Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Damage award in auction of pot-laden SUV SAN DIEGO, Aug. 18 (UPI) -- A federal judge in San Diego has awarded $551,000 in damages to a man who bought a car with 37 pounds of marijuana hidden in it at a government auction. Advertisement Francisco Rivera Agrendano spent a year in a Mexican prison after he was busted at a roadblock near Ensenada while driving an SUV that turned out to have packages of moldering pot stuffed in the door panels and seats. The San Diego Union-Tribune said Monday that U.S. District Judge Emily Hewitt wrote in a her recently released opinion that U.S. Customs officials could not explain how they missed so much contraband when they originally searched the vehicle; however she dismissed the contention that agents didn't tear it apart too much so they could maintain the resale value. Federal attorneys were not required to go into much detail on their search procedures in order to prevent their techniques from being made public. Advertisement Rivera told The Union-Tribune in Tijuana that he was pleased with Hewitt's decision but said the amount wouldn't cover the expenses of his ordeal. Hewitt's order specified how much of the award would go to legal expenses, lost income, the price of the SUV and psychiatric treatment. Deputies use checks to attract fugitives CHICAGO, Aug. 18 (UPI) -- Sheriff's deputies in Cook County, Ill., say they used the promise of federal economic stimulus checks to draw several dozen wanted fugitives out into the open. The Chicago-area sheriff's office said it sent more than 5,000 letters to people with outstanding warrants for drunken driving, robbery, burglary and other crimes promising stimulus checks if they visited a store on the Southwest Side of Chicago, the Chicago Tribune reported Monday. However, those who showed up were instead put in handcuffs by deputies participating in "Operation Rebate and Switch." Deputies said 66 people were arrested. "We homed in on what is probably people's prevailing motivator at times, which is greed," Sheriff Tom Dart said. He said deputies posed as receptionists, clerks and customers at the dummy "Tax Recovery Experts Inc." office during the operation, which he said took about three weeks to plan. Advertisement MIT project energizes hacking community CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Aug. 18 (UPI) -- A student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has electrified the hacking community with a project aimed at a major transport system, students say. While the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority successfully sued MIT student Zack Anderson in order to suppress the hacking project he created, his fellow students say the 21-year-old electrical engineering major has become a veritable hacking hero, The Boston Globe said Monday. The situation began when Anderson and two other students, R. J. Ryan and Alessandro Chiesa, claimed to have found a way to hack into the $180 million MBTA automated fare-collection system. The state group sued the trio to ensure they would not release details of their project at the hacker's convention, DEFCON, which takes place in Las Vegas each year. Attendees of the Aug. 8-10 convention told the Globe while details of the hacking scheme were slim at the gathering, the trio's accomplishment was all anyone was talking about. "It was all the discussion at DEFCON," convention attendee Dave Marcus said. "Anytime you suppress research, it goes through the research community like wildfire. We can all feel like 'the man' is coming down on us as security researchers." Advertisement Swedes filled up with free gas MALMO, Sweden, Aug. 18 (UPI) -- Motorists in southern Sweden took advantage of criminal tinkering at several gas pumps to load up on free fuel last weekend, officials say. Thomas Ogren, press director for the petroleum company Preem, alleged organized criminals manipulated gas pumps at multiple stations, allowing motorists to fill up their tanks at no charge, the Swedish news agency TT reported Monday. Ogren said the thefts, which took place at unmanned stations, had to have been orchestrated by someone who knew how the pumps operate. "This isn't the type of fraud your average person could organize. You need to know how the pumps work to get lucky," he told TT. Police told TT that at one gas station in Malmo, more than 20 vehicles had lined up for a free fill-up.
