Author Archives: Jay Butchko
Finally, Some Encouraging News About The Fentanyl Epidemic
If you are young enough that you have only ever voted in elections where Trump was on the ballot, then you do not remember a time before fentanyl became the scariest thing anyone could imagine. If you watch news reports from the 80s where people panicked about crack cocaine, or even about HIV, it… Read More »
Philadelphia Drug Trafficking Investigation Leads To Arrest Of Seven Defendants
A steady stream of opioids has flooded Pennsylvania for the last two decades, each scarier than the last. The policy changes that have done the most to prevent opioid overdose deaths are the widespread availability of naloxone, which reverses the effects of opioid overdose, and Good Samaritan laws, which protect you from criminal prosecution… Read More »
Pittsburgh Senior Gets Weapons Charges After Driving Dangerously
It is possible to get criminal charges for actions related to unloaded guns; not all gun crimes involve shooting. Sometimes the mere presence of a firearm is enough to result in criminal charges. Charges for unlawful possession of a firearm depend on context; you might be doing something that is perfectly legal in your… Read More »
How Much Of Your Property Can Police Search At A Traffic Stop?
If you are nervous about air travel, hiking, zip lining, or canoeing, people who are experienced in these activities will remind you that driving a car, which you do every day, is more dangerous. Things can go from normal to disastrous in an instant when you are driving, and not just if you get… Read More »
ATM Skimming
Consumers are aware of the risk of theft of financial information from websites. Many of us think twice before entering our credit card number in an online payment form; we increasingly prefer to store the information in our phones and then let our phones decide which vendors to trust. Financial crime can occur at… Read More »
Is DOI A Psychiatric Wonder Drug Or Just Another Illegal High?
If you can get past the vitriol and the conspiracy theories, it can be quite interesting to ask people their opinions on drugs. Which recreational drugs are harmful, which ones are harmless fun, and which ones are beneficial to your health? These days, almost everyone will tell you that fentanyl and other opioids are… Read More »
Pittsburgh Entrepreneur Pleads Guilty To Bankruptcy Fraud
Accurate calculations, especially in the service of predictions, can help you be successful in business, but so can being vague about numbers and their significance in the right situations. Business owners get away with fuzzy accounting on a regular basis; most of the time, no one finds out until there is a tax audit… Read More »
Pennsylvania Couple Faces Charges For Obtaining Thousands Of Gabapentin Pills Through Fraud
In the days of the pill mills, you could walk out of a pain clinic in Florida with hundreds of oxycodone pills and bring them back to Pennsylvania for resale. Today, if anyone had that many oxycodone pills in the same place at the same time, anywhere except locked up in a pharmacy, it… Read More »
Pennsylvania Man Charged With Fraud For Selling Forgeries Of Renaissance Era Printing Blocks
If a museum discovered that a painting it had been displaying for decades was not, as it claimed to be, the work of a famous artist who lived centuries ago, but rather a more recent forgery, this would be front page news. Lots of people buy artwork, not for museums, but for their own… Read More »
When An Accuser’s Testimony Is The Only Evidence
Forensic evidence has come a long way in the past century. To appreciate this, try watching true crime documentaries about crimes that occurred in the 19th century or earlier. For example, in the 1830s in Scotland, four people were accused of killing people in order to supply bodies for surgeons to dissect in the… Read More »
