#61: BAT COUNTRY 2.0 🦇🦇

🧑 GEN Z - Canadian teen arrested in Miami after stealing over $13M in cryptocurrency

👵 BOOMERS - Sault woman, 86, loses $900K to crypto scam that used AI deepfake of Mark Carney

🧒 GEN ALPHA - 11-year-old boy dies of rabies after bat sits on his face in Northern Ontario

Good morning.

Happy belated Canada Day. 🇨🇦 

A funny coincidence last week:

Turns out, a loyal SG subscriber is well-acquainted with Rodney McDonald, the hero of our lead story in issue #60 who restrained an Air Canada pilot after he had a seizure mid-flight.

Small world!

In other news, the youth of our nation are enriching themselves by taking advantage of our seniors’ technological illiteracy coupled with their reverence for our prime minister.

Meanwhile, the youngest members of our society are being killed by rabid bats in Northern Ontario.

Enjoy one of our rare Generational Issues.

-Peter

PS: Longtime subscribers will recall that issue #23 was also titled “BAT COUNTRY,” which is why this issue is called “BAT COUNTRY 2.0.”

⌛️ Today’s read is 2.5 minutes long.

A Canadian teen who stole over $13 million in cryptocurrency was arrested by American authorities earlier this month in Miami.

19-year-old Trenton Richard David Johnston was seated in the backseat of a white Rolls-Royce Cullinan one evening in March when the car was pulled over by a Miami sheriff’s deputy.

The deputy arrested Johnston and his three friends in the car after smelling "a strong odour of freshly burnt marijuana" as well as spotting cannabis residue in the car’s cup holder. 

After his arrest, Johnston was found to be carrying 21 suspected amphetamine tablets in a Hermes bag.

Under questioning, all three of Johnston’s friends ratted him out: they'd met him in the past year and were living off his money.

They said that Johnston made his fortune by scamming crypto holders.

Police seized Johnston's computer, cell phone, and handwritten notes containing codes to access crypto accounts.

After several months, the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations pieced together his fraud scheme.

They found that in March, he had impersonated staff at Google and Trezor – a crypto security firm – to trick a California man over the phone into giving him access codes to a crypto wallet loaded with Bitcoin.

The man noticed shortly after that approximately 185 Bitcoin — worth roughly $13 million USD  — had been stolen from his digital wallet.

After the theft, Johnston messaged an unknown accomplice on Signal.

“We actually smacked a 185btc target today," Johnston wrote. "Like unironically smacked a 185."

“And we ain't done,” he added.

Johnston also reportedly shared his fraud methodology with friends on Discord.

He used the stolen funds to live large in Miami. He rented a private jet, bought a high-powered Lamborghini Aventador SVJ, two BMWs, jewelry, and “plane tickets for two girls from New York.”

Johnston, who turned 20 while in custody, pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges laid against him.

He agreed to be deported back to Canada. He has not yet been sentenced.

_{Source: CBC News}

A senior from Sault St. Marie, ON, was recently defrauded of nearly $1 million after investing in a crypto scam that she thought was endorsed by the federal government.

86-year-old Judy Skene was doomscrolling Facebook last summer when she saw a deepfake video of Prime Minister Mark Carney promoting a crypto investment platform.

“I saw an ad on Facebook of Mark Carney telling me if I invested $350 Canadian, it would be backed by the Bank of Canada,” Skene told CTV News.

She clicked the link, signed up, and invested some money.

Then she got a phone call from someone claiming her investment had already tripled in value. 

Over the next few months, she dumped everything she had into the crypto scheme, even taking out a mortgage on her condo to invest more.

“I agreed to put a mortgage of $300,000 on my condominium,” she said.

The fake investment account showed that her money had doubled in value.

“Once I did the final payment, there was no more conversation and all my money was gone,” said Skene.

Skene became suicidal. Her friend Pat Probert stepped in to help after learning what happened.

“Her condo fees were bouncing, the insurance payments on her condo and her car were bouncing,” he said.

Skene is warning other seniors about crypto scams.

“Just be alert and be careful with what you see on Facebook,” she said.

Probert, meanwhile, is happy Skene is still alive. He started a GoFundMe page to help her regain some of her lost money.

“Judy wanted to leave money to different charities, as she has no kids or relatives and was an only child,” he said. 

“Judy was not doing this for greed; she was doing it to help others. Now she is the one needing help.”

A boy is dead after a rabid bat sat on his face in Northern Ontario.

The unnamed 11-year-old boy was sleeping in his family’s cottage two summers ago when he awoke to find a bat resting on his face, according to a new report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal titled “Fatal Rabies in a Child.”

The boy swatted the bat off his face, then his father caught it in a cooking pot and released it outside. 

The boy had no visible bite marks and the bat had not behaved erratically, so the parents decided not to seek medical attention.

It was not until 19 days later that his symptoms began. 

They started with a tingling sensation on his face along with swelling and numbness. His parents took him to a walk-in clinic, where he was prescribed an antiviral drug.

Several days later the boy was admitted to a hospital. By this point his symptoms had worsened to include slurred speech, a fever, visual hallucinations, and “heavy salivation” or mouth foaming.

“His neurological condition continued to deteriorate,” said the report. “By his fifth day in hospital, he had no reflexes in his brain stem — the part of the brain that regulates breathing, heart rate and other essential bodily functions.”

Further tests “identified a bat rabies virus variant,” the report added.

There is no proven cure for human rabies once symptoms have set in.

A little more than two weeks later, the boy died “peacefully with his family at his bedside.” 

Human rabies is extremely rare. 

“This patient’s was the first case of locally acquired rabies reported in Ontario since 1967,” says the report.