Faruk Fatih Özer stood in front of a passport control officer at Istanbul Airport, a line of impatient travelers queuing behind him. He pulled his face mask below his chin for the security camera. Surely he was nervous. The 27-year-old had unruly black hair, a boy-band face, and a patchy …
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The saga of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange continued this week after the UK’s high court ordered a delay in his extradition to the United States. Assange faces 18 charges in the US, including 17 alleged violations of the Espionage Act—charges that have alarmed journalism watchdogs. The two judges who issued …
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A US federal judge in the Southern District of New York has sentenced Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, to 25 years in prison. In addition, Bankman-Fried has been ordered to forfeit $11 billion. Last November, at the end of a month-long trial, Bankman-Fried—known colloquially as SBF—was found …
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Nearly 200 mobile devices of people who visited Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious “pedophile island” in the years prior to his death left an invisible trail of data pointing back to their own homes and offices. Maps of these visitations generated by a troubled international data broker with defense industry ties, discovered …
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On March 12, Russian-Swedish national Roman Sterlingov was found guilty of money laundering conspiracy and other violations by a federal jury in Washington, DC, for having operated Bitcoin Fog, a service criminals used to launder what authorities claim was hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains. The conviction was …
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The UK high court has extended WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s hope to avoid espionage charges in the United States, allowing Assange to further challenge his extradition from the UK to the US. In a ruling issued in London on Tuesday, two high court judges said that Assange will not be …
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How do you know the internet has a deepfake porn problem? Just look at copyright takedown requests. WIRED found this week that Google is receiving thousands of Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaints for deepfake nudes, most of which are published by just a handful of websites. Experts say the deluge …
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WIRED collaborated with Der Spiegel, Recorder, and The Washington Post on this reporting. Each wrote separate stories that the news organizations agreed to publish in tandem. This story contains descriptions of abuse, self-harm, murder, and suicide. Reader discretion is advised. It sounds like a cheap true-crime conspiracy: An international network …
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Editor's note: Nigerian authorities have charged Binance and two company executives with tax evasion. See more in the update below. In his years as a US federal agent, Tigran Gambaryan helped to lead landmark investigations that took down cryptocurrency thieves and money launderers, dark-web drug dealers, and even crypto-funded child …
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Two teenage boys from Miami, Florida, were arrested in December for allegedly creating and sharing AI-generated nude images of male and female classmates without consent, according to police reports obtained by WIRED via public record request. The arrest reports say the boys, aged 13 and 14, created the images of …
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