Lunchtime Crime episodes:

• March 01, 2025@LunchtimeCrime | The Culture Looter

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  "The case not only exposed how Steinhardt exploited gaps in provenance, but documentation, but also the existence of some pretty shady dealers. Today, Michael Steinhardt remains barred from acquiring antiquities, which I guess is a small victory for efforts to combat antiquities trafficking. His case stands as a cautionary tale about the ethical responsibilities of collectors and the consequences of ignoring those ethical responsibilities. And I guess it's a reassuring outcome for billionaires who want to do what they want to do, the law be damned."

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• March 01, 2025@LunchtimeCrime | In Defense of Magic

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  "It's time for lunch. You have the right to remain silent, but I won't remain silent. Welcome back to Lunchtime Crime Place your order to go because we are going to take a little field trip to the Magic Castle in Los Angeles. This story is not a genuine crime story, but one about self policing by a professional group. The Magic Castle is a historic private club for magicians and in 2024, the venue was doing double duty as a courtroom of sorts. The accused was Murray Sawchuck."

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• February 28, 2025@LunchtimeCrime | Legally Poisoned

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  "The new law required manufacturers to do premarket safety testing for drugs and submit evidence of safety before that drug would be approved. It also empowered the FDA to inspect manufacturing facilities and enforce labeling standards."

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• February 22, 2025@LunchtimeCrime | Doxing

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  "It's time for lunch. You have the right to remain silent. But I won't remain silent. Welcome back to Lunchtime Crime. Today's special is another explainer, an overview of doxxing. It's a relatively new crime, or maybe an old crime facilitated by technology. Doxxing is the act of publicly sharing someone's private information without their consent, usually online. The term originated in the 1990s from the hacker slang dropping docs, which doc dox, meaning documents."

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• February 22, 2025@LunchtimeCrime | Swatting

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  "Tech advancements have made tracing perpetrators challenging because swatterers typically use ID spoofing, or anonymizing technologies to mask their identities. However, law enforcement agencies are improving their detection, and, you know, public awareness about the crime itself is rising. So, lunch buddies. What started as a nasty prank is now a social threat. Swatting endangered lives, wastes resources, and undermines trust in emergency services and editorializing here. It's a really punk ass thing to do. Come back for more lunchtime crime."

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• February 22, 2025@LunchtimeCrime | (Another) Hitler Wannabe

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  "It's time for lunch. You have the right to remain silent, but I won't remain silent. Welcome back to Lunchtime Crime. Today's special was popular in the 30s and 40s and features Fascism and anti Semitism seasoned with a prison sentence. William Dudley Pelly was a big name in America briefly, and you've probably never heard of him or his playgroup, the Silver Legion. And that gives me hope. The Silver Legion of America was a paramilitary group modeled after Hitler's Nazi Brown Shirts."

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• February 21, 2025@LunchtimeCrime | Salt for Your Hysteria?

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  "It's time for lunch. You have the right to remain silent, but I won't remain silent. Welcome back to Lunchtime Crime. Today's special touches on something that seems to have a deep spot in the American psyche. Zombies. We are always up for a good zombie story, and we got one in 2012. The Miami zombie attack, which occurred May 26, 212, shocked the nation and sparked a media frenzy around the dangers of of a synthetic drug known as bath salts."

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• February 21, 2025@LunchtimeCrime | Belle of the Bank

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  "Following her release, she adopted a much quieter life under her married name, Rebecca Rogers, and she eventually worked as a legal secretary for her husband when she passed away in 1950. I don't know if her three children knew that mom was also the Flapper Bandit. Come back for more Lunchtime Crime. All week we've got an interesting selection of, well, criminals and just little odd bits of American history."

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• February 17, 2025@LunchtimeCrime | Nuts & Volts (and Lawyers)

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  "He took a more business based line of attack by aggressively undercutting competitors. He sold AC systems at a loss early on to gain market. And this let him establish power stations in areas where D.C. was impractical due to limited range. By 1987, Westinghouse had built 68 power plants. Now Edison had 121. But Westinghouse was closing the gap. Take that, Tom. However, the Electric Chair association was a PR nightmare."

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• February 16, 2025@LunchtimeCrime | Smoking Out a Killer

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  "Jurors found special circumstances of murder by poisoning and financial gain. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole and ordered to pay over 500,000 in restitution to Linda's family and some other stakeholders there. So, lunch buddies Paul Curry was calculating and successful until he wasn't. He was driven by greed and he misused his scientific aptitude for sinister purposes. So it does seem karmically satisfying that advances in forensic science helped put him away. Come back for more lunchtime crime this week and hug an engineer."

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