There are some 48,000 barrels of Scotch whisky quietly aging in Martin Armstrong’s warehouses in southwestern Scotland. Last year, 17 of them became a problem. Mr. Armstrong normally deals with companies that buy hundreds of barrels at a time from distilleries, then pay him to store them as they age. …
Every few weeks, fireworks light up the night sky in Cambodia, set off by scammers to salute their biggest swindles. By the time the shells pop and crackle, somebody’s life savings are probably gone. Maybe the victim fell for an online romance scam or bought into a fake cryptocurrency exchange. …
They were conned by skilled online criminals into draining their retirement savings. After the shock, shame and grief that followed, the victims were often left with something else: an enormous income tax bill. Mary Ellen Strange, a 75-year-old widow who was deceived by fraudsters impersonating federal investigators, now owes the …
The scandal began with a tweet. “The world wants to invest in Argentina,” Javier Milei, Argentina’s president, posted at 7:01 p.m. on Valentine’s Day, offering a code to buy a new cryptocurrency. The digital coin was called $Libra, and it had been created 23 minutes earlier. Over the next few …
There are usually no international flights out of the airport in Mae Sot, a town on Thailand’s border with Myanmar. But in recent days, hundreds of people here boarded direct flights back home to China. They had been rescued from Myanmar, where they were ensnared in a 21st-century scourge — …
Lisa Schiff sat at her kitchen table, trying to explain how she went from being one of the world’s most celebrated art advisers to a high-society pariah and a felon. It was her first time speaking openly about her crimes. But the setting for this unburdening wasn’t her old $25,000-a-month …
Two art fraud rings in a remote Canadian city produced thousands of paintings sold in galleries as works by Norval Morrisseau, Canada’s most celebrated Indigenous artist. By Norimitsu Onishi Photographs by Brett Gundlock Reporting from Thunder Bay, Ontario Jan. 26, 2025 Tim Tait put two and two together when he …
Amy Ryan was panicking about her savings when she went online for advice. It was April 2020, and the stock market had plunged, draining a nest egg that she had built up over the years. Ms. Ryan, a 43-year-old sales engineer from Wales, had dumped her portfolio in the crash …
Around midday on Feb. 2, a large wave began its slow rumble toward the Aisland 1, an 800-ton deck barge floating in the waters between Dubai and Iran. On board the vessel were its residents of more than a year: a 58-year-old Italian businessman named Samuele Landi, three sailors, a …