The exploitation is sickening. Scam artists use tragedy as an opportunity to profit. The school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut was no exception. Last week CNN confronted a woman who was allegedly using the name of a young victim to solicit donations. Today she was arrested by the FBI on charges of lying to federal agents investigating fraudulent fundraising.
When our producer, David Fitzpatrick, went to the Bronx home of Nouel Alba, 37, she denied any connection to an email asking for money for the funeral of 6-year-old Noah Pozner. Fitzpatrick told her that the Pozner family was alarmed to learn a stranger was collecting funds just days after Noah’s death.
Drew Griffin and David Fitzpatrick
CNN Special Investigations Unit
Pharmacies in Utah and Illinois are at the heart of an illicit nationwide network providing prescription drugs over the internet, federal agents state in court papers filed in two cities.
In search warrant affidavits obtained by CNN, agents that the business was centered around two pharmacies, one in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines, Illinois, and the other here in this small town south of Salt Lake City.
According to the affidavits, both pharmacies are owned by the same man, Kyle Rootsaert - the subject of a 2008 report by CNN. One of them, the Des Plaines company now called Rand Pharmacy, combined with another unidentified pharmacy to ship 30,000 packages of prescription drugs across the country during the first six months of 2010.
Drew Griffin | BIO
CNN Investigative Correspondent
David Fitzpatrick
CNN Special Investigations Unit
Program Note: A look at the investigation into potential safety concerns along the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline on tonight's "AC360" 10 p.m. ET
Delta Junction, Alaska (CNN) - The Trans-Alaska Pipeline, 800 miles long and carrying an estimated 650,000 barrels of oil a day, sweeps majestically over the fast-flowing Tanana River here.
For most of its 33-year history, the pipeline has done its work well. It survived an earthquake and even a 2001 attack by a deranged man who pumped six high-powered bullets into its skin.
But a little-publicized accident over the Memorial Day weekend has triggered a wave of concern among congressional investigators and led to accusations that Alyeska, the oil company consortium that manages the pipeline, is cutting maintenance and safety budgets.
According to pipeline critics, those cuts could endanger the entire system and one day lead to a spill that would shatter Alaska's fragile ecosystems.
"There's incident after incident within the last six months (that) might seem like small things, but when you put them all together, in a relatively short period of time, it really tells you how poorly this pipeline is being maintained," Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Michigan, told CNN in an interview to air on tonigh't "AC360"
David Fitzpatrick
CNN Special Investigations Unit
Editor's Note: Exxon Valdez victims - 20 years later. CNN's Drew Griffin investigates charges that Exxon deliberately covered up high rates of sickness among workers after the spill. Don't miss a special "AC360°" investigation at 10 p.m. ET Wednesday on CNN.
The head of the company that operates the Trans-Alaska Pipeline announced his retirement Wednesday after criticism by a congressional committee and the internal watchdog unit of majority owner BP.
Kevin Hostler will step down as CEO of Alyeska, the BP-dominated consortium that operates the 800-mile pipeline, on September 30, the company announced.
"Retiring at the end of September is good for the pipeline, and it allows enough time for a proper transition," Hostler said. "Our executive team and other Alyeska leaders have worked toward developing leadership skills so that any transition in the organization is seamless."
Abbie Boudreau and David Fitzpatrick
CNN Special Investigations Unit
A history of slipshod inspections is at least partly to blame for the disaster that destroyed the drill rig Deepwater Horizon and unleashed the worst oil spill in U.S. history, a former Interior Department official says.
Bobby Maxwell worked for 22 years as an auditor and audit supervisor for the Minerals Management Service, and he said the disaster would not have happened if inspectors had done their jobs. But he said a "culture of corruption" enveloped the agency, "and it permeated the whole agency, both the revenue and the inspection side."
The Minerals Management Service, a division of the Interior Department, is the primary federal agency that conducts safety inspections and collects revenue on the more than 3,500 oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Before leaving the agency in 2006, he supervised more than 100 auditors, who dig through oil company documents to make sure the federal government is getting all the royalties it's owed.
David Fitzpatrick
CNN Special Investigations Unit
ON NORTHSHORE BAY, Louisiana—It’s difficult to imagine the scale and depth of the back breaking work that lies ahead for Louisiana and the other Gulf states until you spend some time on the water with people whose job it is to protect the environment.
Along with CNN Photojournalist Orlando Ruiz, I took a five hour trip to look at only a few of the hundreds of marsh islands that dot the Mississippi Delta country at the very tip of Louisiana. Taking us on the tour was the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, custodians of the estimated 15,000 miles of coastline that make the state unique.
I took the trip in preparation for a planned CNN Special Investigations Unit report that later this week on AC 360° that will examine the Minerals Management Service. The MMS is an agency within the Department of Interior that has proven to be a key player in the oil spill crisis, even though with all the coverage given the spill, few Americans know of the agency and fewer still know what it does.
The MMS, as one oil industry expert told me, is the nation’s landlord of all of the oil and gas tenants in the Gulf. The latest count is that there are something like 4,000 or so oil or gas platforms and the MMS deals with all of them.
Like a landlord, the MMS takes in rent—the royalties that companies like British Petroleum pay to the U.S. treasury for the privilege of operating either close in or deep water drilling platforms. And the MMS also has a statutory duty to inspect those rigs, take careful note of the safety and overall conditions of the rigs and, if necessary, deny permits to drill or continue drilling.
But if the MMS fails in its job, or as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in late May, it has a “cozy” relationship with the oil companies that it’s supposed to regulate, then you can see the real world impact on the islands we saw near the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Oil began arriving at NorthShore Bay in Louisiana two weeks ago, according to the Wildlife and Fisheries Department. On our tour, you could see miles and miles of booms laid around the marsh islands. But under a blazing sun, it was also clear that most of the booms had become fully saturated. Oil was not only seeping into the roso-cane reeds that dominate the islands but it had also broken through the containment booms. The roso-cane reeds closest to the edge of the water had already been destroyed. Small wisps of green leaf on the very top of the reeds were the only visible sign of life.
Sgt. Ray Champagne of the Wildlife and Fisheries began telling his headquarters that the booms had become saturated and that new ones needed to be brought out to the islands. He gave the exact coordinates but soon gave up and told his superiors that every boom he saw needed to be replaced.
Sgt. Champagne also had one other piece of unhappy news. As we rode along the Mississippi River, he pointed out that the water level was unusually high. By the end of the month, he added, the water is bound to decrease, making oil contamination that much more certain.
By Drew Griffin and David Fitzpatrick
CNN Special Investigations Unit
The captain of the container ship Maersk Alabama ignored explicit warnings to stay well off the coast of Somalia before his capture by pirates in 2009, according to 16 of its 19 crew members.
"It's almost like he wanted to be captured," the ship's chief engineer, Mike Perry, told CNN in an interview to air on tonight's "AC360."
Capt. Richard Phillips spent four days as a hostage after the attempted seizure of the Maersk Alabama. After his rescue by U.S. Navy SEAL commandos, Phillips was lauded as a hero, and the publisher of his new book promoted him as a sea captain who risked his life by offering himself as a hostage "in exchange for the safety of the crew."
The 16 crew members have been far less public about the events, even as Phillips toured the country this spring to promote his book, "A Captain's Duty." But now they are telling a different version of what took place in the waters off the Somali coast in early April 2009.
Perry, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Navy, was the chief engineer aboard the Alabama as it sailed from Oman, in the Persian Gulf, to Mombasa, Kenya, with a cargo of relief supplies. He told CNN Correspondent Drew Griffin that Phillips' decision "certainly warrants an investigation."
David Fitzpatrick
CNN's Special Investigative Unit
A town with a population of 218 sitting more than three hours from St. Louis would seem like an unlikely place for the nation's first stimulus project.
Yet the progress is apparent on a new $9 million bridge over the Osage River, and the span is scheduled to receive its first automobile and truck traffic sometime in midsummer. It's replacing a bridge built when Franklin Roosevelt was president on what the Missouri Department of Transportation says is the most direct link between Missouri's capitol, Jefferson City, and a large U.S. Army installation, Fort Leonard Wood.
The earth-moving equipment kicked in only minutes after President Obama signed the economic stimulus bill his administration pushed through Congress 11 months ago. Missouri's Democratic governor, Jay Nixon, was present at the first shovel turning and the state paid for a satellite truck to beam images of the ceremony to every resident of the state who wanted to see it.
State and federal officials said at that time that the bridge would create about 30 direct jobs and spin off another 220 "indirect" jobs - supplying the steel, pouring the concrete and boosting the local community's economy.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 symbolized the end of communism across Eastern Europe.
David W. Fitzpatrick
CNN Special Investigations Unit
There’s a lot to read and a lot to see today about the events 20 years ago on Nov. 9, 1989 when East Germany (technically a splendid oxymoron called the German Democratic Republic) took no action and the infamous Berlin Wall was reduced to a footnote of history.
I was there for those tumultuous and joyous events as a producer for the CBS Evening News and above all else, the one thing that sticks in my mind is not the tremendous geo-political fallout, but rather the voices and faces of the people of both East and West Berlin.
When I arrived in Berlin after an overnight flight from New York and then on the only Western airline allowed into West Berlin (remember Pan American World Airways?), enormous crowds had already started to build near the Wall and the adjacent Brandenburg Gate.
One of the first people I recognized — and he, being a seasoned politician enjoyed the recognition — was the mayor of West Berlin, Willy Brandt. His long time symbol was a red rose that he always wore in lapel of his suit. He was beaming as we approached with our camera crew and in perfect English began to give us an interview drenched in politics and logic, but mostly void of emotion.
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