Robberies and Thefts

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      British Museum Sues Former Curator for Return of Stolen Items

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      The museum accuses Peter Higgs, a former keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities, of stealing or damaging at least 1,800 artifacts and selling many on eBay.A judge has ordered a former curator who the British Museum says stole hundred of artifacts to return any gems or jewelry from the institution that are in his possession.The museum claims that the former curator, Peter Higgs, who once ran the museum’s Greek and Roman antiquities department, stole or damaged over 1,800 artifacts from its collections and sold hundreds of those items on eBay, according to court documents.Officials also want Mr. Higgs to explain the whereabouts of other artifacts that they says the former curator sold online. The court documents state that Mr. Higgs disputes the accusations against him.At a High Court hearing in London, the presiding judge, Heather Williams, ordered Mr. Higgs to return any items within four weeks. Judge Williams also ordered PayPal, the online payments company, to disclose data relating to Mr. Higgs’s eBay accounts, including his transaction history.The missing museum items include engraved gems and jewelry, some of which are thousands of years old.On Tuesday, Mr. Higgs and his family did not respond to emails and social media messages from The Times. In court papers, the museum’s lawyers said the curator was “suffering from severe mental strain” and was “unable to respond effectively to the proceedings.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Public Workers Joined Ring That Stole IDs of Homeless People, D.A. Says

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      Eighteen people, including nine New York City public employees, were charged with joining a conspiracy that made ghost guns and defrauded a state Covid relief program.Eighteen people, including nine public employees, engaged in a broad criminal conspiracy that included the manufacture of ghost guns, burglary and defrauding a state pandemic relief program, according to four indictments filed Thursday by the Manhattan district attorney.The defendants include five employees of New York City’s Department of Homeless Services, a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, a worker for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, an employee of the New York City Housing Authority and a school safety police officer.The Homeless Services workers were involved in a scheme to steal the personal information of homeless people to file for fraudulent benefits, the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, said.“This kind of conduct by our public servants is unacceptable and, we allege, criminal,” Mr. Bragg said at a news conference on Thursday.The investigation began in 2022 with suspicions that two people were using 3-D printers to manufacture ghost guns — untraceable firearms that can be assembled at home — in an apartment in the East Village. Evidence uncovered after the execution of a search warrant confirmed that Craig Freeman, 56, and another defendant had used eBay and Amazon to purchase machines and materials to build illegal guns in their homes. Both were employees of the Barbara Kleiman homeless shelter in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn.In the summer of 2022, Mr. Freeman got a text message from a co-defendant saying, “We can make some serious bank.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Germany Arrests 2 More Suspects in Hunt for Red Army Fugitives

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      Two men were in custody after a police raid in Berlin in connection with the longtime search for three of the militant group’s members, one of whom was caught last week.The German police on Sunday said that they had arrested two more suspects connected to the capture last week of one of the country’s most wanted Red Army Faction fugitives, Daniela Klette.A spokeswoman for the police in the state of Lower Saxony, which is in charge of the case, said the authorities were now investigating whether the two men, who were caught in Berlin, are Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg, who were sought in connection with Red Army Faction activities.The Red Army Faction, originally known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, was Germany’s most infamous postwar terrorist group. Ms. Klette, who evaded the police for decades, was wanted in connection with the bombing of a prison in 1993.During their time in hiding, the police say, Ms. Klette, Mr. Staub and Mr. Garweg committed at least 13 violent robberies, netting them about two million euros, or about $2.1 million.Ms. Klette’s arrest last week made national headlines not only because of the criminal group’s sensational past, but also because she had been living practically in plain sight. Under the name Claudia Ivone, Ms. Klette lived in an apartment in the popular Berlin district of Kreuzberg. The now 65-year-old fugitive had been active in a group practicing the Brazilian martial art of capoeira and in a local Afro-Brazilian society, even participating in a popular Berlin street festival and being photographed there.Security experts have raised questions over the effectiveness of the German authorities’ approach to hunting for fugitives, after it emerged that an investigative reporter, assisting a German podcast, was able to easily identify Ms. Klette last year using publicly available facial recognition tools.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Chiefsaholic’ Superfan Pleads Guilty in String of Bank Robberies

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      Xaviar Michael Babudar, a popular Kansas City Chiefs fan who dressed as a wolf at games, pleaded guilty on Wednesday in a series of robberies in 2022 and 2023, prosecutors said.A Kansas City Chiefs superfan known as the Chiefsaholic pleaded guilty on Wednesday in federal court on charges related to a string of bank robberies across seven states in 2022 and 2023, prosecutors said, adding that he had used some of the money to gamble on his favorite team.The man, Xaviar Michael Babudar, 29, pleaded guilty before Judge Howard F. Sachs of U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., to one count of money laundering and one count of transporting stolen property across state lines, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Western District of Missouri said in a statement. Mr. Babudar also pleaded guilty to one count of bank robbery in a federal case in Oklahoma, prosecutors said.Mr. Babudar was well known among Kansas City Chiefs fans for regularly attending games dressed as a wolf in the team’s apparel, and he had developed a “robust social media presence” on X, where he went by Chiefsaholic, prosecutors said.He boasted about bets that would earn him tens of thousands of dollars if he won and had an opulent lifestyle as a fan: a good seat to see his team win the Super Bowl in Miami Gardens, Fla., in 2020, a ticket that would have fetched about $8,500. He took a selfie with the club’s general manager on the confetti-strewn field. He attended quarterback Patrick Mahomes’s annual fund-raising gala in late 2022 in Kansas City and apparently won the painting that was featured onstage throughout the event.In 2022, prosecutors said, Mr. Babudar began stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from banks across several states. He was arrested in December 2022 after he robbed a bank in Tulsa, Okla., prosecutors said.Mr. Babudar was released on bond in February 2023, and he later cut off his ankle monitor and fled Oklahoma, prosecutors said. After he missed a court hearing the following month, many began to wonder where Mr. Babudar was and how he was able to sustain himself as a fugitive.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Subway Cameras Led to Arrests in Bronx D Train Shooting, NYPD Says

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      Investigators say that an early morning argument on a D train last week ended with the fatal shooting of William Alvarez, 45.The police on Monday said footage from a surveillance camera in a subway car helped lead to the arrests of three people in connection with the fatal shooting of a 45-year-old man last week.Justin Herde, 24, Alfredo Trinidad, 42, and Betty Cotto, 38, were in custody in connection with the killing of William Alvarez, 45, of the Bronx, according to the New York Police Department.Mr. Alvarez was riding a southbound D train around 5 a.m. on Friday morning when the three suspects boarded at the Fordham Road station and got into an argument with him, the police said. Mr. Alvarez was shot in the chest, Michael M. Kemper, the Police Department’s chief of transit, said at a Monday news conference. Chief Kemper added that Mr. Alvarez’s attackers fled the train at the 182nd-183rd Streets station.About 1,000 of the system’s roughly 6,500 cars are equipped with cameras, part of a broader effort begun in 2022 by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which plans to install cameras in the rest of the cars by the end of this year.Killings on the subway are rare, but attract intense public attention. This year there have been two other fatal incidents in the system. Earlier this month, a 35-year-old man was killed and five other people were wounded in a shooting at the Mount Eden Avenue station in the Bronx during the evening rush hour. And in January, a 45-year-old father of three was shot on a No. 3 train in Brooklyn after intervening in an argument.Transit leaders are under intense pressure to bring ridership back to prepandemic levels, and making the system feel safe is critical to that mission. Ridership rose by about 3 percent in January, hovering on average at about 3 million daily passengers. In 2019, daily ridership was about 5 million.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Indian Burglars Return Filmmaker’s Medal

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      Thieves in southern India kept the cash, the gold and most of the silver, but returned to the scene of the crime with one item, and an apology note.When the thieves broke into the country home of a renowned film director in southern India, taking gold, silver and cash, they made a clean getaway. But days later, a small plastic bag appeared outside the house’s gates, stitched shut with thin sticks and containing something wrapped in a white handkerchief.Inside was a medal for a prestigious national award that the director, M. Manikandan, had won in 2021 for one of his films.With it was a brief note handwritten in Tamil, a regional language.“Sir, please forgive us,” the note read. “Your hard work belongs to you alone.”The burglary and partial return, with its small-town intrigue and big-hearted absurdity, could have figured in the kind of movies Mr. Manikandan and other filmmakers in India’s south make.While Bollywood gets much attention and recognition outside the country, some of India’s most endearing and creative films come from its diverse regional cinemas, in languages such as Tamil and Malayalam. Mr. Manikandan broke through with a film about two egg-stealing, slum-dwelling brothers with a single goal — to do whatever it took to taste pizza. The film for which he won the purloined medal, “Kadaisi Vivasayi” or “The Last Farmer,” was a commentary on the difficulties of farming in India. But its surreal twists also laid bare the absurdities of the nation’s bureaucracy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Boyfriend of Bret Easton Ellis Arrested in Hollywood

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      Todd Michael Schultz, the longtime partner of the infamous author, had ambitions to run for office.For nearly 40 years, the novelist Bret Easton Ellis has been chronicling noirish debauchery in best-selling books such as “American Psycho” and “Less Than Zero.” This week, his partner, Todd Michael Schultz, was arrested at the fancy Los Angeles condominium building where the couple lives, and was charged with burglary, according to Abraham Bedoyan, a sergeant at the West Hollywood sheriff’s station.On Tuesday, Sergeant Bedoyan said, management at 818 North Doheny Drive received a phone call from a female resident in distress. The resident said that a man had entered her apartment and was ransacking her things, according to a police report Sergeant Bedoyan read from.The woman reportedly told management that the intruder was “unresponsive” to her requests that he leave her apartment.Building representatives arrived and detained the man, whom Sergeant Bedoyan confirmed to be Mr. Schultz, 37. There is nothing to suggest Mr. Ellis, 59, was associated with the crime, according to Sergeant Bedoyan.An eyewitness outside, who requested anonymity because she did not want to be associated with the story or the case, said that numerous police cars soon arrived. While residents milled about, discussing what had taken place, Mr. Ellis paced the sidewalk seemingly in distress while talking on his cellphone.In a text message on Friday evening, Mr. Ellis said that Mr. Schultz had been having “serious mental health issues exacerbated by drugs.” He said that the episode was nonviolent and that Mr. Schultz, experiencing a psychotic break, walked into an open apartment, believing it to be Mr. Ellis’s.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      15-Year-Old Arrested in Times Square Shooting That Injured a Tourist

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      The teen, Jesus Alejandro Rivas Figueroa, is accused of firing at a security guard and instead hitting a woman from Brazil.A 15-year-old boy was arrested on Friday, accused of shooting a Brazilian tourist in Times Square the night before and then firing twice at a police officer while fleeing the scene, officials said.The arrest came about an hour after the police said at a news conference that they were seeking the teenager, Jesus Alejandro Rivas Figueroa, in the shooting of the tourist, a 37-year-old woman who was hit once in the leg. Her injury was not life-threatening, and she had left the hospital as of Friday afternoon, the police said.Police officials said the teenager was from Venezuela and had been staying at a Manhattan migrant shelter following his arrival in New York last fall, one person among the tens of thousands of people who have come to the city after crossing into the United States at the southern border.He was taken into custody in Yonkers, officials said. He is also considered a suspect in an armed robbery in the Bronx and a second shooting in Times Square last month, said John Chell, the Police Department’s chief of patrol.Mr. Figueroa, a second 15-year-old and a 16-year-old were trying to steal items from a JD Sports store on Broadway near West 42nd Street at around 7 p.m. Thursday when they were stopped by a female security guard, Chief Chell said at the news conference.Mr. Figueroa pulled out what the chief described as a “very large handgun” and fired at the security guard, striking the tourist in the process. He then ran off, firing at an officer as he went. Given the crowds in the area at the time, officers did not fire back.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More