Crime

March For Our Lives launches billboard campaign

FLORIDA COURIER — Like ticker tape, the messages quickly scroll on the digital billboards.“I saw my brother get shot. I saw my sister get shot. I saw my son get shot,” the words flow in New York’s Times Square. They are the latest anti-gun violence messages from the March For Our Lives group, which was founded by the survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre last year in Parkland.

Published

8 years ago

May 1, 2019

Oakland Post

By Johnny Diaz

Like ticker tape, the messages quickly scroll on the digital billboards.

“I saw my brother get shot. I saw my sister get shot. I saw my son get shot,” the words flow in New York’s Times Square.

They are the latest anti-gun violence messages from the March For Our Lives group, which was founded by the survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre last year in Parkland.

The digital billboards sponsored by the nonprofit group went up Monday, April 15, and will remain in place throughout this month.

“For the next two weeks, a series of billboards in Times Square will remind Americans that we must come together to save lives,” wrote Brendan Duff, a co-founder of March For Our Lives and a communications strategist for the group — in an opinion piece he wrote with Lauren Hogg about the billboards.

Duff graduated from Stoneman Douglas and his brother was a freshman at the school during the Feb. 14, 2018 massacre that killed 17 students and staff and wounded 17 others.

‘WE WANT CHANGE’

The group expects the billboards to reach about 5 and a half million people.

After the messages roll on the billboards, they suddenly shatter into digital glass with the words, “Enough. We want change” on a yellow background. There is also a number (954-954), which is Broward’s main area code, for people to text to get more information about the group and local chapters.

“The Times Square billboards are meant to reach people from around the world in an impactful way, and like all of our messages, they are meant to be accessible to those willing to fight for safer communities, schools, concert venues, places of worship, and everywhere the threat of gun violence exists,” added Duff, a student at Elon University in North Carolina.

Previous ads by the group, including one meant to get people to the polls in November, included a video that depicted a gun firing bullets through a school hallway.

This article originally appeared in the Florida Courier.

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AG Bonta Announces Action on Cryptocurrency, Sextortion Fraud – Increasingly Targeting Gen-Z

California Attorney General Rob Bonta is warning residents about a surge in cryptocurrency fraud and online sextortion schemes that increasingly target Gen Z through social media platforms. With internet-based scams costing Americans nearly $21 billion in 2023, Bonta highlighted how artificial intelligence and deepfakes allow criminals to impersonate loved ones and promote fraudulent investment groups. The Attorney General’s Office has already shut down over 100 fraudulent websites and is now utilizing new legislative tools to recover assets for victims. Read more.

Published

2 weeks ago

November 3, 2026

Post News Group

By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

California Attorney General Rob Bonta warned residents about rising cryptocurrency fraud and online sextortion scams, urging Californians to recognize warning signs and protect themselves as scammers increasingly target younger people through social media.

Speaking at a news conference on Oct. 19, Bonta said Americans lost $20.9 billion to internet-based scams in 2025, including $11.4 billion to cryptocurrency scams. He said artificial intelligence, deepfakes, and malicious smart contracts have made fraud easier to carry out and more difficult to detect and prevent.

While older Californians remain targets, Bonta said his office has seen a sharp rise in reports of Gen Z consumers being targeted on platforms such as Twitch, TikTok, and Instagram.

One growing scheme involves so-called rug-pull scams, in which fraudsters promote low-priced stocks or volatile cryptocurrencies through online investment groups and streaming communities. After generating interest and driving up prices, scammers sell their holdings, causing values to collapse and leaving investors with losses.

Bonta also warned about sextortion, in which scammers trick or coerce victims into sharing explicit images before threatening to distribute them to friends and family unless they pay. He advised victims not to give in to demands, saying scammers often do not release the images when victims refuse to pay. Instead, he recommended ignoring and blocking the perpetrators.

Another scheme, known as recovery fraud, targets people who have already lost money to cryptocurrency scams. Fraudsters impersonate blockchain recovery specialists or law enforcement officials and demand additional payments while promising to recover stolen assets.

Bonta urged Californians to be skeptical of promises of large returns on small investments, fake cryptocurrencies resembling established ones, and celebrity endorsements that may have been generated using artificial intelligence. He also warned that scammers can use AI to impersonate loved ones through manipulated video and audio.

“Never use a crypto ATM,” Bonta said, emphasizing that transactions can be difficult to trace and reverse and that the machines lack adequate consumer protections.

His office has shut down more than 100 fraudulent websites over the past two years that collectively scammed victims out of at least $8.3 million, he said.

Bonta also highlighted Senate Bill 1208, which he said was recently signed into law. The measure allows law enforcement to petition a court to return seized cryptocurrency to victims, including when alleged perpetrators are outside U.S. jurisdiction.

Residents who have fallen victim to scams can report them to the California Department of Justice at oag.ca.gov/report.

Bonta also urged victims not to feel embarrassed, stressing that scammers are responsible for the harm they cause.