalism organizations (including bloomberg and NYT) have kept the nomenclature for their special feature and 'interactives' groups who do pieces like this in non-traditional layouts with custom art and interactivity.

As being Dutch I've seen (parts of) this story before. It reminds me a bit of the Silk Road story, as in: who is who, are they indeed victims as they say, or not...

I recently read the "Mocro Mafia"; a Dutch non-fiction book about the 'war' that's still going on in Amsterdam (and Antwerpen too) between two groups of criminals dealing with drugs-import. It's all based on facts (and of course a lot of hearsay) and police-reports, but it reads like a script for a Hollywood-movie. I don't know about an English version, but don't be surprised if it turns up next to the "Heineken Kidnapping"-book.

Probably not. Few places have strong IT security as a core value of their business.