Law Vibe » Criminal Law

2 Crimes for the Price of 1: Woman Scams Man Who Gets Shot

C. C. — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 01:00:59 +0000

Sometimes even the best of plans go awry. Almost right out of a movie, Brandi Bradley enticed a casino customer to leave the casino to “party.” The plan was simple. Once Brandi got the victim, – in the words of the Court, “a Mr. Mataya, [who] wore enough gold, diamond, and ruby jewelry to mark him as the right kind of target” liquored up and into his car, two men planned to jump in the car at a predesignated spot to rob him, stuff him in the trunk and leave him there.

Unfortunately, Mataya was either so drunk or just couldn’t pull it together that when the time came to put him in the trunk, he couldn’t get it open. Frustrated, the two men pumped eight shots into Mataya and sped away.

Fortunately for Mataya, he survived. Unfortunately for Brandi, she got caught – as if we couldn’t figure out that was going to happen given her brilliant planning.

This case is more interesting for its facts, but here’s the actual holding: previously depublished, but certified for publication today, the California Court of Appeal found that although Brandi could be convicted of two crimes, she could not be consecutively sentenced for both crimes because she only intended to commit one: rob Mataya.

Kind of reminds me of my first appellate case, Hajek v. Iowa Board of Parole regarding sentence enhancements for committing two, separate consecutive crimes. While in law school as a student, I succeeded in reversing the Iowa Court of Appeal and the Iowa Attorney General.

The moral of these stories is that it never pays to commit a crime twice, or for that matter, two crimes.

[thanks to j. craig williams and tiffa130 via cc]

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Looking Back at 9/11: State of Airline and Airport Security

C. C. — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:33:38 +0000

Here is what we still don’t know, over seven years after the 9/11 attacks, about airline and airport security on that day:

1. We don’t know if all of the metal screening machines at the airports involved had been tested and were actually working as designed;

2. We don’t know if the security personnel working on those machines and screen passengers were qualified and properly trained to find barred and dangerous items; and

3. We don’t know how the terrorists made it through the checkpoints with their deadly box-cutters, knives and mace.

All that, and more, was unilaterally designated by the aviation industry defendants as confidential, wrongfully exploiting a protective order issued by a federal judge in 2004, designed only to protect trade secret and competitive information. The order was entered in lawsuits filed by families of 9/11 victims against certain airlines, security companies and others responsible for airline and airport security (the “aviation defendants”) on that fateful day. The remaining three families, out of 96 who filed lawsuits, have challenged the defendants’ “confidential trade secrets” designations, claiming that one of their major motivations for filing lawsuits and not going into the no-fault Victims Compensation Fund created by Congress was to ask questions, demand accountability and shed light on the checkpoint failures that allowed 19-for-19 hijackers to board aircrafts with prohibited weapons and hazardous materials. While the families have access to this information within the confines of the litigation, the public does not.

Today, the attorneys for the victims’ families, joined by news organizations, will stand before a federal judge and argue for their latest motion to release a huge stash of documents (a million pages or more) which could finally reveal the truth about the status of airline and airport security leading up to and on that horrible day.

The idea that the airline and airport security regime in existence over eight years ago is a “trade secret” is preposterous. Yet, in producing aviation industry documents and witness testimony to these families, the aviation defendants designated over 99% of the evidence (documents and transcripts) to be trade secrets. None of the machines in operation on 9/11 at any airport in the U.S. are in use today – all have been upgraded by orders of magnitude. All of the personnel now working them on that day were released and/or retrained with much tougher federal standards.

Yes, I represent the attorneys of the 9/11 victims before Congress and the Executive Branch and have assisted them in ensuring the release of government documents pertinent to the issue. But that doesn’t change the point: there is no logical reason to permanently seal industry documents on old, outdated, and replaced airline and airport security procedures or the sworn testimony of nearly 200 witnesses who have testified in these cases.

The procedural rules which govern the confidentiality of “trade secrets” don’t exist to protect businesses from public embarrassment and possible civil liability. Ironically, trade secrets and competitive information are usually intended to be kept secret from other industry members, in this case, the secrets are shared among all of the aviation defendants, but kept secret from everyone else. Civil litigation in the United States is meant to conducted in full view.

UPDATE, March 26: The federal judge told the victims’ attorneys that he favors not publicly disclosing the evidence until a trial occurs. A trial date has not been set.

[via counterterrorism]

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Marc Dreier Assets Itemized: Over $400 Million Taken From Investors

C. C. — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:40:04 +0000

The New York Law Journal reports today on a list of Marc Dreier’s assets compiled by Mark Pomerantz, the receiver appointed by the court to “locate, recover and safeguard” whatever Dreier and his firm had left out of the $400 million allegedly taken from investors.

Dreier was the single equity partner in the now-defunct Dreier LLP, a situation that, as the ABA Journal observantly opined, posed some risk for the other 249 lawyers in that firm. One such risk: the single equity partner may be a crook. Dreier is charged with defrauding investors by selling them more than $700 million in bogus real-estate and pension-plan notes.

I had assumed that Dreier intended to use any profits from this scheme solely for the public good, but it appears that he treated himself to a few items as well. According to Pomerantz, who has been combing through documents and interviewing former employees of the firm, Dreier and/or his LLP owned, in addition to the expected attorney trust account and other bank accounts:

• more than 300 works of art allegedly worth nearly $39 million;

• a Manhattan apartment bought in 2007 for $10.4 million (but probably now worth a lot less);

• three homes worth in the neighborhood of $15 million;

• a 37-meter yacht worth more than than all the homes put together ($18 million), which has five cabins and is “luxuriously equipped with flat-screen televisions and a wine collection”;

• five cars, including an Aston Martin DB9;

• $1.2 million in “home furnishings”;

• two watches valued at $11,000 (combined, presumably, unless they are nuclear-powered);

• and law firm accounts receivables and work-in-progress from Dreier LLP.

Don’t get too excited about that last item, as the value of “work-in-progress from Dreier LLP” has likely declined somewhat.

Nor is the value of the artwork entirely clear which shows an etching of a chair with a hole in it and a bronze sculpture vaguely resembling Ziggy. On the plus side, though, the sculpture appears to depict a person putting up his hands while being robbed, which seems appropriate for something found in Marc Dreier’s office.

[via loweringthebar and newyorklawjournal]

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Secret Service Informant Turns into Identity Thief: The Brett Shannon Johnson Story

Michael — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:08:08 +0000

The United States Secret Service has witnessed yet another informant turned criminal. Convicted of credit card and identity theft, Brett Shannon Johnson is now facing six years and three months imprisonment and paying at least $300,000 in restitution.

Choosing between weekly salaries of $350 from the Secret Service compared to making at least $5,000 per week betraying his duties by commiting tax-refund scams was not a difficult choice for Brett Johnson to make. While working undercover for ten months with the Secret Service and earning his $350 by tipping the Columbia, South Carolina office of the agency to credit card thieves, Johnson was at the same time operating a tax-refund scam under the name of Gollumfun.

Johnson started his ten-month working relationship with the Secret Service when he was captured in 2005 as one of the administrators of an illegal cyber operation web discussion forum called Shadowcrew.com. Instead of facing multiple charges and a significantly longer sentence, he was asked to track down other online carding forums as federal undercover informant. The federal government enlisting captured criminals to help investigations is an action that is not uncommon to law enforcers – the use of criminals as informants have been considered to be a necessity to some investigations.

He started working three months after his arrest on a dubbed “Operation Anglerpish” and was even supplied with an apartment, where his girlfriend stayed with him, plus a daily allowance of $50. While Johnson claimed that he started scheming while under agency supervision, that claim was refuted by the South Carolina division’s special agent in-charge Neal Dolan as two agents were monitored to be with him during office hours. However, Dolan admitted that they were not required to monitor Johnson outside of these hours, in which times the informant used all the data obtained from the agency’s database to assist his illegal operations while not under agency watch.

Even with video surveillance and two agents monitoring him during the six hours a day, six days a week work, Johnson still found enough time to procure all the information he needed for brewing up his new business.

“As time went on, it became more apparent to me that I had a good chance of not getting caught,” said Johnson.

According to a statement from Brett Shannon Johnson, the names and credit card numbers he used for his fraudulent tax-return scam was acquired on the same laptop that he had access to the information inside the office. These actions by Johnson were unnoticed by the agents monitoring him as he threw them off by asking them to monitor audit trails that he asked them to do. Once he was alone, he would research the information he needed for his scam.

“There were two agents with him at all times, and we had a 42-inch plasma (monitor) that projected everything he did on it,” says Neal Dolan. “You’d have to have been asleep not to have seen what he was doing (if he were committing crimes) – and they weren’t. This wasn’t a mafia case where we were going to sit on this guy 24 hours a day. He was told we’d make spot checks on him. But he’s an adult. I told him, if you want to go back to jail then you know what path (to take), and that’s the path he took.”

Johnson’s next step was to purchase several computers and IP addresses in order to not be traced, and file for tax returns using other people’s names and identification. This contributed significantly to the grand total of $2 million dollars he earned over a five-year illegal money-making career. While working as an informant to find illegal activities in cyber crime websites and then reveal them to the government, Johnson managed to put up two of his own illegal websites – CardersMarket and ScandinavianCarding.

Johnson’s case has proved to be fodder for many critics of using convicted offenders as informants and on top of this, paying them a stipend. It has also raised many questions as to the proper monitoring and surveillance allotted to these informants. Dolan reasons out that while these informants may have been given a chance to make up for their crimes, the decision to continue doing so or returning to the path of crime is theirs to make. Johnson himself says that putting him in that situation was like “taking an unrehabilitated crack or heroin addict and placing him in a drug environment, telling him not to use drugs.”

“I would place myself in the top five or 10 for doing what I do. Hopefully, I can find a way to make it benefit people instead of hurting them,” says Johnson. “And yeah, I’m sorry for what I’ve done.”

Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible to have any raw statistics of how prevalent these infomants-turned-rogues scenarios are. Most of these cases are under strict confidentiality, thus only a small number of cases reach the media’s attention.

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The José Medellín Case: When Moral Law and International Law Collides

Michael — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:40:32 +0000

Should outsiders stepping foot on foreign land be shielded or granted immunity for any atrocious act or heinous crime committed while in that alien territory? Does crime beget crime? When a balancing of interests emerges in the practice of criminal law, can one law be truly more dominant than another to merit the promulgation of a court decision? These are but some of the issues that linger in the mind long after justice had been meted in connection with the controversial case of José Ernesto Medellín.

Even for a heinous crime offender as Medellin, certain quarters questioned, and continue to question, if indeed justice was served when he faced capital punishment. The very grave offense he exacted on two innocent, unsuspecting Houston girls had, on the other hand, instigated a national outrage that reverberates to this day. Medellin, it will be recalled, was lethally injected after the US Supreme Court held him liable for the heartless gang rape and murder of two teenaged girls in Texas. The case, which was hyped by mainstream U.S. and other international media and, one can imagine, even utilized to boost propaganda campaigns to serve elite interests, goes down American history as one of the most vicious crimes perpetuated by foreigners in American soil. Not that the case, per se, actually needed to be hyped. Neither executive clemency nor lawyer arguments that the Medellin case would serve as precedent to a nation’s non-adherence to the rule of law could quash the Supreme Court decision of liability for the Mexican-born offender.

The issues connected with the Medellin case appear far more complicated and far-reaching, considering that Medellin was the first to be executed from a list that included 50 other Mexican nationals facing death sentence who sought refuge in an international treaty provision. Article 36 of the Vienna Convention stipulates that arrested foreigners are vested with a cloak of immunity and the right to have some access to or contact with their consulates in their home country following arrest/detention.

Not since the Supreme Court ruling that declared abortion a constitutionally protected basic right of women has there been a greater uproar than the international commotion created by the Jose Medellin case. Protection of life or respect for the fundamental right to live was clearly the violation in the Medellin case, and the Court somehow appeared to do right in its verdict in the eyes of many. A clear difference in Roe v. Wade is that even as countless groups protested the legal opinion upholding abortion as a woman’s fundamental right, the assailants presented strong arguments, even if, upon closer analysis, it is also the protection of life that is being curtailed. In both Medellin and Roe v. Wade, it would appear, public outrage is very much understandable. For in the end, it is the American values that majority still hold dear that is sacrificed. Indeed, being exposed to the raw edges of human existence can greatly influence people’s thinking and mindset on what is or what is not morally permissible. The fact that Jose Medellin was merely 18 when he, his brother, and other gang members who were less than 18 years of age at the time their crime was perpetuated does not diminish the gravity of the act.

What many adopting the legal stance may have contemplated on is where exactly does moral law end and international law begin? Many other cases have shown these often collide. In the end, though, it may all boil down to being human, assuming of course, that one is of sane mind. After all, who would not be infuriated when a convicted felon faces his victims closest of kin with nary an earnest trace of remorse even as he offers an apology coupled with a pre-execution statement that expresses his hope that his execution brings closure to the aggrieved kin?

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The Retail Store Hacker Albert Gonzalez Now Faces Prison Time

Michael — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:22:32 +0000

From conviction of credit card fraud to participation with the Secret Service then back to being federally prosecuted again, Albert “Soupnazi” Gonzalez is facing a lawsuit in what could possibly be the single largest and most complicated identity theft crime in the United States.

In the past three years, Albert Gonzalez from Miami has managed to amass millions of dollars by breaching the U.S. retail networks, gaining access to credit and debit card numbers and then selling them.

How Albert Gonzalez Fooled the Secret Service

Gonzalez was offered a position to cooperate as an informant with the Secret Service in 2003 when he was apprehended in New Jersey for various crimes. One of the biggest events he was involved with while working with the Secret Service as an informant was with “Operation Firewall.” This was back in October of 2004 where 28 members of Shadowcrew.com, an illegal cyber organization, were arrested after Gonzalez – then under the name of “CumbaJohny” – led them to register in a federal-operated private VPN service sting operation. However, it is now speculated now that he had leaked information to other co-conspirators to prevent capture and prosecution – thereby circumventing his role as an ally to the Secret Service.

Once the headlines about Operation Firewall subsided, Albert Gonzalez started operating under a different name, “Segvec”. Together with 10 other men, Gonzalez hacked his way into the data-stores of major companies such as BJ’s Wholesale Club, Boston Market, Forever 21, OfficeMax, Sports Authority, DSW, and TJ Maxx, the last of which shelled out $130 million alone to cope with the aftermath.

The 10 other men in Gonzalez’s crew include two U.S. residents: Christopher Scott and Damon Patrick Toey; three are from Ukraine: Maksym Yastremski, Dzmitry Burak and Sergey Storchak; two from China: Hung-Ming Chiu and Zhi Zhi Wang; and the last two are from the countries Belarus and Estonia named Sergey Pavolvich and Aleksandr Suvorov respectively. The last remaining conspirator is known only as “Delpiero” and is still at large. Also cited in the indictment is a well known online seller of credit card and debit card information, Maksym Yastremski, who became Gonzalez’s stateside hacker. Yastremski, otherwise known as “Maksik,” is a Ukrainian but is now under the custody of Turkey. The indictment showed that Yastremski alone was able to earn at least $11 million by selling credit information between 2004 and 2006.

According to court records, the breaches done by Gonzalez and the ten other criminals coincided with the New Jersey pre-trial court supervision, which means that while he was supposedly under the supervision of the New Jersey court system, Gonzalez was already working his way to even more advanced cyber crimes. Stipulated in the government’s conditions is the forfeiture of his belonging such as a condo in Miami, a 2006 BMW, and his Glock 27 firearm. He is also to pay fines in the amount of $1,650,000 in cash.

Gonzalez and the ten other men are now facing multiple lawsuits. The Boston indictment has charged Gonzalez for computer intrusion along with the other two United States residents, while the others were hit with trafficking of stolen data in San Diego.

There are other known cases of Secret Service informants, who while helping the United States government, have also been performing shady transactions on the side such as 2007′s Brett Shannon Johnson who was responsible for the massive online scam involving identity theft in order to take advantage of the tax refund given out by the United States government during that time. Johnson, under the alias of “Gollumfun,” was charged with prison sentence of a minimum of six years behind bars.

Indictment (PDF): http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/nj/press/press/files/pdffiles/GonzIndictment.pdf

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NETeller Founders Arrested on Conspiracy Charges

Michael — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 21:00:01 +0000

NETeller, a payment processor, now has two former founders charged with federal crimes.

Stephen Lawrence, 47, has plead guilty to a conspiracy charge over the way Neteller handled billions of dollars in gambling proceeds obtained illegally. He faces a maximum prison sentence of 5 years on the conspiracy charge in this case, presided by U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel in Manhattan, New York. The judge has allowed Lawrence to travel inside of the USA and also the Bahamas and Canada.

The other Neteller co-founder was former company president John Lefebvre.

“Mr. Lawrence is very glad to have this episode over and looks forward to moving on to the next stage of his life,” said Lawrence’s attorny Peter Neiman.

What is NETeller?

They are a publically traded company, found on the London Stock Exchange Alternative Investment Market. They operate under the e-wallet brand names Neteller and 1-Pay, as well as Netbanx for credit card processing and debit card business. There are more than 3,500 online merchants across varied industries that accept Neteller payments. After-tax profits are very high for Neteller with $102 million in 2006. They accept Pounds Sterling, Euros, US Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Swedish Krona or Chinese RMB in their accounts – which are free for customers (merchants pay the cost). A customer, after signing up, can then load up their Neteller account with cash from their banking institution or a credit card (which has a fee). The big thing is that Neteller doesn’t accept United States customers at all – and Canada and Turkey are barred from using the service to fund their gambling accounts.

They started business in 1999, with a huge customer base in the United States. But then the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA) passed into law, signed by United States President George W. Bush. Once authorities arrested the two founders, Lawrence and Lefebvre, Neteller abandoned all business in the United States, effectively dropping two-thirds of its business.

This is the message they have front page on their web site for United States users:

“As part of the NETELLER Distribution Plan, which began on 30 July 2007, all US members were given until 26 January 2008 to log in to their account to withdraw any funds from their account. During this time, several reminders were sent to members who continued to hold a balance in their account in an attempt to ensure they accessed their account prior to the deadline. As of 26 January 2008, US members will no longer be able to log in to their accounts.”

Most online poker and internet casino players I know are definitely not happy with the Neteller situation. After the sudden drop of the United States market from Neteller’s business plans, casino gamblers were left scrambling to find an alternate solution for their casino funding needs. But you can understand that with arrests of their two founders, they’d be a little skittish about staying in the USA market!

Thanks go out to online casino blog Casino Smack for contributions to this article. Join their email blog update list or their RSS blog feed for up-to-date coverage of the online casino gaming world.

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Oldest Prison Inmate in New York Has Been Freed

Michael — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 00:00:56 +0000

Now he’s free to enjoy life.

At 89 years old.

Charles E. Friedgood, avoided being fried good on the electric chair and is now out. He was a wealthy surgeon in Long Island who was convicted way back in 1976 of murdering his wife and is now in a veteran’s hospital.

“There is a reasonable probability that, if released, this inmate will live and remain at liberty without violating the law,” said the parole commissioners. Yeah, I’ll definitely agree that at age 89, his best crime years are behind him.

He will now participate in an anger management course (undoubtedly the “old guy” at the classes), will undergo a mental evaluation, and cannot contact the victim’s family. Which happens to include his own children and grandkids unless there’s a parole officer present.

Sixth times’ a charm

He actually was considered for release six times before they let him free.

“While some have formally expressed opposition to this inmate’s release, for various reasons, they are significantly outnumbered by those expressing support for his release.”

Money was a factor

Now don’t go thinking that the parole commission was being really nice that day and decided to let this ol’ grandfather go. Money plays a role. The doctor has terminal cancer, has undergone many operations, including a colostomy. All these have amounted to $300,000 in costs for the state.

How did he murder his wife?

Originally, the investigators on the case ruled that his wife Sophie died from a stroke. This was recorded on her death certificate. However, the police were very suspicious because Dr. Friedgood signed the death certificate himself and then made sure her body was rushed out of New York for a quick burial. When the medical examiners fully examined the body, they discovered he used his state medical license to get responsibility for his ailing wife and then inject her five times with Demerol which killed her. He was then arrested five weeks later at Kennedy International Airport with $450,000 of his wife’s money, bonds, and jewelry. He was actually on his way to Europe to hook up with his mistress, who was a Danish nurse with whom he had two kids already with. He was then tried and subsequently convicted of second-degree murder.

Final comments by the parole commissioners

One commissioner, Chris Ortloff, vigorously opposed the release. He felt that releasing Dr. Friedgood, “so deprecates the seriousness of his offenses, the murder of his wife and subsequent grand larceny of hundreds of thousands of dollars from her estate, as to undermine respect for the law. In colloquial terms, this case, given the inmate’s advanced age and medical prognosis, raises the proverbial question: ‘If any offense deserves the maximum sentence of life in prison, does this one not do so?’”

Most, however, were sympathetic to Dr. Friedgoods advanced age.

“During your interview, you repeatedly cited your status as a senior citizen. It is important to recognize that your actions deprived your wife of the ability to enjoy such status.” said commissioner Thomas P. Grant. However, “the likelihood of your engaging in criminal activity in the community is virtually non-existent.”

Should senior citizen status be enough to parole a convicted murderer?

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No Sex Offenders with Candy on Halloween

Michael — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:00:47 +0000

Trick or treat, give me something good to eat.

Unless you’re a sex offender, in which case you’re going to jail.

There’s a law in New Jersey that forbids sex offenders from giving out candy on Halloween. That means Lester down the street won’t giving out chocolate yum-yums this year.

Don’t think this law is only going to affect a small number of people. Did you know there are 2,200 sexual crime offenders registered in the state of New Jersey?

It makes you think though, how many of these sex offenders used candy to lure children? Did any of them poison food or candy and then give it to them? Did they somehow put some sort of date rape drug in candy or food?

It seems the main goal is to prevent the contact between children and sex crime offenders. It’s a very reasonable concern. Most parents are already wary of their children coming into close contact with strangers, now add the fact that these strangers are convicted sex offenders and that concern raises to another level. People nowadays are scared to let their children out alone and if they know a convicted sex offender is out there then they’re even more scared.

Do sex crime offenders commit their crimes again? If they’ve paid their dues to society shouldn’t they have the same rights as everyone else?

Let’s get some facts. The term for repeat offenders is recidivism and the rate of repeating the crime is recidivism rate. The problem with getting accurate numbers here is that the rate for actual reporting sex crimes is very low. Victims of sex crimes are twice as likely to tell friends and family than they are to go to authorities, like the police. And then we look at the actual sex offenders. A study performed lie detector tests (polygraph) on sex offenders in prison who had committed their crimes on less than two known victims. The researchers discovered that these offenders actually averaged 110 victims and 318 offenses. So there is a major problem with under-reporting sex crime offenses.

How are they going to keep tabs on these sex crime offenders to make sure they aren’t giving out candy?

There will be at least sixty parole officers and members of the 12 district officers patrolling and checking on the offenders. Sixty officers versus 2,200 sex offenders? Hmm, seems like there’s a number disparity here. But with police departments already stretched so thin, it’s a tough situation for police departments. Officers have to be patrolling other areas where public safety may be at risk also.

Classic Public Service Announcement Video:

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FBI Threatens Man’s Family With Torture To Get Confession

Michael — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:00:34 +0000

From Boing Boing:

Long story short: Man is staying in hotel in NYC during the 9/11/2001 attacks. Hotel empties after attacks and device is found in man’s hotel room closet that allows communication with airline pilots. Man is Egyptian national, and FBI questions him. Man denies owning device.

FBI agent threatens that man’s family will be tortured in Egypt.

Man confesses, ultimately spending a month in jail before airline pilot shows up at hotel asking for radio left in man’s room back. Whoops! Lawsuits ensue.

From Steve Bergstein’s Psychosounds blog, where I found this:

“Higazy then realized he had a choice: he could continue denying the radio was his and his family suffers ungodly torture in Egypt or he confesses and his family is spared. Of course, by confessing, Higazy’s life is worth garbage at that point, but … well, that’s why coerced confessions are outlawed in the United States.”

Good thing the FBI doesn’t do this any more. Right?

We never would have known any of this as the US Court of Appeals in Manhattan redacted the description of the torture threats in its decision, but someone posted an unredacted decision on the web for a brief time. And a PDF of that is what’s making the rounds now.

Here’s the link to a story on the situation from the ABA Journal.

In it, the court claims it redacted the information about the torture threats to protect Higazy and his family. The story doesn’t say what they’re being protected from.

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