
Drug traffickers nabbed after sending photo of pet French Bulldog ordered to pay $1.4 million
CBSN
Drug traffickers whose entire organized crime ring was brought down by a photo of a French Bulldog were ordered to fork over more than $1.4 million, the United Kingdom's National Crime Agency said.
Stefan Baldauf, 64, and Philip Lawson 63, were drug traffickers nabbed in 2020 as part of Operation Venetic along with other members of their group for smuggling drugs from the United Kingdom to Australia. The traffickers sent 448kg of amphetamine worth about $46 million in an arm of an excavator down under.
The traffickers even rigged an auction to make sure the amphetamine went into the right hands. The drugs, which investigators said was MDMA, was first stored in the heavy equipment in an industrial unit in Grays, Essex, before being shipped to Australia. It took almost three months to arrive in Brisbane, the National Crime Agency said.

Russia has released Ksenia Karelina, a dual U.S.-Russian national who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for treason in August last year, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a social media post early Thursday, offering no information about the terms of her release. The Wall Street Journal first reported Karelina's release, saying she was freed in a prisoner swap orchestrated by the two countries' intelligence agencies.

London — The British government's broadcasting regulator Ofcom announced Wednesday that it is investigating an online suicide forum reportedly linked to 50 deaths in the U.K. Ofcom said it was using new powers granted under British law to look into whether the site's service provider had "failed to put appropriate safety measures in place to protect its U.K. users from illegal content and activity."

Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo — Anthrax poisoning has killed about 50 hippos in Virunga, Africa's oldest national park, which is located in the Democratic Republic of Congo's troubled east, the head of the park told AFP on Tuesday. The toxin is caused by a spore-forming bacterium, Bacillus anthracis, which survives for decades in soil where animals that died of anthrax or were carriers were buried. It is transmissible to humans and potentially fatal in its inhaled form.

Moscow — An appellate court in Russia's far east on Monday reduced the prison sentence for an American soldier convicted of stealing and making threats of murder, Russia's state news agency RIA Novosti reported. Staff Sgt. Gordon Black, 34, flew to the Pacific port city of Vladivostok to see his girlfriend and was arrested in May 2024 after she accused him of stealing from her, according to U.S. officials and Russian authorities.