Sunday, February 19, 2023

The Art of Deception & Preventing Human Social Engineering

2000 to 2005 I worked in Private Equity, managing Trusts & Estates for Asset Preservation. We managed about 150 portfolios under 20M. The managing partner had me read The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick, and wanted to impress, that our systems and who we worked with, were secure, and that our firm's risk assessment, would be based on the strength of the employees, and who would be vulnerable to social engineering vs not.

My adopted family is HNW, and the family trust is UHNW, albeit they're the bottom percent of people who are UHNW, which my grandmother spoke about often. My entire life, I was trained in security, and relationships with others. Vulnerabilities with systems, can be secured. Vulnerabilities with people, are more about an archetype, and while they can be trained, modified, improved, to me, it actually does come down to Nature + Nurture + Associates + Life Experiences. There are risk assessments with people, and predictable outcomes based on stress they're going through.

My family, taught top down, which is typical teaching for high intelligence, which they are. They though, are isolated in their wealth, and also insulated in their religion. When I was training in college studying Applied Behaviorism, we worked with ASD bottom-up. I related to this training, as it was like baseball. When I won state as Starting Center for our JV Softball team, I was initially cut, then had to work exceptionally hard all season, to get Starting Center, and only for a few games at the end. With finance and security, strength builds, and is bottom-up, to me. Little mistakes, can create consuming and costly audits further on. Little slips, can open up a person or firm, to breach. Never worth it.

When it comes to people who are trustworthy or not, I always interview based on values, ethics, and utilize body language analysis and micro-expressions as taught by FBI Security Trainers, and Dr. Ekman. My companies never had the problems other firms do, based on due diligence and screening.

All corporate problems are people problems. A strong company, has no place for Narcissism, whatsoever. Does not matter if they're glib, because the place they come from, matters, and NPD is black & white thinkers who are retaliatory, and ultimately out for themselves, without an internal sense of anything eusocial for good. Narcissists thrive in organized crime. In healthy companies, they destroy that which is good.

All healthy companies, do have healthy competition. They do NOT have bullying, nor narcissism, nor any form of social engineering or espionage. They are trained in awareness, prevention, protection.

Individuals and companies are healthy, when their team is healthy, balanced, safe, and stimulated. This is the correct foundation for anything worthwhile, with longevity and profits.
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Saturday, February 18, 2023

WIKIPEDIA: Kidnapping of Charley Ross

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Charley_Ross 


Charles Brewster "Charley" Ross (born May 4, 1870 – disappeared July 1, 1874) was the primary victim of the first American kidnapping for ransom to receive widespread media coverage. His fate remains unknown, and his case is one of the most famous disappearances in U.S. history.[1]

Abduction[edit]

On July 1, 1874, four-year-old Charley Ross and his five-year-old brother, Walter Lewis Ross, were playing in the front yard of their family's home in Germantown, a well-to-do section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A horse-drawn carriage pulled up to the residence and the boys were approached by two men who offered candy and fireworks if they would take a ride with them. These two men were known to the boys, as they had been visiting with candy in the days preceding July 1. So the boys agreed, and were transported through Philadelphia to a store where Walter was directed to buy fireworks inside with 25 cents given to him. Walter did so, but the carriage left without him. Charley Ross was taken away and never seen again.[2]

Ransom[edit]

Christian K. Ross, the boys' father, began receiving ransom demands from the apparent kidnappers. They arrived in the form of notes mailed from post offices in Philadelphia and elsewhere, all written in an odd hand and in a coarse, semi-literate style with many simple words misspelled. The communications generally requested a ransom of $20,000 ($400,000 today). The notes cautioned against police intervention and threatened Charley's life if Christian did not cooperate. While the kidnappers had assumed the family was wealthy because of their large house and Christian's ownership of a small dry goods store,[3] the truth was that the family was heavily in debt due to the stock market crash of 1873. Seeing no way to pay the ransom, Christian went to the police. The kidnapping soon became national news.

In addition to the heavy press coverage, some prominent Philadelphians enlisted the help of the famous Pinkerton National Detective Agency, who had millions of flyers and posters printed with Charley Ross's likeness. A popular song based on the crime was composed by Dexter Smith and W. H. Brockway, entitled "Bring Back Our Darling".[4] Several attempts were made to provide the kidnappers with ransom money as dictated in the notes, but in each case the kidnappers failed to appear. Eventually, communication stopped.

Suspects[edit]

On the night of December 13, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York, the house belonging to Judge Charles Van Brunt was burgled.[5] Holmes Van Brunt, Charles' brother who lived next door, gathered armed members of his household to stop the intruders in the act. Holmes's group entered Charles's house and brought down both burglars with a torrent of gunfire. The burglars, Bill Mosher and Joe Douglas, were career criminals who had recently been released from jail. Mosher was killed instantly from the gunfire. Douglas was mortally wounded, but managed to live approximately two more hours and was able to communicate with Holmes.

There is no clear consensus regarding exactly what Douglas said as he was dying, as all who were present to witness were too shaken by the night's events to give accurate reports. It is thought that Douglas may have said that lying was pointless, as he knew he was mortally wounded, and had thusly admitted that he and Mosher had abducted Charley Ross. Douglas is believed to have reported that Ross was killed, or that Mosher knew where the boy was, possibly adding that he would be returned unharmed to his family within a few days. Douglas did not give any clues to Ross's location or other particulars of the crime and died soon afterwards.

Charley's brother Walter was taken to New York City to look at the bodies of Mosher and Douglas so as to determine if they were the men from the carriage ride. Walter confirmed that they were the same men who took the boys from in front of their home the previous summer. Mosher in particular was very identifiable as he had a distinctively malformed nose, which Walter had described to police as a "monkey nose". (The cartilage of Mosher's nose had been destroyed by syphilis or cancer). Walter himself was asked to identify the bodies of Mosher and Douglas, and he confirmed they were the kidnappers. For most, the issue of who the men in the carriage were was settled beyond reasonable doubt, but Charley Ross was still missing.

Trial[edit]

Former Philadelphia policeman William Westervelt, a known associate of Mosher (and his wife's brother), was arrested and held in connection with the case. He was tried in 1875 for kidnapping.[6] Although Westervelt was a friend and perhaps a confidant of Mosher (while in prison awaiting trial he had told Christian that his son had been alive at the time of Mosher's death), there was virtually no evidence to tie him to the crime itself. Walter, for one, insisted that Westervelt was not one of the men in the carriage that took them away. Westervelt was found not guilty of the kidnapping. However, he was found guilty of a lesser conspiracy charge and served six years in prison. He always maintained his own innocence and swore that he did not know the whereabouts of Charley Ross.

Aftermath[edit]

Two years after the kidnapping, Christian published a book on the case titled The Father's Story of Charley Ross, the Kidnapped Child in order to raise money to continue searching for his son. By 1878, the media interest in the case had begun to wane. To renew interest, Ross had the book reprinted and began giving lectures in Boston.[7]

Christian and his wife continued to search for their son until their deaths (Christian died in 1897 and his wife in 1912).[8] They followed leads and interviewed over 570 boys, teenagers, and eventually grown men from around the world who claimed to have been Charley. All proved to be imposters.[9] The Rosses eventually spent approximately $60,000 looking for their son.[10] In 1924, newspapers began running stories about the case to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Ross's abduction. By that time, Walter was an adult and was working as a stockbroker. In interviews, he said that he and his three sisters still received letters from middle aged men claiming to be his brother.[8]

In 1934, Gustave Blair, a 69-year-old carpenter living in Phoenix, Arizona, petitioned a Maricopa County court to recognize him as the real Charley Ross.[11] Blair claimed that after he was abducted, he lived in a cave and was eventually adopted by a man who told him he was Ross.[10] Charley's older brother, Walter Ross, dismissed Blair as "a crank" and added, "The idea that my brother is still alive is not only absurd, but the man's story seems unconvincing. We've long ago given up hope that Charles ever would be found alive."[12] As Blair's claim went uncontested, the court ruled that he was "Charles Brewster Ross" in March 1939.[12] Despite the ruling, the Ross family refused to recognize Blair as their relative and did not bequeath him any money or property from their parents' estate.[11] Blair briefly moved to Los Angeles and attempted to sell his life story to a film studio but was unsuccessful.[8] He eventually moved to Germantown with his wife before moving back to Phoenix. Blair died in December 1943 still claiming that he was Ross.[11]

Gustave Blair's victory in the Maricopa County courtroom was met with considerable skepticism[13] but was reported at the time to have solved the disappearance of Charley Ross.[14] In 2011, in a study commissioned by descendants of the family Blair claimed had raised him after he was kidnapped, Y-DNA evidence determined it did not. Using chain of custody procedures, DNA was collected from a male descendant of each of two suspected brothers, Harrison Miller and Nelson Miller (aka Gustave Blair). DNA analysis determined they had a “99.99903% probability of kinship” meaning they were in fact brothers. They shared the same paternal linage, a perfect 37/37 7-STR marker match. Gustave Blair was a Miller, Nelson Miller. He could not have been Charley Ross.[15]

The case, and in particular the fates of Mosher, Douglas, and Westervelt, served as a deterrent to other potential ransom kidnappers: it would be a quarter of a century before another high-profile ransom kidnapping case emerged with Edward Cudahy Jr. in 1900.

The common admonition "don't take candy from strangers" is said to have come from Ross's abduction. The Charley Project, a major missing persons database, is named for Ross.[9]

While waiting for President Franklin D. Roosevelt to appear at the 1936 Democratic National Convention concluding at Franklin Field in Philadelphia, newspaper columnist H.L. Mencken noted a prank had been played on a public address announcer by someone getting him to continually summon a "Charles Ross" to the press area.[16]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ DeVito, Brittany (Spring 2010). ""23 Letters - A Child Lost Forever."". The Pennsylvania Center for the Book - Charley Ross Kidnapping. Penn State University Libraries. Retrieved April 13, 2022.
  2. ^ Porterfield, Waldon R. (October 2, 1974). "Little Charlie and the Crime That Shocked the Nation". The Milwaukee Journal. p. 20. Retrieved December 3, 2014.[dead link]
  3. ^ People staff (May 23, 2018). "PEOPLE Explains: Infamous Kidnappings Throughout History". People. Retrieved May 25, 2018.
  4. ^ James, Bill (2012). Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence. Simon and Schuster. p. 38. ISBN 978-1-4165-5274-1.
  5. ^ "Beautiful Shore Road", Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 31, 1890
  6. ^ Digital Collections, The New York Public Library. "(still image) Philadelphia, PA. -- the trial of William Westervelt, an alleged accomplice in the abduction of little Charlie Ross, (1875)". The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. Retrieved April 13, 2022.
  7. ^ Harris, Sharon (2009). Dr. Mary Walker: An American Radical, 1832–1919. Rutgers University Press. p. 165. ISBN 978-0-8135-4819-7.
  8. ^ Jump up to: a b c Avery, Ron (1997). City of Brotherly Mayhem: Philadelphia Crimes and Criminals. Otis Books. p. 33. ISBN 1-4223-6235-3.
  9. ^ Jump up to: a b Franscell, Ron; Valentine, Karen B. (2013). The Crime Buff's Guide to Outlaw Pennsylvania. Globe Pequot. p. 107. ISBN 978-1-4930-0446-1.
  10. ^ Jump up to: a b Towne, Vincent (December 9, 1941). "Kidnapers Used Candy To Lure Charley Ross". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. p. 31. Retrieved December 3,2014.
  11. ^ Jump up to: a b c ""Charley Ross" Dead". The Montreal Gazette. December 16, 1943. p. 15. Retrieved December 3, 2014.
  12. ^ Jump up to: a b "Philadelphia Boy Still Missing; Charlie Ross' Brother Declares Claim Of Blair Ridiculous". The Evening Independent. May 9, 1939. p. 1. Retrieved December 3, 2014.
  13. ^ Everly, Thomas. “Searching for Charley Ross.” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, vol. 67, no. 3, 2000, pp. 376–96, https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/view/25641/25410. Accessed 13 Apr. 2022.
  14. ^ Gustave Blair vs Walter L Ross, et al, “In the Superior Court of Maricopa County, State of Arizona - Judgement, May 9, 1939)
  15. ^ Miller, Rodney and Larry D. (December 2021). ""I am Charley Ross: Gustave Blair, Nelson Miler and the Crime that Changed a Nation"". Searching for Charley Ross. Retrieved April 13, 2022.
  16. ^ The Impossible H. L. Mencken, edited by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, 1991, Doubleday, pp. 337-339.

Bibliography[edit]

  • Carrie Hagen, we is got him: The Kidnapping that Changed America ISBN 1590200861 (The Overlook Press, 2011)
  • Christian Ross, The Father's Story of Charley Ross, the Kidnapped Child ISBN 1275753337 (John E. Potter, 1876)
  • Ernest Kahlar Alix, Ransom Kidnapping in America, 1874–1974: The Creation of a Capital Crime ISBN 0809308495(Southern Illinois University Press, 1978
  • Louis Solomon,  Great Unsolved Crimes ISBN 0-590-03020-5 (Scholastic Book Services, 1976)
  • Norman Zierold, Little Charley Ross OCLC 709440306 (Little, Brown & Company, 1967)
  • William H. Westervelt (Defendant), E. E. Barclay Life, trial and conviction of William H. Westervelt, for the abduction of little Charley Ross ... OCLC 942285029 (Barclay & Co., Philadelphia, 1877)

External links[edit]

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Canadian Multiculturalism's Secret Weapon

"The essence of Multiculturalism is the desire to thrive as individuals in a way of one's own choosing in a society of others who want to do the same. All migrants sure this desire. Multiculturalism is intended to preserve the cultural freedom of all individuals and provide recognition of the contributions of diverse ethnic groups. Canada's embracing of Multiculturalism was a pivotal change in government policy and this essay touches upon that and compares with Periyar's vision of an equitable society."

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Law Enforcement Impersonation & Language Malware altering Text

I spoke with a detective Dec '22 about a missing person's case. He said an officer would be sent within about one week for testing. Since then, no response from police except for a woman listed as a Journalist for their office, called me pretending to be a Det. When I looked up her credentials, it's illegal impersonation. It's shocking to me, that an individual would violate their professional ethics & commit a crime. They could be both fired + sentenced for doing that.

After she called, I had a hotel break-in including computer tampering & msgs lost, where I keep everything monitored, under lock & key w/professional security, all systems separate. Only the device used for this category of case was affected.

In a different case, a Constable in another country, contacted me re: a US adopted child, who is listed as missing from the UK. He told me their office had been trying to call & email me, but all was being rejected on their end, which means, guilty perpetrators involved, are tampering with systems & evidence files. I was also locked out of both Twitter & LinkedIn during the attack. I do not know what damage was done on those platforms.

I was able to send the Const. what he asked for. Good job him.

While the UK case I resolved, the CAN case is still open, and I've been waiting for law enforcement follow through re: the forensics test. I know the family involved in this case, would NOT be okay on any level, with how this is being handled.

If you're on the inside & have tried to message me, the tampering is ongoing, but I am available & ready to progress to evidence for closure of these cases. (a) There has been email tampering, which my paid corp subscription, vendor stated problem fixed. I know emails sent to me, I never received. I estimate it's possible impersonation emails were also sent from my account. (b) There was malware on one device, a language library, that was altering my writing, which was detrimental. Emails & evidence sent from device during attack period, are altered, needing to be re-sent w/correct data. (c) My phone should be working now, although tampering is also intermittent.

(I've been involved in reporting fraud my entire career; for more than 2 decades. These issues, happen sometimes, usually when there is a lot of money on the line, or people's lives, like the missing kids who were laundered for profit.)

If this post specifically relates to you, reach out to me. My schedule is over-filled & dockets I'm working on, are detailed, robust, covering a span of years. My work-flow is often based on deadlines & priority; sometimes also based on the financial cost of the case, or threat assessment of perpetrators involved. I do forensics reporting, since 1998, on top of my regular career of Tax & Accounting for corporations. If this post relates to you, reach out to me. Phone is best for anything important/urgent. If you hear my voice, you know you're getting the real me, real data.

Thank you.
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Symbolism Matters & Humanist Freedom

Symbolism matters, and is a tool, for truth & freedom.
My journey, has been wanting to know the truth, no matter what.

I think it matters to my birth family too. I feel that truth was important to my father, Art, but I don't think he was a black & white thinker. Maybe more about The Golden Rule, doing the right thing w/work; being honest in general. I remember him being well connected & I'm aware, that life & business are on a continuum, w/various factors, whether you chunk up or down.

I had been trying to remember his religion, and I think he said he was agnostic. It was my mother, J, who was exploring religions. She was born Ojibwe. I remember that mythology, her singing, the Ojibwe alphabet. In 2000, I cut my hair to look like hers. It was short, and the Robert's family (Danielle Robert's brothers) ignorantly said "I must be gay", as I had broken up with one brother. No. I broke up w/him because of who he is, how his brothers are; when I found out more about his associations.

My haircut had nothing to do with preferences. It was symbolic of my love for my Ojibwe mother. It looked exactly the same as the photo used on her memorial page, and I cut it myself, wanting to get it right from the memory that was inside of me, instead of the interpretation by a stylist.
To each their own; I believe that people are people, regardless of their preferences.
I care about being with the right male match; I care about my career & quality of life.
I also remember the conflict of Art & J's divorce when I was two. Not as a direct memory, as children's memories get more solid & reliable after the age of 4-7, but because they talked about the conflict after. I knew it was costing him a lot of money. I felt that J was struggling, lost, possibly taking advantage. These memories, I talked about with a PhD who interviewed me about my childhood 1998-2003. I never clarified which set of parents I was referring to. The talks with that PhD, showed me that I cared about people, cared about prevention, in all ways that are important. This was also a driver for me, to get the master's I did, and why I spent some years, studying the science of relationships. It's applicable for both personal & business.

This photo below, I had an adaptation of as desktop background post grad school. I'd done "past-life" regression & I was in Ontario, w/the Canadian Coin + other references. Afterwards, this image was a reminder of where I'm from and of my father. I used this symbol for years, as it is more than that to me. It embodies my father, truth, hope, freedom.

I had been told I could connect with him after a forensics test, where the results would be in, right about now. But the detective seemingly dropped the ball, and one of the employees from that office, committed illegal impersonation. I am going to choose to believe, that truth always prevails in the end, and that other helpful people will come forward, to help.

Cheers to all people who seek truth & freedom.

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