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Article content Toronto Raptors management and head coach Darko Rajakovic felt pretty good about the team’s haul after last June’s draft, but you never really know for sure until the players take the court. It’s early days sure, with only about a quarter of this season completed, but the team has to be feeling even better now after seeing No. 19 selection Ja’Kobe Walter start to blossom with a bigger opportunity, No. 31 pick Jonathan Mogbo bringing a varied toolkit every night, No. 45 pick Jamal Shead providing dogged determination, aggressive defence and an ability to get to the basket. Finally, rookie Jamison Battle, who went undrafted but was quickly snapped up by the Raptors on a two-way contract, was expected to spend most of the year in Mississauga with Raptors 905. Instead, he’s only played one G League game so far and 20 NBA contests, shooting 41% on three-point shots in a floor-spacing role. For a franchise that was rightly hailed for a while as one of the best developmental organizations in the NBA, only to see the pipeline stall in recent years, the emergence of this class as viable NBA players so quickly is a needed win. Financially speaking, when you’re paying mega-money to franchise player Scottie Barnes and starters Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett, plus sizeable amounts to other veterans, you need a bunch of productive players on more manageable rookie scale deals to make it all work. And competitively, the more serviceable players (and ideally ones who complement your top talent) you have, the better you’re going to be. Shead and Battle turned strong training camps and preseason games into longer looks and have had their moments, while Mogbo, asked to do more, has had stops and starts. Sometimes he blends in, but in plenty of games he’s wowed with his rebounding and passing ability (including in the two previous games against the Miami Heat, where Mogbo dominated the boards and also excelled as an outlet when Miami went into a zone). Though Toronto has been hit with a double whammy of tons of injuries and close losses, spirits have remained high, with little signs of frustration. Rajakovic and his staff have done a strong job in that regard and it’s helped that the rookies have brought positive energy. Mogbo credited the coaches, as well as veterans like Garrett Temple for creating the good vibes. “I feel like everyone takes care of each other here,” Mogbo told Postmedia after Sunday’s home win over Miami. Whether it’s the rookies supporting their peers, the coaches helping them get better, or the veterans getting in their ears, it’s all made the adjustment to the NBA a lot easier. “You have guys on the bench, all the vets, just giving great advice and tips. We have a great surrounding, so there’s not a time where we should be sped up or we shouldn’t know what to expect,” Mogbo said. When the losses were piling up, we sought out the sage Temple to see how the youngsters were doing. Keep in mind that Shead was the winningest player in Houston Cougars history and the others are used to winning most of the time as well. “I think they’ve handled it well,” Temple told Postmedia a couple of weeks ago when Toronto was mired in a tough losing skid. “I think, the atmosphere has been amazing. On a team that’s (struggling in the win-loss column) ... a lot of credit goes to Coach, and a lot of credit goes to the young guys, keeping things fresh, understanding when to be silly and have fun and when to lock in, and that’s difficult for a team with four rookies,” said Temple, who is in his 15th NBA season. “They haven’t gone through a stretch like this, probably before, definitely not recently, in their college career, so I think they’ve handled it really well, and it’s going to bode well for their growth,” he predicted. So far, Temple has been right. An injury to promising sophomore guard Gradey Dick has given Walter a chance to start recent games and he’s flashed intriguing potential at both ends of the floor. “It’s amazing for him to have this opportunity, he worked really hard during his rehab program (with Raptors 905),” Rajakovic said. “He took that very seriously, he was very professional about it, played really hard, played inside the system and that gave me enough confidence to throw him into the fire and see how he does.” Rajakovic said he’s liked that Walter is “not afraid” on offence. In the games against Miami he dropped his shoulder to gain a path for a bucket, scored on fadeaways and pull-ups and from beyond the arc. None of the rookies have looked afraid. All believe they belong and have acted like it from the start, even if none of them were as highly touted as some of the other players in their draft class. “People might say we’re not this or that, but I feel like we just got to play our roles,” Mogbo said. “I feel like we do a great job of doing that and going out there, playing hard ... That’s what we take pride in. The team gets along, the coaches get along, and that’s why we’re comfortable. You can’t get too comfortable, obviously, but I feel like we’re doing good. Everyone has a good head on their shoulders,” he said. Walter mentioned post-game that the game is starting to slow down a bit for him, making it easier to do the things that have gotten him to this level. Mogbo agreed. “The game is slowing down, you’ve just got to take your time with it. NBA is a high pace. Has its pace, different pace at different times,” he said. “Just being yourself, not trying to do too much. Just play hard. When you play hard everything comes into place.” @WolstatSunHouse Of Reps Proposes Bill To Limit Number Of Ministers To 37The Albanese government will probe whether Meta has unlawfully promoted scams on its platforms, as the social media giant continues to take advertising money from criminals pushing blatantly fraudulent schemes on Facebook that target vulnerable Australians. Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones said he had asked his department and office to examine whether Meta was breaching existing laws, including its criminal and civil obligations. Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones wants to examine if Meta has broken laws. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer “Every hour that a scam ad is live on a Meta platform causes harm,” Jones said. “It’s not good enough that they don’t have a system which enables blatantly criminal material to be removed.” Jones’ comments came after this masthead published an investigation showing Meta was serving up ads promoting notorious sham investment platforms subject to numerous official warnings and easily identified with a simple search. Despite the tech company’s insistence that it had since removed many offending ads and accounts, new ads appeared in recent days using the same techniques and keywords as before. Among the ads published this week were examples misusing the images of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, singer Guy Sebastian, and those linked to a bogus Salvation Army loan offer. There were also numerous ads promoting Quantum AI, which the consumer watchdog has labelled the “most prolific online investment trading platform scam” affecting Australians. Meta did not respond to questions about the ongoing scam ads by deadline. An image of the PM in a recent fake Salvation Army ad. The scammers behind these types of ads are often seeking to steal people’s personal information. Credit: Meta Ad Library Earlier, the company shared news it had recently taken down 2 million accounts linked to scam centres in South-East Asia and the Middle East. It also confirmed that it had been sharing warnings with Australian Facebook users since October, telling them to “beware of scams using celebrity images to deceive you”. Sergeant Alexander Kazagrandi, with the Australian Federal Police’s Joint Policing Cybercrime Co-ordination Centre, said scam advertising was prolific in Australia and was being used “more and more extensively by organised criminal groups”. He warned that these ads were being used not just to recruit victims but to traffic people into South-East Asian scam call centres by offering them an easy way to make money. “That is essentially the same hook that is being used for Australian victims for investment scam purposes,” Kazagrandi said. A scam ad featuring singer Guy Sebastian. When this screenshot was taken, the ad had been live for 13 hours. Credit: Meta Ad Library Last week, new federal scam laws that are set to force social media platforms, banks and telcos to pay compensation to scam victims were debated in parliament. Some MPs and consumer groups are concerned the bill does not go far enough, arguing it will remain far too difficult for victims to be reimbursed. Kazagrandi said more than 90,000 reports about cybercrime and scams were made to ReportCyber last year, a high proportion of which were investment scams. “On average, an investment scam in Australia will net about $81,000 to the criminal,” he said. Kazagrandi said Australians could expect to hear more about Australian police conducting raids and targeting overseas scam operations in the future, as its ongoing Operation Firestorm investigated cybercriminals based in South-East Asia and Eastern Europe. In July this year, Melbourne woman Anna was feeling stressed and vulnerable when she saw an ad on Facebook falsely claiming to feature Albanese talking about a new investment platform purportedly backed by his government. All Anna had to do – at a time when her husband had left her for another woman, and she was struggling to pay off the mortgage alone as she worked long days as an office administrator – was put in $250. “I just click ... [and] I fill out the application because I was thinking, ‘$250 I can afford’,” said Anna, 61, using a pseudonym. The advertisement was a scam, using a manipulated video of Albanese without his permission, and it connected Anna to ruthless scammers who fleeced her of $30,000 over the coming months, pushing her even further into debt. Anna said the scammers, who claimed to be from England and worked for a company called I2 Trading, tricked her into believing she was making profits on her trading, enough to pay off her mortgage. It wasn’t until she couldn’t withdraw her profits that she realised it was a con. She hadn’t seen the scam warnings previously. “I work full-time, I get home, I don’t watch the news,” she said. The mother of two, who is being assisted by the Consumer Action Law Centre, said the scammer also advised her to approach a digital lender for a loan of $30,000, coaching her to tell them the money was for home renovations. Anna says she is now paying an interest rate of 9.69 per cent on the borrowed money. It means the scam is going to cost her more than $40,000 over seven years. She said she was kept awake with the thought of what she might have done with the money she pays into the loan each month – perhaps a holiday, something for her house, or to fund a more stable life. “I’m struggling,” she said. Monash University Professor Mark Andrejevic, who has researched the types of Facebook ads reaching Australians, said it was pretty clear that Meta was not policing its ads carefully. “It’s easy to find these ads,” he said. “There are a number of indicators, including keywords, the characteristics of the pages that are serving them, and the use of multiple administrators across several countries. When taken together, an automated system should be able to flag this type of advertising easily.” Andrejevic said regulatory change was needed or scams would be a persistent part of the online ad environment. “It doesn’t look like Facebook is making much off of each individual ad buy, but if you imagine how many hundreds of thousands of these are appearing globally, the revenues could be more than just a blip.” Expert tips on how to save, invest and make the most of your money, delivered to your inbox every Sunday. Sign up here for our Real Money newsletter.
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NEW YORK (AP) — The masked gunman who the head of one of the largest U.S. health insurers had the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” emblazoned on his ammunition, echoing a phrase used by industry critics, two law enforcement officials said Thursday. The words were written in permanent marker, according to one of the officials, who were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation into the shooting early Wednesday outside a Manhattan hotel and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. With the gunman still at large, police also released photos of a "person of interest" wanted for questioning in connection with the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO . The images, showing an unmasked man in the lobby of a Manhattan hostel, add to a collection of photos and video that have circulated since the shooting — including footage of the attack itself, as well as still frames of the suspected gunman stopping at a Starbucks beforehand. Thompson, 50, died in a dawn ambush as he walked from his midtown hotel to the company’s annual investor conference at a Hilton across the street, blocks from tourist draws such as Radio City Music Hall, the Museum of Modern Art and Rockefeller Center, where the famed Wednesday night. The reason for the killing , but New York City police say evidence firmly points to it being a targeted attack. The messages on the ammunition mimic the phrase “delay, deny, defend,” which is by lawyers and insurance industry critics to describe tactics used to avoid paying claims. It refers to insurers delaying payment, denying a claim and then defending their actions. Health insurers like UnitedHealthcare have become frequent targets of criticism from doctors and patients for or to care. Investigators recovered several 9 mm shell casings from outside the Hilton and a cellphone from the alleyway through which the shooter fled. Inside a nearby trash can, they found a water bottle and protein bar wrapper that they say the gunman purchased from Starbucks minutes before the shooting. The city's crime lab is examining those items for DNA and fingerprints. The killing and the shooter’s movements in the minutes before and afterward were captured on some of the multitude of security cameras in that part of the city. The shooter fled on a bicycle and was last seen riding into Central Park. A tip that the shooter may have stayed at a hostel brought police Thursday morning to at least two such establishments on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, according to one of the law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation. The photos made public Thursday were taken in the lobby of the HI New York City hostel. “We are fully cooperating with the NYPD and, as this is an active investigation, can not comment at this time,” hostel spokesperson Danielle Brumfitt said in an emailed statement. Members of the public have flooded police with tips — many unfounded. Police searched a Long Island Rail Road train Wednesday night after a commuter claimed to have spotted the shooter, but they found no sign of the gunman. “We’re following up on every single tip that comes in,” Assistant Commissioner Carlos Nieves, a police spokesperson, said. ”That little piece of information could be the missing piece of the puzzle that ties everything together.” Based on surveillance video and evidence from the scene, investigators believe the shooter had at least some firearms training and experience with guns and that the weapon was equipped with a silencer, one of the law enforcement officials told the AP. Investigators were also looking into whether the suspect had pre-positioned a bike as part of an escape plan, the official said. Security video shows the killer approaching Thompson from behind, leveling his pistol and firing several shots, barely pausing to clear a gun jam while the executive tumbled to the sidewalk. Cameras showed him fleeing the block across a pedestrian plaza before getting on the bicycle. Police released several images of the man wearing a hooded jacket and a mask that concealed most of his face — a look that would not have attracted attention on a chilly morning. They've also used drones, helicopters and dogs in an intensive search for the killer, while also interviewing Thompson's coworkers, searching his hotel room and scouring his social media. Thompson, a father of two sons who lived in a Minneapolis suburb, had been with Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealthcare since 2004 and served as CEO for more than three years. His wife, Paulette, told NBC News on Wednesday that he told her “there were some people that had been threatening him.” She didn’t have details but suggested the threats may have involved issues with insurance coverage. The insurer’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group Inc., was holding its annual meeting in New York to update investors on its direction and expectations for the coming year. The company ended the conference early in the wake of Thompson’s death. UnitedHealthcare provides coverage for more than 49 million Americans and brought in more than $281 billion in revenue last year. It is the largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans in the U.S. and manages health insurance coverage for employers and state and federally funded Medicaid programs. In October, UnitedHealthcare was named along with Humana and CVS in a Senate report detailing how its denial rate for prior authorizations for some Medicare Advantage patients has surged in recent years.