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Ohio Train Derailment Investigation Finds Overheated Wheel Bearing

According to news sources, the “preventable” and “traumatic” derailment of a train carrying dangerous chemicals in Ohio can be traced to an overheated wheel bearing, which was 253 degrees hotter than the air temperature, National Transportation Safety Board officials said Thursday.

The NTSB released a preliminary report offering clues about what most likely caused the 150-car Norfolk Southern Railway train to crash in East Palestine, just west of the Pennsylvania state line, on Feb. 3. NTSB Chairperson Jennifer Homendy also announced that the board will hold an investigatory field hearing in the East Palestine area in the spring, in addition to its customary full meeting in Washington, D.C.

“We don’t usually have investigative [field] hearings, but we believe that it will be helpful in getting more factual information and getting buy-in on change that will be needed,” Homendy said in an interview after a news conference.

“I think the community deserves to hear some of the answers, and having it there will allow them to see and hear what is being said,” she said.

According to the NTSB report, a defect detector built into the railway transmitted an alarm message to the train’s crew after it recorded that the temperature of a wheel bearing on the 23rd car was 253 degrees Fahrenheit above the ambient temperature. Anything over 170 degrees requires the engineer to stop the train, according to Norfolk Southern’s policies. The engineer hit the brakes, but before the train came to a full stop, the 23rd car derailed, taking others with it, and an automatic emergency break kicked in.

After that, “the crew observed fire and smoke and notified the Cleveland East dispatcher of a possible derailment,” the report said.

It’s all theories and conjecture until SOMEONE investigates. As we’ve seen so many times, success or failure in the courtroom or during the settlement process depends on having the very best, most detailed information about a case. That’s why great attorneys and law firms across the country work with the worldwide team of Santoni Investigations who will ensure you know everything to make the right decisions and maximize the settlement process or win your case in court!

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California Cannabis Industry to be Investigated by Sacramento

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According to news sources, California lawmakers are calling for a sweeping investigation into corruption in the state’s cannabis industry, legislative hearings on the exploitation of farmworkers and new laws to thwart labor trafficking in response to revelations of rampant abuses and worker deaths in a multibillion-dollar market that has become increasingly unmanageable.

The proposals follow a series of (LA) Times investigations last year showing that California’s 2016 legalization of recreational cannabis spurred political corruption, explosive growth in illegal cultivation and widespread exploitation of workers. The Times found that wage theft was rampant and that many workers were subjected to squalid, sometimes lethal conditions.

A spokesperson for the state’s Department of Industrial Relations told The Times last week that the agency is examining the deaths of 32 cannabis farmworkers — never reported to work safety regulators — uncovered by the newspaper.

“We should be a little bit ashamed that we’ve allowed this helter-skelter approach to commercializing and legalizing the cannabis industry,” said Sen. Dave Cortese, a San Jose Democrat who leads the Senate Labor Committee. Cortese called California’s cannabis market the “Wild, Wild West.”

The newspaper found that California’s dual state and local cannabis licensing system created fertile ground for corruption by giving thousands of often part-time, low-paid municipal officials the power to choose winners and losers in the multimillion-dollar deals.

According to the LA Times reports, workers told reporters of bosses who threatened them with guns or physical violence, of living on remote work sites without housing or sanitary facilities or access to food, and of fraudulent promises of pay. In some cases, they said, bosses threatened to report them to immigration authorities or withhold their wages if they tried to leave.

Fraud and coercion are elements of labor trafficking, a felony offense in California. A series of 2020 reports by California’s independent government watch group, the Little Hoover Commission, faulted the state for failing to have clear labor trafficking laws and for lacking a single agency responsible for prosecution.

So the LA Times investigates and that work brings about another more in-depth investigation. Sounds like there’s a lot to sort out there. But as we’ve seen so many times, success or failure in the courtroom or during the settlement process depends on having the very best, most detailed information about a case. That’s why great attorneys and law firms across the country work with the worldwide team of Santoni Investigations who will ensure you know everything to make the right decisions and maximize the settlement process or win your case in court!

Arizona Exits Banking Practices Investigations

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said Monday her office will no longer join a multi-state investigation into U.S. banks that consider sustainability when making investments. Former AG Mark Brnovich, a Republican, was one of 18 state attorneys general who launched an inquiry in October 2022 into environmental, social and governance investing, better known as ESG.

“While my predecessor’s administration spent time and resources launching politicized investigations into the environmental sustainability efforts of major financial institutions, my administration is committed to using the tools and resources at our disposal to protect and secure the rights of Arizonans on matters that affect their daily lives,” Mayes said in a press release. Bank of America, CitiGroup, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo are among the banks targeted by the investigation.

“Corporations should be permitted to access capital markets in ways that they feel are necessary for the advancement of their investor objectives and for society, as long as they are doing so in a lawful manner,” Mayes said.

“Corporations increasingly realize that investing in sustainability is both good for our country, our environment, and public health and good for their bottom lines. The state of Arizona is not going to stand in the way of corporations’ efforts to move in the right direction.”

It’s always fascinating to see which investigations are valued and which aren’t. But as we’ve seen so many times, success or failure in the courtroom or during the settlement process depends on having the very best, most detailed information about a case. That’s why great attorneys and law firms across the country work with the worldwide team of Santoni Investigations who will ensure you know everything to make the right decisions and maximize the settlement process or win your case in court!

No Independent Investigation Says New FTX CEO

According to news sources, FTX’s new chief executive told a bankruptcy court Monday there is “a danger” to authorizing an independent investigation of the crypto exchange’s collapse. John Ray said he had no use for prior court-supervised investigations into other companies he steered through bankruptcy.

“Neither in Enron nor in Residential Capital did I make use of that report,” Ray testified during a hearing before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey in Delaware. “They’re almost a curated gathering of statements that failed to take real opinions as to what occurred.”

The Enron investigation cost $90 million and the Residential Capital investigation cost $100 million, Ray said, adding that neither was helpful. Ray’s testimony came as the judge considered whether to appoint an examiner in the FTX collapse as requested by the Justice Department.

“This is just too fragile an environment for me to accept yet another seat at the table,” Ray testified. “We’ve come too far to allow that to happen.”

Dorsey later said he’d take under advisement a request to appoint an examiner to investigate the collapse of FTX while the parties try to resolve their differences.

The collapse of FTX spurred criminal charges against its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, who has pleaded not guilty to eight criminal charges, including fraud and conspiracy. Ray testified that FTX has furnished 70,000 documents to federal prosecutors, who have asked 156 times for information.

“It’s virtually an ongoing exercise, but the last 90 days have been an extremely intense effort to provide the information the government has requested,” Ray said.

It’s very interesting that the new CEO does not want to see an independent investigation here. As we know, success or failure in the courtroom or during the settlement process depends on having the very best, most detailed information about a case. That’s why great attorneys and law firms across the country work with the worldwide team of Santoni Investigations who will ensure you know everything to make the right decisions and maximize the settlement process or win your case in court!

Why the Supreme Court Isn’t Great at Investigations

News sources have confirmed that we all learned something very powerful from the Supreme Court’s report of its internal investigation of the leak to Politico of the draft Dobbs opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. We learned that The Supreme Court isn’t very good at internal investigations.

The investigation, which was conducted by the marshal of the Supreme Court, Col. Gail A. Curley, failed to identify the leaker, or even how the draft Dobbs opinion was leaked. But, the reasons the Court’s investigation deserves a low grade are as follows —

They should NOT have investigated themselves — Given the inherent conflict when an organization investigates itself, any internal investigation must be credible in both fact and appearance. Would be better to use independent counsel.
The Court did NOT follow its own best practices.
The investigation did NOT follow all leads, most glaringly by apparently failing to interview spouses of Court clerks and personnel even though, according to the final report, “some individuals admitted to investigators that they told their spouse or partner about the draft Dobbs opinion and the vote count, in violation of the Court’s confidentiality rules.” What were the reasons for not interviewing spouses and partners, especially since the draft opinion apparently could be accessed from home? The report does not say.

The bottom line is that to conduct a credible internal investigation of the Dobbs leak, it would have to relinquish control over the investigation, and relinquishing control is not in the Court’s DNA. Instead, as we can see, it tried to have it both ways by using a Court employee to do the investigation and an outside lawyer to give it an arms-length blessing.

As this high profile case demonstrates there are correct and incorrect ways to conduct investigations. As we know, success or failure in the courtroom or during the settlement process depends on having the very best, most detailed information about a case. That’s why great attorneys and law firms across the country work with the worldwide team of Santoni Investigations who will ensure you know everything to make the right decisions and maximize the settlement process or win your case in court!

Meta “Sues Untraceable” Surveillance Firm for Scraping Facebook and Instagram Data

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There’s the right and ethical/legal way to do surveillance—and then there’s this.

Only days after Meta achieved victory after suing the NSO Group for Computer Fraud and Abuse Act charges, the company filed a lawsuit against surveillance company Voyager Labs for violations of its Terms and Policies and California law. Voyager Labs, a surveillance firm, allegedly created thousands of Facebook and Instagram accounts so it could use its scraping tool to steal data.

According to court documents, Voyager Labs created 38,000 fake accounts on Facebook and Instagram so it could use its home-brew surveillance software to scrape data from them.

Voyager is said to have scraped more than half a million pieces of viewable profile information, including likes, comments, friends list, photos, and Facebook Groups and Pages information.

Meta was aware of Voyager’s scraping activities long before formally filing a case against the company. Court documents show that no later than July 2022, Voyager began using its thousands of fake accounts to scrape data.

At least since February 2016, Voyager has been creating these multiple fake accounts on Meta’s platforms, agreeing with its terms yet knowingly breaking them. On October 2017, Meta sent a cease and desist letter to Voyager for the alleged fake accounts.

When confronted about a Facebook account for an individual named “Olga Herrera”, Meta alleges Voyager denied accessing, using, and controlling this account, although Meta says it had seen that a Voyager employee logged on to it just three days before.

Meta asserts in the complaint that Voyager also offered to scrape data from websites on client request.

Voyager’s known target of data scraping range from “employees of non-profit organizations, universities, news media organizations, healthcare facilities, the armed forces of the United States, and local, state, and federal government agencies, as well as full-time parents, retirees, and union members”. In the suit, Meta is also asking the court to enforce its Terms and Policies, and ban Voyager Labs from Facebook and Instagram.

Surveillance can be a powerful tool and like all tools, it can be misused. As we know, success or failure in the courtroom or during the settlement process depends on having the very best, most detailed information about a case. That’s why great attorneys and law firms across the country work with the worldwide team of Santoni Investigations who will ensure you know everything to make the right decisions and maximize the settlement process or win your case in court!

FBI Uses New Top-Secret Investigative Method to Remove Anonymity for Tor User

What is the best way to remove anonymity for a Tor user? According to news reports, somebody over at the FBI definitely has a method, but they “clearly aren’t planning on telling anybody anytime soon.”

Motherboard originally reported that the bureau has somehow managed to nab the IP address of an alleged criminal using Tor, short for “The Onion Router,” as part of an ongoing anti-terrorism case.

The guy in question, Muhammed Momtaz Al-Azhari, of Tampa, Florida, was charged in 2020 with attempting to provide material support to ISIS. According to the government, Al-Azhari is “An ISIS supporter who planned and attempted to carry out an attack on behalf of that terrorist organization.” Part of the government’s case against Al-Azhari revolves around his use of Tor to make multiple visits to an ISIS-related website prior to the planned attack.

The Internet’s well-known portal to the dark web, Tor, is supposed to protect your IP address and keep you anonymous as you surf. Still, Tor has been known to have vulnerabilities that can lead to de-anonymization. The government ascertained Al-Azhari’s real IP address-which actually turned out to be his grandma’s IP address because he was staying with her in Riverside, California at the time of his arrest, court documents state.

Since Tor should have protected Azhari’s real location and IP address, the question remains: how did the feds get this information? Motherboard reports that Al-Azhari’s defense has asked the feds to reveal more details about their digital probing methods, technically known as network investigative techniques, or NITs, but that the FBI’s lawyers are being “pretty cagey.”

Government attorneys seem to be doing everything in their power to make sure that the details of the NIT don’t enter the public docket. In many ways, this isn’t all that surprising, since federal cops tend to spend a lot of time trying to make sure that their methods and procedures remain secret and effective against criminals.

So we see that there is no such thing as being “anonymous” on the web with the right investigator on the case. And as we know, success or failure in the courtroom or during the settlement process depends on having the very best, most detailed information about a case. That’s why great attorneys and law firms across the country work with the worldwide team of Santoni Investigations who will ensure you know everything to make the right decisions and maximize the settlement process or win your case in court!

Insider Trading Decision Could Impact Future White-Collar Investigations and Prosecutions

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Last week, the Second Circuit Court issued a potentially significant decision in an insider-trading case on remand from the Supreme Court that may significantly impact both insider trading investigations and broader “fraud” prosecutions going forward.

The case, United States v. Blaszczak, involved allegations that one of the defendants (the “tipper”) who worked for the U.S. government’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”), gave other defendants (the “tippees”) confidential information about the timing and substance of proposed changes to reimbursement rates for certain types of medical care for various health conditions (“CMS Data”). As alleged by the government, the tippees then used the CMS Data to execute profitable trades in companies that would be impacted by the changed reimbursement rates.

The government charged the defendants with the substantives offenses of (i) securities fraud under Section 10b of the 1934 Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5 (“10b-5 Securities Fraud”); (ii) securities fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1348 (“1348 Securities Fraud”); (iii) wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343; and (iv) conversion of federal government property under 18 U.S.C. § 641, as well as conspiracy to commit those offenses.

At trial, the jury convicted the defendants of 1348 Securities Fraud, wire fraud, and section 641, as well as conspiracy, but acquitted them of substantive Rule 10b-5 Securities Fraud.

According to sources, here are several takeaways from the recent decision:

Far-Reaching: The majority’s narrow definition of “property” impacts the wire fraud statute and the conversion of property statute, both of which are “workhorse” federal statutes, used in a variety of contexts beyond insider trading and beyond securities fraud more generally.

Narrow Definition of Property: With both Blaszczak II’s (i) narrow definition of property and (ii) the concurrence’s criticisms of the lack of a personal-benefit test in Section 1348, it seems like Rule 10b-5, which does not require a deprivation of property, may, after all, remain the securities fraud statute of choice for government insider trading prosecutions.

So it looks like there are some new rules to know that will impact future white-collar investigations and prosecutions. And as we know, success or failure in the courtroom or during the settlement process depends on having the very best, most detailed information about a case. That’s why great attorneys and law firms across the country work with the worldwide team of Santoni Investigations who will ensure you know everything to make the right decisions and maximize the settlement process or win your case in court!

Death Investigations Often Conducted by Non-Qualified Coroners

Investigating death is serious business, but as a recent report by CBS News details, it’s not always handled in the most professional manner in every state.

For example, when a group of physicians gathered in Washington state for an annual meeting, one made a startling revelation: If you ever want to know when, how — and where — to kill someone, I can tell you, and you’ll get away with it. No problem.

That’s because the expertise and availability of coroners, who determine cause of death in criminal and unexplained cases, vary widely across Washington, as they do in many other parts of the country.

“A coroner doesn’t have to ever have taken a science class in their life,” said Nancy Belcher, chief executive officer of the King County Medical Society, the group that met that day.

Her colleague’s startling comment launched her on a four-year journey to improve the state’s archaic death investigation system, she said. “These are the people that go in, look at a homicide scene or death, and say whether there needs to be an autopsy. They’re the ultimate decision-maker,” Belcher added.

Each state has its own laws governing the investigation of violent and unexplained deaths, and most delegate the task to cities, counties, and regional districts. The job can be held by an elected coroner as young as 18 or a highly trained physician appointed as medical examiner. Some death investigators work for elected sheriffs who try to avoid controversy or owe political favors. Others own funeral homes and direct bodies to their private businesses.

Overall, it’s a disjointed and chronically underfunded system — with more than 2,000 offices across the country that determine the cause of death in about 600,000 cases a year.

“There are some really egregious conflicts of interest that can arise with coroners,” said Justin Feldman, a visiting professor at Harvard University’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights.

Proponents of overhauling the system in Washington state — where in small, rural counties, the local prosecutor doubles as the coroner — faced hurdles.

The King County Medical Society, which wrote legislation to divorce the two, said the system created a conflict of interest. But small counties worried they didn’t have the money to hire a coroner.

So, lawmakers struck a deal with the counties to allow them to pool their resources and hire shared contract coroners in exchange for ending the dual role for prosecutors by 2025. The bill, HB 1326, signed last year by Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, also requires more rigorous training for coroners and medical examiners.

“We had some hostile people that we talked to that really just felt that we were gunning for them, and we absolutely were not,” Belcher said. “We were just trying to figure out a system that I think anybody would agree needed to be overhauled.”

Who conducts the investigation often changes the findings. And as we know, success or failure in the courtroom or during the settlement process depends on having the very best, most detailed information about a case. That’s why great attorneys and law firms across the country work with the worldwide team of Santoni Investigations who will ensure you know everything to make the right decisions and maximize the settlement process or win your case in court!