Italian law enforcement agencies have detained a group of people who sold counterfeit money through a “DarkWeb”.

With the assistance of the Italian Public Prosecutor’s Office, eight criminals were detained in Naples who manufactured and distributed counterfeit euros across Europe. To sell their goods, the criminals used “DarkWeb” shops and sent counterfeit money by mail. In July 2018, an investigation was launched against a group of people accused of manufacturing and selling counterfeit banknotes worth more than 120 thousand euros. The counterfeiters had accomplices in many countries of the European Union, which greatly simplified their work.

The criminals acted according to a fairly simple scheme: they placed ads for the sale of counterfeit euros of various denominations on “DarkWeb” resources, and after receiving the order, they sent their invoice to pay for the goods in bitcoins. To deliver the parcels, they chose international mail, through which they sent toys and various vintage items with banknotes of different denominations hidden in them. During the investigation, European border guards intercepted about 50 packages in total. The total amount of money earned by the criminals in the period from 2012 to 2023 is almost 150 thousand euros. In addition to the counterfeiters, the police detained more than 30 buyers and identified fifty accomplices.

The investigation resulted in the arrest of a group of counterfeiters and the liquidation of their printing plant in Naples.

A former doctor will be imprisoned for 8 years for trying to hire a killer from the “dark web”.

It all started in February 2021, when a visitor to a website for ordering killer services under the nickname Scar215 addressed the administrator of the site in a personal letter with a desire to order an attack on his colleague. The customer sent full information about the victim (name, address and photo) and an amount of about USD 2,000 (approximately the same amount of money was used to buy the assassination of the colleague).

This was not the last order from the anonymous person. In early April 2021, Scar215 sent letters to three administrators of similar sites with a detailed description of his order. He wanted to order the kidnapping of his wife because she had started the process of divorce from him. The text of the task stated that she had to be kidnapped and held for one week, the victim had to be injected with heroin twice a day to induce addiction, and the task was accompanied by a list of goals for which the mercenary would receive a “nice bonus”. If we count all the “bonuses” and the initial amount specified in the text of the task, we will get the amount of USD 60,000, which is the amount for which the customer planned to organize the “re-education” of his wife. During the discussion of the details, the customer allowed the mercenary to use any methods to achieve the goal, and the goal was to return the wife to the customer and complete the divorce procedure. Scar215 paid for his two orders with bitcoin, probably to remain completely anonymous.

All the illegal actions could not go unnoticed. While analyzing the blockchain, the FBI noticed some strange transactions, and they contacted the exchange (Coinbase, because it was from an account registered on this exchange that strange transactions for a rather large amount were made) to obtain information on these transactions, which led them to a man named Ronald Craig Ilg, who lived in Spokane, Washington. Ronald was then detained. In the morning, on April 11, 2021, he was interrogated, during which Ronald confessed that he intended to hire killers to kill himself, but investigators did not believe him, so a search was conducted at the suspect’s home. The police were interested in a safe in the man’s bedroom. Access to it was provided by the owner of the house. Inside the safe, investigators found a lot of records and notes. On April 13, 2021, using the found records, law enforcement agencies gained access to the Scar215 user account on the dark web, as well as to correspondence with administrators of sites providing “specific” services.

Ronald Craig Ilg confessed to ordering the attacks on his colleague and ex-wife and was sentenced on August 10, 2022: 8 years in prison in a general regime colony. If you think that’s all, you’re wrong, on January 24, 2023, the court ordered the prisoner to pay the victims compensation in the amount of $125,000.

The Hague Prosecutor’s Office has requested a 5 and a half year prison sentence for a counterfeiter who produced and distributed counterfeit money via DarkWeb.

According to the Dutch prosecutor’s office, a 32-year-old resident of The Hague has been producing and selling counterfeit banknotes via DarkWeb for more than 3 years and sending them by mail throughout Europe.

The investigation began in early 2020. At that time, the Dutch authorities were asked by the German and Austrian authorities to launch an investigation into counterfeiting. Based on the information provided, the customs authorities of Germany and Austria were able to intercept packages of counterfeit banknotes sent to them from the Netherlands.

During the course of this investigation, law enforcement authorities were able to intercept a dozen packages sent to customers. All packages contained counterfeit banknotes of various currencies and denominations. The intercepted banknotes, namely the fingerprints left on them, helped law enforcement agencies identify the counterfeiter.

On July 12, 2022, investigators obtained a search warrant for the accused. During the search, the 32-year-old man was found to have a full-fledged printing house for the production of counterfeit banknotes of various denominations. Also, about 60 thousand euros, approximately 100 thousand Swedish kronor and more than 10 thousand US dollars were found. Firearms and ammunition were also found on the accused’s person.

According to the information provided by the Central Bank of the Netherlands, the counterfeiter produced and partially distributed counterfeit banknotes worth about 800 thousand euros throughout Europe.

A court hearing is scheduled for 2023, at which the defendant will be sentenced.

After being arrested, New Jersey resident John-Michael Musbach pleaded guilty to attempting to hire a hitman from DarkWeb to kill a minor.

According to the information provided, 31-year-old New Jersey resident John-Michael Musbach transferred about $20,000 in BTC to the account of a fraudulent website for hiring killers. He was trying to hire a killer to kill a 14-year-old boy whom he had sexually abused the day before. According to the police department, in the summer of 2015, John-Michael conducted sexual correspondence with a minor (the victim was only 13 years old at the time) using the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) resource.

This could not go unnoticed, so the victim’s parents found out about it and immediately contacted the police. On March 31, 2016, the police arrested Michael, and on October 11, he confessed to having sexual relations with the victim.

On February 9, 2018, Michael was sentenced to 2 years of suspended imprisonment. The case would have been closed, but in 2019, an anonymous informant contacted HSI agents. The anonymous informant reported that in 2016, a user under the nickname agentisai wanted to use the services of a DarkNet site to order the services of a killer.

The anonymous person shared private correspondence from which it became known that in May 2016, agentisai asked the site administration whether a minor could be a target, and received a response that age was not a problem for the order. After receiving a positive response to his request, agentisai transferred 40 bitcoins to the site’s account and placed an order to kill a 14-year-old boy. During the order confirmation, the administrator asked for another $5,000, saying that this way his order would be fulfilled by a more professional killer. After that, agentisai wanted to deactivate his order, but was refused. The site administrator threatened to provide all the information to law enforcement agencies if agentisai did not pay another 22 BTC. For this amount, the administration promised to delete the customer’s account.

The agents reported this information to the Coinbase exchange, as it was the exchange that was used to pay for the murder order. The exchange indicated that this transaction was made from an account registered to John-Michael.

John-Michael was arrested on August 13, 2020, and pleaded guilty on February 2, 2023. U.S. District Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez has scheduled his sentencing for June 13, 2023. Michael faces a 10-year prison sentence.

The text created could lead to massive scandals and lawsuits between scientists. ICML leaders have banned scientists from submitting articles that are created using huge LLMs, such as ChatGPT ( ChatGPT).

Papers with generated text are forbidden if the text is not part of the experimental study of articles. However, scholars can use AI to correct text to improve its style or grammar. The ICML academies, to protect against spam, have banned the acceptance of articles created with the help of III. Note that the rules are not legally established, so they may still change in the future.

Depending on whether or not scientists adhere to the rule depends on their decision. Currently, there are no tools to effectively detect generated text, so the ICML will only rely on those who note in the process of examining suspicious documents. Generated texts often contain real errors, and authors must be heavily edited by the AI text to ensure that they are not suspicious.

Types of language models such as ChatGpt are trained on text from the Internet. They have learned to find common patterns between words to predict what to write next, using textual instructions or prompts. The question arises as to whether these systems work by plagiarizing authors? There is currently no evidence that ChatGPT directly copies the text of its article, but its results are based on human letters.