☀️ In Today’s Edition
1. A Surry County Cattle Con
2. No Strings Attached
3. Around Our Network
4. What We’re Reading
5. Our Recent Stories
Judge Kenneth Bell was planning on giving William Dalton Edwards a light sentence, perhaps just a few months in prison. But he felt he had to make an example of the 26-year-old Surry County man sitting before him.
“This is the first case like this I’ve seen,” Bell told Edwards, “and I want this sentence to be a deterrent.”
From April 2018 to October 2022, Edwards conspired with a Texas man to defraud several livestock markets in North Carolina and surrounding areas. Edwards admitted to fraudulently obtaining more than 3,000 head of cattle over the course of the scam. Kyle Perrotti takes us inside the world of fraudulent livestock trading.
The Cattle Con
The recent sentencing of a Surry County man sheds light on how the shady world of fraudulent cattle traders operates.
No Strings Attached
Tobi Krizon moved to Greensboro in 2020 for a relationship. But when the relationship ended, he found himself homeless for the first time in his life. A friend gave him some money, and he got into an extended-stay hotel. That kept him off the street, but his housing was still a precarious.
“I was trying to make money to be able to stay in a hotel, and I found myself in a repetitive pit,” Krizon said. “I didn’t think I was ever going to get out of that cycle.”
Then Krizon learned about a direct-payment program for people who are unhoused. Now he works at Held, an organization that gives people experiencing homelessness money with no strings attached—a rare model in the housing advocacy landscape, as Sayaka Matsuoka reports.
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Around Our Network
North Carolina universities are grappling with how to handle AI in the classroom, The Quad reports. And in some cases, they’ve partnered with ChatGPT and Google.
A private investigator, 34 Texans, and an $8,887 Bloody Mary walked into a Holly Springs bar with a plan to break multiple Guinness World records. INDY has the scoop on what came next.
PFAS levels in groundwater around Fort Bragg remain high, CityView reports, as new legislation tries to address pollution from military bases.
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What We’re Reading
DYOR: Internal wrangling is riling NCInnovation, the $500 million program meant to put state funding behind promising research. WRAL has more on the latest scuffle.
Messy Books: A three-month-study by a state auditor flagged financial mismanagement in Forsyth County public schools dating back to 2017, but found no evidence of fraud, per the Winston-Salem Journal.
Done, Dundon: Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon and a group of investors have reached a deal to buy the Portland Trail Blazers, The Athletic reports. Whether they’ll move the NBA team remains to be seen.
Our Recent Stories
An Extraordinary Exoneration
A judge overturned the convictions of four men accused as teens of murdering NBA star Chris Paul’s grandfather.
Rallying for the Rails
A project evaluating new intercity passenger rail lines across North Carolina is igniting new passion for an old form of transportation.
A Test for Trump’s EPA: A Creek That Smells Like Death
The agency expressed alarm at contamination near a predominantly Black Durham neighborhood. Then the EPA eliminated its civil-rights office.
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