By Andy Rose, CNN

(CNN) — It might sound like a tale from the Gold Rush: Three men leave Tennessee hoping to strike it rich in California.

But the twists of their saga, as laid out this week in a federal indictment, are closer to a horror story – with pistol-whipping, lives threatened and people tied up in their own homes. And investigators say the men weren’t looking for gold – they sought something you can’t hold or even see.

The trio, according to prosecutors, wanted to make quick millions by stealing cryptocurrency, according to an indictment unsealed last month. Federal prosecutors say the defendants — Elijah Armstrong, 21; Nino Chindavanh, 21; and Jayden Rucker, 25 — all from the Nashville area, swept across several California cities in a little more than a month. They are accused of using several ruses to force their way into people’s homes, assaulting unsuspecting residents and holding them hostage for their own money, and demanding access to their crypto accounts.

“The scheme was not only sophisticated, it was brazen, violent and dangerous,” US Attorney Craig H. Missakian said in a news release this week.

Threatening violence against crypto owners to give up access to their funds is becoming more common, according to cryptocurrency experts, with hundreds of millions of dollars expected to be ripped off just this year. Thieves who might otherwise force people to go to an ATM to withdraw a limited amount of cash are instead demanding potentially unlimited crypto that is hard to trace.

“Bad guys always go where the money is,” said Ari Redbord of TRM Labs, which monitors cryptocurrency fraud and helps businesses and law enforcement respond to theft. “I think more and more right now, the money is in crypto, and we see bad actors taking advantage of that.”

Silicon Valley investor targeted for cybertheft

The case of the three men from Tennessee appears to have begun five days before Thanksgiving last year with a couple of pizza orders to a house in San Francisco, according to the indictment.

But these orders weren’t done as a prank, prosecutors say. They allegedly were an effort to see whether their mark was home.

The date and details in the federal charges match a case in Mission Dolores – San Francisco’s oldest neighborhood and one of its most expensive – that was previously being investigated by local police.

The initials of the victim in the federal indictment match the name of a resident in the home, a prominent tech financier who previously worked for the venture capital firm Y Combinator.

The CEO of Y Combinator, Garry Tan, said on social media he was a friend of the victim and posted surveillance video showing the hooded suspect approaching the door and asking for the victim, claiming to have a UPS package for him. The video shows the suspect following the person who answered the door inside after asking to borrow a pen.

Tan later took down the public video. CNN is not naming the victim because his full name is not listed in the federal indictment.

The intruder bound the victim with duct tape, threatening to kill him if he didn’t give access to his cryptocurrency, the indictment says. Getting instructions by phone from “unknown co-conspirators,” the kidnapper allegedly was able to get about $6.5 million from the account.

The victim told San Francisco police he was forced to crawl downstairs and had liquid dumped on him, with the intruder claiming he was going to burn the house down, according to a police report

By Nicki Brown, CNN

(CNN) — Before a judge sentenced Kouri Richins for fatally poisoning her husband, the couple’s three young sons made their feelings clear.

They urged Judge Richard Mrazik to sentence their mother – who two of them referred to as “Kouri” – to life in prison, saying they would fear for their safety if she were ever released.

“I don’t want you out of jail because I will not feel safe if you are out,” the middle child, identified as A.R., wrote in a statement read aloud in court Wednesday. “You have never said sorry for anything that you have done to me and my brothers. I don’t want you to hurt anyone again.”

The youngest son, W.R., said he wanted her to go to jail “forever.”

“If she got out, I would be so scared, really mad, and I wouldn’t want to go with her anywhere,” he wrote.

After listening to statements from the couple’s children and loved ones of Kouri Richins and the victim, Eric Richins, Mrazik ultimately sentenced the mother of three to life in prison without parole – the most severe sentence she faced.

Richins’ defense attorneys told the court they plan on appealing the sentence and filing a motion for a new trial.

Earlier this year, an eight-person jury convicted Kouri Richins, 36, of aggravated murder for fatally poisoning Eric in March 2022.

At trial, witnesses testified about troubles in the couple’s marriage, her yearslong affair and her spiraling debt – all reasons prosecutors say she killed him. Kouri Richins was also found guilty of attempted murder for trying to kill him weeks earlier, on Valentine’s Day, as well as insurance fraud and forgery related to his life insurance coverage.

“A person convicted of those things is simply too dangerous to ever be free,” the judge said during the sentencing.

The sons have their say

Before Mrazik handed down the sentence, three therapists read the children’s victim impact statements, explaining the boys each decided how their remarks would be shared with the court.

“Our roles are to read their words exactly as they wrote,” one of the therapists, Jessica Black, explained. “The boys want the court and the world to hear their side.”

The kids were all younger than 10 years old when their father was found dead in their Utah family home with roughly five times a lethal dose of fentanyl in his system.

Their mother, Kouri Richins, published a children’s book on grief about a year after his death, saying she wrote it to help their sons cope with their loss. She was arrested shortly after the book’s publication.

“You took away my dad for no reason other than greed, and you only cared about yourself and your stupid boyfriends,” A.R. wrote in his statement. “You were not caring and watching over me and my brothers.”

The two oldest children said they felt like had to take care of each other, with one describing how they would walk the youngest sibling to the bus stop and feed him. The oldest son, identified as C.R., said his mother was “always drunk or gone,” and would frequently lock him in his room.

“Kouri would lock me up if I told her she was drunk,” he wrote. “This happened pretty much daily.”

C.R. and A.R

By Tami Luhby, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration is doubling down on its fraud-fighting crusade as it seeks to show Americans that it is an attentive steward of taxpayer funds ahead of November’s midterm election.

Vice President JD Vance is set to highlight his anti-fraud task force’s efforts in Maine on Thursday, just a day after he and other top officials unveiled multiple measures aimed at combatting fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. Maine’s Senate race, where GOP Sen. Susan Collins is running for a sixth term, is expected to be among the most competitive contests this year.

“We want to protect Medicaid. We want to protect Medicare,” Vance said at an event on the White House campus. “But we can’t do that if the states that are administering those programs are allowing those programs to be fleeced by fraudsters.”

President Donald Trump’s fixation on fraud in federal benefit programs has been met with mixed reactions. Some experts say he and his team are exaggerating the amount of fraud that exists, while others say they are underestimating it. The administration’s tactics have similarly garnered both criticism — particularly for the harsh words and actions toward Democratic-led states — and praise for finally tackling a longstanding issue in the federal government.

One of Trump’s key fraud fighters, Dr. Mehmet Oz, has called out alleged fraud involving Maine’s Medicaid-funded treatment program for children with autism, hospice and home care providers in California, social adult day care centers in New York and durable medical equipment companies in Florida, among other schemes. Oz leads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers several programs at high risk for fraud.

One problem is that no comprehensive data exists to show just how pervasive fraud is in safety net programs, although prosecutions against criminals who steal millions of dollars are common. Last year, the Justice Department announced it had charged 324 defendants for their alleged participation in more than $14.6 billion in healthcare-related fraud schemes, more than double the previous record.

The Government Accountability Office estimated in 2024 that between $233 billion and $521 billion in federal money could be lost annually to fraud in a first-of-its-kind government-wide estimate. That represents 3% to 7% of average federal obligations, though GAO noted the level of risk can vary substantially by agency and program.

Relatedly, the federal government also made about $186 billion in improper payments across 64 programs in fiscal year 2025, according to GAO’s review of a small subset of federal programs. But not all improper payments are fraudulent — some may be due to administrative errors.

Improper payments have totaled $3 trillion since fiscal year 2003, according to GAO’s estimates, though it notes that the actual amount could be “significantly higher.”

Meanwhile, Oz has said that fraud, waste and abuse in the federal healthcare programs his agency oversees totals $100 billion a year.

But one former senior executive in GAO’s fraud unit said that GAO’s and Oz’s fraud estimates are most likely too low.

“There’s a ton of taxpayer d

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Análisis de Allison Morrow, CNN

Las pruebas, tanto anecdóticas como cuantitativas, se acumulan: la inflación ha vuelto con fuerza.

Dos informes consecutivos publicados esta semana revelaron dolorosos aumentos de precios en toda la economía, y no parece que vayan a desaparecer pronto. Los consumidores están agotados, castigados por años de precios elevados y la sensación de que a nadie en el poder le importa realmente.

“No pienso en la situación financiera de los estadounidenses”, dijo el presidente Donald Trump a los periodistas cuando se le preguntó si la difícil situación económica de los estadounidenses era un factor a considerar en sus negociaciones con Irán. “No pienso en nadie. Pienso en una sola cosa: no podemos permitir que Irán tenga un arma nuclear, eso es todo”.

Al igual que su predecesor, Joe Biden, Trump tiene un problema de inflación. La diferencia radica en que el aumento vertiginoso de los precios durante su mandato está indiscutiblemente vinculado directamente a sus decisiones políticas: concretamente, los aranceles y la guerra contra Irán. Ni siquiera los críticos más acérrimos de Biden pueden argumentar con fundamento que él provocó una pandemia mundial antes de asumir el cargo o que sus políticas impulsaron la invasión rusa de Ucrania.

Por supuesto, existen numerosas críticas justificadas a la gestión de Biden tras esos dos episodios inflacionarios. Su administración inyectó casi US$ 2 billones en la economía afectada por el covid-19, lo que impulsó la demanda de los consumidores y probablemente empeoró la inflación. Su emblemática Ley de Reducción de la Inflación de 2022 fue, sin duda, insuficiente y tardía para tener un impacto significativo en los votantes, quienes, obviamente, no le dieron una segunda oportunidad.

Trump regresó a la Casa Blanca tras haber basado su campaña en las quejas económicas de los estadounidenses de a pie, en un momento en que la inflación mostraba una tendencia a la baja constante. El Índice de Precios al Consumidor rondaba el 3 % a principios de 2025 —superior al objetivo del 2 % de la Reserva Federal, pero mucho menor que el pico alcanzado durante la pandemia que superó el 9 % en 2022— y se mantuvo mayormente por debajo de ese umbral durante el resto del año.

Luego llegó la guerra con Irán, un conflicto impopular desde el principio, que no hace sino agravar la frustración económica de los estadounidenses.

Por si te interesa: El informe del Índice de Precios al Consumidor publicado el martes mostró que los precios subieron un 3,8 % interanual, un aumento considerable con respecto a la tasa anual del 2,4 % de febrero, antes de que Estados Unidos e Israel comenzaran a atacar a Irán.

Luego llegó el caos aún mayor del Índice de Precios al Productor, que registra los precios mayoristas que las empresas se pagan entre sí y suele anticipar los cambios en los precios al consumidor. Este indicador de inflación alcanzó una tasa anual del 6 % en abril (frente al 4 % en marzo).

Mensualmente, el índice mayorista aumentó un 1,4 %, el doble de lo que esperaban los economistas y el segundo mayor incremento mensual registrado. (El mayor aumento mensual se produjo en marzo de 2022, tres meses antes de que la inflación al consumidor alcanzara su punto máximo).

“Nuestra inflación es solo a corto plazo”, dijo Trump el martes, sonando un poco como Biden en 2021 cuando dijo que “se espera que la mayoría de los aumentos de precios que hemos visto sean temporales”.

Ojalá con solo desearlo se hiciera realidad.

Si bien es cierto que los precios de la energía son volátiles, y gran parte de la crisis de abril se puede atribuir al hecho de que la guerra dejó fuera de servicio al 20 % del suministro mundial de petróleo prácticamente de la