Word: extortionist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...time he is alleged to have had Raymond McCord, Jr., murdered, the report says, police had information pointing to Haddock as an accomplished killer, extortionist and drug dealer. In spite of a catalogue of suspected crimes, ordinary police officers were only able to jail him twice - once after he was caught red-handed attacking a bar, and more recently when one of his victims allegedly ignored death threats to testify against him. "He had a license to kill," says McCord. "And it wasn't some sort of romantic James Bond episode. The man is a vicious thug...
...neighbor, agreeing to a steep rise in prices. On Jan. 3, however, Belarus' neo-Stalinist President Alexander Lukashenko - and formerly a professed ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin - said on television that his government officials should "feel free getting oil supplies at your discretion, wherever you can" at non-extortionist prices. "Oil refineries must be supplied. Otherwise, our chemical/petroleum industries, that account for half of our economy, will stop, which means millions of people left without salaries." And the bureaucrats who failed to keep the supply up "will be handcuffed and thrown into jail...
...rise of the hacker as extortionist reflects a broader change in hacker culture. "It used to be teenagers looking for bragging rights," says Johannes Ullrich, chief research officer for the SANS Institute, a security think tank. "Now it's done for profit." And it's done from anywhere in the world, so catching the bad guys can be complicated. Ullrich estimates that there are 10 or 20 cases a day, compared with virtually none three years ago. More sophisticated viruses, spyware and other forms of malicious code, meanwhile, are the new weapons of choice for committing identity theft, bank fraud...
...even though Bangladeshis have long grumbled about the daily bribes they have to pay, an etiquette of corruption, honored by extortionists and victims alike, has made life bearable for many years. Mahafuzur Rahaman Bahar, a member of the Bangladesh Truck Drivers' Union, says drivers once operated according to a "token" scheme. By paying a fixed sum to the first extortionist they encountered, they received a colored-paper token imprinted with the sign of a tree or a cow, which guaranteed free passage to their destination. So long as corruption operated within the defined rules of a scheme, Bangladeshis got along...
...that would include freezing and then scrapping its nuclear weapons program, while the U.S. insisted that North Korea would have to scrap its programs before any concessions could be offered. The hard-line U.S. position was premised on the insistence that North Korea should win no rewards for its extortionist behavior, particularly in light of its failure to adhere to the previous agreement negotiated with the Clinton administration in 1994. Since the day it took office, the Bush administration has been divided over North Korea, and even in the course of the current negotiations the President has never quite signaled...