Eideard

Italian police have arrested 39 doctors who were selling holy water as a cure for cancer and other diseases…

Those arrested were charged with conspiracy, fraud, personal injury and wrongful practice for selling the holy water, Italy’s ANSA news agency reported.

Customers were told online the miracle cure, called “White Light Water,” came from the holy shrines of Lourdes, Fatima and Medjugorje and cost as much as $263 per vial. Doctors selling the fake holy water often told customers to abandon traditional medical treatment and rely instead on the “frequencies” given off by the blessed water, police said.

Police searched four doctors’ offices in Ancona, Bari, Milan and Venice, where the concoction was bottled and redistributed, plus 4,000 flasks of ready-to-ship water.

Face it. People who believe that water can be changed into something holy that will cure your ills – are ready and willing targets for fraudsters.

Never mind that last question. I already know the answer to that one. Including the part about not paying taxes on the sale.

A cunning plan to rob the warehouse of his former employer went awry for one chubby Chinese thief after he became wedged, legs dangling, in the roof of a lift.

The man, named as Mr Xi by China’s Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper, was fired from a technology company in the southern city of Shenzhen in October. In a bid to exact revenge, and improve his finances, Mr Xi decided to rob the company’s warehouses, hoping to carry away valuable surveillance cameras.

Last Saturday evening, he hid himself in the company’s offices, waiting until all the staff had left before trying to gain access to the warehouse underneath. However, he found he was unable to break into the warehouse and instead decided, in the early hours of Sunday morning, to make his escape by removing the ventilation fan of a freight lift and hoisting himself into the lift shaft.

But Mr Xi’s plan had not accounted for his girth. He found himself quickly wedged into the lift ceiling and unable to free himself.

According to the Southern Metropolis, Mr Xi called his girlfriend, who arrived at the offices to help him. But after two hours of trying to squeeze him through the gap, and the removal of his trousers to make him more streamlined, Mr Xi was still stuck.

When the company’s security guard arrived on Sunday morning, he found Mr Xi hanging trouserless, and his girlfriend exhausted from her efforts to free him.

Eventually Mr Xi was freed by the police, who detained him and his girlfriend for their attempted burglary.

Har!

Authorities mistakenly arrested an Arab-American leader, but released him Saturday after realizing he was not the man they were looking for, his attorney and the FBI said.

Ali Hammoud, president of the Bint Jebail Cultural Center in Dearborn, was arrested at his Dearborn home Friday night by police, said attorney Majed Moughni. Police told Hammoud that they were acting on a warrant requested by the FBI involving alleged cigarette smuggling and Hizballah support with a man who has a similar name.

But Saturday morning, after he was questioned by FBI agents, Hammoud was released, Moughni said…So, he got to spend the night in custody. Terrific.

The arrest sparked concern among some in the region’s Arab-American community, already sensitive to being unfairly targeted by law enforcement, particularly since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Detroit FBI spokeswoman Special Agent Sandra Berchtold said Saturday via e-mail: “The individual fit the description/identifiers of an active warrant. It was later determined it was not the correct individual, and he was released.”

Berchtold said that “the individual was stopped by Dearborn (police) on a traffic violation.”

Moughni said that there was no traffic violation and that police came to Hammoud’s home Friday night to arrest him…

Face it. The coppers, the Feds, were trolling with a profile. Now, they lie about how the arrest happened.

After Hammoud was arrested, community leaders and others contacted Dearborn police and the FBI to find out what happened…Hammoud is well-known in Dearborn, and his arrest came as a surprise, said Hamad and Moughni…

Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab-American News, spoke Saturday with Dearborn police and the FBI about the case. “We will not rest until we find out what happened, and we want to make sure it will never happen again,” Siblani said. “This is a respected community leader. I never doubted his innocence.”

At least this never got to a trial – and lucky he wasn’t in the hands of someone dedicated to current Republican ideology.

Think it’s an isolated incident? That profiling doesn’t continually embarrass the United States? Check out the latest incident leading to an apology to the former President of India APJ Abdul Kalam – for the 2nd time in two years.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Police captured Rio de Janeiro’s most wanted alleged drug trafficker…as they prepared to occupy the city’s largest slum.

Antonio Bonfim Lopes, alleged drug lord of the teeming Rocinha slum, was found in bizarre circumstances – in the boot of a car belonging to a man who claimed to be a senior diplomat from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

TV images showed the suspect, known as Nem, looking close to tears after his arrest.

There are diplomats with all their “respect” and power, immunity and hypocrisy, who would probably carry a thug like this to safety in their briefcase – if they could fit him inside. Along with the profits from their own crimes.

Police Constables Andy Clare and Steve Browett with boxes of bait for dumb fish

Police arrested 19 wanted criminals after pretending they had won free beer to trick them into coming forward.

Undercover officers with Derbyshire police sent letters to dozens of people who had evaded arrest asking them to ring a marketing company to collect a free crate of beer.

A total of 19 suspects fell for the hoax and called the number which put them through to police officers based at Chesterfield Police Station.

A time and date was arranged for the free alcohol to be dropped off at an agreed address. But instead of being handed free ale the wanted men found themselves confronted by police, handcuffed and under arrest.

Chief Inspector Graham McLaughlin, who is leading the sting known as Operation Rocky, said: “These suspects are people who have managed to evade arrest for some time so we have used different tactics to find them…It has been very cost effective as it can take a lot of time and money to track people down…

Alleged offences committed by some of those arrested range from burglary and robbery to a serious sexual assault.

None of which obviously required a whole boatload of brains.

When Teresa Culpepper called Atlanta police to report her car stolen, the last thing she expected was to land behind bars for 53 days in a case of mistaken identity.

Mistaken for a woman of the same first name who was wanted on a battery charge, Culpepper is now trying to return her life to normal after the ordeal cost her home and her car. Her attorney said none of it would have happened if police had followed basic procedures…

Culpepper’s saga started August 21, whe she called police to report that her car was stolen, attorney Ashleigh Merchant said. An officer took information from her, but never filed a report. Shortly after, police dispatchers called out a bulletin, alerting officers to look out for a woman named Teresa Gilbert who was suspected of aggravated battery.

Police returned to Culpepper’s house and arrested her. And the differences between the two women didn’t stop at their last names, Merchant said.

“The birth dates didn’t match. The addresses were different. The description didn’t match. Other than the name Teresa, nothing matched,” Merchant said. “All they had to do was show a picture of Teresa to the victim and none of this would have happened…”

Weeks later…the battery victim came forward in court and cleared Culpepper’s name. Released on October 12, Culpepper found herself homeless and her car in the impound lot.

“After investigating this matter thoroughly and discussing it carefully with the Atlanta Police Department, we have concluded that the wrong person was arrested,” District Attorney Paul Howard Jr. said in a written statement to CNN affiliate WSB. “The fact that both of the women in question had the same first name and lived in the same police beat led the officer to believe Ms. Culpepper was responsible … Unfortunately, the officer never presented a picture or any form of identification to the victim.”

Culpepper is seeking legal action against the Atlanta police, Merchant said.

“It is scary, really,” Merchant said. “Because it is not like Teresa is an uncommon name. It makes you feel that it could have happened to anybody.”

Well, at least anybody who is Black and named Teresa – in Atlanta.

All you need to get one is money – not brains

A Swiss motorist used his mobile phone to record himself driving on an autoroute near Geneva at 320 km an hour, nearly three times the speed limit, police said Wednesday.

But the offence was only uncovered six months later when the 28-year-old was questioned in another case and investigators found the images still on the phone.

Some shots were focused on the speedometer of his car, a Bentley Continental, according to a police spokesman.

Others showed the road, revealing where he was, and the phone’s timer recorded the date and the time — just before 3:30 in the morning local time last April.

Police said the driver, whom they declined to name, probably took the shots to impress his friends. His license was confiscated and he is free on bail awaiting trial.

When your testicles are hardwired to the accelerator on your car, you really can’t count on your brain working at all.

Some folks are prepared for carjackers

A Belgian couple on holiday in Spain spotted the armed criminals who had carjacked them at gunpoint a month previously in Liege, 1,200 miles away.

The unnamed pair saw Luc Jadoul, 47, and his girlfriend Gaëlle Deloge, 20, on a beach in Alicante.

Mr Jadoul and Miss Deloge had threatened the couple with a gun and hijacked their Nissan SUV while making a dramatic escape from a Belgian courthouse just four weeks before…

…The crime victims were amazed to see Jadoul and Deloge sunning themselves on the Torrevieja beach last weekend.

Incredibly, the stolen car was also parked nearby, just yards from where the carjackers were sunbathing.

Keeping their heads and showing a “sangfroid” praised by the police, the holidaymakers let down the tyres on the car and called the authorities, who made an “easy” arrest.

A firearm was recovered from the stolen vehicle…

Both are being held in Madrid before their extradition back to Belgium.

Jadoul was the subject of an international arrest warrant. Before becoming a fugitive, he was in prison and has multiple convictions for prostitution of a minor aged 13, violence and pimping…

“No one – certainly not the criminals – could have expected an ending like this,” said a police source. “There must be more chance of winning the lottery.”

If this occurred in the UK, the coppers probably would have arrested the Belgian couple along with the carjackers. They’d leave them in custody in the same jail while they spent a week sorting out legal opinions over them being mean to the crooks.

Unless they were Black or Mexican, of course.

New Zealand police arrested and strip searched a black South African rugby journalist drinking with white colleagues in a pub because he “fitted the profile of a drug dealer”.

Vata Ngobeni, who works for the Pretoria News newspaper and acts as an analyst for South Africa’s national broadcaster SABC, was arrested in the early hours of Monday morning and taken to a police station where he was strip searched.

When he tried to explain that he was a journalist on tour covering the Springboks’s performance in the Rugby World Cup, which New Zealand is hosting, he was told they were following standard procedure when they spot someone who fits “the profile of a drug dealer”.

Colleagues in the bar with him confirmed he was the only black person present.

“I have never been so embarrassed in my life,” he told a South African newspaper after being released. “I have never experienced this kind of treatment in all my travels around the world, so to be singled out as a common criminal in front of so many people is something I will never forget.”

Here in the United States we have so many politicians and populist pimps rationalizing away the possible effects of police profiling – we tend to forget that other nations from Israel to New Zealand have already established such foolishness as standard operating procedures.

Some are on their way out of official racism – which I hope would be the case in New Zealand – while others like Israel are baking institutionalized bigotry into daily life.

Pretty fancy X-Ray tech

A 20-year-old Irishman had a $200,000 lunch — and now he might have to pay.

Security personal at a Sao Paulo, Brazil airport on Monday detained a nervous traveler later allegedly found to be smuggling approximately 72 bags of cocaine in his stomach, the Irish independent reports.

Authorities with the Brazilian Federal Police released x-ray images of the suspect, identified only as F.B.B., which appear to show his belly full of drugs. The nearly two-pound stash of coke is estimated to be worth $200,000.

Police said the man was boarding a flight to Lisbon en route to Brussels. Instead of making the trip, authorities escorted the man to a nearby hospital where the capsules were removed, MSNBC reports.

The suspect is charged with international drug trafficking and could face up to 15 years in prison.

No mention of which end of the alimentary canal was utilized to remove the cocaine capsules.

Thanks, Ursarodinia