There are easier ways to watch a football game uninterrupted than taping your wife to a chair.
64-year-old Terry Ward is facing an abduction charge after finding a creative yet abusive way to get some time alone; he taped his wife to a chair in the basement. — Read the rest
This featureis from THE SELF-DESTRUCTION ISSUE of VICE magazine. Find it in a store near you, or get 4 issues each year sent straight to your door, by subscribing.
From approximately 180,000 members in the 1960s, an official 2024 estimate placed numbers closer to 18,000. Aggressive legislation has isolated members economically, removing their bank accounts and restricting where they can live and travel. Once inside the crime organization’s rigid structures, leaving is nearly impossible, and the traditional irezumi full-body tattoos that once symbolized endurance and status have become social shackles as owners have been banned from public spaces including baths and gyms. Today, the Yakuza exist in what some describe as a “golden cage,” bound by loyalty and trapped by regulation. All the while, Japan is changing, through technological acceleration, demographic decline, and increasing influence from outside cultures. So, how exactly does an ultra-traditional criminal brotherhood established in the 17th century survive the emerging world?
Part of the answer lies in combat sports. For the new Yakuza generation, MMA provides visibility, legitimacy, and a route to wealth, as well as an arena where gang ties help rather than hinder. Fighters’ entourages arrive openly sporting crime-family crests and cash-filled envelopes circulate before bouts. In a combat context, the elements of Yakuza culture that have fascinated observers for centuries—the mythology, the symbolism, the ceremony, the tattoos—all add to the theater.
My entry into this world of competitive Yakuza fighters came through Mario Luciano. A New York-born Italian allegedly descended from “Lucky” Luciano, one of the founding fathers of the American Mafia, Mario arrived in Japan in his early twenties. He now owns a members-only Italian restaurant in Tokyo, which is exactly as you would imagine: checkered red-and-white tablecloth, Dean Martin over the speakers, walls lined with framed photos of politicians and celebrities. But other pictures show him fraternizing with high-ranking Yakuza bosses, including figures affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi—Japan’s largest and most powerful Yakuza syndicate. At one point, while reaching for a glass, I noticed a Carl-Gustaf rocket launcher concealed by a row of bottles. Outside, Mario’s brand new Bentley had a bulletproof vest in the back seat.
Through Mario, I met Miyamoto-san, a former member of the Sumiyoshi-kai, Japan’s second-largest Yakuza family. He had performed yubitsume: the ritual severing of part of a finger as penance. “He’s not a good pianist anymore,” joked an acquaintance. Today, he manages the promising MMA careers of his son Ryuko and daughter Rei, as well as a fighting organization called Kiokushikai, which is growing fast.
He invited me to his home. The walls were reinforced with steel to deflect bullets. Inside, he showed me his collection of bōsōzoku motorcycles and openly discussed his ambitions in cinema. He was affable and charismatic.
As the traditional syndicates contract, something looser is emerging. Decentralized groups—fluid, digitally coordinated, less formal—are taking shape. These networks lack the theatrical visibility of the old guard. No elaborate sake ceremonies. No public-facing headquarters with brass nameplates. No irezumi, which in the glory days of yore were created with toxic pigments and unsanitary methods to which some older Yakuza attribute their liver disease. Instead: encrypted chats, financial scams, and temporary alliances between criminals hiring through small job websites. The term used to describe this new breed is Tokuryū: anonymous, semi-organized actors operating in the gray area between gang and network. The transformation is not cinematic. It is bureaucratic, digital, and quiet.
For younger generations, it makes increasingly less sense to submit to a lifetime of surveillance and restrictions when digital anonymity offers faster profits with less risk. The mythology of the Yakuza—immortalized in film and romanticized abroad—belongs to a fading structure. The question is not whether organized crime in Japan will survive. It is whether the Yakuza can survive in a world that rewards invisibility.
The age of the tattooed patriarch may be coming to an end. The age of anonymity has already begun.
Arnaud’s new VICE documentary about the Yakuza, Tokyo Sunset, is coming late 2026.
This featureis from THE SELF-DESTRUCTION ISSUE of VICE magazine. Find it in a store near you, or get 4 issues each year sent straight to your door, by subscribing.
Skincare products promising youthful glows and wrinkle-free smiles regularly lead to unexpected charges for the customers pressured or tricked into buying them, reports NPR. It seems there's not much anyone can do to stop the scammers, who often work out of mall kiosks and suburban salons, beyond filing lawsuits and complaining to disinterested authorities. — Read the rest
The French government is closely watching a cybersecurity crisis at supermarkets after they were forced to throw out food due to an attack that knocked out refrigerators.
The office of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu told POLITICO that he is “personally monitoring the situation” after cyberattacks targeted the refrigeration systems of several major supermarket chains. Lecornu has asked the country’s cybersecurity agency ANSSI to look into it, his office added.
News reports on Monday said that hundreds of supermarkets were affected. Intermarche and Cooperative U, two French supermarket chains, told AFP that they had been affected. Intermarche told AFP that affected stores will have to throw away affected fresh and frozen food.
Dominique Schelcher, the CEO of Cooperative U, confirmed on X that a cyberattack hit “the cold production facilities of several stores in our network” since Sunday night.
EU agriculture and food commissioner Christophe Hansen condemned the attack, also mentioning Leclerc, France’s largest supermarket chain, which has not yet publicly confirmed that it is affected.
French news reports state that the attack hit refrigerators manufactured by Danish company Danfoss. Prime Minister Lecornu’s office said ANSSI has found a flaw in software provided by “a Danish company” and has contacted it. The agency is coordinating with European counterparts as other countries may be affected, the office said.
Danfoss did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
EU cybersecurity agency ENISA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Pentagon's first military execution since World War II is scheduled for December 3, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says it will be livestreamed for the public. Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 fellow service members and injured 32 more in 2009, will be put to death by a firing squad. — Read the rest
BRUSSELS — The European Union’s cybersecurity agency and in-house research center have each begun experimenting with open artificial intelligence models from China, three EU officials have told POLITICO.
The Joint Research Centre (JRC) — the EU’s in-house scientific research center — is evaluating “publicly available open-weight models” originating from China, European Commission spokesperson Maciej Berestecki confirmed. The head of ENISA, the bloc’s agency responsible for cybersecurity, also said in an interview that his team was now testing Chinese AI.
The experiments with Chinese models at the JRC are part of a broader research project to evaluate artificial intelligence that also includes leading models from the United States and Europe, Berestecki said. “Models from different origins are included in a comparative scientific evaluation of their capabilities, performance, limitations and risks,” he said, adding that the JRC is also looking into their potential scientific applications.
AI safety and security — topics currently under intense scrutiny following a series of incidents in which advanced AI models hacked real-world networks during testing activities — are not the core focus of the JRC’s testing activities, according to a different Commission official, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive material.
Open-weight models are those whose core components are publicly released, allowing anyone to run the model and study how it works. China’s approach to AI has leanedmore towards open models than the United States. Some major U.S. tech and AI companies, including chips giant NVIDIA, are investing in open-weight models.
Forced to choose
The U.S. and China are locked in a race to dominate in the technology, with Europe largely sitting on the sidelines. Without a viable European frontier model, European private and public organizations may be left to choose between American and Chinese providers for advanced AI applications.
In a recent speech, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suggested Europe should not try to win the frontier AI race. A top German tech company told POLITICO this week it was dropping Europe’s leading AI lab Mistral in favor of open-source Chinese models.
The JRC has not entered into any “bespoke access” or licensing negotiations with the relevant Chinese developers, Berestecki said. The models are run on the center’s “secure, on-premises scientific infrastructure” and the Commission is not intending to use Chinese models for its own purposes, he added.
EU cyber agency ENISA — which has gained access to advanced models from top U.S. AI firms Anthropic, OpenAI and Google — is also experimenting with “a couple” of open-weight Chinese models, its executive director Juhan Lepassaar confirmed in an interview on Wednesday.
JRC and ENISA have been tasked with working together to set up an AI testing platform under a recent EU action plan on AI and cyber, the European Commission’s attempt to respond to the growing concerns after a series of incidents involving AI systems breaking out of testing environments and breaking into other organizations’ digital systems.
The FBI National Stolen Art File lists more than 8,000 paintings, sculptures and other "culturally-significant property" that has found its way out of galleries, museums and private collections and into swag bags. The sprawling online gallery provides a description, dimensions, artist, and, if available, a photograph. — Read the rest
Netflix’s film “Unabomber” arrived last Friday, and by the weekend it was the most-watched movie on the platform — despite reviews calling it “dangerously simplistic” (IndieWire) and “another box checked on Netflix’s long, long list of true crime content” (Decider). Mixed is putting it kindly.
I watched this streaming content through a unique lens because I have a vantage point on this story almost no one else does: I grew up next door to Ted Kaczynski. For 16 years, the Unabomber was my neighbor in Lincoln, Montana. Which is why you’ll notice I don’t call this a “true-crime thriller.”
The violence I uncovered in our shared backyard was harrowing: the strychnine fed to my beloved jet-black dog, Wiley, a threat against my little sister’s life when she was still a toddler, and evidence that Ted had built and tested bombs in the very woods where I’d ridden horseback and built childhood forts.
Ted wasn’t always the wild-eyed figure the FBI dragged out of a 10×12 cabin in the woods. He was a son, a brother, a student, a professor — the perpetrator of one of the longest domestic terrorism campaigns in American history was once a baby in his mother’s arms, a boy idolized by his younger brother, David. When Ted and David bought 1.4 acres from my grandfather in 1971, Ted still looked like the buttoned-up Berkeley professor, not a disheveled hermit with a taste for murder.
“Teddy,” as our family called him in those early years, didn’t just live alongside us. In the ’80s — before a text message counted as a greeting — he shared meals and dinner conversation with our family. He held me in his arms when I was a baby, brought me gifts as a child, played cards with my parents, and even worked for my family. Ted didn’t present as a monster. He presented as an eccentric neighbor who’d chosen a peaceful, off-grid lifestyle.
(Illustration by Salon / Images courtesy of Jamie Gehring) A young Jamie Gehring, left, in the early 1980s in the cabin where her family shared meals with Ted Kaczynski. Right, her sister, Tessa, with the family dog, which Gehring says Kaczynski poisoned.
I only began to grasp the full extent of his violence while writing my book, “Madman in the Woods: Life Next Door to the Unabomber.” For five years, my evenings were spent trying to crawl inside not only a killer’s mind, but the mind of the man next door who spoke to me in the gentle voice in which people reserve for children. I interviewed people who knew him and people who hunted him, reading thousands of pages of his journals, and corresponding with Ted himself at ADX Florence — the federal supermax known as the Alcatraz of the Rockies.
The violence I uncovered in our shared backyard was harrowing: the strychnine fed to my beloved jet-black dog, Wiley, a threat against my little sister’s life when she was still a toddler, and evidence that Ted had built and tested bombs in the very woods where I’d ridden horseback and built childhood forts, under the ponderosa pines.
But here’s what complicates the monster story, and what Hollywood has failed to illustrate in this movie: I also found a young man failed by nearly every system around him. A baby separated from his mother during a critical window of his development. A child so advanced in school he couldn’t relate to his peers. A teenager shipped off to Harvard at 16.
It’s that Harvard chapter where the Netflix film plants its flag. And look — the Murray experiments make for good cinema. Jacob Tremblay’s young Ted sits under bright lights, electrodes on his chest, while Russell Crowe’s Henry Murray takes him apart. The film wants this to be the moment. The scene where the monster gets made. A monster that discovers he cannot be “broken.”
Here’s what complicates the monster story, and what Hollywood has failed to illustrate in this movie: I also found a young man failed by nearly every system around him.
Some of it is true. His code name was Lawful, and Ted did want to prove that he couldn’t be defeated. There was a camera rolling, electrodes measuring heart and respiratory rates. The experiments were designed to break down a subject’s ideals and measure the stress response. They were unethical and cruel — especially for a 16-year-old who placed such importance on identity and intellect.
But the film mistakes a chapter for the whole story, and a dramatization for the record. If this is your first encounter with Kaczynski, the movie hands you a clean origin story and calls it a day. The experiments were not the single catalyst that turned a teenager into a man who would kill three people and injure 23 others. Were they part of the imperfect storm? In my opinion, yes. But an origin story is what Hollywood needs. The story is deeper, more complicated, and far from clean-cut black and white. There are so many interesting facets of this story, and I wish that the film would have taken the time and the care to tell them.
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Ted isn’t here to give his take on the reenactment, but I can tell you what he said about the experiments themselves. In a letter Ted wrote in response to a pen pal who was concerned about what the man went through with the Harvard study, he said: “The truth is that in the course of the Murray study there was one and only one unpleasant experience. It lasted about half an hour and could not have been described as ‘torture’ even in the loosest sense of the word. Mostly the Murray study consisted of interviews and the filling out of pencil-and-paper personality tests. The CIA was not involved. . .”
(Illustration by Salon / Images courtesy of Jamie Gehring) A young Ted Kaczynski stands outside his cabin near Lincoln, Montana, left. Interior photos taken after his 1996 arrest.
I believe I know which half hour he meant. Buried in a transcript of one session, I found the interrogator attacking the young man’s philosophy, then pivoting — with a cruelty so casual it’s almost worse — to his appearance: “. . .don’t interrupt me, please. On this avoiding of society or of society is a bad thing, is that why you’re trying to grow that beard?” Ted: “. . .I mean, really, this isn’t really a beard yet.” The interrogator: “. . .you’re darn right it’s not.”
It was cold. It was damaging. But was it the singular experience that set a man on a decades-long mission to dismantle technological society? Simply put: no.
And as far as the additional timeline in this movie — the hunt, just read my book. The agent is fictional, the heroes were erased, and just about the only thing I found factual was the re-creation of Kaczynski’s mailbox. But I will admit that Russel Crowe, Jacob Tremblay, and Shailene Woodley all deliver riveting performances. Jacob Tremblay embodies a young Kaczynski almost exactly as I have imagined him, minus the smiling and the forging of his mother’s signature. But there were moments of his performance in which I recognized a young version of my own childhood monster.
Hollywood keeps asking what made the monster, because a monster with a making is a monster we can understand — and contain. The harder truth, the one I lived next door to for 16 years, is that there was no single breaking point. There was a baby, a boy, a brilliant teenager, an eccentric neighbor — and, somewhere in the shadows, a killer. No one scene explains him.
Christopher Paul is running unopposed to become the chief of police in Elizabeth, Louisiana, a village of 417 people. Paul, however, was recently charged with raping two 13-year-old girls twenty years ago, creating a dilemma for locals who might not want someone suspected of serious crimes to be their only full-time police officer. — Read the rest
A young rabbit was having a terrible time attempting a flyout at the local skatepark. Stuck in the bowl and unable to escape, the cottontail made a new friend.
This kind, patient skater pulled off an amazing tailgrab and eventually helped his new bunny buddy escape. — Read the rest
Cocaine worth more than $10m was stored as evidence at a courthouse in Fiji, but at some point in the long-running drug trial was replaced by flour. Authorities admit that about 87 pounds of cocaine is "effectively missing;" ABC News in Australia describes it as "yet another apparent example of internal corruption that has plagued Fiji's authorities." — Read the rest
President Donald Trump loves a good pardon. His generosity is so well known, in fact, that an industry of lobbyists, lawyers and other insiders has reportedly sprung up to facilitate clemency for wealthy criminals. Clemency, meaning mercy or leniency, lets the president reduce the punishment for, or even forgive, federal crimes.
For defendants hoping to avoid jail and walk away from millions of dollars in financial sanctions, paying, say, US$600,000 to a lobbying firm to influence the president may seem like a good investment.
House Democrats recently reported that Trump’s second-term clemency – which includes both pardons, which wipe away every part of a conviction, and commutations, which typically leave convictions intact but shorten a person’s sentence – has saved convicted defendants nearly $1.7 billion in forgiven financial obligations.
Some of that amount – about $700 million – had not yet been officially imposed by courts because the clemency came through so quickly. Much of the remaining $1 billion had been ordered as restitution, meant to repay victims’ losses.
As a legal scholar researching the evolution of modern presidential clemency, I have reviewed every individual pardon and commutation granted by U.S. presidents since 1989, spanning seven administrations, from George H.W. Bush to Trump’s second term. I have found that while other presidents have canceled tens of millions of dollars’ worth of restitution and fines, none of them have come anywhere near the billion-dollar mark – until now.
What is restitution?
The main financial penalties faced by federal defendants are fines, forfeiture – where a defendant has to give up, say, the Ferrari they bought with the profits from their drug business – and restitution.
Restitution is an order to pay back the criminal’s gains to the victims of the crime. For example, if the CEO of a company tricks people into investing $600 million into a hydrogen-powered truck that was never operational, the court may order that, if convicted, he pay back the people he defrauded.
Restitution is rarely able to return all of someone’s lost money, but it is supposed to prevent the fraudster from enjoying the fruits of their crime.
Getting away with it
Since January 2025, Trump has granted clemency to a lengthy list of big-ticket fraudsters, including a cryptocurrency billionaire whose exchange pleaded guilty to anti–money laundering violations and CEOs convicted of payroll tax fraud.
Clemency seekers use a variety of ways to catch the president’s attention. The end result is that victims of crime – and taxpayers, who have to pay for these huge white-collar investigations and trials – are often left with nothing.
Unfettered power
The U.S. Constitution grants the president nearly unbounded power to pardon whomever he likes, whenever he likes and for whatever reason he likes. This is why, since 1894, the Office of the Pardon Attorney has tried to impose some guidelines on the process and decide which cases should be eligible for clemency at all.
These guidelines generally require that a clemency seeker have been released from prison for five years before they are eligible to request a pardon. If they never went to prison, the five years is calculated from the date of sentencing. Many presidents adhere to this norm: My study shows that between 94% and 100% of people pardoned by George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Barack Obama met this criteria. Because he gave so many preemptive pardons, Joe Biden’s percentage was lower, at around 68%, but still well over half.
In contrast, out of the 216 individual pardons granted by Trump in his second term so far, only 34 – about 15% – have gone to people who waited that long.
The money ladder
A look back at recent past administrations shows an erratic but increasing amount of financial obligations canceled. While some presidents have been frugal with their financial forgiveness – George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush remained under the million-dollar mark, while Joe Biden was just over it – others have been less so.
Bill Clinton erased nearly $10 million in fines and restitution through pardons, most notoriously pardoning Marc Rich, a fugitive financier whose ex-wife contributed more than a million dollars to various Democratic causes and the Clinton Presidential Library.
Obama more than doubled Clinton’s record, forgiving $23 million in financial sanctions.
But Trump surpassed them both in his first term, canceling nearly $195 million in financial obligations. The amount of money saved by convicted defendants during his second term is exponentially higher. One could even say that, as Trump likes to put it, “We’ve never seen anything like it.”
A new role for commutations
Since the main function of commutations is to let people out of prison sooner, commutations usually leave financial obligations in place. During his first term, Trump primarily granted commutations that left “intact and in effect” all conditions of a person’s sentence except for imprisonment. This let numerous defendants out of jail but kept them on the hook for nearly $3 billion in fines and restitution.
That has changed during Trump’s second term. Today, his commutations routinely cancel a recipient’s prison sentence “with no furtherfines, restitution, probation or other conditions.”
This is how, through commutations alone, Trump has canceled more than $300 million in penalties and restitution since he returned to office.
A word of caution
One figure that is unavailable in public records is whether any given defendant has started to pay, or has fully paid off, their financial obligations. So these figures for every administration represent a ceiling: the full amount of fines, restitution or forfeiture that a judge imposed on a convicted defendant. How much was actually paid down can usually only be estimated, though there are exceptions.
For example, Jason Galanis, who pled guilty to defrauding the Oglala Sioux Nation, had paid just over $2 million of his $80 million restitution before his sentence was commuted and the restitution erased in 2025. But we only know that because he unsuccessfully asked the court to return the money.
One useful indicator of how much someone may have already paid is the speed at which they got clemency. The faster they receive clemency, the less time they have to pay off their penalties. The median delay between sentencing and receiving a pardon during Biden, Obama and George H.W. Bush’s administrations was over 20 years.
During Trump’s second term, in contrast, things are moving faster. Trump has pardoned or given commutations to at least 44 recipients within a year of their sentences who together account for over $270 million in financial obligations.
This includes a nursing home executive who pled guilty to withholding his employees’ payroll taxes – which prosecutors said he spent on a yacht – and was pardoned 12 days after being sentenced, ensuring that he could avoid some $4 million in restitution. A crypto company was pardoned hours before it was due to pay a $100 million fine for violating anti–money laundering laws. A digital media founder was ordered to repay defrauded investors $36 million. His sentence was commuted, and his restitution canceled within four months of sentencing.
In these cases, clemency was issued before most of the money was able to reach the government or the victims it was owed to. The faster clemency is granted, the more likely it is that fraudsters get to walk away without paying their victims anything.
His victim, production assistant Miriam Haley, told the Manhattan court in an impact statement that Weinstein abused his position and power and that "It is a life sentence for me." — Read the rest
Clavicular, who rose to fame promoting the weird grooming methods termed "looxmaxxing," has worse problems than being mogged by a chad judge. The influencer, legally named Braden Peters, faces felony charges in Massachussets, where he is accused with drugging someone for sex, with procuring liquor for someone under 21 years old, and with rape. — Read the rest
President Donald Trump painted a terrifying picture during his rally in North Carolina on Wednesday night. Standing on stage at Gastonia Municipal Airport, Trump offered a dramatic retelling of a brutal murder that took place in the state last August. Iryna Zarutska’s death made headlines around the country, but the killing that Trump weaved into the Republican Party’s midterm pitch has also emerged as a persistent fixation and rallying cry for racist extremists on the far right.
As he told Zarutska’s story, Trump spared no gory or dramatic details.
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