Results tagged “scam”

From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits...

There was very little else for Londonist to be concerned with when the threat of a Tube strike became a very unpleasant reality. The inconvenience was extreme: there aren't many alternatives to the Tube in London despite the best efforts of the Londonist team to get everyone from A to B. Brighter news came in the form of the first ever female Yeoman Warder, or Beefeater as the position is more commonly known, and...

Need to know just a little bit about something? Ask a dilettante. My husband and I went out to dinner last night. The restaurant was valet only, and it cost $6. We didn’t really mind until we watched the attendant park the car just a few feet from where we were standing. Then, after dinner, we had to give a different valet guy a few dollars for a tip when he retrieved our car. Seems...

Wal-Mart has agreed to pay $750,000 to the family of a suspected shoplifter who suffocated in August 2005 when a Wal-Mart employee chased him out of the Atascocita store and sat on him in the store's parking lot. Stacy Clay Driver, the suspect, was believed to have exchanged stolen goods for $94 worth of store credit on a gift certificate; a loss-prevention employee at the store chased Driver and sat on him as he lay face-down on the parking lot, which an examination found to have caused his death. "One or more people were on his body and he couldn't breathe," Brad Frye, an attorney for the family, said. "This was a senseless, senseless death."

Three local women were arrested this week on charges that they scammed 13 people out of as much as $20,000 by falsely promising them telephone counseling with Dr. Phil McGraw, his wife Robin and television psychic Sylvia Browne. According to the indictment, the women — Ann Theresa Stevens, Serena Stevens and Cher Evans — set up fake toll-free phone numbers for the Dr. Phil show and Browne last fall; when people would call, they would...

Houstonist's grandmother once told us that certain unscrupulous people would stage automobile accidents to defraud insurance agencies out of money. So that's always been in the back of our mind — Grandma doesn't lie, after all – but we never heard of any real cases until we read the story of the 10 people who have been arrested in an elaborate staged-accident scheme. The group of suspects includes a doctor and two attorneys who helped...

At least 80 Houston bars are scrambling to get their state licenses in order after the owners of the licensing service they used disappeared with their money and paperwork, the AP reports today. Bar owners found out this week that Butera License Service hadn't kept their licenses current; at least one bar, McElroy's Irish Pub, had to close for a day after owner Max McElroy found out his liquor license had been expired for two...

As fall settles in and another calendar page gets turned, thoughts turn from bbq's and vacations to holidays and the realization that '06 is coming to an end. With all that going on, with change in the air, we wonder what is it that made that makes the -ists ponder? Phillyist is concerned that the war on Trans fats could affect it's beloved cheese steak sandwiches, something for which we should all be concerned....

If it weren't for our life as an -ist, we're not sure we'd ever leave our apartment. Fortunately, to fully -ist, one must seek out the new, the fresh, and the unknown. Brand new, or just new to us, that's what we're all about this week. Phillyist keeps it fresh by getting a new motto, learning to prioritize, and taking in an experimental indie rock show. Torontoist does their first post in franglais, gets ready...

Being the jaded Interweb users that we are, Houstonist thought we had heard it all when it came to online scams — but apparently, we were wrong. KTRK reports today on an online lost-dog scam that has hit hundreds of people.

Ex-TSU President Priscilla Slade may be out, but she's not down — or so she hopes. According to KTRK, Slade has filed suit against the university claiming she wasn't given a fair shake. According to the suit, the TSU Board of Regents scheduled a retreat for this weekend where regents planned to talk about how to begin a search for a new president, but the retreat was to take place before the regents granted Slade a hearing she's guaranteed under her contract.

The Chronicle looks today at the City Hall career of Rosita Hernandez, the former manager of the mayor pro tem's office — and finds that it started with a lie. When Rosita Hernandez applied for a job as a municipal court secretary in 1994, she wrote on her application that she graduated from Bell High School in Los Angeles County in 1983. But the school said she actually dropped out in the 10th grade to move to Texas. Oops!

The Enron trial took a long weekend because of scheduling conflicts with the next few witnesses, but we can't go a day without some hot Lay/Skilling action — er, no, that came out completely wrong. But onward: On Wednesday, Newsweek looked in on the trial, noting that it's still generating an odd sort of corporate-scandal tourism. It seems the courtroom seats are being filled daily not only by members of the press, but also by...

The Chron's features staff takes an amusing look at surveillance cameras today in light of HPD Chief Harold Hurtt's call for citywide cameras. As the paper notes, Metro already has cameras focused on Main Street, so writer Lana Berkowitz decided to monitor one and see what went down. She watched the view from the cam at Main and McKinney for an hour, and she didn't see any suspicious goings-on — or did she? Some selections...

Five members of a Houston-area family were arrested yesterday morning in connection with a theft ring that stretched from here to eBay. Cindy Jahanian, her daughter Krystal, Nicholas Johanian, Elizabeth Espree and Valerie Baker are accused of a series of thefts that involved changing prices on items at retail stores, then selling the items for full price online — and police say the whole process was directed by Baraham Jahanian, the family patriarch, who is serving a 12-year jail sentence for theft.