Social Media Helps Solve Cases

Do criminals want social media likes so badly that they will incriminate themselves? Apparently so.

Last week a cocaine dealer’s student girlfriend helped police bust a major drug ring by bragging about her luxury lifestyle on Instagram. Emily Lock, 22, of Llanbradach, Caerphilly, earned less than $10,000 as a checkout worker at Lidl, but openly flashed designer clothes, shoes and extravagant holidays. Along with her dealer boyfriend Mark Price, 27, they spent over $100,000 on foreign travel and high end goods. So that has authorities wondering where did they get that kind of cash? Drugs maybe?

Lock and Price, who claimed to be a struggling builder, repeatedly purchased Vivienne Westwood handbags, Gucci sunglasses, Christian Louboutin shoes and Christian Dior perfume. She ended up being jailed for 15 months and landed her boyfriend behind bars for seven years.

 

Check out these other not-so-bright crooks who incriminated themselves with their posts.

1) Conor Murphy, 19, posted a picture of himself on Facebook eating a ‘Cash Sandwich’. The pictures would eventually lead police to connect him to an eight-man gang who stole a fleet of expensive, high-performance cars from some of London’s wealthiest residents. They stole BMWs, Range Rovers, Porsches and a $100,000 Mercedes – as well as jewelry, phones and laptops in 15 separate burglaries. Detectives finally caught them after one of the gang members posted a picture of himself on Facebook sitting on the hood of a stolen black Range Rover.

2) Leon Roberts, 38, and Jade Muzoka, 27, claimed damages after their weeks’ vacation in Turkey. The couple alleged they both suffered from food poisoning and tried to collect around $3,000 compensation. But just days after returning home the bodybuilders uploaded 79 photos on social media bragging about their trip, including pictures of them guzzling drinks and dining on steak, lobster and sushi.

In a doctor’s note they claimed to have been bedridden with vomiting and diarrhea, but their pictures proved otherwise. Luckily, the images they posted saved the resort from having to pay over $2,500 in alleged damages. They were busted and given a 26-week jail sentence and ordered to serve 200 hours community service.

 

social media crime

3) Drug dealer Junior Francis, 33, boasted about his extravagant lifestyle on social media before being caught with $7,000 cash and $75,000 worth of crack cocaine and heroin during a home raid. Francis posted pictures online of him posing with wads of cash pressed like a telephone to the side of his face. In an Instagram post he quoted rapper Notorious BIG, writing ‘everything I got I work hard for it’ under a picture showing thousands of pounds in cash on a kitchen top. Smart, right?

He initially denied any involvement in drug dealing during an interview after the home raid but when police checked his mobile phone, they found evidence of transactions with street level dealers in south London. Francis was jailed for six years and eight months after admitting possession with intent to supply Class A drugs and money laundering.

 

4) The mysterious murder case of a Canadian girl was solved after police found clues in the Facebook selfie posted by her friend. Brittney Gargol, 18, was found dead near a landfill in March 2015 and an autopsy later revealed that she died of strangulation. Gargol’s friend Cheyenne Antoine, 21, plead guilty to manslaughter after they found a Facebook selfie showing her wearing the belt used to strangle her friend. The wide blue woven belt with a large buckle was found on a roadside next to Gargol’s body, and Antoine was seen wearing the same belt in a photo posted to her Facebook account just hours before the killing, according to the Saskatoon Star Phoenix.

Investigators got suspicious of Antoine when she initially told them about spending time with the victim the night she died, but left her friend to visit her uncle. That statement was later proven false. Antoine then told investigators that she and Gargol partied with two men, who allegedly strangled the victim and put a gun to her head to help them. The second statement was also proven false.

“It’s quite remarkable how the police developed this information,” prosecutor Robin Ritter said in court adding that Antoine poses a threat to public safety. She “has issues … and because of those issues, she is dangerous.” At her court appearance Monday, Antoine’s lawyer, Lisa Watson, said her client suffered through sexual, emotional and physical abuse as she grew up in foster care. “My client had some very deep-seeded personal issues that she was not dealing with and unfortunately, for whatever reason, we’ll never know, they turned into a very tragic situation for all involved,” Watson said.

 

Workplace Harassment and Social Media

For decades, instances of sexual harassment have been brushed under the rug and business have only reacted when it’s “really bad” or “high profile.” But a staggering 1 in 5 Americans reports being sexually harassed at work and 75% of those who report their abuser experienced retaliation for speaking up.

Thanks to social media and the #MeToo movement, as well as the general movement to become better human beings, sexual harassment is no longer being tolerated.

So what can business owners and human resources managers do to make work a better place?

  • The first step is for business owners to educate themselves about sexual harassment, including the basics of harassment, discrimination, retaliation and workplace bullying. All managers should know their responsibilities and liability, as well as their duty to prevent harassment and abuse. It’s up to owners to lead the way in the workplace’s professional and respectful behavior. You should know how to receive and respond to a complaint and be familiar with confidentiality guidelines and the rights of all people involved.
  • Business owners must implement workplace strategies to prevent occurrences of harassment. Establish boundaries and policies regarding harassment and make sure all new and existing employees are trained in those areas and are taught how to file a complaint.
  • Business owners must enforce the company’s policies and practices. Offenders must be disciplined according to the severity of their behavior. Penalties could include one-on-one sensitivity training, suspension with or without pay, or possible termination. When policies and procedures are enforced, it demonstrates a no tolerance stance to employees and will further discourage workplace harassment.

 

 

workplace sexual harassment

  • Don’t ignore your employees when they say they’re being harassed. It can be isolating, humiliating, and stressful for an employee to come forward about an abuser, particularly if that person has corporate power over them or is well-liked by peers.
  • Last, look for indicators of abusive behavior before hiring. You’re probably asking yourself how can you possibly spot a harasser before hiring them? Check social media! This is a far better method than standard or criminal background checks used widely in business today. Social media screening can identify potential harassers by flagging material that willingly and publicly disparages women or minorities online, or that blatantly promotes sex or violence.
  • Sexual harassment is a complex issue and as difficult as it may be, the effort to prevent workplace harassment matters. Aside from the distress caused by workplace harassment, discrimination and retaliation, the behavior is illegal. Anyone that commits these acts is a tremendous liability. Addressing harassment proactively instead of reactively avoids personal, business and legal problems.

It’s also important to provide resources for anyone experiencing abuse, and make sure your HR team knows what to do when harassment is reported. If an employee does not feel safe reporting the problem, they probably won’t, and this means the problem will only grow as an attacker feels trapped by silence. That spells disaster for employee morale as well as for your business’s reputation if you’re caught with a harassment scandal you did nothing to prevent.

Social Media’s Role in Finding the Missing

Every three minutes a child is reported missing in the UK; across the EU that number rises to one child every two minutes.
In the US, the FBI recorded almost 467,000 missing children in 2014, which is close to one reported every minute.

In the US, milk cartons, posters, flyers, and traditional news reports were the main missing child search channels until 1996, when Dallas-Fort Worth broadcasters teamed up with local police to develop a warning system that interrupted regular programming on television, radio broadcasts and highway signs. That service, Amber Alert, is used only for the most serious of cases, sending out messages via email, text, traffic signs and digital billboards, as well as through Twitter and Facebook.

In 2015, Child Rescue Alert partnered with Facebook to harness the social network’s reach. Now, when a missing child case meets certain criteria of seriousness, law enforcement agencies can issue geo-targeted posts, containing a photo and description, to appear in the newsfeeds of Facebook users in the area where the child is believed to be.

Rachael Powers, a criminologist at the University of South Florida, says that social media has become “the new milk carton campaign” for police departments across the country, stressing the importance of publicity for missing persons cases. “It’s the difference between 40 eyes and 4,000 eyes,” she says.

“Time is often a crucial element when locating vulnerable missing people who are at risk to themselves or to the public,” says Metropolitan Police commander Alison Newcomb. “The use of social media supports our investigations and appeals and has achieved great results, some of which simply could not have happened through traditional communication channels.”

DC cops are also doing more to publicize the most critical cases. In December, the department began issuing press releases for every single “critical missing” person—defined as anyone under 15, over 65, or otherwise deemed to be vulnerable. Not every critical case had received a press release under the old system. This year, DC officials said at the press conference, 95% of the missing persons cases have been closed.

“If a person goes missing, commands make initial notifications on social media. Then posters are made,” said Zachary Tumin, deputy commissioner for strategic initiatives and leader of the NYPD’s social media efforts. “As that information gets retweeted by police and the public, word spreads very quickly to be on the lookout for that missing person.”

“First year results aren’t in yet, but I think we’ve been successful. We currently have hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter and we have to take advantage of that going forward,” he said. The NYPD’s Twitter campaign comes three years after the creation of its Facebook page, which currently has more than 380,000 likes. Tumin expects all police officers to be issued their own smartphones in the next year or two; that will help them push out information quickly.

Before social media, spreading the word about the missing was hampered by limited outreach to those in direct position to help. Amber Alerts were mainly broadcasted on television, radio and on highways. Distribution of missing posters was also limited, only displayed in communities in which the individual was last seen and or lived.
Now, organizations like National Center for Missing & Exploited Children can increase the likelihood missing children are found thanks to more immediate and full-range awareness raised on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These social media platforms have 1.2 billion, 288 million and 300 million monthly active users, respectively.

 

missing kids and social media

“Our social media properties allow us the ability to geo-target our missing children’s posters. In doing so, we are able to reach people who may be in a direct position to help,” said Ashley Iodice, spokesperson for the National Center. In March, the non-profit ramped up video production across all its social media platforms and launched videos that feature family members of lost children. “We have found that video elements in the digital media space garner more viewership, which we believe will help in finding more missing children,” said Iodice.

Gavin Portnoy, head of digital media at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which makes active use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat, has proof of the power of sharing. In 2015 the charity created a video appeal featuring imagery of a missing girl and the person they suspected had kidnapped her. The video was shared widely and a woman spotted them. “People feel empowered to make a difference; it’s the opportunity to do something,” he says. Portnoy, however, says that while he recognizes that social media is by no means a perfect tool, its benefits should be acknowledged. “It is another really positive tool that’s in the arsenal of the public, of law enforcement, of non-profits like us that are trying to help.”

 

 

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Fired for Posting on Social Media

When posting to any social media platform, it might help to think of all of it as potentially public. Remember that anyone can take a screenshot or copy and pass on your post without your knowledge.

 

There’s something about social media that enables users to say or do anything and think they can get away with it. Is it the fact that they are hiding behind a screen? Or maybe they are pretending to have an alter ego?

In the age of social media there’s a phenomenon that sees users across the world, broadcast messages to the masses that they might not actually say aloud. Whatever the reason, negative or inappropriate social media posts can have severe implications on your career and even your life.

Here are some examples of what not to do on Social Media if you want to keep your job.

1. Complaining about your Job

It seems like a no-brainer. If you complain about your job or make a derogatory or racist remark on social media, someone at your company is going to hear about it. It’s inevitable. Even if you delete it after the fact, the damage has already been done.
After securing a job at a pizza restaurant, Texas teenager Cella took to Twitter so her friends could know how much she dreaded her upcoming first day, calling it a “f*** a** job.” Her friends may have found it funny, but her new boss certainly didn’t. He replied to her on Twitter that she didn’t need to bother showing up; firing her before she even stepped a foot into her new place of employment. Ouch.

2. Political Opinions and Racist Remarks

Radical political opinions can get you in trouble no matter who you are, but when you vow to never follow orders from your Commander and Chief, and you happen to be a Sergeant, it can get you in real trouble. Former Marine Sgt. Gary Stein voiced his opinion on both the country and Obama in a highly negative Facebook post. This ended with a dishonorable discharge and some pretty huge life changes as he watched his career go down the drain.

Drawing all over your passed-out friends and posting the picture to social media is nothing new – but it becomes distasteful when you add a Nazi theme, swastikas and anti-Semitic words to your “art”. Caitlin Davis, a cheerleader for the New England Patriots, drew several symbols on an unconscious party-goer. When the photo found its way onto Facebook, fans and random viewers alike were understandably outraged – encouraging the Patriots to do the patriotic thing and fire Caitlin Davis.

3. On the Job Antics

One hospital in Wiltshire, England, didn’t share the sense of humor displayed by its employees when they took a few seconds out of their workday to lie down in strange places around their workplace, tagging it “The Lying Down on the Job Game.” When a few hospital employees decided to play along, they posted pictures of themselves lying around the hospital on the floor or even on the helipad. The higher ups decided if they had that much time on their hands, why not have more? They were all fired.

social media background checks

 

4. Involving Children

Daycare workers are bound to have bad days, and sometimes a large group of kids can wear your nerves thin. But this caretaker took it too far. Not only did they make an offhanded Facebook post complaining about their job, but they went as far as posting photographs of the children along with snide comments, which actually reached one child’s mother. Following this, the child’s mother immediately made justified complaints to the daycare, ensuring the employee was fired.

5. Criticizing Leaders

Elizabeth Lauten, communications director for the Republican Representative of Tennessee, apparently forgot the value of positive communication. Lauten criticized Obama’s two daughters by posting this on Facebook: “I get you’re both in those awful teen years, but you’re part of the First Family, try showing a little class”. She also criticized the morals of the President and First Lady, and ended her post with a final suggestion to “Act like being in the White House matters to you. Dress like you deserve respect, not a spot at a bar.” Her boss had a suggestion for her as well – apologize and then resign, which she did.

If you feel strongly about maintaining a social media presence and want to continue to voice your opinion, make sure that only the people you want seeing your posts are seeing them. Double check your privacy settings so only friends can see your Timeline. And pay attention to who you add as a friend.

A case study in Harvard Business Review pointed out that your privacy settings are null and void if you’ve friended your boss or your clients – both types of people could be offended by a political opinion or joke. Always think before you post.

Social media is part of your personal brand so you need to remember to keep it somewhat professional at all times. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun with your friends or vent from time to time but try to remember that nothing online is ever truly private.