Word: ransoms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When 21-year-old Web entrepreneur Alex Tew received a $50,000 ransom demand last month, he remembers thinking, "There's no way on earth I'm paying these guys." Hackers had kidnapped Tew's Million Dollar Homepage, an advertising website, crippling it with a flood of data. Thousands of dollars, six days and two security teams later, the site was back up. "I can understand why gambling sites that accept thousands of dollars a day could choose to pay and be done with it," Tew says, "but I made a point of standing firm...
...rote learning that turns so many students off. At Frick Middle School in Oakland, Calif., science teacher Caleb Cheung turned seventh-graders into inquisitive crime-scene investigators when he introduced a unit last fall on cells and microscopes. Students arrived in class to find an empty birdcage and a ransom note--someone had apparently kidnapped Cheung's pet doves, Herbert and Angel. For the next six weeks, the young detectives analyzed fingerprints, interviewed witnesses and compared hair and fabric samples under microscopes to find the perpetrator...
...into each other's mouths. Officials arrested two men for allegedly trying to extort as much as $1 million for the couple's stolen wedding videos. Police say after Tito Moses and Steven Wortman failed to sell footage of the 2004 nuptials to the press, the men tried to ransom it to officers posing as Anthony's associates. The singer-actors are currently filming a biopic of salsa star Hector Lavoe. Unfortunately, authorities could do nothing about Lopez's other incriminating video: her 2003 film Gigli...
...several thousand dollars for freedom, but his was one of many payoffs. On the average day, 10 kidnappings occur; 20 on Christmas weekend alone. Security experts estimate that the criminals net $100,000 a day. One of the country's most charismatic radio DJs was kidnapped last week. The ransom demand: $2 million...
...employee who taped his eyes shut before garroting him with a rope. Other prominent abductees have included Chinese movie star Wu Ruofu and Jiang Yingwu, a regional manager of a popular chain of hot pot restaurants, who was killed by his kidnappers in 2004 even after they received a ransom...