Quote:A Navy veteran and former CIA officer who was found with more than $40 million in gold bars in his Virginia home is nearing a plea deal.

David Rush reached a tentative plea agreement, according to a joint court filing by prosecutors and his attorney. A federal judge extended the deadline to formally indict him to Oct. 8 to give the parties time to finalize it.

In their filing, both sides told the court the resolution would serve the public interest, in part because a trial could involve significant litigation over classified material.

So far, Rush faces a single charge—theft of public money—which has nothing to do with the seized gold. Instead, he's charged with timesheet fraud.

Prosecutors have not filed charges tied to the gold itself as the case remains in a pre-indictment stage while the plea agreement is negotiated.

Rush's Military Record

Rush was honorably discharged from the Navy in 2015.

The charge against him grew out of what happened afterward when he allegedly claimed 744 hours of military leave he was no longer entitled to on his federal timesheet, equating to roughly $77,000 in compensation, according to prosecutors.

Investigators also alleged that Rush inflated his government salary by falsely claiming he held degrees from Clemson University in South Carolina, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, according to an FBI affidavit.

That document said he provided false information about both his education and his military service on his government application.

How He Allegedly Got the Gold

When FBI agents searched Rush's home in May, they seized about 303 gold bars worth more than $40 million.

They also found roughly $2 million in cash and about 35 luxury watches, many of them Rolexes, according to the affidavit. Rush was arrested May 19.

How the gold ended up in his basement is what sets the case apart. According to U.S. officials, Rush was an officer in the CIA's science and technology division who created a false classified program that only a handful of people were cleared to know about.

That secrecy, officials said, allowed him to request and receive tens of millions of dollars in gold bars and foreign currency from the government for what he described as work-related expenses.

The requests drew little scrutiny since so few people had access to the purported program, according to court records.

Shaping the Outcome

The same classified environment that prosecutors say enabled the scheme is now shaping how the case may conclude.

In their joint filing, the government and Rush's attorney told the court that resolving the matter through a plea, rather than a trial, would avoid the hurdles that handling classified material can create in open court.

That means a man found with $40 million in gold in his home may resolve his case without a full public trial, reflecting the national security sensitivities wrapped around his former work instead of any question about the value of what was seized.

The parties wrote that they had made significant progress and had a plea agreement in principle that would resolve the matter before an indictment.

At press time, Rush had not entered a plea.

Quote:According to these reports, some potential candidates also drop out during the audition process, while male performers may receive less pay and recognition than their female counterparts.

One major factor often cited is the social stigma surrounding the profession in Japan, which can make potential candidates hesitant to enter the industry.

Quote:The FBI and DOJ are announcing the seizure of internet domains associated with NightmareStresser, one of the world’s longest running Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) for-hire services. Since 2022, the NightmareStresser Booter service was used to launch hundreds of thousands of actual or attempted DDoS attacks targeting victims worldwide. These actions were taken in conjunction with Operation PowerOFF, an ongoing effort among international law enforcement agencies aimed at dismantling criminal DDoS-for-hire infrastructure worldwide.

The seizures announced today were performed by FBI - Anchorage in coordination with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Quote:President Donald Trump pledged Wednesday to send every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections, an extraordinary gambit to reverse his party’s sagging fortunes in November.

The dubious promise would most likely cost more than $1 trillion and require congressional approval, and would further exacerbate the country’s nearly $1.8 trillion annual budget deficit and concerns about inflation.

“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” Trump said during the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas. “It will be called the Trump Dividend.”

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He likened the payments to a corporation’s distributions to shareholders, citing “our tremendous strength and success economically.”

Within an hour, Vice President JD Vance appeared to try to walk back Trump’s proposal — at least in part — by suggesting the dividend payments would not go to the wealthy. Vance suggested it could be paid for by U.S. tariff revenues, though the suggested payment dwarfs what the U.S. has taken in through the protectionist measures.

Quote:More than 153 million US and Canadian driver’s licenses, as well as other identity documents, have reportedly become available for purchase on the dark web for a limited time. According to cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs, the service was called Nexus, and although it’s no longer available at the time of writing, it claimed to have possessed 153 million driver’s licenses, 10 million ID cards, 1.9 million travel documents, 1.3 million international driver’s licenses, 579k medical cards, 429k common access cards, 91k residence cards, 77k employment authorization records, and 5 million other documents, allegedly sourced from an ID-authentication service based in Louisiana.

The service was advertised on the Russian cybercrime forum Exploit, where whoever was promoting it posted the driver’s license of Krebs as a free sample, which caught the journalist’s attention. He was also able to see a preview of U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s information on the database — a concerning breach of security for someone with such a sensitive position in the government. After further investigation, they concluded that the service seemed to have possessed legitimate data, especially after searching for the data of several of his friends and family members with their consent. One thing that all the people he found in the database had in common was that they all used Hertz to rent a vehicle.

Krebs also talked with security and privacy researcher Zach Edwards, who said that their information was also found on Nexus. Edwards said that they did not rent a car recently but used their ID at a Planet13 marijuana dispensary. The time stamps found on the scanned images of the driver’s licenses and other identity documents coincide with the time that the victims used their IDs at the said companies, confirming that they were the sources of the leaks. However, Planet13 and Hertz do not do their own authentication; instead, they contract a service provider for the service. Now, it turns out that both Planet13 and Hertz used the company for identity verification and ID-authentication — IDScan.

Based on the evidence gathered by Krebs, it seems that the leak is centered around the company. He has already contacted the company about the issue, and they said they were investigating the matter. “At this point I’m not able to share any additional information, but the updates you have provided have been welcome, and helpful to our team’s investigation,” Jillian Kossman, a marketing and operations leader at idscan.net, told the journalist. The FBI has also started looking into the leak, with its New Orleans field office opening an official investigation into the breach.

The massive amount of data that was briefly available on the dark web is certainly concerning. A similar data breach hit Discord after its third-party service provider was hit and resulted in the exposure of 70,000 government IDs. Incidents like these have got privacy experts concerned with the push for online age verification requirements, which is why the EFF is asking the California governor to veto the law requiring this.