Verizon Wireless is facing a lawsuit after a man claiming to be a detective with the Cary Police Department was arrested for stalking. Last year, Robert Glauner, who is a resident of New Mexico, sent Verizon Wireless a fake search warrant demanding phone records from a Cary woman. He falsely claimed that the woman was a homicide suspect, but it was later revealed that she was someone he was stalking after connecting with her online.
According to this News and Observer article, Glauner met the woman online in August 2023. The woman gave him her phone number and an alias, but the relationship eventually led to her blocking his number. In accordance with the “search warrant,” Verizon disclosed the woman’s full name, new phone number, and her address, which he used to escalate his harassment efforts. He made calls to her family, friends, and job on several occasions. In November, he called the woman and said he was on the way to Cary to see her. Glauner was arrested in Cary, in possession of a black folding blade knife, two bundles of rope in the car he drove to North Carolina, and two cell phones, one of which displayed an image of the woman on its lock screen.
He was later federally indicted on obtaining confidential phone records, making false statements, and obtaining phone records by claiming to be a detective with the Cary Police Department and submitting a false search warrant with a judge’s forged signature.
Doctor charged with filming women and children in hospital with hidden cameras. NBC reports that a Detroit-area doctor has been charged with using hidden cameras to secretly film women and children in the hospital where he worked over the course of six years. According to the local sheriff’s office, Dr. Oumair Aejaz recorded children as young as two and women recovering from operations in various hospital rooms. He spied on people in changing rooms, closets, bathrooms and bedrooms at hospitals and at a local swim club. Detectives received a tip about Aejaz’s behavior on August 7 and carried out a raid on his home the next day, when 6 computers, 4 cell phones, and 15 external storage devices were seized. One device contained 13,000 videos dating back six years, and detectives estimate it will take at least six months to fully examine all the other seized devices. He has been charged with several crimes, including one count of sexual abuse of a child, one count of using a computer to create and/or reproduce child sexual abuse material, and four counts of capturing or recording children under 18 and two women while nude. His bond is set at $2 million.
How to catch a thief. A California woman who’d had several items stolen from her mailbox at the post office decided she would send herself a package with an Apple AirTag to find the suspected thief. If her mail was stolen again, she hoped the AirTag would help to track the thieves down. On Monday, sheriff’s deputies were called to the post office for a report of mail theft. When they arrived, the woman told officials her mail had been stolen again, including the package with the AirTag. Law enforcement tracked the AirTag to a block about 16 miles from the post office and arrested two suspects. They located the package with the AirTag among the victim’s mail, as well as items believed to have been stolen from more than a dozen other people. The two suspects were charged with possession of checks with intent to commit fraud, conspiracy, and identity and credit card theft.
Hurricane Debby leaves behind more than $1.6 million worth of cocaine in Florida. More than 100 pounds of narcotics were discovered along the Florida coast after Hurricane Debby. On August 4, 25 packages of cocaine were found on a beach in the Florida Keys. According to authorities, the packages weighed about 70 pounds and contained cocaine with an estimated street value of more than $1 million. A week later, the local sheriff’s office discovered another batch of cocaine floating near Everglades City. That batch was later determined to be 56 pounds of cocaine wrapped in a package about the size of a microwave oven. It contained 25 individually wrapped kilograms of cocaine and had an estimated street value of $625,000.
Local detectives are working to determine where the drugs came from. According to this article, drug smugglers often use boats, submarines and other vessels to transport drugs into the U.S. by sea and may ditch the drugs in the water to avoid seizure if their vessels encounter issues such as mechanical failures, severe weather, or interception by law enforcement. Once in the water, ocean currents and tides can carry the drugs to shore far away from their original drop points.
Don’t eat the celery in California. In other drug-related news, officers recently found and seized almost $6 million worth of methamphetamine in less than two weeks at the United States-Mexico border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said the drug hauls were discovered in two separate incidents.
The first seizure happened at an inspection port in San Diego, when border agents found 629 pounds of methamphetamine in a grocery shipping crate filled with celery. The haul had an estimated street value of $755,000. Less than two weeks after the celery seizure, agents at the same inspection facility discovered an even larger haul of methamphetamine. The drugs were wrapped inside packaging that might be mistaken for watermelon from a distance. Closer inspection revealed the packages were actually filled with 4,587 pounds of meth, with a street value exceeding $5 million.
Both of these seizures came as part of Operation Apollo, an ongoing project to combat trafficking of fentanyl, which the U.S. government has declared as a leading source of the current opioid overdose epidemic in this country. It’s focused in California and Arizona.
Not a good way to avoid paying child support. A Kentucky man attempted to fake his death to avoid paying child support obligations by hacking into state registries and falsifying official records. According to this AP News story, Jesse Kipf accessed Hawaii’s death registry system by using the username and password of a doctor living in another state. Once inside the system, Kipf created a case for his own death and completed a worksheet for a death certificate in that state, resulting in Kipf being registered as a deceased person in several government databases. Kipf pleaded guilty in April to federal charges of aggravated identity theft and computer fraud. On Monday, he was sentenced to nine years in federal prison after reaching a plea agreement. Kipf has also been ordered to pay more than $195,000 in restitution for damage to computer systems and the remaining total of his child support.