Elon Musk boosts criticism of Twitter executives, prompting online attacks

The targeting of employees by Musk’s massive Twitter megaphone is a major concern for workers

Elizabeth Dwoskin3:03 a.m. EDT

Elon Musk on Tuesday used his powerful Twitter account to bolster right-wing users who sharply criticized__two company executives, __exposing them to the online masses who joined in the ___attacks__.

It started with a tweet from political podcast host Saagar Enjeti, who was responding to a report by Politico that Twitter’s legal, policy and trust leader broke down in tears at a meeting with her staff this week.

“Vijaya Gadde, the top censorship advocate at Twitter who famously gaslit the world on Joe Rogan’s podcast and censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, is very upset about the @elonmusktakeover,” Enjeti tweeted.

Tesla CEO Musk, who acquired Twitter for $44 billion this week, replied, criticizing Gadde’s past actions. “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” he wrote.

Twitter accepted a $44 billion takeover offer from Elon Musk on April 25. Why did he want to buy the social media giant?

During the 2020 presidential election, Twitter temporarily blocked a New York Post story on Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter that it said violated a policy against posting hacked materials. The company did not suspend the entire news organization but did prevent it from tweeting for a period of time.

Musk’s response Tuesday was the first time he targeted specific Twitter executives by using his nearly singular ability to call attention to topics that interest him. Supporters of Musk, a prolific and freewheeling tweeter with 86 million followers, tend to pile on with his viewpoints.

He has used the platform to criticize Twitter’s decisions in the past, particularly on topics related to free speech and the banning of accounts from individuals who violate Twitter rules. Gadde is the most senior executive responsible for those decisions.

He also used his megaphone to take a swipe at Twitter’s popularity, pointing out that Donald Trump’s Truth Social was “beating Twitter & TikTok" among Apple Store downloads early Wednesday.

But until now, Musk’s criticisms do not appear to have been personal or targeted at individual Twitter employees. His responses to the tweets from Enjeti and online influencer Mike Cernovich also reveal the chaos — and potential harm — that can ensue when the incoming owner of a company amplifies criticism of workers there.

Twitter, Musk, Enjeti and the two targeted Twitter executives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Personal attacks from Musk are a nightmare scenario for Twitter employees, who in recent weeks have repeatedly expressed concerns in interviews and at a companywide town hall that they could be targeted by the world’s richest man.

Twitter users quickly piled onto the criticism of Gadde, including calling on Musk to fire her and using racist language to describe her. Gadde was born in India and immigrated to the United States as a child. One user said she would “go down in history as an appalling person.”

Cernovich also tweeted about Twitter Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker, drawing a response from Musk.

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Cernovich told The Washington Post that he was “surprised by the reaction to my tweet, which was a discussion of a news report.”

In internal messages and at a company town hall Monday, Twitter employees asked executives for assurance that they would be able to safely do their jobs if Musk targeted them.

Musk launched a hostile takeover bid for Twitter two weeks ago, citing a desire to restore “free speech” to the platform. Over the weekend, he engaged in closed-door negotiations with the board. On Monday, the two parties announced they’d reached an agreement for an acquisition that is expected to close in three to six months, according to executives.

Employees who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution have said that they are concerned Musk may undo some of the steps they’ve taken tobetter moderate hate speech and disinformation..

This reporting WAPO sounds like one about a major war occurring on the planet. Kek

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/27/musk-twitter-attacks/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wp_main

Sean Davis comments on his growth of followers,and the comments from followers are kekked

https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1519302447143038979?s=20&t=H3DYhpLc9nO5Wz8wv3NnlQ

https://twitter.com/BuckSexton/status/1519292660497985536?s=20&t=H3DYhpLc9nO5Wz8wv3NnlQ

Buck mentions shadow bannings and this guy picked up on Markey’s statement “Algorithmic Justice”with a new twist “ Algorithmic Reparations” kek

https://twitter.com/Mando6Actual/status/1519293952049905664?s=20&t=H3DYhpLc9nO5Wz8wv3NnlQ

Schitt opens his mouth again

https://twitter.com/RepDanBishop/status/1519147477508796418?s=20&t=H3DYhpLc9nO5Wz8wv3NnlQ

https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1519289310322823168?s=20&t=H3DYhpLc9nO5Wz8wv3NnlQ

>>16163895

When they were invisible they could and would generate hate against anyone and now they are skerred to be criticized by their boss, get used to it, it happens in the real world all the time. Time to buck up kiddos

Adam Housley has said at least $80 billion from CA alone

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1519127955586265088?s=20&t=H3DYhpLc9nO5Wz8wv3NnlQ

Who’s Colin Kahl?

https://twitter.com/adamhousley/status/1493257298541645827?s=20&t=brOhIPtHbnAMUQjTaA90jQ

https://twitter.com/adamhousley/status/1493257298541645827?s=20&t=brOhIPtHbnAMUQjTaA90jQ

>>16163998

Link to article, whats worse, look at the date of the article. This is money laundering from the states. They knew ot was happening but they also refused to upgrade the DOL systems and refused to let the Treasury Dept to manage unemployment funds. Trump wanted it done from the Treasury. CA losing $80 billion went straight to Newsom and his family members. How do you Nanshee could buy that big expensive house in FL?

'Easy money': How international scam artists pulled off an epic theft of Covid benefits0>>16163985

Russian mobsters, Chinese hackers and Nigerian scammers have used stolen identities to plunder tens of billions of dollars in pandemic aid, officials say.

=•Aug. 15, 2021==, 9:02 AM UTC

By Ken Dilanian, Kit Ramgopal and Chloe Atkins

In June, the FBI got a warrant to hunt through the Google accounts of Abedemi Rufai, a Nigerian state government official.

What they found, they said in a sworn affidavit, was all the ingredients for a "massive" cyberfraud on U.S. government benefits: stolen bank, credit card and tax information of Americans. Money transfers. And emails showing dozens of false unemployment claims in seven states that paid out $350,000.

Rufai was arrested in May at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as he prepared to fly first class back to Nigeria, according to court records. He is being held without bail in Washington state, where he has pleaded not guilty to five counts of wire fraud.

Rufai's case offers a small window into what law enforcement officials and private experts say is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated against the U.S., a significant part of it carried out by foreigners.

Russian mobsters, Chinese hackers and Nigerian scammers have used stolen identities to plunder tens of billions of dollars in Covid benefits, spiriting the money overseas in a massive transfer of wealth from U.S. taxpayers, officials and experts say. And they say it is still happening.

Among the ripest targets for the cybertheft have been jobless programs. The federal government cannot say for sure how much of the more than $900 billion in pandemic-related unemployment relief has been stolen, but credible estimates range from $87 billion to $400 billion — at least half of which went to foreign criminals, law enforcement officials say.

Those staggering sums dwarf, even on the low end, what the federal government spends every year on intelligence collection, food stamps or K-12 education.

"This is perhaps the single biggest organized fraud heist we've ever seen," said security researcher Armen Najarian of the firm RSA, who tracked a Nigerian fraud ring as it allegedly siphoned millions of dollars out of more than a dozen states.

Jeremy Sheridan, who directs the office of investigations at the Secret Service, called it "the largest fraud scheme that I've ever encountered."

"Due to the volume and pace at which these funds were made available and a lot of the requirements that were lifted in order to release them, criminals seized on that opportunity and were very, very successful — and continue to be successful," he said.

While the enormous scope of Covid relief fraud has been clear for some time, scant attention has been paid to the role of organized foreign criminal groups, who move taxpayer money overseas via laundering schemes involving payment apps and "money mules," law enforcement officials said.

"This is like letting people just walk right into Fort Knox and take the gold, and nobody even asked any questions," said Blake Hall, the CEO of ID.me, which has contracts with 27 states to verify identities.

Officials and analysts say both domestic and foreign fraudsters took advantage of an already weak system of unemployment verification maintained by the states, which has been flagged for years by federal watchdogs. Adding to the vulnerability, states made it easier to apply for Covid benefits online during the pandemic, and officials felt pressure to expedite processing. The federal government also rolled out new benefits for contractors and gig workers that required no employer verification.

In that environment, crooks were easily able to impersonate jobless Americans using stolen identity information for sale in bulk in the dark corners of the internet. The data — birthdates, Social Security numbers, addresses and other private information — have accumulated online for years through huge data breaches, including hacks of Yahoo, LinkedIn, Facebook, Marriott and Experian.

At home, prison inmates and drug gangs got in on the action. But experts say the best-organized efforts came from abroad, with criminals from nearly every country swooping in to steal on an industrial scale…

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/easy-money-how-international-scam-artists-pulled-epic-theft-covid-n1276789

>>16164209

More of the article, this is institutional fraud, every state allowed, most of excuses below are lies

Easy money':How international scam artists pulled off an epic theft of Covid benefits

Aug. 15, 2021

Russian mobsters, Chinese hackers and Nigerian scammers have used stolen identities to plunder tens of billions of dollars in pandemic aid, officials say.

Sheridan, whose purview at the Secret Service includes financial crimes, pointed out that the stolen sums far exceed the annual cost of ransomware, a problem estimated to cost the economy $20 billion a year, which has commanded outsize media attention.

The windfall for criminal groups will fuel other types of crime, including drug and human trafficking, he said.

"These groups that are profiting so greatly from these types of schemes, they engage in a host of other crimes," he said. "Drug trade, crimes against children, more sophisticated cyber-related fraud. And this money is basically an investment to them to conduct more extensive criminal operations … some of which include crimes that will compromise national security."

Missed opportunities

By the time states recognized the extent of the criminality, the spigot of cash had been gushing for months.

"Nobody really understood how big the problem was until it was playing out," said Najarian, the RSA security researcher. "We all accepted that there was fraud taking place, organized fraud and local fraud. But what we didn't realize … was that the organized fraud was very aggressive and very efficient and moving very, very large sums of money offshore."

The investigative journalism site ProPublica calculated last month that from March to December 2020, the number of jobless claims added up to about two-thirds of the country's labor force, when the actual unemployment rate was 23 percent. Although some people lose jobs more than once in a given year, that alone could not account for the vast disparity.

The thievery continues. Maryland, for example, in June detected more than half a million potentially fraudulent unemployment claims in May and June alone. Most of the attempts were blocked, but experts say that nationwide, many are still getting through.

The Biden administration has acknowledged the problem and blamed it on the Trump administration.

"There is perhaps no oversight issue inherited by my Administration that is as serious as the exploitation of relief programs by criminal syndicates using stolen identities to steal government benefits," Biden said in a statement in May as the government announced a Justice Department Covid fraud task force.

The Biden administration has allocated $2 billionto shore up state unemployment systems. That appears to be badly needed, because states have failed to take basic steps to improve identity verification, according to the Labor Department's inspector general.

In a memo in February, the inspector general reported that as of December, 22 of 54 state and territorial workforce agencies were still not following its repeated recommendationto join a national data exchange to check Social Security numbers. And in July, the inspector general reported that the national association of state workforce agencies had not been sharing fraud data as required by federal regulations.

Twenty states failed to perform all the required database identity checks, and 44 states did not perform all recommended ones, the inspector general found.

"The states have been chronically underfunded for years — they're running 1980s technology," Hall said.

Not a victimless crime

Along with the huge losses inflicted on the U.S. Treasury, the criminals also hurt tens of thousands of people, many of whom suffered delays in getting much-needed benefits.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/easy-money-how-international-scam-artists-pulled-epic-theft-covid-n1276789