Housewife Charged In Sex-For-Security Scam
AKRON, OH—Area resident Helen Crandall, 44, was arrested by Akron police Sunday, charged with conducting an elaborate "sex for security" scam in which she allegedly defrauded husband Russell Crandall out of nearly $230,000 in cash, food, clothing and housing over the past 19 years using periodic offers of sexual intercourse.
"It's the biggest scam of its kind I've ever seen," Akron police chief Thomas Agee said. "We're talking coats, dishwashers, jewelry, sewing machines, bathroom cleansers—you name it."
According to Agee, undercover agents spotted Crandall's husband handing her $50 in cash at approximately 4 p.m., just 30 minutes after the two had sex. Crandall then drove off in her car, returning home two hours later with five bags of groceries.
"That's when we made the arrest," Agee said. "After tracking her for years, we finally had proof that she was buying all those goods with dirty money."
During the arrest, Akron police officials entered the Crandall household and seized more than 150 items Mrs. Crandall had received from her husband over the last 19 years, including a four-speed adjustable food processor, 12 pairs of earrings, a matching sofa and loveseat, a box of two-ply kitchen garbage bags, and a portable radio.
In exchange for these items, Agee said, Crandall's husband received sex an estimated 950 times—most frequently in the master bedroom, but also in the downstairs den three times, and once on the floor of the sewing room.
In addition to physical evidence, Akron police have collected considerable eyewitness testimony. More than 250 Akron residents have come forward to report seeing Helen and Russell Crandall together, and several said they witnessed Mr. Crandall flagrantly purchasing items for his wife.
"Sure, they'd come in here," said Ray Greene of Greene's House and Home. "I think the last time they got one of those box fans with the three settings."
Perhaps the most damaging testimony has come from Mr. Crandall himself, who on Tuesday told police that while the couple was dating in 1977, Mrs. Crandall—then known as Helen Steuben—demanded that he buy her a ring worth over $1,000 before he could have sex with her. The first sexual liaison took place some six months later at Bob's Honeymooner Hotel during an all-expenses-paid trip to Niagara Falls.
It was also in 1977, Mr. Crandall said, that his wife quit her job at Shippee Shoes in downtown Akron.
"Clearly," Summit County prosecutor Andrew Dravecky said, "after quitting her job, the accused began receiving money under the table from some other source: How else could she have afforded to not work? It's now pretty apparent that at that point she began supporting herself by providing a certain service to Mr. Crandall."
Crandall's mother, Bernice Steuben, a resident of the Valley View Senior Home in Yuma, AZ, is being sought for questioning in connection to the case: Police suspect that Steuben may have introduced her daughter to the sex-for-security scam after having used it herself from 1932 to 1971.
But for all the evidence collected against Crandall, Dravecky said the case will likely be difficult to prosecute. "Helen was very careful to cover her tracks," he said. "She even got her husband to put her name on the bank accounts and credit cards."
The Crandall case is not an isolated incident, said criminologist John Ohlmeyer, who said there are "literally millions" of such cases across the U.S. each year that never come to court.
"This kind of thing isn't as uncommon as we'd all like to think," Ohlmeyer said. "A woman finds herself in a situation where she isn't employable. Or maybe she has interests like child-rearing, cooking and home-maintenance that keep her from getting a job. So what does she do? She cooks up a scheme to entrap a man using her body as the bait. It's frightening, but it happens every day in this country."
How Apple Plans To Rebound From Apple Watch Flop
With sales of the Apple Watch reportedly down 90 percent since its initial release, Apple is suffering in the wearables market and faces a lack of enthusiasm about its latest product. Here are some ways Apple can improve the watch and prevent the company from falling into a slump:
- Renew enthusiasm and anticipation for watch by allowing consumers to pre-order device from website again
- Destigmatize the cost of Apple Watch by introducing a line of assorted cables, phone cases, and other items at the $10,000-and-above level
- Aim for a demographic with larger emotional voids that can be filled with technology products
- Recast public perception of Apple Watch as $349 investment in the future of Shenzhen
- Eschew image of decadence and self-indulgence by releasing all models with tawdry burlap wristbands
- Find some way to leverage position as world’s largest, most successful corporation, if possible
- Invest millions in R&D and organize hundreds of focus groups, then release one in red
- Generally avoid reinventing those products you previously promised to render obsolete
Single Woman With 3 Young Children Unaware She Subject Of 984 Judgments Today
LINCOLN, NE—Oblivious to the thoughts and looks directed toward her as she shopped for groceries, stopped by the post office, and ran several other errands with her three young children, single mother Karen Nichols, 29, was reportedly completely unaware that she was the focus of 984 separate judgments by strangers this afternoon.
According to reports, during the five hours in which Nichols was accompanied by her kids, Erik, Sadie, and James—aged 1, 2, and 4, respectively—to a variety of locations throughout the city, she was the subject of nearly a thousand negative assumptions about her financial situation, relative parenting capabilities, and general promiscuity.
“My God—that is just so sad,” thought 45-year-old local resident Rebecca Mueller, just one of 16 people in the local Stop and Shop parking lot who leveled a total of 29 judgments at Nichols as she struggled to secure her crying youngest child into a car seat. “If it’s this bad out in public, can you even imagine how terrible it must be at home?”
“Look at that—she doesn’t discipline them properly, and now it’s everyone else’s problem. That’s what happens when you’re not strict enough with your kids and just let them run totally wild.”
“I bet those grocery bags are just full of sugary cereal and other junk food,” Mueller continued, making a judgment that three other onlookers had arrived at separately. “That’s why she has absolutely no control over her kids.”
Mueller echoed the sentiments of the roughly 300 other witnesses who observed Nichols with her children throughout the day, 37 of whom felt that if Nichols couldn’t handle one child, she had no business having two more; 42 of whom decided she probably sat them down in front of the TV all day because she didn’t want to deal with them; and 68 of whom, after quickly arriving at the conclusion that Nichols was on welfare, couldn’t believe that’s where their tax dollars were going.
During a stop at a local drug store, Nichols was said to be the target of some 40 judgments within a single 15-second period when her eldest, James, began taking items off of the shelf in the toy aisle. Nichols’ sharp command for the child to return to her side quickly attracted the scorn of upward of a dozen onlookers, over half of whom immediately speculated that the evident lack of a positive male role model in the child’s life would eventually lead him down the road to drugs and criminal activity.
“Look at that—she doesn’t discipline them properly, and now it’s everyone else’s problem,” thought Henry Wilkins, 29, rolling his eyes at the scene as he waited in the checkout line. “That’s what happens when you’re not strict enough with your kids and just let them run totally wild.”
“Why is she being so hard on that poor kid?” 52-year-old Sandy Werner thought while witnessing the same incident. “Honestly, she could stand to be a lot more loving and patient with him, or else he’s going to end up as some delinquent.”
Werner, along with six other bystanders, reportedly went on to assume that this same kind of unnecessarily controlling behavior is more than likely precisely what drives away all the men in Nichols’ life.
According to sources, the single most concentrated number of judgments came during a late-day stopover at a local diner. Among dozens of other criticisms, Nichols’ momentary pause to respond to a text message from her mother while her children ate their meals conjured up nearly 75 variations on the idea that Nichols mindlessly spends her whole life staring at her phone, barely considering her children’s emotional needs.
“She doesn’t really look like she can afford to go out to dinner—it’s disgraceful, running up debt like that,” thought Glenda Frank, 71, who looked on skeptically as Sadie, the middle child, momentarily clambered up the back of the family’s booth before being replaced in her booster seat by Nichols. “It’s probably just as well, though; it’s not like those kids are ever getting into college, anyway.”
“I bet she doesn’t even read to them,” Frank added, beginning a line of speculation about the woman’s life that would result in a string of 19 separate judgments regarding Nichols’ level of educational attainment, employment status, temper, general ability to make responsible decisions, the cleanliness of her home, and whether her own neglected childhood was simply perpetuating itself in her current behavior toward her kids.
While exiting the diner, Nichols reportedly received her final judgment of the day from Terrance Leary, 46, who, assuming each of Nichols’ children was fathered by a different man, decided that Nichols would likely be open to getting a drink with him.
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