‘Tis the Season for Burning Down Your House

Earlier this year, a Connecticut court upheld an arson conviction for Randal Licari.  The fire, which destroyed Licari’s home and resulted in a large insurance payment, occurred during the holiday season and appeared to involve a Christmas tree.  Initially, fire investigators could not determine the cause of the fire but stated it seemed ‘‘to be accidental in nature and more probably than not caused by the Christmas tree.’’  It turns out that Licari’s Christmas tree was freshly purchased and well hydrated and therefore could not have accidentally caught fire.  Further investigation revealed that he had placed Duraflame logs under the Christmas tree and lit them.  Licari did not have a fireplace in his home.

This case is a reminder that although Christmas trees can start fires (the National Fire Protection Association estimates about 210 Christmas tree fires per year), the moisture content of a Christmas tree plays a significant role in how hazardous it can be.  A DRY tree burns very quickly and will become fully engulfed in flames within 30 seconds.   However, a properly hydrated tree will not burn.  The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conducted several tests and attempted to light a well hydrated tree with a match, electric current attached to an entire matchbook, and an open flame applied with a blow torch (see the test results here with video).  The needles burned a bit while the open flame was applied but they self-extinguished quickly.  So, this holiday season, if you choose to have a real Christmas tree in your home, remember to keep it well hydrated!  And don’t light Duraflame logs directly underneath it.

Fugitives on Facebook

Almost on cue, following my last post about using social networking sites as an investigative tool… I ran across this article about a fugitive hiding from US authorities in Mexico who (somewhat foolishly) updated his status and location on his Facebook page.  While it is more and more common for investigators to search social network sites for information, what is most interesting to me about this example is that the first searches turned up nothing.

 

“Investigators initially could find no trace of him on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and they were unable to pin down his exact location in Mexico.”

But the actions of a persistent investigator turned up new information later in the investigation.  I recently posted a question on LinkedIn about the use of monitoring tools in investigations to address this very issue.

“But several months later, Secret Service agent Seth Reeg checked Facebook again — and up popped Maxi Sopo. His photo showed him wearing a black jacket decorated with a white lion as he stood in front of a party backdrop featuring logos of BMW and Courvoisier cognac.”

The other neat thing about this investigation is that although the fugitive’s profile was private – and therefore all the details were not visible to outsiders – the investigator was able to obtain the information by researching the fugitive’s “friends” on Facebook.

“Although Sopo’s profile was set to private, his list of friends was not, and Scoville started combing through it. He was surprised to see that one friend listed an affiliation with the Justice Department and sent him a message requesting a phone call.

‘We figured this was a person we could probably trust to keep our inquiry discreet,’ Scoville said.

The former official told Scoville he had met Sopo in Cancun’s nightclubs a few times, but did not really know him and had no idea he was a fugitive. The official learned where Sopo was living and passed that information back to Scoville, who provided it to Mexican authorities. They arrested Sopo last month.”

Social (Media) Stratification

A recent study by Nielsen (referenced in this CNN article) indicates that social networking sites may magnify social and economic  stratification.  The study suggests that less affluent people tend to be users of MySpace, more affluent users are on Facebook, and the most affluent are on LinkedIn and Twitter – although researchers did notice significant overlap – where users are registered on multiple networks – particularly between Facebook and LinkedIn.  While MySpace captured an early lead in the social networking race, more educated and affluent users jumped ship and headed to Facebook.  Consider this sobering statistic - Percentage of users with a six-figure salary:

16% MySpace | 23% Facebook | 38% LinkedIn

Why the disparity – particularly between MySpace and Facebook?

A lot of it has to do with the disparate beginnings of MySpace and Facebook, said Adam Ostrow, editor-in-chief of Mashable, a blog about social media. Facebook originated at Harvard University and was limited at first to students at approved colleges before opening itself to the public in September 2006.

MySpace, on the other hand, had a “come one, come all” policy and made a mad dash towards monetization, Ostrow said. “They used a lot of banner ads without regard to the quality, and it really diminished the value [of the site] for the more tech-savvy demographic.”

These are factors for the investigative researcher to take into consideration when querying social networking sites.