Placer County woman to turn over cash, designer bags in plea deal with feds
A Placer County woman will turn over dozens of luxury items including designer purses, a Rolex watch and a Cartier necklace as part of a plea deal filed in Sacramento federal court in connection with a series of schemes including interstate marijuana distribution, identity theft and impersonating public officials.
Myra Boleche Minks, who prosecutors said operated with two co-conspirators out of a house in Loomis, admitted that she purchased marijuana in California and sent it to Georgia, Nevada, Texas and other states. The weed was either stuffed into suitcases and carried on commercial airline flights by couriers who worked for the group, or sent via shipping companies, the plea agreement filed Tuesday says.
According to the agreement with prosecutors, the sales generated cash, which was either brought back to the house in Loomis in suitcases, shipped back or deposited in banks by the group's associates. Minks admitted that she used the proceeds from the sales to buy luxury goods including an 18-karat white gold ring that featured a pear-shaped 7.15-carat diamond and 20 smaller diamonds.
The list of 73 items she agreed to forfeit included nearly $40,000 in cash, several pieces of jewelry and dozens of purses by Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Prada, Yves St. Laurent and others.
In addition to the marijuana sales, Minks also pleaded guilty to impersonating government officials on several occasions.
In April 2020, after two people were shot at on a freeway in Oakland, Minks called the hospital where they were taken, saying she was a DEA agent named Amanda Wilkins and asking whether the car the two had been traveling in was being searched, according to prosecutors. She also sought information from the California Highway Patrol about the investigation, again posing as Wilkins.
On another occasion, Minks toured a house in the Placer County community of Newcastle with co-conspirator Quinten Moody, who has already pleaded guilty in the case, the agreement says. When she learned that someone else had made an offer on the property, she impersonated an FBI agent in an effort to get them to drop the deal, the agreement says.
Minks also posed as an assistant U.S. attorney to get information about a co-conspirator who was arrested in Georgia, according to prosecutors. She identified herself as a Secret Service agent when trying to pry information about a criminal investigation in the town of Colma in San Mateo County and a federal prosecutor seeking information about a murder in San Francisco.
A separate scheme involved identity theft and efforts to obtain California unemployment benefits, the agreement says.
Minks is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 5. She faces up to 40 years in prison and a $5 million fine for the marijuana distribution charge, and three years of incarceration and a $250,000 fine for each of seven counts of impersonating an officer or employee of the United States. She faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for a mail fraud charge related to the unemployment insurance scam, and two years and a fine of up to $250,000 for the identity theft charge.
Moody was sentenced in 2023 to 84 months in prison.
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Buzz Feed
2 days ago
- Buzz Feed
22 Wild Facts About Old Hollywood Celebrities
Shirley Temple was so popular and talented that there was a conspiracy theory she was not a child at all, but an adult with dwarfism. In fact, she was investigated by the Vatican, who sent a priest to confirm she was in fact a child — which they were, apparently, able to do. Many celebrities from the '40s were actually spies during World War II, including Josephine Baker. She lived in Nazi-occupied France and would flirt with Nazi officials and get them tispy until they divulged military secrets, then write the secrets down on invisible ink and stash them in her underwear. MLB Baseball player Moe Berg worked for the predecessor to the CIA (the Office of Strategic Services), and once traveled to Switzerland with orders to assasinate German scientiest Werner Heisenberg if he discovered the Germans might soon be able to develop an atomic bomb. Famous chef Julia Child worked for the same organization before becoming famous, with her most notable job being to create "cakes" that were used as shark repellant. And Cary Grant reportedly spied on people in Hollywood to find Nazi sympathizers, including the German-born Count Kurt von Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow, who had married heiress Barbara Woolworth Hutton. Grant actually ended up marrying the heiress after she separated from her husband. Also during WWII, Audrey Hepburn (as a child) used to perform at secret concerts in the Netherlands to raise money for the Dutch resistance, risking discovery and punishment from Germans. Oh, and BTW, guess who was allegedly a Nazi informant? Coco Chanel. During World War II, Coco Chanel was named as a Nazi informant by friend Vera Bate (who herself confessed to being a German agent). The French government arrested Chanel, who had several ties with Nazi intelligence organization Abwehr and its members. Chanel was eventually released due to a lack of evidence and possible help from friend Winston Churchill. Chanel's Nazi ties remained hidden for decades, though her "fear and hatred for Jews" was allegedly "notorious." Lucille Ball once claimed that she picked up Morse code during WWII through her lead teeth fillings. While driving home (and having previously experienced picking up music through her teeth), she began to hear a "de-de-de-de" sound. "As soon as it started fading, I stopped the car and then started backing up until it was coming in full strength. DE-DE-DE-DE-DE-DE DE-DE-DE-DE! I tell you, I got the hell out of there real quick. The next day I told the MGM Security Office about it, and they called the FBI or something, and sure enough, they found an underground Japanese radio station. It was somebody's gardener, but sure enough, they were spies," Ball recounted. The story sounds completely ridiculous, but it's possible it was true. There is no record of Ball talking to the FBI, or Japanese spies being found in that area at that time, but there is evidence shrapnel in someone's body, at least, can pick up AM radio waves, which suggests lead tooth fillings could work the same way. Cary Grant tried LSD over a hundred times in the 1950s as a form of psychotherapy to deal with his childhood trauma. 'After weeks of treatment came a day when I saw the light,' Grant said. 'When I broke through, I felt an immeasurably beneficial cleansing of so many needless fears and guilts. I lost all the tension that I'd been crippling myself with. First I thought of all those wasted years. Second, I said, 'Oh my God, the humanity. Please come in.'' Eartha Kitt reportedly once had a threesome with James Dean and Paul Newman. She's been quoted as having said, 'Those two beauties transported me to heaven. I never knew that lovemaking could be so beautiful," though this quote is extremely difficult to confirm. In fact, there are quite a lot of scandalous sexual secrets from Old Hollywood that can't be 100% confirmed but are still fun to hear. For instance, there's speculation that Marlon Brando and James Dean had an S&M-based relationship. Ernest Hemingway once inspected F. Scott Fitzgerald's dick in the bathroom because Fitzgerald was worried it was too small after his wife Zelda complained about it. Hemingway assured him he was "perfectly fine,' telling Fitzgerald, "You look at yourself from above and you look foreshortened. Go over to the Louvre and look at the people in the statues and then go home and look at yourself in the mirror in profile." In another example featuring a famous writer, James Joyce wrote some truly scandalous love letters to his wife Nora Barnacle, many of which extolled her farts. 'You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.' Agatha Christie, possibly the most famous writer in the mystery genre, once created her own mystery when she disappeared in 1926 for 11 days — and the reason is still contested. After putting her daughter to bed, Christie (who was aware her husband was having an affair), drove off and her car was later found abandoned, hanging over the edge of a pit. She had left three letters behind, one to her brother-in-law claiming she had gone to a spa, another to her secretary with "scheduling details," and a third to her husband, who never revealed what the letter said. To find her, the police dredged a lake, brought in dogs, enlisted the help of over 10,000 people, and even looked to her novels for clues. She was eventually found at a spa, like she had told her brother-in-law — except according to her husband, she no longer remembered who she was or recognized him. She had checked in under his mistress' name. In the only time Christie ever spoke of it, she admitted to considering driving into the pit her car was found by, and hitting her head — this, accompanied by the trauma of her husband cheating and her mother dying, led to memory loss. Still, people have continued to speculate it was all a publicity stunt. Steve McQueen came very close to being killed by the Manson family along with Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger, and Steven Parent. He had been invited to Tate's house that night, and the only reason he didn't go, according to his then-wife Neile Adams, was that he 'ran into a chickie and decided to go off with her instead." According to a biography of McQueen, he had been having an affair with a blonde woman at the time, and even invited her to come to Tate's with him. However, she said "she had a better idea for just the two of them." McQueen, unlike Tate,* was on a list of targets for the Manson family. His death was planned to look like a suicide. Tate and her friends weren't specifically targeted, according to prosecutors — she just happened to live in the house once owned by music producer Terry Melcher, who had rejected proposals to make a record with Manson. Speaking of serial killer Charles Manson — he was friendly with a number of big players in Hollywood, including Dennis Wilson and Mike Love, the co-founders of the Beach Boys. In fact, Manson and his friends actually moved into Wilson's house. Wilson later allegedly told Love that he'd seen Manson murder a Black man (though this is contested), causing Wilson to break off the friendship. Marilyn Monroe's last known words were to actor Peter Lawford, who was a brother-in-law to Robert and John F. Kennedy, as he had married their sister, Pat Kennedy. He stated she ended the call with, "Say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to Jack, and say goodbye to yourself, because you're a nice guy." The Jack in reference was then-President JFK. This is noteworthy because there were longstanding rumors of an affair between JFK and Monroe, as well as Robert F. Kennedy and Monroe. There are also rumors that Robert F. Kennedy visited her that night, though this was denied by the Kennedys. Her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, who was there all day and night and was the one to find her dead, later claimed Robert had visited and they'd fought. When Murray found Marilyn dead around 3:30 a.m., she was reportedly holding her phone, and then-LA chief of detectives Thad Brown reportedly claimed she was found with a crumpled-up piece of paper with the number for the White House on it. Besides her connections to the Kennedys, there were other suspicious details around Monroe's death. Murray initially called Monroe's psychiatrist, Dr. Greenson, who called the doctor who had prescribed the pills, Dr. Engelberg, before calling the police. The police did not arrive for close to an hour after Murray first saw Monroe's body. Lawford later claimed that he'd heard about her death at 1:30 a.m. The wife of Monroe's press relations manager Arthur Jacobs also later claimed that her husband had received the call that Marilyn was dead at 10:30. Natalie Wood, who starred in a number of films including West Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause, and Gypsy, also died under extremely mysterious circumstances. The 43-year-old was with her husband Robert Wagner on his boat on a weekend vacation from filming Brainstorm when she drowned. According to Wagner himself (though he initially denied this), he and Wood argued, and then he went to bed without her. The next morning, her body was found a mile away. Wood had been drinking, and it's possible her death was an accident, but she was found with bruises that could mean she was attacked. Nearby witnesses had heard a woman scream. The captain of the boat, Dennis Davern, allegedly drunkenly confessed to Wood's sister years later that he'd seen Wagner push Wood, who then fell overboard, and that Wagner refused to rescue this is unconfirmed. Wagner has denied he had anything to do with Wood's death. But I mention this one specifically for a wild Hollywood fact that not many people seem to know — Christopher Walken, Wood's Brainstorm costar, had also been on the boat that night. He had reportedly also argued with Wagner, and Wagner was (according to Davern) angry Natalie had invited him. Walken has not said much about the night beyond affirming it was an accident and that he had nothing to do with it. "I don't know what happened. She slipped and fell in the water. I was in bed then. It was a terrible thing." He also said, "The people who are convinced that there was something more to it than what came out in the investigation will never be satisfied with the truth. Because the truth is, there is nothing more to it." One of the wildest Hollywood secrets involves Loretta Young and Clark Gable. For years, there were rumors Young's adopted daughter Judy was actually her biological daughter, conceived with Clake Gable. The rumors wouldn't be proven true until Young admitted to them in her posthumous memoirs. It turned out Young had conducted an elaborate cover-up to make it seem like she had adopted the child. Loretta even reportedly had Judy's ears pinned back in an operation because they so resembled Gable's. Gable never had any role in her daughter Judy's life. Young refused to tell Judy the truth, and according to Judy's memoir, when Judy confronted her about the rumors, Young ran into the house and Young never spoke publicly about the circumstances of Judy's conception, according to her daughter-in-law, Linda Lewis, in the '90s, Young had asked her what date rape meant after hearing the term on Larry King Live. After Lewis explained, Young replied, "That's what happened between me and Clark.' On the train ride back from shooting Call of the Wild on location, Gable had allegedly snuck into Young's compartment. According to Lewis, Young didn't want Judy to know, so Lewis kept quiet until both Young and Judy were dead. Finally, we'll end with a few last examples featuring Errol Flynn, because the man had a wild life and allegedly did some wild things. First of all, he wrote in his autobiography that he once had a job castrating young sheep with his teeth. Second, Flynn once apparently showed up on the doorstep of Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, angry about something she had written about him, and began masturbating. "I began laughing, and continued laughing until he finished with a dramatic flourish all over my doorstep," Hopper reportedly told Paul Newman. "I'll say one thing for Errol. He's the only man I know who can ejaculate in front of a fully dressed woman who's laughing derisively during the entire process." And finally, David Niven claims that Flynn once brought him along to view 'the best-looking girls in L.A.'...which, as it turned out, meant parking by Hollywood High to watch the girls get out of school. He then allegedly told a police officer who questioned why they were there that he was "enjoying the scenery." What shocking old Hollywood facts do you know? Let us know in the comments!
Miami Herald
4 days ago
- Miami Herald
Luxury brand Cartier suffers data breach, warns customers
There's something unmistakable about a Cartier box. The deep red, the gold trim, the impossibly elegant weight of it - it doesn't just whisper luxury, it radiates it. One birthday, while at my house in Maine, my mom went behind my back to surprise me with a pair of Cartier earrings. She had already given me the bracelets over the years (a sort of unofficial tradition) but this time, I had no idea it was coming. When I walked upstairs to my room, there it was. That signature box, beautifully wrapped, quietly waiting on my bed. Related: Dior makes a risky move that could backfire No announcement. No grand gesture. Just a perfect surprise from the woman who taught me how meaningful a gift can be. There's a certain trust baked into luxury. Not just in the quality of what you're buying, but in the experience, the brand, the people behind it. That's why Cartier's latest surprise hasn't been received with the same kind of warmth. Instead of earrings or a bracelet, the brand delivered a digital shock. A confirmed data breach that put customer privacy at risk. And this time, the signature box wasn't the only thing that got opened without warning. In a letter sent to affected customers, Cartier confirmed that an "unauthorized party gained temporary access to our system and obtained limited client information." The brand said the issue was quickly contained and emphasized that no financial data, passwords, or login credentials were accessed. The stolen data includes customer names, email addresses, and their countries of residence. While the breach might seem limited in scope, even that small window is enough to spark serious concern. "Given the nature of the data, we recommend that you remain alert for any unsolicited communications or any other suspicious correspondence," Cartier warned. Related: Luxury outerwear brand avoids tariffs as rivals try to exit China The brand has brought in an external cybersecurity firm and reported the breach to law enforcement, promising to enhance its digital protections. "We contained the issue and have further enhanced the protection of our systems and data," the company said. This places Cartier among several retail brands recently shaken by cybersecurity incidents, including Dior, The North Face, and Victoria's Secret. The trend suggests that hackers may be shifting their focus toward aspirational luxury, where the stakes are higher and trust is everything. This wasn't the kind of story Cartier hoped to be part of. But the breach reflects something bigger: a clear pattern of rising digital attacks on luxury and fashion brands. According to IBM's 2025 X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, nearly one-third of all cyber incidents in 2024 involved credential theft. It's a sharp reminder that even breaches involving limited personal information can be the first step in larger, more damaging campaigns. Unlike fast fashion or big-box retail, luxury labels rely on their mystique - the exclusivity, the trust, the emotional connection. So when a brand like Cartier makes headlines for the wrong reasons, it stings in a different way. The jewelry house, owned by Swiss conglomerate Richemont (CFRUY) , now finds itself caught between legacy and vulnerability. While its designs represent status and security, the breach showed just how fragile even the most prestigious brands can be when it comes to cybersecurity. As this digital trend escalates, it's not just about firewalls or IT departments. It's about protecting the promise behind every little red box. Customers shouldn't have to second-guess whether their personal details are safe just because they chose to indulge in something beautiful. Related: Versace, Michael Kors, Jimmy Choo stumble hard The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
CNET
4 days ago
- CNET
More Than 2,800 North Face Accounts Compromised in Cyber Attack
This is why you shouldn't reuse passwords. Getty Outdoor apparel and equipment brand The North Face is notifying more than 2,800 of its online customers that their personal information was stolen in an April credential-stuffing attack on its website. That attack comes on the heels of recent cyber attacks on fellow retailers Victoria's Secret, Cartier, Adidas and Marks & Spencer. According to a notification filed with the state of Maine, North Face detected unusual activity on its site on April 23. An investigation revealed that an attacker had launched a "small-scale credential-stuffing attack" against the site. In that type of attack, cybercriminals attempt to use massive sets of previously exposed logins and passwords to access online accounts. If a customer has used the same login and password for the attacked site, their account could be at risk of compromise. According to the state of Maine notification, 2,861 North Face accounts were affected by the April attack. The company said it disabled the passwords for those accounts and customers will be required to set new ones when they log back in. Customers were also advised to set new passwords for any other account that they might have used the same password for. "We do not believe that the incident involved information that would require us to notify you of a data security breach under applicable law," North Face said in its customer-notification letter. "However, we are notifying you of the incident voluntarily, out of an abundance of caution." Gaining access to a customer account could give the attackers access to information including customer names, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses and shipping addresses, if those pieces of information were saved to a customer's account, along with shopping preferences and past-product purchases, North Face said. Credit and banking card information, including card numbers and expiration dates, were not exposed in the attack, the company said, because it doesn't store that kind of information on its site. Instead it uses a secure token that links a customer's account to a third-party payment processor. How to protect your personal data in case of a breach Set great passwords. All of your online passwords should be long, random and unique. In the case of the North Face breach, the customer accounts were compromised because the customers had used the same password for another account that was previously compromised. Yes, setting different, great passwords for all of your accounts can be a lot of work. If you need help, try a password manager. Always, always use two-factor authentication whenever possible. This protects your account with a second identifier like a biometric indicator or a push notification sent to your phone, making it a lot harder for an attacker to get in even if they have your password. Limit the data you store in online accounts. Sure, it's convenient to save your name, address and credit card information in your account for your favorite online store, but the more information you hand over, the more it's at risk for theft. Think about checking out as a guest and if you're done shopping with a particular retailer, think about deleting your account entirely. Change compromised passwords right away. It's no longer considered a best practice to change your passwords every 90 days or so. If you set a good one, you can largely leave it be. But if you do hear that it's been compromised don't dawdle in setting a new one. Be on guard for phishing attempts. The more information cybercriminals have about you, the better they can craft phishing attempts aimed at stealing your money or personal data. Artificial intelligence tools are making this easier than ever. All unsolicited emails, texts and social media ads and messages should be looked at with skepticism.
