In the summer of 2014, the Disabled Veterans National Foundation was in dire straits. Only seven years after setting up shop, DVNF had raised more money than all but a handful of other veterans groups, but only 15 percent of its revenue in that time directly reached veterans. The rest was owed, almost entirely, to a single contractor—an outcome that had already sparked a congressional probe and investigations by Florida and New York’s top prosecutors.

Like other groups, DVNF used sappy solicitations to raise money, often centered around veterans with heartbreaking stories of injuries suffered in combat. But many of these characters were completely made up. By the time New York authorities announced a settlement with DVNF that summer, the charity was spending 90 cents of every dollar it raised to pay Quadriga Art, the direct mail firm that coordinated its fundraising campaign, and Convergence Direct Marketing, a firm that designed the direct-mail solicitations. As part of the agreement, Quadriga was ordered to forgive DVNF’s massive debt and pay the state nearly $10 million, the “largest amount of financial relief ever obtained in the US for deceptive charitable fundraising,” according to the New York attorney general’s office.

A Russian billionaire with a criminal record and alleged links to organized crime has been making large investments in US companies, including the ride-hail service Lyft, a biotech firm that does work for the Defense Department, and a prominent software company.

Gavril Yushvaev, who according to Forbes is worth $1.6 billion, invested a reported $100 million in Lyft. On a 2018 list of its investors that the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last year—which named LeBron James, General Motors, the Kuwait Investment Authority, and scores of other individuals and investment funds—Yushvaev stood out with his checkered past, which includes being cited in a Spanish government report as an associate of a Russian banker linked to organized crime and money laundering.

On Thursday, Greg Lindberg, one of the largest Republican political donors in North Carolina and a self-described billionaire insurance baron, was convicted of trying to bribe a state official who oversaw his businesses.

It’s a case that has torn the Republican firmament in the state apart—right before a pivotal election year with new maps that are expected to help Democrats pick up seats.

The April 2019 indictments against Lindberg were a bombshell. Lindberg had been secretly recorded by North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey, who was working with the FBI, as the businessman tried to bribe Causey with $2 million. The charges linked state GOP Chairperson Robin Hayes to the scheme, who promptly stepped down from his role. He pled guilty and is now awaiting sentencing. (Dallas Woodhouse—dubbed the “Roger Stone” of North Carolina politics and Hayes’ second hand—stepped down too.) The indictments also revealed that Republican Congressman Mark Walker’s political action committee received $150,000 from Lindberg at the same time Lindberg was asking Walker to exert pressure on Causey. (Walker is not accused in the case.)

The Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles confirmed Thursday that an anti-abortion specialty license plate has been discontinued after failing to prove its demand.

The “Values Life” specialty license plate debuted in July 2018 and had until Dec. 31, 2019 to receive 3,000 active registrations. It fell short of that quota.

According to a DMV spokesperson, 2,005 of the specialty were plates were registered by the midnight deadline.

The plate was a fundraising project of the Women’s Resource Medical Centers of Southern Nevada, which describes its mission as helping “save the lives of unborn children by sharing the love of Jesus Christ through spiritual, physical, emotional and educational support to our clients.” The center explicitly states it does not recommend, provide or refer for abortions.

Also discontinued for failing to garner enough support is the “Heritage of Sparks” specialty license plate, which featured Last Chance Joe and supports the Sparks Heritage Museum and Cultural Center.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to finalize a host of high-profile rules in 2020, including policies that will impact everything from auto emissions to food stamp access.

With the November presidential election approaching, the administration is widely expected to make a push to wrap up pending regulations early in 2020 in an effort to bolster those rules against a possible Democratic administration that may seek to unravel Trump’s policies.

Trump administration officials have been effective at overturning the work of their predecessors.

With the help of the GOP-led Congress, the administration effectively torpedoed a slew of Obama-era regulations. After Trump’s inauguration, GOP lawmakers used the Congressional Review Act to overturn 16 Obama rules, according to the Center for Progressive Reform. That law had been used only once before that, when the George W. Bush administration overturned a Clinton-era rule dealing with workplace safety.

Regulatory experts predict the administration is working hard behind the scenes to ensure that their own policies aren’t as vulnerable. Trump’s roadmap was laid out in a recent regulatory timeline, which estimates the dates for finalizing federal agencies’ rules.

Food stamp restrictions, climate rule rollback, health care, campus sexual assault...

Almost all of the 2020 candidates are using bad email security practices
It seems political candidates have yet to learn from the mistakes of the past.

“It is our full expectation that the cyber attacks against the 2020 U.S. presidential candidates will be more aggressive than we’ve seen before because these attackers continue to move away from content-based techniques and towards identity-based attacks, which many cybersecurity technologies cannot detect,” said Armen Najarian, Agari’s Chief Marketing Officer.

The research by Agari found that only 4 out of the 13 presidential candidates were employing the REJECT policy in DMARC; this meant that remaining 9 candidates’ supporters and donors were now vulnerable to phishing attacks. Also, it was found that advanced email security measures such as Advanced Threat Protection and Secure Email Gateways for both Google Suite and Microsoft office 365 weren’t being implemented by the candidates.