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The Cybercrime Kingpin Gery Shalon and his incredible fortune!

Adrian Fuller
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The Cybercrime Kingpin Gery Shalon and his incredible fortune!

If there were a list of top cybercriminals, Georgia-born Israeli Gery “Gabi” Shalon, a/k/a Gabi the Georgian, would probably be at the top. Perhaps there is such a list at the U.S. FBI with which Gery Shalon is currently cooperating. Not voluntarily, but as part of a plea deal in which Shalon allegedly pleaded guilty to the charges. In November 2015, the U.S. prosecutors charged him with computer hacking, securities fraud, money laundering, operating an illegal gambling business, and other counts. The indictment includes a total of 23 counts.

Gery Shalon ordered to pay $413 million penalty in the US

Without a doubt, Gery Shalon is very rich. Estimates range up to $2 billion that he is said to have with his father, the former Georgian politician Shota Shalelashvili. We do not know if this figure is correct. However, we know that he must and apparently can pay nearly half a billion dollars in fines to the U.S.

Gery Shalon was arrested in Israel in 2015 and extradited to the U.S. He spent some time in prison there and was later released to house arrest in New York. He pleaded guilty in April 2017. To date, much of his criminal record remains sealed. In March 2021the court entered a Consent Preliminary Order of Forfeiture ordering Shalon to pay monetary fines of approximately $413 million. The U.S. Government forfeited bank account balances and other assets to pay these fines. Gery Shalon has already agreed to this as part of the plea agreement.

It now remains to be seen what Shalon’s prison sentence will be. The maximum sentence for the 23 counts charged is around 200 years in prison. Allegedly, Shalon has been closely cooperating with the U.S. authorities to fight against Russian hackers. He has snitched on some of his former accomplices, such as Russian Andrei Tyurin, who received a 12-year prison time sentence. The online magazine Daily Beast has called Shalon the Tony Soprano of cybercrime.

Shalon has cooperated with his Israeli compatriot Gal Barak, the Wolf of Sofia, in the forex and binary options industry. Through E&G Bulgaria, tens of thousands of consumers are said to have been harmed by more than $200 million. In 2019, Barak was arrested, indicted, and later sentenced to four years in prison and payments of around €4 million for investment fraud and money laundering, FinTelegram reported.

Read more on Gery Shalon on FinTelegram

Congratulations! Love and Lemons named the best food blog!

Charlene Lensburg
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Congratulations! Love and Lemons named the best food blog!

Werner Geyser of Influencer MarketingHub recently compiled a list of the 17 best food blogs. The #1 on this list is the Love and Lemons (www.loveandlemon.com) food blog by Jeanine Donofrio and her husband Jack Mathews. The blog’s name comes from the fact that Jeanine loves seasonal food, often finished off with a squeeze of lemon. Most of the recipes on the site are vegetarian.

It is not the first recognition of Love and Lemon. Founded in 2011 the blog has been recognized by prestigious food magazines like Food & Wine, Food52, Refinery29, SELF Magazine, and Oprah Magazine. It was named Readers’ Choice Best Cooking Blog by Saveur Magazine in 2014 and won a Saveur Editor’s Choice award in 2016.

If you are looking for a recipe, you can filter your search by season, holiday, special diet, meal type, or ingredient. Surprisingly there are only six recipes under the ingredient, lemon.

See the total list of food blogs here

TikTok becomes the new Dr. Google for the young cyberspace generation

Charlene Lensburg
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TikTok becomes the new Dr. Google for the young cyberspace generation

We have all done it. When we had physical or mental problems, we confidently turned to Dr. Google for a diagnosis. The huge database behind Dr. Google should theoretically enable them to make the most accurate diagnoses. But only theoretically. In addition to data, training is also needed to make a diagnosis. Increasingly, the young cyberspace generation is turning to TikTok for diagnoses, reports Julie Jargon in the WSJ.

She reports on a young woman who believes she suffers from borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and multiple-personality disorder. She watched hours of related videos on TikTok. Another young woman was diagnosed with anxiety and depression when she was 10 years old and also turned to TikTok to learn more about borderline.

According to Julie Jargon, TikTok videos containing the hashtag #borderlinepersonalitydisorder have been viewed almost 600 million times. However, only 1.4% of the U.S. adult population is estimated to experience the disorder. Borderline-personality disorder is almost never diagnosed in adolescents, because their personalities are still forming and because some symptoms, such as having unstable personal relationships and exhibiting impulsive behavior, are hard to distinguish from typical teen behavior, doctors say.

When teens watch TikTok videos and decide they have a mental-health affliction it can pose a danger. Psychologists say there are things parents should and shouldn’t do when confronting their self-diagnosing teen. TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., is implementing changes that could minimize streams of single-topic videos.

Read and learn more about Dr. TikTok on WSJ

Interesting! Too much online pleasure may make us depressive and anxious!

Jacob Weizman
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Interesting! Too much online pleasure may make us depressive and anxious!

Rising rates of depression and anxiety in wealthy countries may be a result of our brains getting hooked on the neurotransmitter associated with pleasure, Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist and professor at Stanford University, reports in a Wall Street Journal article. A patient of hers, a young man in his early 20s, came to see her for debilitating anxiety and depression. He had dropped out of college, was living with his parents, and was vaguely contemplating suicide. He was playing video games most of every day and late into every night.

Twenty years ago the first thing she would have prescribed an antidepressant. Today she sees it altogether different and would put him on dopamine fast. She suggested that he abstain from all screens, including video games, for one month.

In her career as a psychiatrist, she has seen more and more patients suffering from depression and anxiety. Many of her patients have been otherwise healthy young people with loving families, elite education, and relative wealth. Their problem isn’t trauma, social dislocation, or poverty. It’s too much dopamine, a chemical produced in the brain that functions as a neurotransmitter, associated with feelings of pleasure and reward.

When we do something we enjoy—like playing online video games—the brain releases a little bit of dopamine and we feel good. As soon as dopamine is released, the brain adapts to it by reducing or “downregulating” the number of dopamine receptors that are stimulated. This causes the brain to level out by tipping to the side of pain, which is why pleasure is usually followed by a feeling of hangover or comedown. If we can wait long enough, that feeling passes; neutrality is restored. But there’s a natural tendency to counteract it by going back to the source of pleasure for another dose. We go back online.

Read Anne Lembke’s article on WSJ

Start now! How to generate passive income with an online side hustle!

Adrian Fuller
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Start now! How to generate passive income with an online side hustle!

Tim Denning (www.timdenning.com and his Medium site) is probably one of the 19 most well-known bloggers on this planet. He is actually a versatile and talented writer with a knack for giving people ideas about new income streams as well. Recently, Tim has suggested a way how people can create an online empire from the bedroom over the internet opportunities and create high passive income with it.

If you have an internet connection, you’re powerful, Tim argues. Most people would not see it that way and use the internet to go backward in life rather than forwards. You need a side hustle to start generating passive income, Tim suggests. And you should start your side hustle in silence to avoid attention and pressure. And avoid careful preparation.

However, preparation is the enemy of a side hustle. Many people who want to start a side hustle and access passive income spend months collecting data and trying to figure out how the game works. By the time they’ve figured it out the market has moved.

Education in school and college taught us to do research and seek permission but a side hustle works differently. The point is to give yourself permission. Tim suggests treating it like a kid would who gets a new toy. There are no rules. They smash the shit out of that dump truck you gave them until you buy them another toy. That’s how it works with side hustles.

Get in the ring. Throw some punches. Ignore the critics in the crowd who never take action. There’s no proper side hustle education. It’s counter-intuitive: you learn as you go, not before you get started.

Read Tim Denning’s story on Medium

Wonder Drug “Walking” may extend your life!

Adrian Fuller
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Wonder Drug “Walking” may extend your life!

In an interesting article, Medium blogger and physician Michael Hunter suggests regular short walks to prolong life or maintain health as we age. A daily 15-minute walk as your physical activity of the day may improve your health, he suggests. His patients often ask whether walking counts as exercise and are surprised when he would say “absolutely!”

Even minimal physical activity is associated with improvements in health, Hunter suggests. Do it right, and your blood pressure may go down, your cholesterol improves, and you can experience memory improvements. In addition, you can reduce your risk for diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and more.

Walking can be central to losing weight, dropping blood pressure and cholesterol, and boosting memory, as well as lowering your risk for diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. Hunter prescribes walking to my patients, a “wonder drug” with health and wellness benefits we often underestimate. Moreover, it’s free, and there are no side effects. It keeps you fit.

The least fit healthy adults have an early death risk that is 4.5-times that of the fittest. You may find it surprising that an individual’s fitness level represented a more important predictor of early death than established risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes.

So, get started.

Source: Michael Hunter in Does Walking Extend Life? on Medium

Wirecard Case – Austrian Regulator Closes Crypto Exchange!

Charlene Lensburg
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Wirecard Case – Austrian Regulator Closes Crypto Exchange!

The Austrian crypto trading platform XTrader24 (www.trader24.com) a/k/a CoinFinder (www.coinfinder.at) was founded by former police officers Christoph Gsottbauer and Markus Sperr. They also established the private investigation company PRM in Vienna, which worked for Wirecard. or private detectives, received a license from the Austrian Financial Market Authority FMA in June 2020.

Due to numerous, serious violations of the Austrian Money Laundering Act, the FMA revoked the license on 16 Dec 2021. The police officers behind XTrader24 are said to have spied on critics for Wirecard.

Such a warning from a regulatory authority should lead to public prosecutor’s office investigations. If regulatory findings uncover that a company like XTrader24 continuously and seriously violates the Money Laundering Act, it must file a criminal complaint. Consequently, law enforcement must prosecute the case under the respective Criminal Code, especially when the case is politically exposed, as is Wirecard.

Source: FinTelegram published on 29 Dec 2021.

Epstein Case – Ghislaine Maxwell Found Guilty!

bluechipper
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Epstein Case – Ghislaine Maxwell Found Guilty!

It was not really a surprise! British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty on five of six criminal counts in her sex-trafficking case. After five days of deliberations, a federal jury in New York convicted Ms. Maxwell on Wednesday for what prosecutors said was her role in helping Epstein sexually abuse underage teens. A sentencing date hasn’t been scheduled yet.

On the most serious count, sex trafficking of minors, the jury found Ms. Maxwell guilty. That count carries a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison.

Maxwell, 60 years old, pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. Her lawyers said she was a scapegoat who wasn’t indicted until nearly a year after Epstein died in a federal jail in August 2019 while awaiting his own sex-trafficking trial. The New York City medical examiner ruled his death a suicide.

Source: Wall Street Journal (link)

The SPAC Frenzyoom – $900 billion cash pile & inflated startup valuations

bluechipper
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The SPAC Frenzyoom – $900 billion cash pile & inflated startup valuations

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that investors continue to make hundreds of billions of dollars available to startups, a cash pile that promises to inject a torrent of money into early-stage firms in 2022 and beyond. A large chunk of this cash pile is held in SPACs waiting to merge with the next startup unicorn.

Number of startup unicorns according to PitchBook

Special-purpose acquisition companies (SPAC) have taken Wall Street and Silicon Valley by storm as a new way to quickly raise cash and go public. A SPAC is a shell firm that raises money and lists on a stock exchange with the sole intent of merging with a private firm to take it public. After regulators approve the deal, the private firm replaces the SPAC in the stock market. One reason for SPACs’ sudden ubiquity is that startups are allowed to make business projections when going public that aren’t allowed in traditional IPOs. 

According to WSJ, these SPACs raised about $12 billion in each of October and November, roughly doubling their clip from each of the previous three months. In December 2021, three SPACs a day are being created. While that is below the first quarter’s record pace, it brings the total amount held by the hundreds of SPACs seeking private companies to take public in the next two years to roughly $160 billion.

The cash committed to venture-capital firms and private-equity (PE) firms focused on rapidly growing companies is ballooning. So-called dry powder hit about $440B for venture capitalists and roughly $310B for growth-focused PE firms earlier this month.

“The availability of SPAC capital and of private capital gives companies options, but ultimately, the problems are caused by bringing the wrong company public or the wrong valuation,” said Mike Ryan, CEO of Bullet Point Network, a financial analytics company.

Read the whole story on WSJ

Covid-19 Pandemic: US CDC investigates outbreaks on cruise ships!

bluechipper
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Covid-19 Pandemic: US CDC investigates outbreaks on cruise ships!

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is investigating almost 70 cruise ships following COVID-19 outbreaks aboard the vessels, according to the agency’s update on Monday. According to the agency’s website, 68 ships have either met the agency’s “investigation threshold” of crew or passengers COVID-19 outbreaks, or a health department has alerted the agency of positive COVID-19 passengers who disembarked within five days.

The CDC is currently investigating 36 ships while it has already investigated an additional 32 ships, but these vessels remain “under observation.”

Impacted ships come from cruise lines including Disney, MSC Cruises, Carnival, Norwegian, Royal Caribbean, and Celebrity.

This update comes as COVID-19 cases continue to spike amid the spread of the Omicron variant. This has caused some ships to be barred from passenger disembarkation or ports of call, and three major cruise lines to enforce stricter masking mandates.

Source: Brittany Chang on the Insider (link)

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At The Cyber Voice, we are dedicated to illuminating the intricate tapestry of our evolving cyber society. Through incisive journalism and informed perspectives, we strive to be the beacon for those navigating the digital realm. From politics and finance to cryptocurrencies and lifestyle, we commit to delivering unbiased, comprehensive, and forward-thinking narratives that empower our readers to stay informed, engaged, and ahead of the curve in an ever-changing digital landscape.

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