The FBI is after a very prominent "G" man: weight loss doctor and big-time ad buyer Gautam Gupta who may have swiped $25 million before skipping town. more ›

The FBI has requested DNA samples from Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, as part of an investigation into whether Kaczynski was involved in the 1982 Tylenol poisonsings that led to seven deaths in the Chicago area. more ›

After the Chicago Blackhawks defeated the Philadelpia Flyers in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals last year, it appears that people were too busy partying to pay attention to where the game-winning hockey puck went. Some people thought that an upset Flyers fan grabbed the puck before anyone else could get their hands on it, but it's unclear how the puck left the ice without a trace on that fateful night. more ›

Police and FBI agents rounded up over 100 members of the Traveling Vice Lords street gang this morning, the result of a long investigation that started two years ago. Among the gang members arrested was one who was once accused of murdering Detective Robert Soto in August 2008. more ›

DeKalb police have identified a "person of interest" in the homicide investigation of NIU student Antinette "Toni" Keller. more ›

The anti-war activists whose home the FBI raided on Friday held a rally over the weekend to denounce the bureau's actions. On Friday, the FBI conducted raids on eight addresses in Minneapolis and Chicago, including the home of Joseph Iosbaker and his wife Stephanie Weiner of Logan Square. The warrants executed suggest the FBI is looking for connections between anti-war activists and groups in Colombia and the Middle East. An FBI spokesperson stated that the raids were “predicated on criminal violations, not First Amendment protected activities.” more ›

• The FBI executed search warrants on several homes in Minnesota and Chicago as part of a terrorism investigation of a group of anti-war protesters.
• The investigation continues in Elk Grove Village of an incident believed to be a double murder-suicide.
• Police caught a suspect in the act of raping a woman in her apartment near DePaul University and have charged with with home invasion and aggravated criminal sexual assault.

A Lebanese citizen was arrested over the weekend and charged with plotting a bombing attack outside of a night club in Wrigleyville. Sami Samir Hassoun, of the 4700 block of North Kedzie Ave., was arrested after having gone through with an attempted bombing on Saturday night. Two problems: his accomplice was an undercover FBI agents and what Hassoun thought were explosives in the backpack given to him but the undercover agent were actually fake. The incident happened just south of Wrigley Field, near Eddy & Clark. According to the Tribune, while Hassoun will be charged with just this incident, he's also talked about "a biological attack on the city, poisoning Lake Michigan, attacking police officers, bombing the Willis Tower and assassinating Mayor Richard Daley." more ›

Eight people arrested over the weekend were indicted today along with a ninth man in connection with a potential domestic terror plot. The accused are members of the Hutaree, a right wing Christian militia group based in Lenawee County, Michigan. The indictment charges that those in question have been conducting military style training in order to prepare for an impending war with the Hutaree’s enemies, which include the federal government, state and local law enforcement. The Hutaree, self appointed “Christian warriors” who believe they’re “preparing for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive,” were planning to touch off a confrontation with local law enforcement in the hopes of igniting a larger uprising against the government. more ›

According to a report by the Tribune, Mayor Daley was secretly interviewed by the FBI in 2008, as part of their investigation into Calvin Boender and the Galewood Yards project. That investigation has led former 29th Ward Alderman Ike Carothers to plead guilty to accepting a bribe in connection to the project, and bribery charges against Boender. "The mayor cooperated with a request for an interview during the course of the investigation," said Jennifer Hoyle, spokeswoman for the city's Law Department, in an e-mail response to Tribune questions. "There is no indication that he was or is anything other than a witness." more ›

• The FBI has charged two men with plotting to kill an assistant U.S. attorney in Illinois.
• The search continues for an L.A. man last seen last week in Chicago.
• An argument over tailgating may have led to the stabbing death of trucker Alan Lauritzen last week.

As stats for 2009 continue to roll in, one bright spot is that bank robberies in the City of Chicago were down 30 percent last year over 2008's inordinately high number. 2008's total of 277 robberies fell just short of the city's record - 284 in 2006 - but the unofficial tally from 2009 currently stands at 190, the FBI told WBBM; an official number for 2009 should be released within the next week. Earlier this year, the FBI, CPD, and Cook County Sheriff's office worked with Dallas-based Electronic Tracking Systems (ETS) to create the Bandit Tracker to help spread information on area robberies. more ›

For five years the FBI has been searching for Dr. Mark Weinberger, a 46-year-old ear, nose and throat specialist from Merrillville, Ind. wanted for 22 counts of health care fraud. This week he was found living in a tent on the southern slopes of Mont Blanc surviving in freezing weather on dried and tinned food and snow he melted on a portable stove. During his arrest, he attempted to slit his throat but officers managed to stop him and he is now in an Italian hospital. more ›

The FBI and local area police are investigating two separate Friday night bank robberies, one in west suburban Oak Brook and the other in north suburban Skokie. more ›

A pair of laptops stolen from the office of lawyer Sam Adams, Jr., who is also defending former governor Rod Blagojevich, were recovered. However, according to Adams, neither of the returned laptops held any evidence related to the Blagojevich case. Because it's considered an ongoing investigation, additional details weren't released but Adams praised the police officers involved, saying, "Without jeopardizing an ongoing investigation, we can say we are ecstatic about the performance of the Chicago Police Department." Adams also wrote a letter praising the officers which can be read at the Tribune's site. more ›

Blogger and internet radio host Hal Turner, arrested in June for calling for the murder of three federal judges, has been on the FBI payroll since 2003. According to The Record of Bergen County, Turner was approached by the FBI in 2003 to become an informant. Since then, he has reportedly received thousands of dollars from the feds to report on various white supremacist groups. FBI memos indicate as much as $100,000 were appropriated for Turner’s work. more ›

Gapers Block points us in the direction of this story, showing that famed Chicago writer Studs Terkel was tracked by the FBI for most of his life under suspicion of being a Communist. You can check out all 99 pages here [PDF]. more ›

A pair of Chicago men - David Coleman Headley, 49, and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48 - have been arrested for alleged terror plots against sites in Western Europe including the Danish newspaper that caused an international incident a few years back by printing a cartoon featuring the prophet Muhammad. According to the Tribune: more ›

Last week, six black students, all males, from Washington University in St. Louis alleged they and some friends were not allowed in to Mother's Night Club and claimed their race as the reason. At the time, the bar claimed the students were in violation of its dress code, including baggy pants. The students turned away alleged that white students with equally or more baggy pants were allowed inside and at one point, one of the denied students, Senior Regis Murayi, switched pants with a student who had been allowed inside and was still denied entry. In an interview with the Tribune, representatives of the bar said other black students had been admitted and pointed out a photo of two of the denied students wearing backwards baseball caps, insisting the caps were associated with gangs and that it was concern over gang violence which led to the denial of entry. Murayi countered, “In and of itself that’s racial in that they automatically assumed that we were a gang." more ›

• NIU's police chief, Donald Grady, has been placed on a leave of absence after allegations of improper ethical behavior were made by NIU's student newspaper.
• Joseph Caputo, a former pricing analyst for MPC Products who turned FBI informant, has been awarded $4.5 million for helping the FBI crack a price-inflating case against the company.
• In the wake of all the fuss over the CTA's new proposed hikes and service cuts, The Reader's Whet Moser took a thoughtful look at transit issues in a few other large cities.

Craigslist buyers uncovered a scam by people pretending to be Illinois National Guardsmen who need to sell big ticket items like cars and boats in a hurry before they're deployed overseas. After receiving several calls, the Illinois National Guard verified that the names of the sellers on Craigslist were bogus according to Chicago Breaking News. Guard spokesman Michael Chrisman said the verbiage is almost the same in every ad, only the type of vehicle for sale is different. more ›

• Chicago 2016 CEO Patrick Ryan, speaking at today's press conference in Copenhagen, cited a new Zogby poll that claims 72 percent of Chicagoans support the Olympic bid.
• The Teen Cop Impersonator is back in the news as a judge has ordered him to three months in juvenile detention for violating the rules of his home confinement.
• The FBI is asking for the public's help in tracking down a Cicero man wanted in connection with a 1996 murder.

• The FBI has charged four area men in a child-pornography case; the men apparently did themselves no favors by referring to their groups as "Boy Lovers."
• U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush will introduce the "Bereaved Consumers Protection Act," federal legislation on cemetery regulations, inspired by the Burr Oak scandal.
• The CTA is the recipient of a new $1.5 million grant to help buy cleaner buses.

In one hell of an "oops!," it seems around 50,000 felons released from Illinois state prisons over the past several years without submitting DNA samples as required by law. The law is meant to collect DNA samples from felons on their release to check any potential links to unsolved crimes. According to the Tribune:

The Illinois Department of Corrections released nearly 10,000 felons without gathering their DNA since the law was enacted. And Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan's office estimates that county probation departments did not secure samples from 40,000 additional felons, mostly in Cook County, due to delays in implementing the law.

• The Chicago Park District has made the controversial decision to rename the site of "The Ft. Dearborn Massacre" (located at at 18th Street and Calumet Ave.) to "Battle of Ft. Dearborn Park."
• Will County Judge Stephen White today delayed a change of venue hearing on Drew Peterson's case until October 2nd and began preparing the jury pool.
• The Spire is looking even less likely than before.

In one of the stranger stories we've run across this morning, the FBI has apparently arrested a man who hacked into the CTA's radio frequencies and was passing himself off as a rail official. According to the Tribune, "Once the threat was identified, CTA officials implemented precautions limiting the individual to communicating with the CTA's operations command center, but not to train operators or other personnel in the field." He's no teen cop impersonator, but that doesn't make us feel any better. [via] more ›

Come on, feel the Illinoize indeed. Nevermind those 44 arrests in New Jersey last week. It seems that although that would seem to give The Garden State an advantage in corruption over Illinois, the FBI's statistics say otherwise. According to a report in the Sun-Times, Illinois still ranks pretty high in corruption if you're going by the number of FBI agents tracking political corruption cases. Chicago ranks 2nd in terms of U.S. cities, only behind Washington, D.C., putting Illinois near the top. Not only that, but former Springfield bureau chief Weysan Dun is now in charge in Newark so it's pretty easy to see where he cut his chops in preparation for last week's big bust. more ›

With the crime scene expanding and new horrific discoveries almost every day in the Burr Oak Cemetery case, the FBI has joined the investigation. Chicago Breaking News reports that an FBI forensics team is now on the scene, helping to map the cemetery grounds and determine what the scope of the actual crime scene is. more ›

• Bail was set at $1 million for the cab driver accused of sexually assaulting a passenger.
• University of Illinois Chancellor Richard Herman spoke briefly today on ending the admissions process at the school that gives favor to certain "connected" students.
• The FBI is now investigating a suspicious package found this morning at Riverside Plaza.

The Red Line Bandit isn't the only bank robber grabbing headlines this week. The FBI is also asking for the public's help in tracking down the "Bulletproof Bandit," so named because he wears a bulletproof vest during his robberies. The bandit is described as caucasian male, between 30 to 35 years old, between 6 foot to 6 foot 2 inches tall, medium build with dark hair and is suspected in three robberies since late-March. [WGN Radio] more ›