All Blog Posts from Crimesider

LOS ANGELES - Did the legal battle between former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean and pageant organizers suddenly conclude because organizers presented Prejean with a sex tape starring the religiously devout beauty queen?

Celebrity site TMZ says yes and CNN, last night, said a source with knowledge of the settlement confirmed it. Crimesider has no independent verification of the story at this time.

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LOS ANGELES - A former Miss California, Carrie Prejean, and organizers of the state beauty pageant, have settled dueling lawsuits surrounding Prejean's high-profile stand on gay marriage, and her much-remarked-upon breast implants.

Now, everyone can stand down.

A joint statement released Tuesday says Prejean and pageant organizers reached a confidential settlement on both legal fronts.

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NEW YORK - Apparently in Mount Clemens, Mich., crime does pay, especially if the people you rob fight back and beat you to a pulp.

A judge has ruled that Scott T. Zielinski can sue the store that he robbed at knifepoint, because the employees allegedly shot and beat him on the way out.

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PHOENIX - Self-help guru James Arthur Ray has made a small fortune coaching people that they can achieve wealth and fulfillment by simply imagining the future they want. That's "The Secret."

But the three people who died after a sweat lodge retreat run by Ray probably didn't imagine his words would be the last they ever heard.

Now, Ray will be forced to do some positive thinking of his own. The guru was hit with two lawsuits stemming from the Oct. 8 Angel Valley Retreat sweat lodge ceremony in Sedona, Ariz., that left three dead and 18 hospitalized.

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NEW YORK - Fallen financier Bernard Madoff has plunged from his Manhattan penthouse to the lower bunk of a cell he shares with a drug offender at a federal prison, where he eats pizza cooked by a child molester and hangs around with a notorious mobster and a convicted spy, according to legal papers filed Tuesday.

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NEW YORK - They are one of America's best looking and most talked about couples — New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and supermodel Gisele Bundchen.

The two certainly attract enough attention, but now two photographers who covered the pair's Costa Rican wedding have sued the newlyweds for $1 million, saying that the supermodel's bodyguards shot at them during a post-nuptial party.

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NEW YORK - Here's a switch: a dozen hedge funds are accusing a California businessman of "playing dirty" with their money — and even the name Sarah Palin is a "player" in the defendant's prior ventures, according to the New York Daily News.

The suit alleges Milton Ault the 3rd stiffed the hedge funds out of their $4.2 million investment in Ault's firm, Zealous Inc., by shoveling the money into porn, including a publicly traded gentleman's club and a planned swingers ranch in New York's Catskill Mountains.

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MINNEAPOLIS - A Minnesota woman who became the nation's only music file-sharing defendant so far to go to trial is getting a replay two years after losing the case.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a 32-year-old mother of four and self-described “huge music fan,” will be armed with aggressive new lawyers when her retrial begins in federal court here Monday.

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