Police arrest suspect in murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO, with grainy pics the only tech involved
- Reference: 1733792294
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/12/10/unitedhealthcare_shooting_camera/
- Source link:
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed last Wednesday as he walked on Sixth Avenue, NYC, on his way to a meeting with shareholders. Video footage showed a man wearing a hoodie and face mask take aim at the CEO and fire several shots, before riding away on a bicycle.
At a press conference on Monday, police said they had arrested a suspect, named Luigi Mangione, at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a restaurant worker alerted authorities. Some accounts say the employee was tipped off by a customer who believed they recognized the wanted man. Mangione is a 26-year-old Ivy League grad, and hails from Maryland.
[1]
During the arrest, officers [2]reportedly retrieved a gun, a sound suppressor (silencer), several fake IDs, and a multi-page document allegedly penned by Mangione. The weapon is reportedly a "ghost gun" that used home-made parts – perhaps 3D printed – to avoid the need for registration.
[3]
[4]
Technically speaking, following his detention, Mangione has been arraigned on [5]weapons-related charges in Pennsylvania, and has not been formally accused of slaying Thompson.
Technology proves poor detective
Police in New York searched for the shooter for five days, using physical and digital means including sending divers into a Central Park lake. However, the suspect managed to elude all the plentiful and pervasive surveillance tech in the Big Apple.
New York City has around 25,500 public and private cameras just at traffic intersections, [6]according to Amnesty International. And the NYPD used facial recognition evidence in 22,000 legal cases between 2016 and 2019.
Last Thursday, the NYPD [7]released photos of a person of interest, and confirmed to the press they were trying to use facial recognition technology to identify the suspect. While the released pictures posed challenges for facial recognition because the suspect's facial features were largely obscured, they appear to have been sufficient to allow the McDonald's worker to recognize the suspect.
[8]
Another unproductive NYPD tech system is called ShotSpotter. It employs over 2,000 sensors scattered around the city to detect the sound of firearms being discharged, so that officers can be alerted.
In this case, ShotSpotter would most likely have been ineffective as the alleged shooter reportedly used a suppressor and what appeared to be subsonic rounds.
ShotSpotter is known to have problems. A June 2024 audit found it had problems discerning gunshots from other loud noises.
[9]
"ShotSpotter claims to be 'a proven detection system' that is 'faster and more accurate,' but our audit found that 87 percent of the time, ShotSpotter is sending NYPD officers in response to loud noises that don't turn out to be confirmed shootings," [10]declared the city's comptroller Brad Lander in June 2024.
"The evidence shows that the NYPD is wasting precious time and money on this technology and needs to do a better job managing its resources. Chasing down car backfires and construction noise does not make us safer," Lander complained.
[11]San Francisco mayor suggests police drones and CCTV can cure city's crime woes
[12]Smile! UK cops spend tens of millions on live facial recognition tech
[13]Healthcare org Equinox notifies 21K patients and staff of data theft
[14]China has utterly pwned 'thousands and thousands' of devices at US telcos
The NYPD has alleged the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO was premeditated. Reportedly, the discarded shell casings were marked with the words "deny," "defend," and "depose" – thought to be a reference to Jay Feinman's 2010 book "Delay, Deny, Defend," which exposed the way health insurance companies in America get rich by denying care and fighting claims.
It's possible that the killer was motivated by a grudge against the health insurance provider – UnitedHealthcare is notorious for refusing to pay out for treatments. [15]Recent research shows that the business rejected 32 percent of claims – much higher than the industry average – and it's currently [16]being sued for allegedly relying on a faulty AI model to deny claims.
Adding to its controversies, parent company UnitedHealth Group [17]paid $22 million to ransomware operators after subsidiary Change Healthcare was attacked. Cleaning up that incident has already cost close to a [18]billion dollars and the group's boss was called before Congress to explain himself. ®
Get our [19]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Z1fK-DK4FuHbq-6fef4XZwAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/us/live-news/brian-thompson-unitedhealthcare-death-investigation-12-9-24/index.html
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Z1fK-DK4FuHbq-6fef4XZwAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Z1fK-DK4FuHbq-6fef4XZwAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://abcnews.go.com/US/unitedhealthcare-ceo-shooting-latest-net-closing-suspect-new/story?id=116591169
[6] https://banthescan.amnesty.org/decode/index.html
[7] https://x.com/NYPDnews/status/1864706407985221974
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Z1fK-DK4FuHbq-6fef4XZwAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Z1fK-DK4FuHbq-6fef4XZwAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/nypds-shotspotter-gunshot-detection-system-overwhelmingly-sends-officers-to-locations-where-no-confirmed-shooting-occurred-new-audit-uncovers/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/19/san_francisco_police_drones/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/25/uk_police_lfr_tender/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/20/equinox_patients_employees_data/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/25/salt_typhoon_mark_warner_warning/
[15] https://www.valuepenguin.com/health-insurance-claim-denials-and-appeals#denial-rates
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/unitedhealthcare_ai_medicine/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/30/unitedhealth_ceo_ransom/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/16/change_healthcares_ransomware_attack_has/
[19] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Initial reports said it was a customer?
Customer and employee
It is believed a customer mentioned him to an employee, who decided to call it in.
C.
I wonder
If he'd disposed of the incriminating evidence, if they would've had enough to hold / prosecute him?
Hey, you sorta look like this grainy video pic wouldn't have gotten far with the type of lawyer one would expect a guy of his background to be able to afford.
Seems like a bit of a dumbass thing to do (especially if the 'ghost gun' is homemade and therefore replaceable) - to have gone to some good lengths in the plotting to commit, but not what to do to stay out after the fact?
Re: I wonder
He's only an amateur. A smart amateur, but still amateur. A pro would have ditched the gun with never a backward glance, but then they would have been using quite a different type of gun to begin with.
It doesn't come naturally to most of us to get rid of a tool that's cost us time, care and money to create. Presumably he thought he'd covered his tracks well enough.
This guy may well have broken the law, but good luck convicting him in the court of public opinion.
That's what worries me. I'm as much of an "every billionaire is a policy failure" type guy as the next but if "the court of public opinion" considers murder to be acceptable then can we stop this train? I want to get off.
Something something the only thing the poor will have left to eat will be the rich.
The CNN Live Update (linked under "reportedly") has lots of info ... for example, the suspect here wasn't some poor sob forced to eat discounted Happy Meals at Micky Ds, his family owns MD's Lorien Health Systems nursing homes.
And with a MS and BS in computer science, plus a minor in math, "Mark Rosario" (aka Luigi Mangione) could surely have found a less fatal way to make his point (whichever that may be), like youthfully cyber-robin-hooding that UnitedHealthcare outfit, or just plain getting into politics to change related laws, IMHO. He was high school valedictorian FFS!
Maybe he was inspired by Trump's brazen small testicle insecurity [1]boast : " I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? " and tested it out near Sixth Avenue instead -- who knows? Bottom line is there are better ways to get your opinion across when you're not completely nuts!
Tangentially, I'll add that the photos (linked under "released photos") are not really that grainy imho (whomever's face is quite visible there, except eyebrows), but he was probably snitched on by a Penn State Altoona buddy anyways, rather than a random customer (eg. for having 3-D printed a plastic gun), and my resulting investigative query at this juncture is then: can such devices really fire [2]"several rounds" in sequence these days (though this one "appeared to malfunction before the assailant fired again")? Anyways, what a grim waste of human potential, talent and tech!
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/23/464129029/donald-trump-i-could-shoot-somebody-and-i-wouldnt-lose-any-voters
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/04/unitedhealth-cancels-investor-day-after-reports-of-executive-shot-in-manhattan.html
How terrible, such an outrage!
Eating in McDonalds
New Incel dating technique?
Is this the hot new dating technique for m incels? Is a Robin Hood-like act enough to get him marriage proposals, as has happened to other notorious criminals?
Funeral benefit?
Have to wonder if United Health will deny the deceased's family's funeral benefit claim.
Grim but at the rate Americans shoot (and indiscriminately kill) each other mostly without head lines who really going to be too concerned in the land of the free.
For some reason I was under the impression "silencers" were in fact flash suppressors. For silence a Burley and Stronginthearm crossbow would be favoured (the point with a poisoned or exploding "point" for a reliable outcome.)
It's a wonder that the Ankh-Morpork Assassins Guild hasn't set up a branch office in the USofA offering designer inhumations to the great and good (or should that be for ?)
Ginger, get the popcorn!
This comment thread should be gold.