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There have been a recent series of theft allegations against TSA employees.

One such case involves Agent Clayton Keith Dovel who was arrested last week on suspicion of stealing numerous iPads from passenger’s luggage at DFW’s airport.

It appears Dovel was stealing the iPads from his position where he screened passenger’s checked luggage by hand.

Due to the smarts of one victim, Dovel was caught because the victim had downloaded the “Find My iPhone” app onto her iPad. She was able to track her stolen iPad directly to Dovel’s house where police found at least seven iPads at Dovel’s home.

Dovel has been placed on leave until officials can further investigate the situation.

I think video surveillance cameras should be installed in the area where luggage is checked. This would catch those who are stealing, although I am sure most TSA employees are honest, hard working individuals.

Video surveillance in the screening area at John F. Kennedy International Airport recently helped catch a TSA agent who stole $5,000 from a passenger’s jacket. The surveillance video showed TSA agent Alexandra Schmid taking the money from a jacket pocket, wrapping the cash in a plastic glove and taking it to a bathroom.

The money hasn’t been recovered and police are investigating whether Schmid gave it to another person in the bathroom.

Schmid, age 31, was arrested on a charge of grand larceny and suspended pending an investigation.

It is best to never check items of value in your luggage and to check for your valuables after they have gone through the passenger screening area. If you must check your computers, there are software programs for Macs and PCs that will track your computer should it be lost or stolen.

The case of the Utah missing woman, Susan Powell, has been in the news for over two years. Child custody battles between the father of the children, Josh Powell, and Susan’s parents, Chuck and Judy Cox, have also been going on for years.

Apparently no one but the Coxes, Susan’s parents, could have predicted that things could only get worse – much worse.

Josh Powell left a voicemail for family members saying he couldn’t live without the boys and didn’t want to go on anymore. Then on Sunday, he set his house ablaze and killed himself and his two young sons.

Although Josh Powell painted himself as a tortured man, ridiculed without reason in the disappearance of his wife, the investigation and autopsy reports released showed the acts of a violent man who meticulously planned the double murder-suicide of himself and his two young sons.

Powell’s horrific murder-suicide seemed to come out of nowhere. Just days before, in a motion seeking custody of his children filed with a Washington state court, Powell said he missed his wife, and would remain strong for the boys. Things changed dramatically when the judge ruled against him, ordering the children to remain with Susan Powell’s parents for now.

On Sunday, Powell’s boys came for a routine supervised visit. They ran ahead, the social worker falling behind. Powell then locked the door, used a hatchet on his kids, and lit the house on fire. Powell and both boys died of smoke inhalation, according to the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office.

However, they also suffered “chop injuries” that contributed to their deaths — 7-year-old Charles was struck on his neck and 5-year-old Braden had injuries to both his head and neck, Baker said.

Susan Powell’s parents, the boy’s grandparents, had legal custody of the kids before their death. They told NBC’s TODAY Show that Powell felt “cornered.” “We felt [the boys] were safe as long as they were with us, but we were concerned about the visitation,” Chuck Cox told NBC’s Ann Curry. ” Added Judy Cox, “He didn’t like us and he just wanted to get the kids away from us so much. And it really bothered him that the boys were showing so much affection to Chuck.”

The Coxes spoke with reporters on Monday. They said the boys played happily and didn’t want to visit their father when the time came for their weekly Sunday visit. But Judy Cox said she talked them into going — and she now regrets it. Chuck Cox said he didn’t necessarily think there was any more the court could have done legally to protect his grandchildren. However, he said he didn’t like that there was only one supervisor during their visits with their father.

Authorities recovered two 5-gallon cans of gasoline inside the home. Gasoline from one 5-gallon can was spread throughout the house and used as an accelerant. The other can was found by the three bodies, said Pierce County Sheriff’s Detective Ed Troyer. “This was definitely a deliberate, planned-out event,” Troyer said.

Powell sent emails to several people, including his lawyer, saying, “I’m sorry. Goodbye.” To others, including his cousins and pastor, he sent longer emails, with instructions on where to find his money and how to shut off his utilities. Shut off his utilities? This is a detail this man was concerned about before a murder-suicide? Guess what? The utility companies will shut off your power when you don’t pay your bill. In at least one email, he wrote that he couldn’t live without his boys, Troyer said. Apparently, he didn’t want the boys to live with anyone else either.

The only mention of his wife, who has been missing for over two years, was in one of the emails. He said, “There’s no indication about Susan in anything that we’ve found so far.”

Josh Powell claimed that the night his wife vanished in December 2009, he took the boys from their West Valley City home, about 10 miles outside Salt Lake City, on a midnight camping trip in freezing temperatures — a story her parents never believed. Authorities searched the area in the central Utah desert but came up empty.

Chuck Cox said that the summer after his daughter disappeared, Braden (one of the boys) drew a picture at day care of a van with three people in it, and told caregivers who asked him about it that it was a picture of his family going camping: “Mommy’s in the trunk,” the boy reportedly said.

Although Josh is gone and was always a person of interest, his father also still remains a person of interest. Josh’s father, Steve Powell, claimed on national television last year to have had a flirtatious or even sexual relationship with Susan — something her family has adamantly denied.

Steve Powell has been in jail on voyeurism and child porn charges since last fall after authorities found explicit images on his computers during a search of his home in the case of his missing daughter-in-law.

West Valley, Utah, Police Chief Buzz Nielsen, who is in charge of the investigation into the young mother’s disappearance, is not giving up on solving the missing person case of Susan Powell.

Nielsen said Utah authorities would continue with their investigation and hoped to make an arrest in the Susan Powell case this year.

“On a criminal case of this nature, you’ve got one shot. You’ve got to make sure everything is done right,” Nielsen said. “Our case is not closed.”

Read full story@ msnbc

Anonymous hackers have posted a YouTube video of a candid and embarrasing conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard in which investigators talk about hacking suspects. One of the suspects is a 15-year-old which a UK-based law enforcement official called “a bit of an idiot” and a “pain in the butt.”

Ironically, this sensitive conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard was recorded by the very people they are investigating - the hacking group known as Anonymous.

The group released a nearly 17-minute-long recording of what appears to be a Jan. 17 conference call devoted to tracking and prosecuting members of the loose-knit hacking group (video link included in story link below).

The FBI stated that the information “was intended for law enforcement officers only and was illegally obtained” but that no FBI systems were breached. I am not sure what the FBI means when they say “systems” weren’t breached. Clearly they were or else the group would not have been able to eavesdrop on the call. The FBI says it’s not entirely clear how the hackers got their hands on the recording. Parts of the recording appear to have been edited to bleep out the names of some of the suspects being discussed.

If you listen to the recording, you can hear people entering their pass code to get into the call throughout the entire call. The first few people who called in identified themselves; however, after that, people continued to call in without identifying themselves (you can hear several beeps). Anonymous published an email purportedly sent by an FBI agent which gave details and a password for accessing the call. This sounds like the obvious way that Anonymous was able to gain information to access the call. “The FBI might be curious how we’re able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now,” the group gloated in a message posted to Twitter.

A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the matter is under investigation, told The Associated Press that authorities were looking at the possibility that the message was intercepted after a private email account of one of the invited participants was compromised.

On Friday, London police confirmed that one of its e-crimes specialist was on the intercepted conference call but said that “at this stage no operational risks” to the police service had been identified.

In the future, I think the investigators should start using handles instead of their real names. They used their first names in the call and identified their locations.

Graham Cluley, an expert with data security company Sophos, said that knowing the time, telephone number and passcode for the call meant it was all too easy to spy on the investigators.

“Even my ironing lady could have rung in and silently listened to the call just like Anonymous did,” Cluley said in an email, calling the fiasco “highly embarrassing for the cops.” Yes indeed!

The breach is likely to act as a wake-up call to law enforcement agencies globally, said Marcus Carey, who spent years securing communications for the NSA before joining security-risk assessment firm Rapid7.

The FBI says ”a criminal investigation is under way to identify and hold accountable those responsible.”

There was enough on the call to clearly hear the investigators talk about a 15-year-old who they say goes by the handle of Tehwongz, who one official said was arrested just before Christmas. The UK-based investigator said the teen was currently under the subject of a local police investigation and that his hard drive was in custody.

He said the teen had written a statement explaining how he came to become a hacker and what he has done, including hacking into a gaming site with access to 32,000 users and their financial information. The FBI might want to consider recruiting this kid.

British police say the intercepted phone call between cybercrime investigators from the FBI and Scotland Yard poses no immediate risk to operations.

Anonymous also made good on one of its promises on Friday. The group also claimed credit for defacing the Boston Police Department’s website, saying it was retaliating for police brutality against protesters at Occupy Wall Street. Anonymous has warned they were intending to go after any police officers who were caught on video pepper spraying or hitting protesters.

Anonymous, an eclectic group of hackers, pranksters and activists, has increasingly focused its attention on law enforcement agencies in general and the FBI in particular.

The group began with targeting the Church of Scientology, the music industry, and financial companies such as Visa and MasterCard. It then expanded its targets to include government, police and military targets.

Dozens of suspected members and supporters have been arrested across the world.

Read story and view video@ msnbc

A Wisconsin woman has been charged with theft over accusations she tried to profit from Facebook’s much-anticipated plans to go public by selling fake stock in the social media giant.

Facebook announced on Wednesday its plans for the biggest-ever Internet IPO.

In a criminal complaint on Thursday, prosecutors said Marianne Oleson told acquaintances she obtained $1 million in stock because her daughter was an acquaintance of Facebook’s founder and persuaded several people to buy fictitious Facebook stock over a four-month period.

The Oshkosh woman was charged with 31 counts of theft, forgery and making misleading statements.

One of Oleson’s victims was a contractor who did work at her house in September. Oleson paid the contractor for the work with $13,980 worth of fake Facebook stock, the complaint alleged.

The contractor, who also paid $10,000 in cash to the woman for additional stock, grew suspicious when he found she lied about her name and various oddities on documents referring to the transaction.

Oleson, 46, was also accused of defrauding a 66-year-old Oshkosh man who was suffering from a vision impairment. According to the district attorney, the man gave Oleson four checks totaling about $43,000 late last year to pay for Facebook stock.

The woman promised him she would send stock certificates in the mail. Oleson is also accused of selling fake Facebook stock to two other men for a total of $9,900.

What each of her four victims say they did receive was a document describing the private stock offering — a document Oleson had received when she contacted OM Investment Management LLC, a legitimate owner of 65,000 shares of private Facebook stock, about purchasing $1 million worth of stock from the company. She allegedly took the share subscription agreement they sent, changed a few words and offered it to her victims as proof of her good faith.

If convicted, she will not only miss the legitimate Facebook IPO, but will also face 218 years, 30 days in prison and $418,000 in fines. Her bond is set at $50,000, and she is due back in court next week.

Read story@ msnbc

Other Sources: newsfeed.time.com