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The bill started out as just one word.  “Literally adding the word ‘Captain’ to the David Dorn Memorial Highway on Highway (State Route) 180 here in St. Louis County,” said Rep. Shamed Dogan, R-Ballwin.  When they named the highway in his honor last year, legislators accidentally left out the title for Dorn, a retired St. […]

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People are making at-home formula to supplement for the national formula shortage, but doctors say it puts the child's health at risk.

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O'FALLON, Ill. - A 20-year-old man was shot and killed Sunday night in O'Fallon, Illinois. Ivan Marshall was shot in the 400 block of Regency Park at about 10 p.m. He was taken to St. Elizabeth's Hospital where he died from his injuries. Police said the suspect left the area "in an earlier model 4-door, [...]

BROOKLYN, Ill. - A Tesla was on fire on Route 3 in Brooklyn, Illinois Monday morning. The call came out at about 4:30 a.m. Police found a man and woman near the scene on Route 3 close to the Dawg Pound Gentlemen's Club. The woman told police the man had bought the car within the [...]

Embedded in the protracted abortion debate are many existing conditions and facts that are often omitted or distorted, along with blatant hypocrisy when it comes to promoting and protecting the wellbeing of millions of women and children already among us. Whether you take to the street in protest, seethe in anger or shudder silently in […]

The post The abortion debate is filled with misinformation, hypocrisy | Opinion appeared first on Missouri Independent.

by Megan O’Matz

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Jay Stone grew up in the rough-and-tumble world of Chicago ward politics, the son of a longtime city alderman. But his own forays into politics left him distrustful of Chicago Democrats.

When he ran for alderman in 2003, he was crushed at the polls after party leaders sent city workers out to campaign against him. Even his own father didn’t endorse him.

Then when Stone sought the mayor’s office in 2010, he only mustered a few hundred of the 12,500 signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. He filed a federal lawsuit over the requirement and lost.

His father, Bernard Stone, who held office for 38 years, once told the Chicago Tribune: “My son is very good at what he’s trained to do. And that’s not politics.”

Jay Stone’s training was in hypnotherapy, and he eventually walked away from Chicago politics, carving out a living using hypnosis to help people with anxiety, weight gain, nicotine addiction and other issues. Only in retirement, and after a move to Wisconsin, did he finally find his political niche.

In 2020, Stone played a crucial, if little-known, role in making Wisconsin a hotbed of conspiracy theories that Democrats stole the state’s 10 electoral votes from then-President Donald Trump. The outcry emanating from Wisconsin has cast Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as a force of untoward political influence and helped create a backlash against using private grants, including large donations from Zuckerberg, to assist election officials across the country.

In Wisconsin, Stone has finally been embraced politically, by activists and politicians who, like him, didn’t approve of the so-called “Zuckerbucks” or of big-city Democratic mayors. They, too, are unhappy with the way the 2020 presidential election was run in Wisconsin and how it turned out. And they, too, show no inclination of giving up, even when their claims have been rejected and other Republicans have told them it’s time to move on.

“The best part of getting involved in politics in Wisconsin is the wonderful people I’ve been meeting,” Stone said in an interview. “They’re just a great group of men and women that I admire and respect.”

The questioning of the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s 20,000-vote victory in Wisconsin continues thanks to Stone and others who have emerged to take on outsize roles after the election. Among them: a retired travel industry executive who has alleged voter fraud at nursing homes. Ten alternate GOP electors who signed documents to try to subvert the certification of Biden’s election. And some state legislators who are still looking for ways to hand the state to Trump, a year and a half after the election.

Stone hasn’t garnered much public attention, but records indicate that in the summer of 2020 he was the first person to complain to state authorities about grant money accepted by local election officials. The funds were earmarked for face masks, shields and other safety supplies, as well as hazard pay, larger voting facilities, vote-by-mail processing, drop boxes and educational outreach about absentee voting.

Stone, however, saw the election funding, which came from a Chicago nonprofit, as a way to sway the election for Biden by helping bring more Democratic-leaning voters to the polls in Wisconsin’s five largest cities.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission rejected Stone’s claim last year, on the grounds that he didn’t live in any of the cities he mentioned and that the complaint did not allege any violations that the commission had the authority to investigate. A separate complaint Stone filed with the Federal Election Commission, in which he objects to the Zuckerberg money, has not been resolved.

Nonetheless, the idea that the election was somehow rigged lives on.

Chief among the election deniers is Michael Gableman, who served on the state Supreme Court for a decade. A Trump ally, Gableman was named as special counsel by the GOP-controlled State Assembly to investigate the legitimacy of Biden’s victory in Wisconsin. Not only did Gableman give Stone’s accusations a platform, he took them even further. In his review for the Assembly, Gableman labeled the grants a form of bribery.

Gableman expressed his admiration for Stone during a March interview on the “Tucker Carlson Today” show, which streams online.

It’s “a private citizen, a guy named Jay Stone, who really deserves a lot of credit,” Gableman said, referring to questions about the election grants.

“He saw all of this coming,” Gableman said. “And he’s not a lawyer. I don’t know what his particular training is — he’s trained in the medical field. He filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission back in August of 2020, well before the election. And he foresaw all of this, he foresaw the partisan nature of all of the Zuckerberg money and all of the Zuckerberg people coming in to influence the election.”

Gableman, who has not responded to requests for an interview, had hired Stone as a paid consultant for his review by the time he appeared on Carlson’s show.

But that’s not the only thing keeping Stone from a quiet retirement in Pleasant Prairie, not far from the Illinois border, where he grows his own fruits and vegetables and heats his home only with firewood. Once again, he’s got his eyes on political office. This time he’s running for the Wisconsin State Senate.

The Chicago Connection Items for sale at the H.O.T. Government meeting (Nathanial Schmidt, special to ProPublica)

In the summer of 2020, cities across the U.S. were canceling Fourth of July firework celebrations. Public health departments were scrambling to put contact tracing measures in place to track the spread of COVID-19. Movie theaters remained shuttered. Vaccines were still undergoing testing.

Against this backdrop, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit based in Chicago, decided to get involved. Its stated mission is to ensure that elections across the country are “more professional, inclusive and secure.”

The group approached the mayors of Wisconsin’s five largest cities — Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine — and encouraged them to draw up a “Safe Voting Plan” outlining how they would spend more than $6 million in grant money to make it easier for people to vote while also limiting their exposure to the highly contagious coronavirus.

Wisconsin’s April elections, including the presidential primary, had been a near-disaster. The state’s Democratic governor and GOP-controlled legislature bickered over whether to postpone the balloting. Election offices were deluged with requests for absentee ballots. National Guard troops stepped in to replace poll workers too scared to volunteer. Polling places closed or relocated. Some voters waited in long lines for hours.

The Safe Voting Plan envisioned a smoother election that November. The goals were to keep voters safe and educate them about how to cast a ballot properly, whether in person or by mail. The plan also expressed the desire to ensure the right to vote “in our dense and diverse communities.”

Green Bay, for example, proposed using $15,000 to partner with “churches, educational institutions, and organizations serving African immigrants, LatinX residents, and African Americans” to help new voters obtain documents needed to get a valid state ID that they could show at the polls or to get an absentee ballot.

The Center for Tech and Civic Life awarded the $6.3 million to Wisconsin’s five largest cities in early July 2020. That’s when a friend of Stone’s sent him a link to a newspaper article about the grants.

“Within 10 minutes, I knew this was a scam, because they were targeting the Democratic strongholds in the state of Wisconsin,” said Stone.

Stone recognized that the organization’s address on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile was in the same building that had once housed Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters, which he felt confirmed his instincts.

He took exception to the proposed outreach to communities that traditionally vote Democratic, saying such efforts are the responsibility of candidates and parties, not municipal election workers. On Aug. 28, 2020, he fired off a 27-page complaint to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which included 167 exhibits.

The Center for Tech and Civic Life “exploited COVID-19” to help Democrats, Stone wrote. “All of CTCL’s $6.3 million expenditures will increase voter turnout in Wisconsin cities that are heavily Democratic and increase the likelihood that Democrat Joe Biden will win Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes.”

Less than a week later, CTCL made a major announcement: It had received a $250 million donation from Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. The couple later added an additional $100 million. CTCL’s previous funding had come from a variety of foundations.

Ultimately, CTCL awarded grants to more than 2,500 elections offices across 49 states, including rural parts of Wisconsin. The sums included $5,000 to small communities such as Ralls County, Missouri, and $10 million each for the city of Philadelphia and for Fulton County, Georgia, which encompasses most of Atlanta.

In an interview, Stone said he wouldn’t have objected if the grants had been awarded to each of Wisconsin’s 72 counties — with every county getting an equal amount per registered voter.

According to a ProPublica analysis, the biggest municipalities in Wisconsin received the most money and had higher per capita grants than smaller places like Waukesha, Brookfield and Fond Du Lac, which all had a history of voting for Trump. For instance, the per capita figure for Milwaukee was more than 10 times that of nearby Waukesha.

An analysis by Ballotpedia, a nonprofit focusing on elections, found that Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan — swing states that ended up in the Biden column — received some of the highest per capita grants from CTCL. However, it’s nearly impossible to discern what may have turned the tide in those states and whether turnout was affected by the grant money, a motivation to vote against Trump, or other factors.

CTCL was formed in 2014. One of its founders, Tiana Epps-Johnson, was named an Obama Foundation fellow in 2018, providing her with leadership training and other resources to help her in her work. She has described CTCL as nonpartisan, but Stone said the Obama Foundation connection suggests otherwise.

Epps-Johnson, who is CTCL’s executive director, did not respond to a voice message left on her direct line, but the group replied with a statement saying the grant money was available to all parts of the country. “Every eligible local election office that applied was awarded funds,” CTCL stated.

The center also defended its actions in a lawsuit the Trump campaign filed against the Wisconsin Elections Commission; the suit alleged, in part, that the state election commission had improperly supported the five cities’ plan to promote expanded mail-in voting.

In an amicus brief in that case, CTCL wrote: “Most of those funds were used to purchase personal protective equipment for voters and election workers, to recruit and train additional staff, to provide improved security, to establish in-person polling places, to process mail-in ballots, and to ensure emergency preparedness. CTCL’s program thus helped officials throughout the nation to run secure, lawful, and efficient elections for all Americans.”

A federal judge appointed by Trump found no merit in the former president’s case and dismissed it.

Zuckerberg also denies having hidden motives in funding nonprofits that targeted voting issues. His spokesperson Brian Baker said in an email to ProPublica that Zuckerberg and his wife stepped in when “our nation’s election infrastructure faced unprecedented challenges” and the federal government “failed to provide adequate funds.” The goal, Baker said, was to “ensure that residents could vote regardless of their party or preference.”

When Wisconsinites went to the polls in November 2020, there were far fewer issues with people having trouble casting a ballot or having to wait in long lines than there had been in the spring election.

Jay Stone’s Grievances “We have to fight for changes with the Wisconsin Elections Commission, because the way it is currently going we’re not going to have fair elections, and it’s going to be hard for us to elect honest candidates,” Jay Stone told the H.O.T. Government gathering. (Nathanial Schmidt, special to ProPublica)

Stone’s skepticism was deeply rooted. His own family and his political failures were shaped by Chicago politics, giving him a close-up view of the unseemly tactics of loyalists associated with Democratic rule under Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley and then, to a lesser extent, his son Richard M. Daley.

Running for 32nd Ward alderman on Chicago’s North Side in 2003, Stone preached good government, transparency and election reform. He lost. Testimony in a 2006 federal corruption trial involving top Daley administration officials described how party bosses ordered city workers to campaign for Stone’s opponent, the sitting alderman.

“They wanted a puppet they could control,” Stone said.

After his election defeat, Stone filed a claim against the Daley administration as part of a class-action suit seeking compensation for damages related to political patronage. A federal monitor awarded him $75,000 based on Stone’s claims about city workers forced to campaign against him. His efforts taking on the Daley machine earned him a description as a “passionate independent” from a reporter for the Chicago Reader, an alternative weekly.

Reflecting on the experience, Stone said that even his father was unwilling to endorse him for fear of political retribution. (Stone’s father died in 2014. Jay Stone said that despite their political differences, they remained close.)

Undeterred, in 2010 Stone made a bid for mayor, hoping to take on Richard M. Daley, but Daley announced he would not run for a record seventh term.

Stone didn’t obtain enough signatures to qualify for the ballot and sued the city’s Board of Election Commissioners, claiming the requirement was onerous and unconstitutional, designed to keep the machine in power. The courts disagreed, and the case failed.

Stone never won an election in Chicago, but he was able to build a professional life there as a hypnotherapist in private practice. Stone decided to enter the field after earning first an undergraduate philosophy degree and then an MBA. He received a doctorate in clinical hypnotherapy through remote learning from a now-shuttered California institute.

Hypnotherapists are not licensed in Illinois. But the treatment has gained acceptance. According to the National Institutes of Health, hypnosis has been shown to help people manage some painful conditions and deal with anxiety.

Stone sought to help clients visualize a better future, a goal he said he wanted to achieve in politics, too. In hypnosis, Stone said, some of his patients experienced flashbacks to past lives that helped them find peace and change their behavior for the better. He wrote a paper, posted on his website, on the potential to use DNA to prove the existence of past lives.

Science, he noted, always starts with a theory. “And then you have to be able to prove it,” he said.

His theories about elections tend to lump all Chicago Democrats together, so that Michelle and Barack Obama are considered just as capable of unsavory political tactics as the two Daleys who governed Chicago for decades.

Stone maintains that the Obamas have unduly influenced elections through a network of former White House staffers associated with nonprofits Stone believes are inappropriately registering and influencing voters. (He said he soured on Barack Obama long ago because he believed that Obama had failed to confront the Chicago Democratic machine as a U.S. senator.)

He is particularly opposed to the star-studded nonprofit When We All Vote, set up by Michelle Obama to register voters and help “close the race and age gap.” By the 2020 election, more than 500,000 people had started or completed their voter registration process through When We All Vote, according to the group.

“I believe Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote is the most powerful political organization or political machine in the country,” Stone said in a video he posted on Rumble, a video platform that’s popular among some conservatives. “When We All Vote is more powerful than the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee combined.”

When We All Vote told ProPublica in an email that it is nonpartisan and works with schools and educators to increase civic engagement and voter participation, saying its “initiatives comply with the letter and spirit of the law.”

Stone filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission against the former first lady, alleging criminal violations for offering financial prizes to schools that registered the most voters and for enticing people to early voting sites with food and music. The commission, in a 5-1 vote in April, dismissed the matter “due to a lack of reasonable suspicion” and fined him $500 for filing a “frivolous” complaint. (Stone on Friday appealed that decision in Kenosha County Circuit Court.)

Stone saw the supposed Obama network’s fingerprints on the 2020 election grants offered by the Center for Tech and Civic Life.

And while he measures his words more carefully than Gableman and others who see the 2020 Wisconsin election results as tainted, he clearly is in that camp.

“There was so much, I don’t want to say ‘fraud,’ but there was so much deviation from the election laws and the election norms, it raises serious questions,” he said of Trump’s loss in Wisconsin.

“I don’t think the election was fair and just.”

Allies in Wisconsin The H.O.T. Government meeting in Union Grove (Nathanial Schmidt, special to ProPublica)

The CTCL money has become a central theme in complaints about Biden’s victory in Wisconsin — and in the review by Gableman. Under pressure from Trump, GOP Assembly Speaker Robin

Vos appointed Gableman to review whether the election was administered fairly and lawfully.

Gableman has fallen short of proving fraud, but did use an interim report and an appearance before the legislative oversight committee on March 1 to highlight the Zuckerberg money and call for disbanding the Wisconsin Elections Commission. He said the legislature should look into decertifying the 2020 election results, but even Republican officials balked at that.

​​Republican Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke tweeted that “handing authority to partisan politicians to determine if election fraud exists would be the end of our republic as we know it.”

Jay Stone sat in the front row behind Gableman during the meeting, where Gableman released a report of his findings thus far. It spanned 136 pages, half of which dealt with the CTCL grants, which he characterized as “election bribery.”

Stone helped in the review but won’t talk about what exactly he did in the ongoing investigation, which was budgeted by Vos to cost taxpayers $676,000. “I’m on a confidentiality agreement,” Stone said.

Stone billed Gableman $3,250 for 128 hours of work between Feb. 16 and March 1, according to an invoice obtained by the nonprofit group American Oversight, which has sued to get access to Gableman’s records.

Asked about Gableman’s bribery terminology, Stone sighed. “It’s not a typical case where somebody gives a politician money for, let’s say, a zoning change,” he said. “So, it’s not your typical bribery case, but certainly it’s worth looking into.”

Lawsuits in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota about the CTCL grants have failed, as did Stone’s complaint to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Just last week in Madison, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Stephen Ehlke called the election bribery allegation “ridiculous,” saying he saw no evidence that CTCL offered anything to change anyone’s vote. “I mean, what proof is there in the record anywhere of an inducement of bribery? That whole thing just falls away. There’s nothing in the record. Is there?”

Minnesota lawyer Erick G. Kaardal, who continues to challenge the grants, replied that he reads state law to mean: “We don’t want Wisconsin public officials taking money to get people to go to the polls.”

The county case is an appeal of the elections commission’s rejection of a similar complaint Kaardal filed there about the grants. Ehlke has yet to rule.

Gableman’s work, meanwhile, has been widely discredited, cast by politicians, including some Republicans, and legal analysts as unprofessional and amateurish. Wisconsin’s Democratic governor called the investigation a “colossal waste of taxpayer dollars.”

“This effort has spread disinformation about our election processes, it has attacked the integrity of our clerks, election administrators, and poll workers, and it has emboldened individuals to harass and demean dedicated public servants,” Gov. Tony Evers said in a prepared statement.

The issue of using private grants in administering elections, however, remains alive.

Zuckerberg will not be making future donations to election offices, his spokesperson told ProPublica earlier this month, calling it “a one-time donation given the unprecedented nature of the crisis.”

More than a dozen states, meanwhile, have banned or restricted the use of private funds for election offices. The Wisconsin legislature passed a bill in 2021 prohibiting counties or municipalities from applying for or accepting any private donations for elections, but left room for the Wisconsin Elections Commission to take outside grants so long as the money is distributed statewide on a per capita basis. Evers vetoed it.

In southeastern Wisconsin, however, the Walworth County Board of Supervisors passed its own ban last month, prohibiting the county from accepting donations or grants for election administration from individuals or nongovernmental entities.

Now that he’s left a mark as a political activist in Wisconsin, Stone is back on the campaign trail.

At an event hall near Kenosha this month, Stone addressed about 100 people gathered at a regular meeting of the H.O.T. Government group, a right-leaning Wisconsin grassroots organization that adopted an acronym for the words “honest, open and transparent.” (Stone is the group’s vice president.) A stuffed effigy of a torso with a white foam head hung from the rafters, wearing a shirt labeled “Corrupt Officials.”

Standing before a large American flag, he politely asked people to sign his nominating forms. Republican State Rep. Janel Brandtjen, who chairs the elections committee overseeing Gableman’s investigation and supports the effort to overturn Biden’s Wisconsin victory, jumped up from her seat to lead the crowd in a chant: “Jay Stone! Jay Stone!”

“Jay is the one who filed the complaint in the very beginning,” she told the audience. “Jay is a real hero in what he’s done for Wisconsin.”

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by Renee Dudley

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On Feb. 25, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, a prolific ransomware gang called Conti made a proclamation on its dark web site. It was an unusually political statement for a cybercrime organization: Conti pledged its “full support of Russian government” and said it would use “all possible resources to strike back at the critical infrastructures” of Russia’s opponents.

Perhaps sensing that such a public alliance with the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin could cause problems, Conti tempered its declaration later that day. “We do not ally with any government and we condemn the ongoing war,” it wrote in a follow-up statement that nonetheless vowed retaliation against the United States if it used cyberwarfare to target “any Russian-speaking region of the world.”

Conti was likely concerned about the specter of U.S. sanctions, which Washington applies to people or countries threatening America’s security, foreign policy or economy. But Conti’s attempt to resume its status as a stateless operation didn’t work out: Within days of Russia’s invasion, a researcher who would later tweet “Glory to Ukraine!” leaked 60,000 internal Conti messages on Twitter. The communications showed signs of connections between the gang and the FSB, a Russian intelligence agency, and included one suggesting a Conti boss “is in service of Pu.”

Yet even as Putin’s family and other Russian officials, oligarchs, banks and businesses have faced an unprecedented wave of U.S. sanctions designed to impose a crippling blow on the Russian economy, Conti was not hit with sanctions. Any time the U.S. Treasury Department sanctions such an operation, Americans are legally barred from paying it ransom.

The fact that Conti wasn’t put on a sanctions list may seem surprising given the widespread damage it wrought. Conti penetrated the computer systems of more than 1,000 victims around the world, locked their files and collected more than $150 million in ransoms to restore access. The group also stole victims’ data, published samples on a dark website and threatened to publish more unless it was paid.

But only a small handful of the legions of alleged ransomware criminals and groups attacking U.S. victims have been named on sanctions lists over the years by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which administers and enforces them.

Putting a ransomware group on a sanctions list isn’t as simple as it might seem, current and former Treasury officials said. Sanctions are only as good as the evidence behind them. OFAC mostly relies on information from intelligence and law enforcement agencies, as well as media reports and other sources. When it comes to ransomware, OFAC has typically used evidence from criminal indictments, such as that of the alleged mastermind behind the Russia-based Evil Corp cybercrime gang in 2019. But such law enforcement actions can take years.

“Attribution is very difficult,” Michael Lieberman, assistant director of OFAC’s enforcement division, acknowledged at a conference this year. (The Treasury Department did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.)

Ransomware groups are constantly changing their names, in part to evade sanctions and law enforcement. Indeed, on Thursday, a tech site called BleepingComputer reported that Conti itself has “officially shut down their operation.” The article, which cited information from a threat-prevention company called AdvIntel, laid out details about the status of Conti’s sites and servers but was unambiguous on a key point: “Conti’s gone, but the operation lives on.”

The evanescence of the Conti name underscores another reason it’s hard to sanction ransomware groups: Putting a group on a list of sanctioned entities without also naming the individuals behind it or releasing other identifying characteristics could cause hardship for bystanders. For example, a bank customer with the last name “Conti” might pop up as a sanctioned person, creating unintended legal exposure for that person and the bank, said Michael Parker, a former official in OFAC’s Enforcement Division. The government then would have to untangle these snarls.

By imposing sanctions, the federal government would hamstring victimized organizations, such as businesses and hospitals, that might suffer disclosure of trade secrets or other sensitive information, or might have to shut down if they couldn’t recover their locked files. If they could pay the ransom, the hacker would supply a key to unlock the files and pledge to delete stolen data.

But even without sanctions, victims are in a bind. Years before the invasion of Ukraine, OFAC imposed sanctions on the FSB, one of the successor agencies to the Soviet-era KGB. So even though Conti was not listed by name, its possible ties to the FSB or other listed Russian entities may have rendered it sanctioned anyway.

Between that and the bad optics of paying a group linked to Russia, most victims had not paid Conti’s ransom after the February proclamation, according to lawyers and negotiators who work with ransomware victims. They say the situation is confusing. “It certainly would be easier for us if the standard were to add particular ransomware groups to the OFAC list,” said Michael Waters, an attorney who frequently works with victims of ransomware. “Then we simply aren’t going to make payments to those groups. But it is much foggier than that.”

Some American victims continued to pay ransoms to Conti through a Canadian intermediary called Cypfer. CEO Daniel Tobok said Cypher paid Conti on behalf of about a dozen victims, more than a third of them American, after the war began. He said that some companies would have had to lay off employees or shut down entirely if they hadn’t paid Conti. Cypfer follows U.S. sanctions on groups listed by name, such as Evil Corp, Tobok said. “Either they’re on the sanctions list or they’re not,” he said of Conti. “I don't include morals here.”

The lack of clarity puts the onus on victims to discover if their attacker falls into a sanctioned category. Determining whether groups are operating out of North Korea or Iran, for example, or on behalf of the FSB is “very, very challenging because there’s obviously efforts to conceal that on the other side,” said Ryan Fayhee, a sanctions attorney who works with victims. The government makes it seem “as if this is a traditional commercial enterprise and you can just simply screen the criminal,” he added. “That’s not how it happens.”

The federal government has long discouraged the payment of ransom and in recent years has put the professionals who work with ransomware victims on notice. In October 2020 the Treasury Department issued an advisory saying that “companies that facilitate ransomware payments to cyber actors on behalf of victims” may “risk violating OFAC regulations.” A second advisory, in 2021, seemed to acknowledge that victims sometimes make payments that violate sanctions. In those cases, victims and their representatives may receive leniency if they quickly report the incident and payment to OFAC.

Since many victims in the past have been loath to report attacks to the FBI, fearing that the intrusion would become public or the FBI would instead investigate the company itself, the Treasury Department hoped the guidance would prompt more victims to work with law enforcement. That, in turn, could lead to more indictments and more sanctions.

That part of the strategy seems to be working: More victims are reporting incidents to law enforcement, according to Waters. Following the 2021 advisory, many insurers began requesting proof that policyholders making ransomware claims report the incidents to the FBI, he said. The insurers he works with heavily weigh decisions made by intermediaries such as negotiating firm Coveware. Following Conti’s proclamation about Russia, Coveware stopped making payments to the group, said its co-founder, Bill Siegel. Coveware continued to negotiate with Conti, allowing time for the victim to assess the situation, prepare a public relations strategy and make arrangements to notify people affected by the breach.

For its part, Conti laid low following the late February leak of its messages, then launched a final burst of intrusions in April, including a significant one against the Costa Rican government. But that attack, AdvIntel told BleepingComputer, seemed intended to provide cover while Conti protected its online infrastructure. Not unlike the Russian army in Ukraine, it seemed, Conti’s forces were making a tactical retreat in preparation for future attacks.

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Update, May 24, 2022: This article has been updated to include comments, made after this story was produced for publication, from the CEO of a company that continued to pay ransom to Conti after it proclaimed its sympathy to Russia.

Daniel Golden contributed reporting.

Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden are the authors of “The Ransomware Hunting Team,” which will be published in October by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

A case brought by Sen. Ted Cruz now means candidates who loan their campaigns more than $250,000 can repay themselves with contributions raised after they are elected.

David Fox of Cape Girardeau, MO joined the Real Rock Army today

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Recently I was pleased to renew a friendship with a man who I once had as an instructor of digital photography, John Nagel.  In the spring of 2007, I was enrolled in my second semester of Photoshop at St. Louis Community College – Meramec. It was the last semester that John taught before retiring.  I […]