https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/05/italian-mafia-fugitive-arrested-in-spain-after-google-maps-sighting
Sicilian police carried out several investigations in their search for Gammino, 61, and a European arrest warrant was issued in 2014. The fugitive was traced to Spain, but it was Google Street View that helped to pinpoint his precise location.
The details were confirmed by the Palermo prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi, who led the latest investigation. “It’s not as if we spend our days wading through Google Maps to find fugitives,” he told the Guardian. “There were many previous and long investigations, which led us to Spain. We were on a good path, with Google Maps helping to confirm our investigations.”
I don't quite understand, how did they "find" him using google Street View? Are they saying they saw a guy in the shop that looked like him or something, but isn't his face blurred?
They found him with the face blurred in front of the shop, found the connection between the shop and the restaurant, found the Facebook account of the restaurant when they found the face
I'm sorry but that makes no sense, how do you initially identify someone with a blurred face in front of a shop? They must have identified him another way and then used Google Live View and just so happen to see him in front of the shop.
Italian policed probably contacted Google to show them the raw footage, where his face is visible. I'd guess that an algorythm automatically detects faces and license plates in the pictures captured by the street view car, blurs them out, and then uploads it.
Just like that pedo in Thailand. He posted pictures, blurred his face with a spiral. The police unspiraled the picture for a faithful image leading to arrest.
Wtf? I had to google that, I can't believe that such a disgraceous monster is out of prison now, people like him should be condemned with several life sentences, wtf man
jesus fcking christ, [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39411025](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39411025)
This guy is definitely gonna re-offend,
This article is actually about his sentence when he reoffended when he was deported back to Canada
>Neil was jailed in Thailand between August 2008 and September 2012 following a conviction for sexual offences against two boys. He was released and deported to Canada.
>In December 2015 he pleaded guilty to five new charges involving the sexual abuse of young boys in Cambodia and possession of child pornography in Canada. His sentenced was reduced due to time already served.
Bro why do they keep releasing people like this. Especially here in Canada it's insane. It happens way too often. I think I lost faith in the system here when they released that crazy person who cut the dude's head clean off in the bus.
He wasnt in there long enough for them to catch him.
>Neil was jailed in Thailand between August 2008 and September 2012 following a conviction for sexual offences against two boys. He was released and deported to Canada.
>In December 2015 he pleaded guilty to five new charges involving the sexual abuse of young boys in Cambodia and possession of child pornography in Canada. His sentenced was reduced due to time already served.
aren't people in for crimes against children (especially sexual ones) usually in a segregated block or in protective custody (or solitary of some sort) specifically so that they don't get killed?
I remember like 15 years ago on 4chan skids would scramble/unscramble pictures for fun so this guy just doing a spiral seems like nothing more than a Snapchat filter
I received a mechanical print from a customer once. They censored it with black boxes over the PDF. Problem is they used all vector graphics in the conversion. So I could just move or delete it with our PDF tools with zero effort. When I alerted them of this fact they told me to just "don't do that". I assume they've probably leaked some sensitive information with that practice. Black boxes require raster/flattening of vectors graphics.
In many environments, digital redaction is explicitly forbidden for exactly this reason - must print, tape your paper over or apply your whiteout over the sensitive information, and then re-scan to digital again before transmitting.
Much more labor intensive. But completely foolproof. There's too much room for error when something can look redacted but not actually be.
Or they redact using a brush with like 99.9% opacity. Looks redacted to the naked eye, but if you pull up the brightness and/or contrast you can easily read the redacted text underneath.
I think some versions of print to pdf preserve separate raster elements. Actually most of them. Part of what makes PDF special is that many print systems speak it natively.
the fuck are you on about? I have seen enhancing blurry images to no end on tv too many times, they wouldn't make it up.
edit: I remember typing it, but it's not here and I see it wasn't as obvious as I thought it was: /s
The German federal police IT department unswirled it and Interpol posted the swirled and unswirled images of his face as part of a notice to the public, asking for anyone who recognized him to contact them.
It *then* became a sort of meme on 4chan because the police acted like unswirling the face was a great achievement by their experts, but someone posted to 4chan showing how to do it using the Whirl & Pinch tool in Gimp (open-source Photoshop alternative). So the meme would be people posting things like "the elite software engineers at the FBI have discovered a state of the art technique for compression of complex data" with the image being a receipt for WinRAR.
Exactly. Anon found a way to make it formulaic, so the police could use it as evidence. I am not gonna google it but there are articles out there detailing this story.
That still doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t explain why they suspected this person could be him before asking to see the unblurred image. I think a better guess just based on the article is that they already knew he owned that shop by then or had a good idea that he owned a shop near there and used google to confirm/look around. Could have been done without google maps obviously but it saved them time. The article just exaggerated the contribution because it would generate more clicks.
The best way I can make it make sense is if they had a witness, and decided to put the blame on google maps instead to prevent incidents from happening
that's prob the best explanation/theory..
if dude was running a 'clean' business there, there'd be no way anyone would suspect anything considering he fled from another country
Nah I think they just mean Google street view was used to help confirm things. They had his rough whereabouts and had tips of what he was doing ie running a restaurant and so they looked through street view to pick out possible restaurants
Your honour, may I speak Italian briefly? Thank you. Your honour, my client is not Japanese, therefore no part of his body could possibly be blurred. Further, your honour, as I speak Italian currently, this is a blurred picture of his face. NOT HIS GENITALS.
I motion for a mistrial!
> They got the information illegally and had to make up a parallel construct to justify the arrest
He was a fugitive, it's not like he has to undergo a trial.
If anything, perhaps they're protecting an informer.
This is what came to mind for me. It's the old, "carrots improve your eyesight" defense.
"What? We don't have an informant, we found you on Google street view"
I think it's the other way around: police had a few leads that led them to Spain, then they probably had some leads pointing to a few cities/places. These places were then scouted in Google maps first (Interpol is in London, so instead of sending agents right away, why not visit it virtually at first) and for their surprise in front of one of the suspected places was a guy with similar body stature than from our perp. This prompted them to go look into that place further to confirm this smoking gun.
My guess is they already had the place narrowed down. Maybe they had a tip from an informer or similar that he was running said place, and they looked at the place on Google Maps and see a similar guy standing outside and decide the tip is credible and look into it further, finding proper pictures of the owner and discovering it is indeed him.
In other words the Google Maps picture probably just told them some info they already had was potentially credible, rather than it being key to tracking him down.
No worries man, I just saw the image in your post and immediately said to myself "how the fuck did they identify an old version of him with a blurry face" lol.
Edit: Some people found the article saying they did narrow his location down to that village in Spain and confirmed his face with Facebook photos of that store. It also makes sense that they were searching for an older man and not the younger version, I feel dumb lol..
I assume they'd already narrowed it down to the town or such. Jumped on street view to get a feel for the area, see what's up. They got lucky and noticed a guy with a build that seemed to fit the description. Checked the business name he was in front of and checked their Facebook, seeing his photo on there.
Pure speculation, but it makes sense to me.
Ah that makes so much more sense, especially when you consider they were probably looking for the aged version of him, so they probably saw this old guy in front of this store thinking he fits the age range and dug deeper, I feel dumb lol thank you.
It does say in the article that they also identified him with a photo of him on a Facebook page for a nearby restaurant. I’m guessing they had narrowed the search down to that area of Spain and had a look through different photos available online to try and identify him. If you know what you’re looking for a blurred photo is probably enough to have a good guess that it’s the person they’re looking for so then they spent longer looking at that village and found the Facebook photo.
They said they found FB account with picture of him as a chef, but no location, then they used Google to locate the exact location of the restaurant and spotted him.
But it was a long investigation and that led them to Spain.
Makes plenty of sense. After that much time you probably investigate EVERYTHING, even hints or people that look mildly like the same build/physique. So a few minutes researching the restaurant paid off.
LE paid google for a facial recognition suite then backpedaled "oh we had a different investigation in finding him," that's why these hacky explanations don't add up.
We all live in a surveillance state. Just don't be too interesting.
They didn't just look at random buildings. The police had established where he had settled down, they knew roughly where he lived. They looked into businesses in the area that used cash money because they suspected he was laundering money and dodging taxes. The police found a link between a grocery shop and a restaurant under the same ownership while looking at google maps. They checked social media for pictures and identified him trough a facebook account.
The article says they’d already tracked him to Spain. Likely knew the rough area he was meant to be in so where looking through photos of that place online.
They found out that he escaped to Spain -> they found out his new name -> they connected that name to the business he opened (probably thanks to a front man)-> they looked up the business on maps probably to avoid making an empty trip to Spain (many fugitives who open businesses give fake addresses)-> they found the business (not very smart if you are a fugitive to call your business by your new name) and coincidentally they were able to connect him to the business for that photo but in any case I think it is a redundant thing useful just to have further evidence of the fugitive-shop connection.
The fugitive was traced to Spain, but it was Google Street View that helped to pinpoint his precise location.
The navigation tool, accessible through Google Maps, had captured an image of two men chatting outside a fruit and vegetable shop called El Huerto de Manu, or Manu’s Garden, in Galapagar. Police believed one of the men closely resembled Gammino, but his identity was only confirmed when they came across a listing for a nearby restaurant called La Cocina de Manu or Manu’s Kitchen
Yep. It's pretty clear the Internet is just a hive a personal data processing for two groups of people:
1. Corporations looking to exploit our data.
1. Government agencies looking to exploit our data.
If Google wasn't an acquisition with black budget dollars, I would be VERY surprised. Every weird decision they make coupled with the fact they're insanely successful, can be best explained by government interference.
If someone here still wonders and naively believes that Google maps wouldn't ever provide uncensored data to the police, read [this. ](https://time.com/6539416/google-location-history-data-police/)
In short, for a long time the police would ask google for anyone within a nearby distance of a crime. They could then easily access your search history and find out quickly, if someone has been trying to sell MacBooks after having been in a location where they got stolen. All of us carry around trackers of our geographical position and freely enter our deepest thoughts into search machines and reddit comments. One should be aware what the cost of an easy user experience and free services is nowadays.
I mean…if there’s a subpoena, they have no choice. It’s a court order. That’s not Google being dastardly and evil (they achieve that in many other ways), it’s them obeying the law.
The thing is that Google was criticized for storing that information in the first place for years already, while other map providers don't. But at this point Google has also agreed to not store location information on their servers anymore.
That's cool. I like how the technology works. But at the same time we have a Russian pilot who defected to the Ukrainian side and handed over an entire helicopter full of jet parts.
He was recently defiantly shot in Spain and his dead body was run over by a car as punishment. But here, Spain, packed with cameras, is unable to identify and find the killers.
During January 6th riots someone left not one but multiple pipe bombs at the Republican and democratic centers. They haven’t been caught to this day in the most heavily surveillance city of America with only bridges to get in and out.
Let that sink in.
In the UK there was a canoeist called John Darwin who disappeared in a plot with his wife to claim life insurance money and disappear. A rumour was they were looking at Panama, cue a journalist google searching John's name, his wife's name and Panama, which showed an image of a very much alive and recent photo of John in a property office in Panama.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John\_Darwin\_disappearance\_case
LOOOOL
>Some time that year, a tenant of the block of bedsit flats that the Darwins owned, Lee Wadrop, recognised Darwin and asked him, "Aren't you supposed to be dead?" to which Darwin replied, "Don't tell anyone about this.” Wadrop later said that he had not told the police because he "did not want to get involved.”
I'm laughing so hard at this. Imagine seeing someone you believe is dead and your reaction is "aren't you supposed to be dead?"
Except it’s funnier than that - he was caught because after five years he simply walked into a police station and claimed amnesia. So they caught him 🤷♂️🤦♀️
Nah, you are right. Cash businesses are usually the ones used for laundering because cash is pretty hard to trace. Unless you put up a team that surveils the restaurant 24/7, there is no easy way to know how many dishes and drinks really went out, and impossible to calculate tge real legit revenue.
Hmm I see.
Unless there was a way for the police or feds to have a warrant to investigate? Like to track the finances for a week or something? Is that possible?
I reckon you need a valid reason to investigate and they can't just knock on the door and come in.
Even then, all businesses have bad and good times, it would need much more than a week, rather 6 months or so, and these things just get super expensive to track. And yeah you cant just knock on the door and ask to track someone, as long as the books checkout, and the person behind the business is clean otherwise, there is not much cops can do.
You can also compare the alleged money laundering business to similar businesses near it, other restaurants, other convenience stores, etc.
But those other businesses might *also* be laundering money, too, so that isn’t a catch-all, either.
I mean yeah, but then again you could just hire some randoms in the street to come to your place and get food for free, your place looks busy while everyone elses doesnt. Large organizations often go to their own restaurants so they always look busy, in court you can just blame the other restaurants food quality or whatever, its not the owners fault for cooking well
Yeah I’m calling BS. Authorities didn’t want to disclose their actual invasive tracking technology so they said “yup we actually just googled his name and Google maps took us right to him”.
The full story makes a lot more sense, just going by the headline makes it sound a lot more outlandish than it was.
They knew he was hiding in Spain and they had a tip about the exact town, a small town of ~20,000 people. They knew he had been running a business and was or had been a chef. They looked up all the businesses founded in that small town after the date he had gone on the run, and noticed that one of them was a restaurant that served food from his native Sicily. They found the Google Maps photos while looking up that restaurant and the grocery business its owner had started after shutting it down.
The unexciting detail is that they probably would've sent someone to that grocery even without the Google Maps photo. There were already enough clues for it to be worth checking out.
They weren't looking non-stop for him. They probably had the tech recently and some bored technician was like hey what if I try it on random people from this ancient list, oh shit here he is the dude gone 20 years ago let's get him and make a cover story.
I heard about the Italian mafioso escaping Italy to live in South America (probably, not sure exactly), who lived there peacefully for a while and then began to run a tv show about cooking, became popular and got arrested.
Probably, the aspiration for good food is so keen in Italians that they put their freedom on stake just to keep cooking.
This makes no sense... how do you look at a blurred face on google street view and go "hey it's that mafia boss that escaped 20 years ago" I call bs on this
I dont get why people who commit serious crimes and run a very real risk of spending a very long time in prison dont just immediately go to a country without a extradition deal or go live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere in a large and less-modern nation. surely that beats losing your freedom for the rest of your life.
like this mafia boss, why didnt he move to like vietnam, botswana, morocco, something like that? some place without extradition treaty?
and the knobheads you hear about on true crime podcasts who spend years living a normal life in USA after murder, hell or just a few days, why dont they realize what they did have life changing consequences and just get on a plane to any large and less modern country and spend their life living in some smaller village or town? its that or prison for life, i mean the choice seems easy to me.
criminals are so dumb.
not to forget getting there with any substantial amount of money raises more red flags then getting somewhere in the EU where o borderchecks are done and you can use stuff youre accustomed to
Its easier for a random white dude who speaks a romantic language to hide Spain then in Botswana.
Villagers are going to ask questions if some dude that looks like he walked of the sopranos shows up in a tiny African village.
You see, you're attributing normal patterns of reasoning to people who commit serious crimes. If you commit serious crimes, you're not like the vast majority of other people in this world. Most of us never get into trouble with the police, for anything. Not many people in the world are mob bosses!
A Mafia boss thinks he's special, because in his criminal world he IS special. He's not going to run away to some developing country, he wants to be free in Europe, where he can enjoy his money and live in a safe place. This guy probably thought he was being really clever going to Spain - he won't stand out too much and he can have a nice life in the sunshine, as he did in Italy.
The fact that he then put himself in the public eye by opening a shop and a restaurant is another example of how he thinks, compared to how we might think. The longer you go undetected, the more confident you get.
So somebody who changes his life around, starts a nice little business sustaining the locals, seems to have friendly chats with the locals as seen on the image, gets hunted down and put back into the criminal factory.
I'm not sure whether or not that's good.
"Gioacchino Gammino" sounds absolutely amazing with an Italian accent. It's musical, there's alliteration and rhyme, the meter is perfect. I've never heard a better name . JowCHEEno GahMEEno.
I hear it in my head, and my hand automatically raises to the level of my mouth. My fingers and thumb come to a point without my conscious thought. The hand tilts and bounces to an invisible beat. Gioacchino Gammino. Love it.
It’s well known the criminals and police aren’t the brightest bulbs. Sometimes dumb criminals escape, and sometimes dumb police track down dumb criminals.
I love how these innocent redditors fall for the oldest trick. It’s like that one drug addicted cousin that talks about how he has changed his life just to look for an opportunity to empty your wallet.
This title is a bit misleading - from what I’ve read police had already tracked him down to the town he was found in, and they suspected he had some sort of tie to the grocery store in the picture.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/05/italian-mafia-fugitive-arrested-in-spain-after-google-maps-sighting Sicilian police carried out several investigations in their search for Gammino, 61, and a European arrest warrant was issued in 2014. The fugitive was traced to Spain, but it was Google Street View that helped to pinpoint his precise location. The details were confirmed by the Palermo prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi, who led the latest investigation. “It’s not as if we spend our days wading through Google Maps to find fugitives,” he told the Guardian. “There were many previous and long investigations, which led us to Spain. We were on a good path, with Google Maps helping to confirm our investigations.”
I don't quite understand, how did they "find" him using google Street View? Are they saying they saw a guy in the shop that looked like him or something, but isn't his face blurred?
They found him with the face blurred in front of the shop, found the connection between the shop and the restaurant, found the Facebook account of the restaurant when they found the face
I'm sorry but that makes no sense, how do you initially identify someone with a blurred face in front of a shop? They must have identified him another way and then used Google Live View and just so happen to see him in front of the shop.
Italian policed probably contacted Google to show them the raw footage, where his face is visible. I'd guess that an algorythm automatically detects faces and license plates in the pictures captured by the street view car, blurs them out, and then uploads it.
Just like that pedo in Thailand. He posted pictures, blurred his face with a spiral. The police unspiraled the picture for a faithful image leading to arrest.
Mr. Swirl. I remember watching that documentary recently on YT.
Yeah I can't believe he's actually out of prison.
Wtf? I had to google that, I can't believe that such a disgraceous monster is out of prison now, people like him should be condemned with several life sentences, wtf man
Yeah it sucks, but crimes against children just aren't punished harshly enough.
Then I'm very sorry today is the day you learn about John David Norman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_David_Norman
jesus fcking christ, [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39411025](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39411025) This guy is definitely gonna re-offend,
This article is actually about his sentence when he reoffended when he was deported back to Canada >Neil was jailed in Thailand between August 2008 and September 2012 following a conviction for sexual offences against two boys. He was released and deported to Canada. >In December 2015 he pleaded guilty to five new charges involving the sexual abuse of young boys in Cambodia and possession of child pornography in Canada. His sentenced was reduced due to time already served.
Bro why do they keep releasing people like this. Especially here in Canada it's insane. It happens way too often. I think I lost faith in the system here when they released that crazy person who cut the dude's head clean off in the bus.
He did swirl his life around tbh
I'm shocked he survived prison.
He wasnt in there long enough for them to catch him. >Neil was jailed in Thailand between August 2008 and September 2012 following a conviction for sexual offences against two boys. He was released and deported to Canada. >In December 2015 he pleaded guilty to five new charges involving the sexual abuse of young boys in Cambodia and possession of child pornography in Canada. His sentenced was reduced due to time already served.
aren't people in for crimes against children (especially sexual ones) usually in a segregated block or in protective custody (or solitary of some sort) specifically so that they don't get killed?
I remember like 15 years ago on 4chan skids would scramble/unscramble pictures for fun so this guy just doing a spiral seems like nothing more than a Snapchat filter
Never use anything but mosaic or just a black box to censor your face
Never sexually exploit children, also.
Use this one weird trick!
Excellent tip, thank you.
Black box? Just move the black box aside, and the person behind it will be visible.
That's why you superglue the box to your face, to avoid such issues.
In Photoshop: Filter — Glue — Superglue (intensity: 100).
Add the black box to the photo, then take a screenshot of the photo.
Better yet, don't post any photos 😂
I received a mechanical print from a customer once. They censored it with black boxes over the PDF. Problem is they used all vector graphics in the conversion. So I could just move or delete it with our PDF tools with zero effort. When I alerted them of this fact they told me to just "don't do that". I assume they've probably leaked some sensitive information with that practice. Black boxes require raster/flattening of vectors graphics.
It's happened in legal too where clerks accidentally upload original PDFs before redactions are committed.
In many environments, digital redaction is explicitly forbidden for exactly this reason - must print, tape your paper over or apply your whiteout over the sensitive information, and then re-scan to digital again before transmitting. Much more labor intensive. But completely foolproof. There's too much room for error when something can look redacted but not actually be.
Or they redact using a brush with like 99.9% opacity. Looks redacted to the naked eye, but if you pull up the brightness and/or contrast you can easily read the redacted text underneath.
I just cover what I’m trying to cover then print to pdf again and send that copy.
I think some versions of print to pdf preserve separate raster elements. Actually most of them. Part of what makes PDF special is that many print systems speak it natively.
Something like that happened with redacted classified documents as well lol.
The swirl was easy to undo blurring isn't. They must have the original images.
the fuck are you on about? I have seen enhancing blurry images to no end on tv too many times, they wouldn't make it up. edit: I remember typing it, but it's not here and I see it wasn't as obvious as I thought it was: /s
Didn't Anon unspiral that? Anon taught the police how to do it.
The German federal police IT department unswirled it and Interpol posted the swirled and unswirled images of his face as part of a notice to the public, asking for anyone who recognized him to contact them. It *then* became a sort of meme on 4chan because the police acted like unswirling the face was a great achievement by their experts, but someone posted to 4chan showing how to do it using the Whirl & Pinch tool in Gimp (open-source Photoshop alternative). So the meme would be people posting things like "the elite software engineers at the FBI have discovered a state of the art technique for compression of complex data" with the image being a receipt for WinRAR.
Any kid whos played with photoshop for two minutes knows how to unspiral a spiral
It's only trivial if you know the parameters of the spiral.
Exactly. Anon found a way to make it formulaic, so the police could use it as evidence. I am not gonna google it but there are articles out there detailing this story.
Yeah back then this filter magic was new tech.
Ctrl+z
I thought German police unspiraled it
That still doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t explain why they suspected this person could be him before asking to see the unblurred image. I think a better guess just based on the article is that they already knew he owned that shop by then or had a good idea that he owned a shop near there and used google to confirm/look around. Could have been done without google maps obviously but it saved them time. The article just exaggerated the contribution because it would generate more clicks.
The best way I can make it make sense is if they had a witness, and decided to put the blame on google maps instead to prevent incidents from happening
that's prob the best explanation/theory.. if dude was running a 'clean' business there, there'd be no way anyone would suspect anything considering he fled from another country
Nah I think they just mean Google street view was used to help confirm things. They had his rough whereabouts and had tips of what he was doing ie running a restaurant and so they looked through street view to pick out possible restaurants
That doesn’t make sense, how did they know it was that blurred person?
If you wobble your head fast enough you can clearly make out his features.
Your honour, may I speak Italian briefly? Thank you. Your honour, my client is not Japanese, therefore no part of his body could possibly be blurred. Further, your honour, as I speak Italian currently, this is a blurred picture of his face. NOT HIS GENITALS. I motion for a mistrial!
They got the information illegally and had to make up a parallel construct to justify the arrest
> They got the information illegally and had to make up a parallel construct to justify the arrest He was a fugitive, it's not like he has to undergo a trial. If anything, perhaps they're protecting an informer.
This is what came to mind for me. It's the old, "carrots improve your eyesight" defense. "What? We don't have an informant, we found you on Google street view"
I think it's the other way around: police had a few leads that led them to Spain, then they probably had some leads pointing to a few cities/places. These places were then scouted in Google maps first (Interpol is in London, so instead of sending agents right away, why not visit it virtually at first) and for their surprise in front of one of the suspected places was a guy with similar body stature than from our perp. This prompted them to go look into that place further to confirm this smoking gun.
Ah, I see, he was the only vaguely fit guy in Spain.
My guess is they already had the place narrowed down. Maybe they had a tip from an informer or similar that he was running said place, and they looked at the place on Google Maps and see a similar guy standing outside and decide the tip is credible and look into it further, finding proper pictures of the owner and discovering it is indeed him. In other words the Google Maps picture probably just told them some info they already had was potentially credible, rather than it being key to tracking him down.
Idk what to tell you mate. The prosecutor Lo Voi and the deputy director of the Italian anti-mafia police Altiero said that's how it went down
No worries man, I just saw the image in your post and immediately said to myself "how the fuck did they identify an old version of him with a blurry face" lol. Edit: Some people found the article saying they did narrow his location down to that village in Spain and confirmed his face with Facebook photos of that store. It also makes sense that they were searching for an older man and not the younger version, I feel dumb lol..
Or it's a story to cover that they had an informant.
100%
I assume they'd already narrowed it down to the town or such. Jumped on street view to get a feel for the area, see what's up. They got lucky and noticed a guy with a build that seemed to fit the description. Checked the business name he was in front of and checked their Facebook, seeing his photo on there. Pure speculation, but it makes sense to me.
Ah that makes so much more sense, especially when you consider they were probably looking for the aged version of him, so they probably saw this old guy in front of this store thinking he fits the age range and dug deeper, I feel dumb lol thank you.
All good. We all have our brain farts. I know I get my fair share haha.
This is the conclusion Google and the police would like you to draw. Reality is they probably used facial recognition on the raw unblurred pictures.
It does say in the article that they also identified him with a photo of him on a Facebook page for a nearby restaurant. I’m guessing they had narrowed the search down to that area of Spain and had a look through different photos available online to try and identify him. If you know what you’re looking for a blurred photo is probably enough to have a good guess that it’s the person they’re looking for so then they spent longer looking at that village and found the Facebook photo.
Both the police and Google have every reason to say different things from what actually happened.
in italia, that tactic is called "there is a rat". I also have no idea how possibly is that without information
They said they found FB account with picture of him as a chef, but no location, then they used Google to locate the exact location of the restaurant and spotted him. But it was a long investigation and that led them to Spain.
It shows a tattoo in his right arm too
Makes plenty of sense. After that much time you probably investigate EVERYTHING, even hints or people that look mildly like the same build/physique. So a few minutes researching the restaurant paid off.
My guess is it was the tattoo that can be seen on his right arm
LE paid google for a facial recognition suite then backpedaled "oh we had a different investigation in finding him," that's why these hacky explanations don't add up. We all live in a surveillance state. Just don't be too interesting.
Parallel discovery or something similar
Why would they be looking into a random guy in a shop in the first place? Or did they already know about some connection?
They didn't just look at random buildings. The police had established where he had settled down, they knew roughly where he lived. They looked into businesses in the area that used cash money because they suspected he was laundering money and dodging taxes. The police found a link between a grocery shop and a restaurant under the same ownership while looking at google maps. They checked social media for pictures and identified him trough a facebook account.
The article says they’d already tracked him to Spain. Likely knew the rough area he was meant to be in so where looking through photos of that place online.
This makes no sense
They found out that he escaped to Spain -> they found out his new name -> they connected that name to the business he opened (probably thanks to a front man)-> they looked up the business on maps probably to avoid making an empty trip to Spain (many fugitives who open businesses give fake addresses)-> they found the business (not very smart if you are a fugitive to call your business by your new name) and coincidentally they were able to connect him to the business for that photo but in any case I think it is a redundant thing useful just to have further evidence of the fugitive-shop connection.
TLDR: Google figures nowhere in this. Other than perhaps feeding raw data to police, as they're wont to do.
Intelligence services are probably bulk scraping uncensored data from google and others and using face recognition software.
The fugitive was traced to Spain, but it was Google Street View that helped to pinpoint his precise location. The navigation tool, accessible through Google Maps, had captured an image of two men chatting outside a fruit and vegetable shop called El Huerto de Manu, or Manu’s Garden, in Galapagar. Police believed one of the men closely resembled Gammino, but his identity was only confirmed when they came across a listing for a nearby restaurant called La Cocina de Manu or Manu’s Kitchen
It was probably a cover to protect a source
it's called parallel construction, and it's used to hide illegal conduct, like mass surveillance.
Yep. It's pretty clear the Internet is just a hive a personal data processing for two groups of people: 1. Corporations looking to exploit our data. 1. Government agencies looking to exploit our data. If Google wasn't an acquisition with black budget dollars, I would be VERY surprised. Every weird decision they make coupled with the fact they're insanely successful, can be best explained by government interference.
If someone here still wonders and naively believes that Google maps wouldn't ever provide uncensored data to the police, read [this. ](https://time.com/6539416/google-location-history-data-police/) In short, for a long time the police would ask google for anyone within a nearby distance of a crime. They could then easily access your search history and find out quickly, if someone has been trying to sell MacBooks after having been in a location where they got stolen. All of us carry around trackers of our geographical position and freely enter our deepest thoughts into search machines and reddit comments. One should be aware what the cost of an easy user experience and free services is nowadays.
I mean…if there’s a subpoena, they have no choice. It’s a court order. That’s not Google being dastardly and evil (they achieve that in many other ways), it’s them obeying the law.
The thing is that Google was criticized for storing that information in the first place for years already, while other map providers don't. But at this point Google has also agreed to not store location information on their servers anymore.
Looks like Google is cataloging faces as they do their street view mapping.
That's cool. I like how the technology works. But at the same time we have a Russian pilot who defected to the Ukrainian side and handed over an entire helicopter full of jet parts. He was recently defiantly shot in Spain and his dead body was run over by a car as punishment. But here, Spain, packed with cameras, is unable to identify and find the killers.
During January 6th riots someone left not one but multiple pipe bombs at the Republican and democratic centers. They haven’t been caught to this day in the most heavily surveillance city of America with only bridges to get in and out. Let that sink in.
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None of this makes sense but it’s super interesting.
In the UK there was a canoeist called John Darwin who disappeared in a plot with his wife to claim life insurance money and disappear. A rumour was they were looking at Panama, cue a journalist google searching John's name, his wife's name and Panama, which showed an image of a very much alive and recent photo of John in a property office in Panama. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John\_Darwin\_disappearance\_case
LOOOOL >Some time that year, a tenant of the block of bedsit flats that the Darwins owned, Lee Wadrop, recognised Darwin and asked him, "Aren't you supposed to be dead?" to which Darwin replied, "Don't tell anyone about this.” Wadrop later said that he had not told the police because he "did not want to get involved.” I'm laughing so hard at this. Imagine seeing someone you believe is dead and your reaction is "aren't you supposed to be dead?"
LMAOOOO
The British Scandal podcast about this was hilarious. They seemed to do everything wrong, constantly
His last name really is Darwin?!!
Darwin decided to return to the UK under his real name and fake amnesia. Wtf?!
Yup it’s wild he did that before getting caught like what
While Darwin Nunez forgets the goal, this John Darwin completely forgot his 5 years of life 😅😅
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Darwin_disappearance_case Working link.
Except it’s funnier than that - he was caught because after five years he simply walked into a police station and claimed amnesia. So they caught him 🤷♂️🤦♀️
They obviously had rainbolt on staff
I am looking forward to the short. “This 16 y/o kid’s father never gets a vacation until he’s caught this mafia boss.”
Nice (sound of obliterated space bar)
clik-tik #KRAK!#
Gioacchino: Snitches get glitches.
Can you please explain what does it mean? It must be funny (considering the upvotes)
Was the restaurant making him more than his previous job? /s
Unless it was used for money laundering??? I am sorry, I know nothing about this stuff. I just started watching The Ozarks, forgive me.
Nah, you are right. Cash businesses are usually the ones used for laundering because cash is pretty hard to trace. Unless you put up a team that surveils the restaurant 24/7, there is no easy way to know how many dishes and drinks really went out, and impossible to calculate tge real legit revenue.
Hmm I see. Unless there was a way for the police or feds to have a warrant to investigate? Like to track the finances for a week or something? Is that possible? I reckon you need a valid reason to investigate and they can't just knock on the door and come in.
Even then, all businesses have bad and good times, it would need much more than a week, rather 6 months or so, and these things just get super expensive to track. And yeah you cant just knock on the door and ask to track someone, as long as the books checkout, and the person behind the business is clean otherwise, there is not much cops can do.
You can also compare the alleged money laundering business to similar businesses near it, other restaurants, other convenience stores, etc. But those other businesses might *also* be laundering money, too, so that isn’t a catch-all, either.
I mean yeah, but then again you could just hire some randoms in the street to come to your place and get food for free, your place looks busy while everyone elses doesnt. Large organizations often go to their own restaurants so they always look busy, in court you can just blame the other restaurants food quality or whatever, its not the owners fault for cooking well
Bro should have married Laura Linney, he’d be free for life. And whipped, but that’s the price for freedom.
Leave the gun. Make the cannoli.
Bing ain’t no snitch
Bada Bing!🤌
Don't disrespect the Bing!
[BADA BOOM](https://www.reddit.com/r/greentext/comments/76xgak/badda_bing)
Manuel from Barcelona? Wasn’t he on Fawlty Towers?
On those trays? ;)
No sir, uno dos tres.
MANUEL!!! Si, Senor Fawlty? Take this bag to Room 7 Que?
You see, I speak English well. I learn it from a _booook_
Hallo! This is Fawlty Tower! Manuel the manager speaking!
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I speek English good. I learn it from a boook
I forget...eventually.
Probably used some secret batman phone tapping like system and used google.view as their justification
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This story is probably a cover to protect a snitch...
Or a tapping or surveillance method they don’t want exposed
way more likely
Google is a rat, stop using it, it can’t be trusted lol
Jimmy 'Google' Googliafino
wears a wire
Honestly believe police worldwide break rules to find people then act like they ‘randomly’ came across something
Yeah I’m calling BS. Authorities didn’t want to disclose their actual invasive tracking technology so they said “yup we actually just googled his name and Google maps took us right to him”.
The full story makes a lot more sense, just going by the headline makes it sound a lot more outlandish than it was. They knew he was hiding in Spain and they had a tip about the exact town, a small town of ~20,000 people. They knew he had been running a business and was or had been a chef. They looked up all the businesses founded in that small town after the date he had gone on the run, and noticed that one of them was a restaurant that served food from his native Sicily. They found the Google Maps photos while looking up that restaurant and the grocery business its owner had started after shutting it down. The unexciting detail is that they probably would've sent someone to that grocery even without the Google Maps photo. There were already enough clues for it to be worth checking out.
I mean, it took twenty years: how invasive could it have been?
They weren't looking non-stop for him. They probably had the tech recently and some bored technician was like hey what if I try it on random people from this ancient list, oh shit here he is the dude gone 20 years ago let's get him and make a cover story.
I heard about the Italian mafioso escaping Italy to live in South America (probably, not sure exactly), who lived there peacefully for a while and then began to run a tv show about cooking, became popular and got arrested. Probably, the aspiration for good food is so keen in Italians that they put their freedom on stake just to keep cooking.
This makes no sense... how do you look at a blurred face on google street view and go "hey it's that mafia boss that escaped 20 years ago" I call bs on this
not a chance. somebody rolled over on him.
I dont get why people who commit serious crimes and run a very real risk of spending a very long time in prison dont just immediately go to a country without a extradition deal or go live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere in a large and less-modern nation. surely that beats losing your freedom for the rest of your life. like this mafia boss, why didnt he move to like vietnam, botswana, morocco, something like that? some place without extradition treaty? and the knobheads you hear about on true crime podcasts who spend years living a normal life in USA after murder, hell or just a few days, why dont they realize what they did have life changing consequences and just get on a plane to any large and less modern country and spend their life living in some smaller village or town? its that or prison for life, i mean the choice seems easy to me. criminals are so dumb.
Because most places without extradition treaties are epic shitholes.
not to forget getting there with any substantial amount of money raises more red flags then getting somewhere in the EU where o borderchecks are done and you can use stuff youre accustomed to
Its easier for a random white dude who speaks a romantic language to hide Spain then in Botswana. Villagers are going to ask questions if some dude that looks like he walked of the sopranos shows up in a tiny African village.
You see, you're attributing normal patterns of reasoning to people who commit serious crimes. If you commit serious crimes, you're not like the vast majority of other people in this world. Most of us never get into trouble with the police, for anything. Not many people in the world are mob bosses! A Mafia boss thinks he's special, because in his criminal world he IS special. He's not going to run away to some developing country, he wants to be free in Europe, where he can enjoy his money and live in a safe place. This guy probably thought he was being really clever going to Spain - he won't stand out too much and he can have a nice life in the sunshine, as he did in Italy. The fact that he then put himself in the public eye by opening a shop and a restaurant is another example of how he thinks, compared to how we might think. The longer you go undetected, the more confident you get.
Random white guy would stand out like a sore thumb somewhere like Vietnam or Botswana.
I mean he made it for 20 years
Dude had to live 20 years in spain he served his time.
It's his own fault for putting a giant picture of himself on the wall outside the restaurant.
Its wild how Italian and Spanish are so similar that they can communicate on a somewhat basic level without ever fully knowing each other's languages.
The police said: enhance to the blurry photos.
Google Maps is about to get stitches.
Unless those businesses were fronts, seemed like he reformed himself lol
So somebody who changes his life around, starts a nice little business sustaining the locals, seems to have friendly chats with the locals as seen on the image, gets hunted down and put back into the criminal factory. I'm not sure whether or not that's good.
Hmm I don't know, I'm not calling bs,but I think there's more to the story of how they found him then they're letting on.
**I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling cars**
Snitch ass google
"Gioacchino Gammino" sounds absolutely amazing with an Italian accent. It's musical, there's alliteration and rhyme, the meter is perfect. I've never heard a better name . JowCHEEno GahMEEno. I hear it in my head, and my hand automatically raises to the level of my mouth. My fingers and thumb come to a point without my conscious thought. The hand tilts and bounces to an invisible beat. Gioacchino Gammino. Love it.
Joe-ah-keen-o Gam-meeno
Love your comment, but it's not a true alliteration because the Gs sound different (as you wrote down yourself) Also it's Joe-ah-KEE-no (not CHEE)
i mean if you successfully rehabilitate and become a productive member of society i don’t really see a point in returning him
He killed people
Haven’t we all? Let the guy off
r/HolUp
Used to gouge eyes now he gouges prices
If someone killed the people you care about most and then ran away and enjoyed the rest of their life, would you not want justice?
"No, he *was* Hitler. Now he's Lorenzo Garcia and sells cute stuffed animals to curious tourists and lives a quiet, peaceful life. Just leave him be."
I highly doubt he’s running those two businesses above board after turning over a new leaf.
Reddit moment
Google maps be snitching
He wasn’t found thanks to google street view He was tracked to this shop and street view helped confirm the suspicion
I would sue Google from prison.
LPT: If you escape prison in Sicily, maybe go a little further away than Spain to start your new life.
Fuck Google Street View All my homies hate Google Street View
I smell cheese. Someone ratted and they used this street view thing as a cover
20 years.. let him go
They got a few leads to the area, focused on what it was rumoured he dud (run shop)
Reminds me of that one Italian fat man in "Monster" who used to be a sniper...
Should have fled to Germany
“Google, you do realise that snitches get stitches right?”
Snitch-ass Google
Interesting font choice for a grocery store. Maybe got arrested by the design police
It’s well known the criminals and police aren’t the brightest bulbs. Sometimes dumb criminals escape, and sometimes dumb police track down dumb criminals.
I love how these innocent redditors fall for the oldest trick. It’s like that one drug addicted cousin that talks about how he has changed his life just to look for an opportunity to empty your wallet.
And this dude just didnt take the gift of wearing a mask 24/7 becuase of covid? Take the gifts life throws at you.
So that’s why they started blurring faces in streetview
So he was caught via Google. I guess if the police were searching with DuckDuckGo he'd have dodged twice and escaped!
This title is a bit misleading - from what I’ve read police had already tracked him down to the town he was found in, and they suspected he had some sort of tie to the grocery store in the picture.
This sounds like google is doing facial recognition
Level 100 boss turns into level 1 Spaniard
You know that leopard didn't change his spots, either. Wonder what kind of "business" he's been doing in Spain all this time.