I fell into journalism in 2006 with a
story
that started as a simple assignment about a local charter school opening for The
Miami Herald’s Neighbors section, and turned into something more.
In the ensuing years, I got drafted onto the Herald’s investigative team, where
I worked on three major projects: Borrower’s Betrayed, about the subprime
mortgage crisis; Key’s to the Kingdom, about Allen Stanford’s Ponzi scheme;
and Neglected to Death, about Florida’s failure to protect its elderly and
disabled.
I joined The Wall Street Journal in 2011, where I’ve worked on a range of
stories and projects, including Accounting for Terror, a series about terror
financing; Putin’s Power, a project looking at the Russian president’s inner
circle; and Inside TikTok’s Dangerously Addictive Algorithm, where we
reverse-engineered the popular social media app’s algorithm using a tower of
Raspberry Pi minicomputers and a swath of AI and machine-learning techniques.
In 2015, armed with a trove of billions of previously confidential billing
records, we used statistical analyses and shoe-leather reporting to unravel
millions of dollars in Medicare fraud. The project, Medicare Unmasked, won the
2015 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.
The popular app can feed young users a stream of intense, polarized and hard-to-verify videos about the Israel-Hamas war
Learn more in our story here.
Our documentary reveals how the Russian private military company hides the flow of riches and resources that ultimately connect to the Kremlin.
Watch the documentary here.
The web of shell companies and middlemen managed by services firm Bridgewaters makes it hard for authorities to track assets and enforce sanctions. The company has connections to now-blacklisted oligarchs including Alisher Usmanov, Andrei Skoch and Sergei Chemezov.
Read the full story here.
The app’s algorithm can send users down rabbit holes of narrow interest, resulting in potentially dangerous content such as emaciated images, purging techniques, hazardous diets and body shaming.
Read the full story here.
The popular app can quickly drive young users into endless spools of adult content, including videos touting drug use and promoting pornography sites, a Wall Street Journal investigation finds.
Read the full story here.
Months before travel bans and lockdowns, Americans were transmitting the virus across the country
The Wall Street Journal interviewed disease detectives and reviewed hundreds of pages of new research to piece together how the coronavirus infiltrated the wealthiest nation on earth. The latest genetic, epidemiological and computational research suggests it was spreading inside the country before anyone started looking.
How did it happen? Find out here.
A Journal investigation finds the Cloud Hopper attack was much bigger than previously known
Read the full story here.
A Wall Street Journal reconstruction of the worst known hack into the nation’s power system reveals attacks on hundreds of small contractors.
Read the full story here.
An analysis of 221,641 tweets shows Russian trolls tried to incite chaos, fear and outrage about fake events before their election activity, as if they were testing to see how much they could get Americans to believe.
Read the full story here.
VEB, a Russian state-run bank under scrutiny by U.S. investigators, financed a deal involving Donald Trump’s onetime partner in a Toronto hotel tower at a key moment for the project, according to people familiar with the transaction.
Read the full story here.
Annie Murray’s 2009 Land Cruiser followed the same overseas car caravan that U.S. officials alleged raised millions of dollars for Hezbollah–a trade route they thought they had cleaned up five years ago.
Read the full story here.
U.S. companies are barred from doing business with people and entities named on the government’s designated-terrorist list. The firm that touts the Butterball turkey is being investigated over such alleged ties.
Read the full story here.
Banks close the accounts of customers they fear may be up to no good, evicting from the financial system those the government most wants to watch.
Read the full story here.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of data from 105 of the largest police agencies in the country found more than 550 police killings between 2007 and 2012 were missing from the FBI’s records or, in a few dozen cases, not attributed to the agency whose officers were involved. The result: It is nearly impossible to determine how many people are killed by police each year.
Read the full story here.
Stockbrokers who’ve been in trouble with regulators tend to cluster in certain places in the country where the affluent and elderly are easily accessible and where regulatory punishment is lax, a Wall Street Journal data analysis shows. The Journal found these hotspots in south Florida and Long Island, long known as havens for troubled brokers, but also in places around Detroit, Las Vegas and parts of California. The Journal’s analysis showed a total of 16 such hot spots....
More than 2,300 providers earned $500,000 or more from Medicare in 2012 from a single procedure or service, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.
Read the full story here.
More than 5,000 brokers were still licensed to sell securities earlier this year after working for one or more firms that regulators expelled between 2005 and 2012, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal.
Read the full story here.
An investigation of insider trading by corporate executives found many make profitable trades prior to news announcements.
Our analysis found that many executives made trades yielding considerable profits just before significant company news announcements. Of 20,237 executives we looked at, 1,418 experienced an average gain of 10% in their trades one week before significant news releases. This rate of profit was notably higher than that of executives who faced negative stock movements....
At a time when the overall U.S. homicide rate is declining, more civilians are killing each other and claiming self-defense–a trend that is most pronounced in states with new “stand your ground” laws.
The U.S. has seen a notable increase in justifiable homicides, particularly in states with “stand your ground” laws, even as the overall homicide rate declines. “Stand your ground” laws allow individuals greater latitude in using force for self-defense outside the home....
Results from Russia’s parliamentary vote earlier this month are studded with red flags that suggest broad electoral fraud, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.
Our analysis of nearly 100,000 voting precincts reveals potential vote-rigging, with up to 14 million votes in question. Higher turnout areas showed suspiciously strong support for Putin’s United Russia party. Large-scale protests have erupted in response to allegations of fraud, challenging Putin’s political legitimacy. In response, Putin promises transparent measures for upcoming elections....