wacky news round-up

Sounds like copper theft could become a good part time home-business for many people.

6NEWS Investigators: High cost of copper theft 3:56 PM

03:57 PM EDT on Monday, July 24, 2006

By STUART WATSON / 6NEWS
E-mail Stuart: SWatson@WCNC.com

The high price of copper is drawing thieves bound and determined to steal the metal. At Overcash Electric in Mooresville crooks were caught on tape carting away four rolls of copper wire. At a Greenville, South Carolina Duke Power substation a man was electrocuted while trying to strip copper. At a Charlotte cell phone tower thieves dug under a fence to steal copper tubing. At a Charlotte antique store thieves even heisted a 7 foot, 600 pound bronze fountain for its copper. Newcomb Spring near the Charlotte Douglas Airport has to use fans to cool the plant since crooks ripped the copper pipes from their giant air conditioning units.

From businesses to construction sites, “They're breaking into houses under construction and stealing the copper piping that is already in the house," said Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Detective Andy Leonard.

Police say these days if it has copper, thieves want it.

continue reading...

This article mentions Limewire then dosen't elobrate how it was used to assist in the theft of $500k.

Man arrested over theft of 500,000 yen from account

The Yomiuri Shimbun

A man was arrested Monday on suspicion of stealing about 500,000 yen from a postal savings account using LimeWire file-sharing software, police said. According to the Nagano prefectural police, this is the first known case of the software being used to gain illegal access to an Internet banking system.

Arrested was Mitsugu Tominaga, 34, of Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, who is on trial on charges of violating the Antiunauthorized Access Law. Junichi Iwai, 33, of Hatogaya in the prefecture, who had been indicted on the same charge in an earlier case, was sent to the prosecutors for the same charge. In February, the two men were arrested on suspicion of withdrawing 950,000 yen by illegally accessing an Internet banking account at Hachijuni Bank in Nagano.

According to the police, Tominaga and Iwai obtained the password for a Japan Post postal savings Internet account and transferred 500,000 yen from the account of a Ishikawa Prefecture man to Iwai's account.
(Jul. 25, 2006)