Financial Crime and Business Scandals | Bloomberg Originals Marathon

but I never shared this with anyone, okay, but you took it, that's the problem, okay, that's where we are now, this is Dr. Shannon, 2 hours after she was arrested and when the FBI picked her up, They also found a briefcase containing $4,000. and suspected she was about to flee the country, the then-56-year-old might be an unlikely spy, but pushed by an FBI interrogator, she's about to talk herself into a 14-year prison sentence for stealing secrets. commercials worth $120 million in the process the case will reveal details of how industrial espionage has become the cornerstone of China's economic growth.

My name is Jordan Robertson and I'm a cybersecurity reporter for Bloomberg. Here in London, this story is about an incentive system similar to the one the world has never seen before. Dr. Shannon, I was a chemical engineer at Coca-Cola, she evaluated the coatings that were inside all the cans that Coca makes. -Line. What these formulations do is they actually protect the can from the coke, they keep the chemicals out. soft drinks erode the can in which they are found for the companies that manufacture them, such as BASF Dal Chemical and Axon Noel, the chemical formulas are a closely guarded secret and their development cost approximately 120 million dollars, so far no Chinese company has managed to develop an equivalent. and you have the formulas on your hard drive.

I have never shared any technology with anyone in China. Okay, I'm going back to China because my mother was in the last stage of her life, so I took every opportunity to go to China to see my mother. At the beginning of the interrogation she insists that she has done nothing wrong, but she is being a bit disingenuous because she has returned to China for an interview for the show Thousand Talents. The Thousand Talents program is a program of the Chinese national government and is designed to provide incentives. You know ethnic Chinese who have moved abroad to work or study to return to China and start

business

es there.

Critics of the program say it's actually a multibillion-dollar scheme that incentivizes them to steal foreign technology and bring it home and this. is the guy the FBI alleges has been helping their application Liu Jang Chen he is the chief engineer of weeh High Jinhong Group and that company wants to get into the

business

of making BPA Ani the chemical coating for coat cans Wei Jinhong did not respond to Bloomberg News requests for comment, the interrogation is almost a master class in how to unravel a plan like this because at almost every stage the FBI catches her in a lie, the plan was to form a new company, a venture company, yes, That's what, sir.

Thinking it was fine, but on his part he never got there. Yo insists that all he did was introduce the Chinese company to other companies interested in entering the business in the interrogation room. This is where she starts to get rid of her actions, right? she signs a contract for your job there. I did well, but there's no job, there's no job, yeah, there's no job, because my job basically just showed up. I didn't do anything, unfortunately for you, the FBI had a copy of the contract from A J Hong. Responsibilities include investing the initial amount of 6 million you want and providing the location, among other preparation work that is expected to take a year.

Part B's responsibilities include being the technical director of the project, providing technical assistance and leading Pary's research and development team. and communicate with foreign manufacturers and develop new joint ventures abroad this is just a talking doll this me is not just talking look at the facts you signed a contract yes, they said they would pay you, the contract was to help build a laboratory, they said when the lab was built, you would have shareholders in that lab and then weeks later you are sending emails asking about building a lab, it's not just paper, then the FBI agents reveal their hand, they have their voicemails and they have Reading his text messages in quick succession, they describe how he knew that joining the Thousand Talents could attract the attention of the FBI.

Liu suggested that he keep his job at Coca-Cola to continue taking advantage of the latest technologies at Coca-Cola. Her sister had received payments from the Chinese government on her behalf. I don't want publicity about winning the Thousand Talents for fear of alerting the US authorities and Cuda. A voicemail left by her sister says that unlike other TTP winners who are losers abroad, she is doing well in the United States, she is the one who takes the prize. risk during the current hostile period between US-China relations and she won't give away her technology easily until she sees real money this time Yo's response is much quieter, well I didn't do anything her messages reveal about that defense is that she was trying to share it, she wanted to get paid first and was ultimately prosecuted, not for whether or not she shared it with the Chinese government or whether she took it, that was the central question and her messages show that the end of This was sharing it. that information and launch this company in China and get rich, yes, this is a story about the theft of Coca-Cola's other secret formula, but it is also about how China is encouraging espionage far beyond the realms of technology defense and national security and to the farthest reaches of the economy.

On August 15, 2023, hundreds of police officers launched pre-dawn raids across Singapore. So far, 10 people have been arrested and charged with laundering organized

crime

proceeds. This was big news just because of the proportion of verbal assets involved in cryptocurrencies. Luxury watches. luxury cars luxury handbags houses pieces of jewelry has now become the largest money laundering case in Singapore's history: equivalent to around $2 billion for decades the Asian city has welcomed foreign money, which It has made it one of the richest countries on the planet, but beyond everything. Legitimate investment Singapore's openness is now under scrutiny in the latest case for attracting billions of dollars of supposedly dirty money, some of it even funneled through the world's biggest banks.

This is drawing attention to the kind of loopholes that have potentially allowed this huge amount of wealth to accumulate, the origin of the accused has also shed light on global money flows and whether Singapore has done enough to police them. All suspects are from China or have ties to China. Singapore is a small country, so it is an economy that cannot sustain domestic consumption in the same way that larger countries like China or the US can and that is why investments are essential for Singapore's growth. . It is very easy to live and stay here, especially for experts.

Singapore has long capitalized on its reputation for attracting the global wealthy. Crime is low. The policy is stable and wealth flows from banks to Singapore amounted to $1.5 trillion in 2022 in terms of assets. Singapore's park is the third largest only after Switzerland and Hong Kong, but this flood of money has also had downsides as the country has become more prosperous. Soaring prices and growing wealth inequality have become contentious issues in the city-state. If we look at the surveys right now, some of the biggest issues that people mentioned is the issue of housing affordability. Singapore is the most expensive city in the world to own a car.

The danger that this resentment and unhappiness begins to conflict with the issue of where many of these foreigners are coming. A considerable amount of the money coming into Singapore comes from China since 2019, investment has increased 79% to S$19 billion. This exodus of wealth is partly because President Xi Jinping launched a campaign for what he calls common prosperity, a policy to redistribute wealth, in the last decade the Chinese government has tightened many regulations and we have also seen many difficulties in several companies, in addition to the grueling restrictions during the pandemic. prompted many Chinese to leave their homes in search of a safer place why Singapore's Mandarin Chinese is one of the four official languages ​​most ethnic groups in Singapore are Chinese signs of Chinese wealth are all over Singapore, from clubs from luxury to car dealerships and even golf clubs Singapore has always been a big attraction for the ultra-rich.

It's not just the Chinese who have flocked to Singapore in recent years, there are also people like Ray Dalo James Dyson who have essentially set up family offices here to come and manage their wealth. Instruments like these that have been exploited and have seen suspected criminals find ways to deposit their money in family offices in Singapore are loosely regulated private companies set up by the ultra-rich to manage their investments in the same period when China began its strict pandemic lockdowns. of single family offices in Singapore tripled, it is a business that the Singapore government has promoted over the years and established green systems such as lawyers, banks to support family offices, of course, when there is a lot of money flowing, no matter how strict the legation.

The bad apples flow in what we know about the 10 alleged criminals, some of them have been on China's wanted list since 2015 or 16 for online gambling operations, which is illegal in China, all of them came to Singapore in the last few years basically to set up businesses here some suspects said they had been advised to set up a family office as a means of staying in Singapore many suspects also set up companies what can be done is to hire a local citizen or a permanent resident to be a director and company secretary for some of these defendants had a corporate secretary who essentially had a few hundred companies in his name during the process of our investigations we found a company that can help you set up a company in Singapore in 24 hours. examining whether loopholes or weaknesses in the system allowed the suspects to move their money to Singapore when they arrived they weren't exactly living modest or quiet lives all of these suspects were living in highly coveted real estate in Singapore we're talking about places that are the equivalent of Mayfair in London or Central Park in New York all charges brought against the suspects related to money laundering and forgery so far none of them have been convicted of a

crime

and some have said they will fight the charges in court. be very careful, we have to be very discreet, keep it small but examine the links and then move on so the money doesn't leave Singapore.

We have evidence that clearly shows that when the money was brought there were forged documents. used to justify the source of the funds after the arrest, the government said they are setting up an inter-ministerial committee to examine whether there are loopholes anywhere in the government that allowed illicit money to reach Singapore, international connectivity, diversity and debt our

financial

institutions. The ecosystem also makes us attractive to criminals who will seek to exploit these same qualities to hide their tracks and launder their ill-gotten gains. This is something that faces not only Singapore but all major

financial

centres. 2.8 billion dollars were seized throughout the ecosystem.

Of which, I think, about 1.5 billion were also in the financial services sector, so we have to ask ourselves what we can do better. Questions are also being asked about who could have allowed the movement of allegedly contaminated money; The suspects had funds in more than Ten financial institutions in Singapore, including major Western banks, credit Swiss and the City group as one of the world's leading international financial centers. Daily transactions in Singapore are voluminous. If we make the rules too strict then it will be the vast majority of innocent applicants who will be penalized unnecessarily as far as my system is concerned the system is clean the system did what it was supposed to do if my system had been corrupt then you will be in trouble then I am in trouble the essential question not only for Singapore but any financial center is how much is the cost and how much is the risk that you are willing to take to attract the rich and corporate and at the same time deliver with the number of safeguards in place to deter possible illegality Barry and Honey Sherman were found dead in their Toronto home on December 15, 2017.

The investigation continues into the shocking deaths of a pharmaceutical billionaire and his wife. It is quite rare for people of this wealth to be murdered, and in fact, Barry and Honey Sherman were among the richest. people who were once murdered, what we don't know is whodid. I initially wrote a long story for Bloomberg Business Week about this case in 2018. I'm from Toronto. I grew up in the Jewish community, where the Shermans loomed large. I knew the family very vaguely, so of course I was interested. The reason I came back was because there was a lot of new information and we know a lot more now than in 2018, we still don't know.

Central Answer for Who Did It? Who was responsible for this heinous crime? Barry was the founder and president of a company called Apotex, a large manufacturer of generic pharmaceuticals that filled something like one in every five prescriptions in the country, were worth several billion dollars, and were also kind of ubiquitous, well-known , they were great Florida philanthropists for decades, honey, and we have both felt a commitment to do what we can for the community, she does all the community service work, she has participated in almost everything and my time is better spent doing what I I can try to earn money so I can write the checks fa and Equitable, very equitable, the Shermans despite being extremely rich, lived very modest lives, they flew in economy, Barry drove a series of loud cars, they opened the door to anyone who asked them call to.

They did not live in fear and, frankly, they had no reason to until, of course, they learned the shocking news that the founder of the Canadian pharmaceutical giant Opotc Barry Sherman and his wife, Honey, have been found dead in the York Mills mansion the circumstances of their deaths seem suspicious the way they were found was strange they were found in their basement where they had an indoor pool their bodies held by belts that had been tied around their necks So, it's a pretty gruesome scene, as you can imagine, forensic officers They comb the billionaire's house looking for anything that could determine who killed Barry Sherman and his wife, honey, the day the bodies were found, there were quite a few people at his house, there was a housekeeper there.

He was a gardener, a personal trainer and there was also a real estate agent who was showing his house to potential buyers. They go through the entire house. You know, it's a big place, I think it's 12,000 feet and towards the end of the tour they go into the basement. she walks into the pool room and sees in a kind of dim light her clients Barry and Honey Sherman on the pool deck slumped over and tied to the railing with these leather belts and it's clear to everyone that they're dead and that the police were treating them.

This as a possible murder-suicide, we are not currently searching nor are we looking for a prominent suspect. The idea is that Barry Sherman had killed his wife and then committed suicide and that from the beginning caught the attention of many people close to the Shermans. very strange there, just physically, it was very hard to imagine, you know, Barry was not in good shape, he was not a strong guy, the people who were really most upset about this, understandably, were Sherman's four adult children and they were worried that the police would come. the wrong way, so they commissioned a private investigation.

The first priority was to perform a second autopsy and it was found that the forensic evidence strongly suggested that this was a double homicide. This hour there were new details about the deaths of Toronto billionaires Barry and Honey Sherman. marks on Barry Sherman's wrists that seemed to indicate that his hands had been tied at some point; There were actually two sets of marks on Sherman's necks, so obviously there is a belt mark, but there was also another one that marked a narrower one that looked like it could have been from a rope or rope, but that's not clear. found at the scene, so the implication, of course, is that they were strangled and then moved.

The private team reported their findings to the police immediately, it became clear that both were murdered. and the Toronto Police Service should not have reached any conclusions suggesting self-inflicted injuries, yet it takes approximately a month for police to meet with the pathologist the private team had hired. A couple of days later, the senior officer gives a press conference. We believe we now have enough evidence to describe this as a double homicide investigation and that both Honey and Barry Sherman were actually targeted; There were tons of people who were speculated as suspects, for example, Barry Sherman's cousin Carrie Winter, who was involved in a really acrimonious relationship.

In the legal battle with Sherman, he cared about one thing, money, making a lot of money and he didn't care who he destroyed and in fact a judge dismissed the claim in September 2017, so not long before the murders, This moment was suspicious for everyone. I was betrayed, my cousin. I got hurt and now I want to hurt him, as you can imagine this made the police very interested in him but there was simply no evidence linking him to the crime. There are Sherman's children who inherited all the Fortune and became billionaires in one fell swoop, so of the four children there are three girls, one boy the boy is Jonathan Sherman, who was the most focused on business and would take on a key role in the administration of these assets that the children had just inherited.

This has been incredibly painful and strangely surreal, my sisters and I promise to rise again and continue to prosper and knowing that, as our parents always reminded us, with great privilege comes enormous responsibility when Sherman's sons took over the Empire, things They began to change quite rapidly at the time of his death. Sherman was very focused on expansion, the boys however wanted to slow down investments to reverse the expansion and essentially prepare the business to sell and in 20122 they agreed to sell to a private equity firm called SK capital and certainly their colleagues have me said that, um Barry Sherman.

He would have been horrified by this but of course he is not available to make that decision. Sherman was very unusual in many ways, he loved supporting people, the person he funded most generously was Frank D'Angelo, he and Sherman were initially in the beer business together Frank is a bit of a comedic figure, he had a show of low-budget interviews that he produces, uh, they're movies, you know, titles like Sicilian Vampire that Sherman financed. I can trust in you? Because if I can't trust you, I have to go back. and kill you and the people around him thought this was completely strange, they couldn't understand why he kept advancing tons and tons of money to him, which was just one of those very strange financial entanglements that, when the police and private investigators looked into the Sherman affairs, I had to get through the other big area worth investigating: competitors.

Sherman had made many enemies in the pharmaceutical world over the years. He himself had speculated that one day a rival pharmaceutical company might have him killed and this was all done, but none of it has led to any arrests, much less a prosecution after saying nothing publicly for about 2 years, they published a video of The Walking Man, we confiscated a large amount of security videos, we are left with an individual who We have not been able to identify the time of this individual's appearance coincides with the time we believe the murders occurred. Based on this evidence, we are classifying this individual as a suspect.

Why did it take you four years to publish this video? We carried out this investigation. steps to identify this individual now that we have reached the point where we have not been able to do so, now is the prudent time to release this to the public and seek the public's help. We don't know if releasing this footage sooner would have had any benefit, it's surprising that the police were in possession of this footage in 2018, we're dealing with an intensely secretive police culture, the default is to just say nothing, uh, and that's in To a large extent what happened in this case, who would have a Motive to kill Barry and his wife could imagine, for example, in some business dispute that had gone terribly wrong.

He could be a taret target, but why would he also target her? The other thing I think has really been very confusing for a lot of people. Anyone who has seen this is the method, you would think they would know that a bullet does the job perfectly well, but no, they were strangled, which is painful, intimate, not what you would imagine, for example, that a Hitman uses, we carry 5 years from time to time. There have been no arrests let alone charges as to who did it. The central mystery here remains completely unsolved. A senior CEO and her security team were having dinner at this Copenhagen restaurant when they noticed something disturbing outside the 17th floor window, a drone seemed to be monitoring.

They had good reason to be paranoid. They were here celebrating the end of a two and a half month investigation that found that the Chinese company Huawei had carried out this clumsy espionage effort to try to secure a $200 million contract. It was about more than money. Telecommunications networks are a fundamental part of the national security of any country. The investigation revealed the extent of the alleged dirty tricks a Chinese tech giant would deploy to get a piece. It all started at the beginning of 2019 here, at the headquarters of the TDC group, the largest in Denmark. telecommunications company is also where the team that dine at the CeeLo restaurant worked and at the time, in early 2019, TDC had a public bid for a contract worth more than $200 million to build its 5G telecommunications network and in At that time they had Whitt down. the bidders for only two Ericson from Sweden and the WWE from China the details in those public bids are very protected things like the price how much you charge for things Ericson turns out that he had offered to do this job for less money than Huawei Huawei was not supposed to knowing that Huawei somehow found out and a few hours before the final decision it submitted an emergency review of its offer and in fact its offer was slightly lower than Ericson's, how had the information managed to leak?

TDC called an emergency investigation within that decade, WWE had overtaken other Nordic rivals, including Ericson and Nokia, to become the world's largest telecommunications equipment maker, although not as big as 10cent or Alibaba Huawei is an export much more successful Chinese technology. The company says its technology connects more than 3 billion people in 17 countries. They did it, it was not without controversy, yes, for many years, WWE has been under suspicion by the US government and others for potentially being under the control of the Chinese government. We start with the Biden Administration, which is said to be considering isolating Huawei. all of their American suppliers, Huawei, are a bad actor;

There is a lot of intelligence suggesting that they are very close to the Chinese military and Chinese Intel, so controversy has followed Huawei wherever it has gone, but here in Denmark, Huawei was a reliable supplier that Huawei had worked with. with TDC since 2013, so for many years Huawei had supplied the key equipment that TDC used for its 3G and 4G networks. Huawei had an office on this campus and many of its engineers logged into TDC every day to service the network it was on. was seen as a reliable supplier. TDC is very alarmed because it is clear that someone has leaked confidential information from Huawei Ericson.

TDC begins an investigation focused on possible infiltrators, possible hacking and also possible infiltrations into its offices and, in fact, a sweep of the boardroom found hidden microphones in the boardroom these are some of the most sensitive types of investigations because in this case maybe five maybe 10 at most people had this information. That find? What they find is that the head of Special Projects, a guy called Dove Goldstein, they discovered very quickly that he had leaked this information to Wuwei, the investigation itself was quite simple, however, when they requested CCTV footage of the comings and goings of Dove Golden, Dove Goldstein finds out and confronts the TDC executive team, so there was a leak within the security system.

The investigation further increased the paranoia. The security team decides that we can't trust our own environment. We have to go. We need to take our tests. They seize the executives' phones. Their laptops are seized. This is a very serious investigation. They realize that we can't. Keep that information here, we need to get that evidence somewhere else, a safe place where we can conduct this investigation, so if you look up, that Big Brown building is the nicest law firm, that's the building where TDC, TDC Security Group, moved its investigation. They reserved a conference room on the 15th floor of these Law Offices as the safe place to conduct the rest of their investigation, but that quickly passed.night when they moved their investigation from the TDC headquarters here where the PLN computer network was left. sustained hacking attacks the next day, after midnight, a security guard noticed a drone floating outside the same 15th floor window where the team was working, one of the reasons they saw the drone, it had lights, apparently It had lights, which added even more levels of intrigue. because if you lit that room at that moment with the blinds not closed you would have seen the entire timeline of this team's investigation, the paranoia increased.

Members of the security team began to notice the same strangers appearing around town and appearing to follow them. and photographing them while they ate in restaurants or went in and out of their homes, even TDC CEO Allison Kirkby seemed to have attracted a persistent story to make matters worse. Huawei managers had written to the Danish Prime Minister warning him that if WWE did not get the TDC contract, they would. the appointment seriously affects other Chinese companies confidence in investments in Denmark the prime minister's office did not comment the reaction was that Swift Goldstein left the company the investigation found that she had allegedly leaked Erikson's secret information to Jason Lan ran the operations of Huawei in Denmark and investigators determined that he had essentially cultivated Goldstein as a source returned to China with the investigation concluded that an alleged source of the leaks was identified A celebratory dinner was called gathered here at the CeeLo restaurant Allison Kirkby reflected on the paranoia that had engulfed them and told a joke about when there was Then he saw a drone minutes later, a drone reappeared outside the window, the security team watched as it descended to the street below, some men in a white van grabbed it and drove away at full speed, and Erikson still won the contract.

No criminal charges were filed as a result of the matter Goldstein declined to comment Erikson declined to comment An attorney for Jason Lan said his client believes he has acted in compliance with all applicable laws and that his relationship with Dove Goldstein was professional in nature. and appropriate in the circumstances Huawei said in the statement, Huawei complies with applicable laws and regulations and strives for the highest standards of business conduct. We deny any irregularity. TDC said in a statement. We recognize some of the things in Bloomberg's findings from our own files. None of the employees mentioned directly by Bloomberg work.

For the company today, you can find the full story at businessweek.com. This is Valerie. She was 5 years old when she received chemotherapy. Valerie would receive chemotherapy treatments here at Clin Medical Duarte in the small border town of Kuta in Columbia on January 23, 2020. Doctors at her clinic gave Valerie a dose of methotraxate, a drug used to treat cancer, less than 24 hours later, she returned to the hospital days later, she died, the medication that Valerie was given, that trexate was manufactured by napod Life Sciences, a manufacturer based in India, a country that supplies 20% of the world's generic medications, But instead of being sterile, the medicine was contaminated with bacteria and had become dangerous.

In a month-long investigation we discovered that this was not an isolated incident. Nap drugs have been linked to serious quality problems with almost no consequences. is the story of a drug manufacturer with a dangerous history and how it continues to sell drugs, leaving families and doctors suffering the consequences. That trxade is a medication used to treat leukemia and other cancers and has been around for decades when given as an injection. the conditions under which medicine is manufactured are always assumed to be sterile if ingredients are not properly tested if a production line is not properly cleaned if water is not thoroughly filtered life-saving medicine could become potentially lethal Napo Life Science plays a crucial, but sometimes overlooked, role in the global medicines supply chain.

None of its drugs are for sale in the US, but instead sells primarily directly to suppliers in low-income countries. Batches of the cancer drug methotrexate manufactured here in 2018 and 2011 were sent to clinics in Colombia, Colombian regulators later confirmed that a dangerous bacteria had been found in the drug, doctors suspected that more than 100 patients had suffered reactions related to the contaminated medicine, a total of four children died and the medicine was later withdrawn from the market, my colleague Panka Pula. investigated nap PR's operations in India. This is a plant that makes many low cost cancer genetics for big brands like intas Dr. redy and aott.

Former nap Rod employees we spoke to told us that the quality control at this company was not up to par. the brand and was very careless the former QC employee spoke to us on condition of anonymity they asked her to rush through the quality test our superiors used to see her sometimes she would just skip that part and complete that work what did you think when did you hear about this? uh contamination from sudom Monas in Colombia uh coming from nap R products is on the seal definitely comes from the company it doesn't come from anywhere else the damage can never be reversed it's a deal Indian regulators have often failed to detect and clamp down on really dangerous quality problems Maharashtra FDA is trying its best to bring good quality medicine to people all over the world, not just in India, although we don't have enough staff, we are trying, we are working very hard and we have corrected. their problems they said we have already rectified it it was a minor problem in Colombia they have asked and have already taken the measures they have investigated the state governments are very eager to attract the pharmaceutical industry and get them to set up their manufacturing plants because it helps them generate income and jobs and the state regulators are directly under these state governments these state regulators are understaffed and underfunded if you put these two things together it is a very dangerous cocktail because it means that India's huge manufacturing industry does not get all the supervision you need.

This was not the first time quality issues were found at Napro in India. Three separate batches of its cancer drugs failed quality tests in 2017 and 2018. In Ethiopia, researchers analyzed multiple samples of its chemotherapy drug and found only half. declared active ingredient yet company has not faced serious consequences from regulators big pharmaceutical companies buying nap stick products or public health warnings from the World Health Organization napod declined to comment on the case of Valerie or other cases in Colombia establishing ongoing legal proceedings against the company said it has adequately responded to quality concerns raised by regulators and that it manufactures high-quality products, so who is to blame for Valerie's death and How can people in low income countries ensure their medicines are safe despite their history and continued selling medicines around the world for money?

In the growing markets for generic cancer drugs and Valerie's case is caught in the labyrinth of Colombian government bureaucracy, the Attorney General's office received Valerie's autopsy report four years ago and listed the cause of her death is under study in the years that have passed there have been There are few signs of progress in the investigation in recent months, the Attorney General's office has begun interviewing the families and others involved, but 2.5 billion away, a researcher in the US is trying to perfect a test to help detect poor-quality drugs before they reach patients on the chemotherapy market. products is increasing and it is increasing in places where regulatory agencies often do not have enough resources, especially for the analysis of highly toxic chemotherapy products, so it is a very risky situation right now.

The paper test his team developed is a field lab kit that runs on a drug test sample. for the amount of active ingredient it's just $2 and a nurse can do it easily using a cell phone and these are a field detection device that you can use to check a medication quickly and see if it looks good or if it looks good. suspicious almost four years after Valerie's death, napod continues to sell its medicines to customers all over the world, when my daughters started getting too sick, I took her to the hospital and they told me to let me go to the pharmacy to buy these syrups and Then I go to the pharmacy.

I bought these syrups but the sick never rest there I lost my daughter Alusan Bangura's daughter was only 10 months old when he buried her here She was one of more than 60 children poisoned in the Gambia last year by contaminated medicines produced thousands of kilometers away distance India is known as the pharmacy of the world, the country's booming $50 billion pharmaceutical industry has been hailed for bringing affordable medicines to the masses, but along with that success come new dangers, we lost our children, they did something, we know that they know that we lost our children. children, but we still don't know anything about them, yes, we wanted justice for our children this year.

Drugs with the same type of contamination have been turning up all over the world, from Central Asia to the Pacific Islands. I traveled to Gambia and India to research. how these medicines were contaminated and what India is doing about it. I remember this 7-year-old boy who I was called to see in the morning, we called the boy and I sent him to the ICU for better monitoring and in the afternoon. I got there, the boy was still unconscious the next morning before he returned. Our boy died in the summer of 2022. Dozens of children began showing up at Edward Francis Small University Hospital with the same mysterious conditions where their kidneys had stopped working.

One-year-old Aisha Darbo was prescribed an anti-nausea syrup after she developed a fever. You know, sometimes it's not easy to say much about her, I can only say that she is smart and intelligent. After taking the syrup, Aisha's health did not worsen soon. she was in the hospital, they allowed me to be there, yes she has to be with you, yes she will be with me in a few days. Aisha Darbo was dead. Tests show that the medication she took was contaminated with a toxic industrial solvent used in brakes. fluid, the medicines were manufactured by India-based Maiden Pharmaceuticals, so how did the poison get into those medicine bottles?

Firstly, syrups consist of a small amount of active ingredient suspended in an aqueous solution to dissolve the active ingredient. Drug manufacturers add propylene glycol. a harmless, clear, slightly sweet liquid, but sometimes chemical traffickers try to pass off other chemicals as propylene glycol. These other chemicals are called diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol. They are much cheaper and highly toxic. Both poisons were found in Gambia. Drugs after the news. It exploded over the deaths. India said it would investigate what happened at Maiden Farm pH ceuticals, but the country's top anti-drug official later claimed that Maiden's drugs were fine and did not kill anyone in statements to local media.

Maiden representatives have said they did not. something wrong and that their medications were not to blame, they did not answer our questions. India's Ministry of Health also did not respond to our questions. Behind me is the Maiden Pharmaceuticals plant. We asked to come in, but the security guard said. No one was allowed to enter the pharmaceutical industry is a great economic success story for India. Criticism of Indian pharmaceutical companies is often seen through a nationalist lens now that the government has said the exact causal relationship of the death has not yet been provided by the World Health Organization. the government has raised certain questions to whom, that is, is there any specific link that says that the 66 deaths are directly and exclusively related to the syrups.

I spoke to a retired pharmaceutical executive who advises the Federation of Pharmaceutical Entrepreneurs in Delhi how he is so sure. that the drug was responsible for the death of the children, Indian pharmaceutical exports are growing and naturally when you grow up you definitely enter a field where someone else was there before and their business is getting hurt, so there may be a PL against Indian companies to defendthat Indian companies see that the exports of Indian companies are limited. Health care watchdog groups in India say drug regulators there often see their role as promoting the industry rather than policing it and that they do not have the staff or resources to monitor some 10,000 drug factories, even when, you know, they issued multiple alerts that the root cause of the deaths of 70 children in The Gambia is directly linked to an agricultural manufacturer based in India, but the government completely refused to advise all countries to detect and delete. circulating these products to prevent further harm to patients, three independent laboratories confirmed contamination and an international panel found that the syrups caused the deaths.

Indian drug regulators could have gotten to the bottom of the matter, instead they called this whole thing fake news and I quote there. There is no direct causal relationship between cough syrup consumption and child deaths in The Gambia not long after children began dying elsewhere, this time it was in Usbekistan. About 20 children died. USC authorities traced the problem to imported cough syrups made by another Indian manufacturer. They were contaminated. with the same poisons found in Gambia, then a dozen children died in Cameroon and suspicion fell on another Indian manufacturer and more bad cough syrups appeared in Liberia and the Pacific Islands, where do the bad chemicals come from and where else? they left?

We visited a warehouse in Delhi where some of the chemicals used in the syrups come from was recently destroyed in a fire and the owner did not want to speak to us since the outbreaks. India's drug regulator has tightened rules for syrup exports and cracked down on some companies making substandard products. drugs, but continues to deny that Indian drugs are to blame for the Gambian deaths and has not discovered where all the contaminated chemicals come from. At the end of the day, no one has been charged, no one takes responsibility. Sure, if this was in some European country or not in the United States, maybe this will happen while drug manufacturers continue to make drugs with little oversight and ship them around the world before I start crying there, she told me to stop to cry, who did he say?

I arrested C on the afternoon of January 7, 2018. Michael Turpin was in Las Vegas for a cryptography conference when he received an alert that his email password had been changed. Turpin felt bad that he had not reset his password and soon realized that he was the victim. of a so-called Sim swap hack, Turpin says that during the hour and a half it took an AT&T customer service representative to deal with the breach, the hackers gained access to their crypto wallets the moment they discovered that It was worth $24 million and they took all the Sim trading is a crude form of digital identity theft.

Thieves walk into a cell phone company's store and convince an employee to reassign their victim's cell phone number to a new phone, either by lying or, in Turpin's case, sometimes even managing to do so. By phone with access to the phone number, thieves can reset their victim's email and social media passwords. The two-factor identity authentication text does not go to the victim but to the phone number that the hackers now control with the access they gain. Hackers can root. Americans reported more than 1,600 Sim swapping incidents in 2022, totaling more than $68 million in losses according to the FBI, which is an increase from the previous year and because the scam exploits vulnerabilities in SIM providers. services, it's also not the kind of thing that even a security-conscious person can improve.

In Turpin's case, the hackers were a gang of young players, the leader of the network was a 15-year-old named Ellis Pinsky, from among the rich. Irvington, a New York City suburb, another conspirator, Nick Truglia, then 20, helped launder the cryptocurrencies and others allegedly used the proceeds to fund a flashy lifestyle of luxury watches and cars, nightclubs high-end, private jets and, unfortunately, a lot of video games. For the hackers, Turban had his resources, connection and personality to track them down and he also went after AT&T, his cell phone provider. On August 15, 2018 he announced that he was suing the company for $224 million against Turpin, who had made the first fortune from him.

At Tech PR he made sure to publicize his lawsuit and soon began receiving phone calls to his home from burner phones with people using autotune to mask his voices. One of those calls was from a private jet broker named Chris David, who said he would help Nick Truglia get a $40,000 private plane ticket to concerts and tables with bottle service at Manhattan clubs like the One Oak, and everywhere there had been fights and some harsh words over a failed deal to sell a Bentley. David had recorded Truglia bragging about hacking Turpin during a late-night video game session and sent those tapes to Turpin.

Truglia is the only one of the hackers convicted for Turpin's exchange with Sim. In April 2023, a judge dismissed Turpin's civil case against AT&T. and agreed with the telecommunications provider that it was not his responsibility. Turpin plans to appeal. He, along with prosecutors, lawyers and other victims of SIM swapping, believe it is an ongoing problem and that people are losing smaller but still significant sums each week due to SIM swapping. isn't going away anytime soon, miners who are recruited by SIM swapping gangs can escape processing, and while passwords can be changed, human vulnerability to tampering is harder to address, even with the additional security measures offered. by vendors may not be enough to protect it, it's a good reminder that even a small part of your phone can be a big vulnerability.