Chicago media ran stories today about a police officer there who was shot and killed while pursuing a fleeing suspect. They name the 36-year-old officer, a woman with a young daughter, who chased the suspect on foot. They quote a senior officer saying she was protecting lives and lost her own as a hero who wanted to make Chicago safer.

She was a four-year department veteran on duty with a 6th District tactical team, they report, stopping a man they understood to be armed. They relate the suspect’s flight into a nearby apartment, and an armed confrontation commencing with those within. One pointed a rifle at them and officer Krystal Rivera was shot: “Shots fired at police,” one officer “screamed.” Rivera was rushed to local hospital, but died.

“This is the risk our officers take every single day,” Police Superintendent Larry Snelling is quoted saying. Two suspects were arrested. Three firearms were recovered at the scene. One story closes on a poignant quote from Mayor Brandon Johnson: “Her young, energetic and bold approach toward keeping us safe is the memory we will honor.”

Hundreds of words. Dozens of paragraphs. But nowhere do any of these reporters state who is thought to have shot and killed Krystal Rivera. Police are usually enthusiastic about naming them, especially when they are in custody.

The story is an unusually extreme example of what some call “the exonerative tense” in reportage about bad things that happen in the presence of police. When it comes to the moment where the key act would be described, such stories retreat into the passive voice, law enforcement jargon and peculiar omission: guns are discharged, individuals are impacted, subjects become unresponsive. It reflects the language of police reports and press releases, adopted verbatim by newswriters and editors eager to please departments that are often their key sources.

A clue is offered in the PBS story: “The Civilian Office of Police Accountability is also investigating the incident.” I’m sure they are.

Note how my post never states that Rivera was shot and killed by another cop? You likely think it does. It’s an intentional technique and it works. But I don’t know if that’s really what happened. We can only hope the police soon have local media post what did.

A woman in Pennsylvania is accused of abusing family ties to steal large sums of cash from her mother’s PNC bank account for personal use.

Grove City Police just arrested 55-year-old Lynn Dewey following a bank fraud investigation, reports 21 WFMJ.

According to the criminal complaint, the senior care provider Quality Life Services contacted authorities after Dewey’s 80-year-old mother, who is unable to care for herself and make financial decisions, lost a substantial amount in her bank account.

The facility’s administrators say that the bank statements from December 2023 to present show that Dewey, who had access to the account, transferred funds using the peer-to-peer money transfer service Cash App.

They also say that the mother has over $16,000 in patient liability, with no payments made since January. Medicaid likewise denied medical assistance due to the old woman’s reported income.

The police say that the suspect admitted using Cash App to move money from the PNC bank account and used the funds to purchase groceries and gas, pay personal credit card bills and send money to relatives.

Dewey says she used $41,671.78 for personal expenses. She is now facing charges for financial exploitation of an older adult and theft.

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An American-Israeli national named Alexander Gurevich has been arrested in Israel for his alleged involvement in exploiting the Nomad bridge smart-contract in August 2022 that allowed hackers to siphon $190 million.

Blockchain intelligence platform TRM Labs supplied key information to international law enforcement authorities, leading to the identification of Gorevich, who is believed to have played a central role in what is one of the largest hacks in DeFi history.

“The suspect, American-Israeli dual national Alexander Gurevich, was arrested in Jerusalem by Israeli police working in coordination with the DOJ, the FBI, and Interpol,” explained TRM Labs.

According to the blockchain intelligence firm, Gurevich will soon be extradited to the United States as the legal procedures have already been approved.

Gurevich’s links to Nomad Bridge hack

The Nomad bridge is a cross-chain communication standard that allows users to transfer assets between different blockchains.

On August 1, 2022, attackers exploited a critical vulnerability introduced in an update to its Replica smart contract, specifically in the ‘process() function.’

Though the contract was supposed to verify message proofs before releasing funds, a misconfiguration allowed any message with a correct root hash to be accepted, even if the underlying proof was invalid.

Once a single attacker figured out the flaw, the exploit method was quickly picked up by hundreds of other wallets, as it consisted in simply copy-pasting a specific transaction format.

This “mob-style” attack led to a chaotic and decentralized looting of the bridge, draining over $190 million in ETH, USDC, WBTC, and ERC-20 tokens.

TRM Labs comments that the vulnerability was very easy to leverage, so even people with no hacking skills or deep blockchain knowledge joined in the exploitation. However, experienced North Korean actors were also implicated.

Alexander Gurevich is not believed to have written or initiated the exploit code itself, but TRM Labs says he “played a central role,” and evidence suggests he conspired with others to launder large amounts of funds stolen during the exploit.

Wallets linked to Gurevich received stolen assets within hours of the bridge being drained, suggesting close coordination with early attackers.

TMR Labs’ data shows that Gurevich used ‘chain-hopping’ to move the stolen tokens across various blockchains, the Tornado Cash mixer to obfuscate the origin of the funds, and swapped ETH into the privacy-boosting Monero (XMR) and Dash.

To cash out the proceeds, he used non-custodial exchanges, OTC brokers, and offshore bank accounts tied to fake or opaque legal entities, and also converted some crypto to fiat through providers with no KYC standards.

Despite all the obfuscation efforts and the time that has passed since these events, blockchain transaction analysis still yielded enough clues to uncover Gurevich’s identity, resulting in his arrest.

Gurevich’s arrest follows that of another suspected hacker, a Russian-Israeli citizen named Alexander Gurevich, who was caught on May 1st at the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv using documents under a new name, Alexander Block, he had officially changed.

According to prosecutors, Gurevich exploited the Nomad bridge flaw and withdrew about $2.89 million in digital tokens. This was followed by others finding the issue and leveraging it to siphon assets.

Jerusalem Post reports that on August 4, 2022, Gurevich contacted Nomad’s Chief Technology Officer and admitted he had been probing Nomad for weaknesses, apologizing for the trouble and later demanding a $500,000 reward for identifying the vulnerability.

Update 5/17 – Article updated to replace Osei Morrell with Alexander Gurevich, following a corresponding correction at the source report by TRM Labs.