Last October, Wired was kind enough to publish a story I’d been working on for 16 months—the tale of a lonely Appalachian woman acted as a money mule for a crew of Nigerian con artists. That woman, Audrey Elaine Elrod, was lured into the conspiracy by a scammer who posed as a Scottish oil worker […]
Tags:crime·fraud·journalism·psychology·scams·West Virginia·Wired
Given the state’s reputation as a mecca for opioid absuers, you will probably not be surprised to learn that West Virginia leads the nation in drug-overdose deaths. Yet the problem evidently has less to do with the sheer number of narcotics consumed than with a dangerous (and nonsensical) quirk of law: The state doesn’t allow […]
Not to tease too much, but I’m getting really excited ’bout this secret project I’m wrapping up. Details to come shortly, I promise—all should be public right after the New Year, if not a little sooner. In the meantime, though, I can only hint at the nature of the yarn: It involves a son of […]
Tags:Belgium·coal·energy·mining·Misère au Borinage·Wallonia·West Virginia
