Connect with us

Business

Pluck eyebrows. Avoid surveillance cameras: Luigi Mangione’s to-do list as he tried to avoid arrest revealed in court

Published

on



Pluck eyebrows. Buy less conspicuous shoes. Take a bus or a train west toward Cincinnati and St. Louis. Move around late at night. Stay away from surveillance cameras.

A to-do list and travel plans found during Luigi Mangione’s arrest and revealed in court this week shed new light on the steps he may have taken — or planned to take — to avoid capture after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s killing last year.

“Keep momentum, FBI slower overnight,” said one note. “Change hat, shoes, pluck eyebrows,” said another.

The notes, including a hand-drawn map and tactics for surviving on the lam, were shown on Monday at a pretrial hearing as Mangione’s bid to prevent prosecutors from using evidence seized during his Dec. 9, 2024, arrest at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Excerpts of body-worn camera footage of the arrest, previously unseen by the press or the public, were released on Tuesday.

Police said they discovered the notes in Mangione’s backpack, along with a 9 mm handgun that prosecutors said matches the one used to kill Thompson five days earlier; a loaded gun magazine and silencer; and a notebook in similar handwriting which he purportedly described his intent to “wack” a health insurance executive.

Mangione’s lawyers haven’t disputed the authenticity of the notes or the provenance of the gun, pocket knife, fake ID, driver’s license, passport, credit cards, AirPods, protein bar, travel toothpaste, flash drives and other items seized from him and his backpack.

But they argue that anything found in the bag should be barred because police didn’t have a search warrant and lacked the grounds to justify a warrantless search. Prosecutors contend the search was legal — officers said they were checking for a bomb — and that police eventually obtained a warrant.

The notes, along with other evidence highlighted at the pretrial hearing, underscore that Mangione’s stop in Altoona, a city of about 44,000 people about 230 miles (370 kilometers) west of Manhattan, was only meant to be temporary.

One note said to check for “red eyes” from Pittsburgh to Columbus, Ohio or part way to Cincinnati (“get off early,” it reads). The map drawn below shows lines linking those cities, as well as other possible destinations, including Detroit, Indianapolis and St. Louis.

Thompson, 50, was killed as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for his company’s investor conference on Dec. 4, 2024. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind and then fleeing the area. Over the next hours and days, police released photos of a suspect — first showing him in a mask and hooded coat and then his face and thick eyebrows.

Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges. The pretrial hearing, which resumes for a sixth day on Thursday, applies only to the state case. His lawyers are making a similar push to exclude the evidence from his federal case, where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Among the notes revealed this week was one with a heading “12/5” and a starred entry that said: “buy black shoes (white stripes too distinctive).”

Another, also written in to-do list style, suggested spending more than three hours away from surveillance cameras and using different modes of transportation to “Break CAM continuity” and avoid tracking. Below that, it said: “check reports for current situation,” a possible reference to news reports about the search for Thompson’s killer.

According to prosecutors, Mangione fled to Newark, New Jersey, immediately after the shooting and took a train to Philadelphia. Among the evidence shown at the pretrial hearing was a Philadelphia transit pass purchased at 1:06 p.m. — a little more than six hours after the shooting — and a ticket for a Greyhound bus, booked under the name Sam Dawson, leaving Philadelphia at 6:30 p.m. and arriving in Pittsburgh at 11:55 p.m.

A note with the heading “12/8” lists a number of tasks, including an apparent trip to Best Buy to purchase a digital camera and accessories, “hot meal + water bottles,” and “trash bag(s).” Under “12/9,” the day of Mangione’s arrest, the note lists tasks including “Sheetz,” an Altoona-based convenience store chain, “masks” and “AAA bats.” Under “Future TO DO,” it listed “intel checkin” and “survival kit.”

Mangione had a Sheetz hoagie in his backpack when he was arrested, along with a loaf of Italian bread from a local deli, according to police officers testifying Monday and Tuesday. It had been raining, and the bag and items inside it were wet, the officers said. They were heard on body-worn camera footage played in court theorizing that Mangione had gotten soaked walking from the city’s bus station.

Police responded to the McDonald’s after a manager called 911 to relay concerns from customers who thought that Mangione, eating breakfast in a back corner, resembled the man wanted for killing Thompson. On the call, played in court, the manager could be heard saying that because Mangione was wearing a medical mask, she could only see his eyebrows and that she searched online for a photo of the suspect for comparison.

Altoona Police Officer Stephen Fox testified on Tuesday that Mangione, the Ivy League-educated scion of a wealthy Maryland family, expressed concern for the 911 caller’s wellbeing. Fox said Mangione asked if police had planned on releasing her name, which they didn’t. The officer recalled him saying: “It would be bad for her” and “there would be a lot of people that would be upset.”

At another point, Fox said, a shackled Mangione stumbled while trying to keep up with the brisk-moving officer. Fox said he apologized and said, “I forgot you were shackled.”

He said Mangione responded: “It’s OK, I’m going to have to get used to it.”



Source link

Continue Reading

Business

Billionaire Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale calls elite college undergrads a ‘loser generation’ as data reveals rise in students seeking support for disabilities

Published

on



That reality is showing up on a campus. A growing share of college students are seeking medical evaluations for ADHD, anxiety, and depression—and requesting academic accommodations such as extended time on exams and papers. At some of the country’s selective universities, the numbers are striking: more than 20% of undergraduates at Brown and Harvard are registered as disabled. At UMass Amherst, it’s 34%; Stanford, 38%, according to data analyzed by The Atlantic.

While it’s clear that many students requesting accommodations do so for legitimate medical reasons and that increased diagnoses may reflect greater mental-health awareness, some experts have raised concerns about overdiagnosis and whether universities are making it too easy for students to qualify. And the debate has set off a wildfire on social media this week, catching the attention of high-profile business leaders, including Joe Lonsdale, the billionaire venture capitalist and Palantir cofounder.

Lonsdale’s response offered no sympathy. “Loser generation,” he wrote in reaction to a graph showing the rising number of undergraduate students reporting disabilities.

“At Stanford it’s a hack for housing though and at some point I get it, even if it’s not my personal ethics. Terrible leadership from the university.”

He argued that families have been slowly using disability accommodations to give their children an academic advantage—when they might not actually need it.

“Claiming your child has a disability to give them a leg up became an obvious dominant game theoretic strategy for parents without honor in the 2010’s,” Lonsdale wrote earlier this month on X. “Great signal to avoid a family / not do business with parents who act this way.”

And while it’s unclear how many students, if any, are trying to game the system, Lonsdale has made his broader view clear: he doesn’t think universities are preparing young people—or evaluating them—in ways that matter.

“No great companies are interested in the BS games played by universities,” he added.

Fortune reached out to Lonsdale for further comment.

Lonsdale’s complicated history with higher education

Though a Stanford alum himself, Lonsdale has a complicated history with the institution and higher education more broadly.

In the early 2010s, while serving as a mentor in a Stanford tech entrepreneurship course, Lonsdale was accused of sexual assault by a student—and banned from mentoring undergraduates for 10 years and from campus entirely. The assault charges were later dropped, but Lonsdale acknowledged violating a rule prohibiting consensual relationships between mentors and students.

Less than a decade later, in 2021, Lonsdale cofounded his own school—the University of Austin—with Niall Ferguson, Bari Weiss, and others. The institution prides itself on freedom of speech and overcoming the “mediocrity” of traditional higher education. It welcomed its first group of undergraduates last fall and remains unaccredited.

The school has drawn support from Lonsdale’s fellow Palantir cofounder and Stanford alum Alex Karp, who has also criticized the college system.

“Everything you learned at your school and college about how the world works is intellectually incorrect,” Karp, Palantir’s CEO, told CNBC earlier this year.

Instead, the 58-year-old said Palantir is building a new credential “separate from class or background,” that is the “best credential in tech.”

“If you did not go to school, or you went to a school that’s not that great, or you went to Harvard or Princeton or Yale, once you come to Palantir, you’re a Palantirian,” Karp said during an earnings call earlier this year. “No one cares about the other stuff.”



Source link

Continue Reading

Business

Exclusive: Crypto startup LI.FI raises $29 million for cross-blockchain price discovery tool

Published

on



When businesses decide to engage with crypto, they quickly discover the landscape is fragmented across numerous blockchains. If they want to move assets between different chains, they must often rely on a technology called bridging that can prove insecure and expensive. Philipp Zentner, cofounder and CEO of LI.FI, created his company to address these issues. The startup provides businesses with price comparisons of exchange rates and bridging fees. It also aims to find businesses the most efficient and cost-effective pathway for each transaction. 

On Thursday, LI.FI announced that it raised $29 million in funding led by Multicoin and CoinFund, bringing the total capital to about $52 million. Zentner did not disclose the company’s valuation. 

“You can think of us like a combination of Google Flights and Google Maps,” he said in an interview with Fortune. “[We’re] a competitive price comparison and transaction pathfinding for businesses in crypto finance.”

The businesses that LI.FI partners with are fintechs, brokerage apps, trading desks, wallets, and neobanks. The startup has more than 800 partners, including Robinhood, Binance, and Kraken. The company says that its value proposition is that its service allows companies to go to market faster and saves them time on research, integration, and maintenance. 

Zentner says that LI.FI is profitable and generates revenue through transaction fees, though he declined to disclose specific revenue numbers. It has $8 billion in monthly transaction volume as of October, which is about seven times more than its monthly volume from a year prior. The company has more than 100 employees. 

“As crypto trading becomes a core feature inside mainstream fintech apps, the hardest problem is…making fragmented blockchains, liquidity, and execution work seamlessly together,” said Spencer Applebaum, investment partner at Multicoin Capital, in a statement. “LI.FI Protocol gives fintechs and web3 wallets a single API to offer both trading and cross-chain asset movement, handling on-chain routing and execution behind the scenes.”

With the new funding, LI.FI plans to expand into different transaction domains, including perpetual futures, yield opportunities, prediction markets, and lending markets. Zentner says with the new capital he also aims to hire more employees.

Join us at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit May 19–20, 2026, in Atlanta. The next era of workplace innovation is here—and the old playbook is being rewritten. At this exclusive, high-energy event, the world’s most innovative leaders will convene to explore how AI, humanity, and strategy converge to redefine, again, the future of work. Register now.



Source link

Continue Reading

Business

A San Francisco woman just gave birth in a Waymo robotaxi — and Waymo says it’s not the first time

Published

on



 Self-driving Waymo taxis have gone viral for negative reasons involving the death of a beloved San Francisco bodega cat and pulling an illegal U-turn in front of police who were unable to issue a ticket to a nonexistent driver.

But this week, the self-driving taxis are the bearer of happier news after a San Francisco woman gave birth in a Waymo.

The mother was on her way to the University of California, San Francisco medical center Monday when she delivered inside the robotaxi, said a Waymo spokesperson in a statement Wednesday. The company said its rider support team detected “unusual activity” inside the vehicle and called to check on the rider as well as alert 911.

Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, declined to elaborate on how the vehicle knew something was amiss.

The company has said it has cameras and microphones inside as well as outside the cars.

The taxi and its passengers arrived safely at the hospital ahead of emergency services. Jess Berthold, a UCSF spokesperson, confirmed the mother and child were brought to the hospital. She said the mother was not available for interviews.

Waymo said the vehicle was taken out of service for cleaning after the ride. While still rare, this was not the first baby delivered in one of its taxis, the company said.

“We’re proud to be a trusted ride for moments big and small, serving riders from just seconds old to many years young,” the company said.

The driverless taxis have surged in popularity even as they court higher scrutiny. Riders can take them on freeways and interstates around San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and Phoenix.

In September, a Waymo pulled a U-turn in front of a sign telling drivers not to do that, and social media users dumped on the San Bruno Police because state law prohibited officers from ticketing the car. In October, a popular tabby cat named Kit Kat known to pad around its Mission District neighborhood was crushed to death by a Waymo.



Source link

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © Miami Select.