Chris Parker

Dr. Charles Benbrook

The Monsanto Menace

Chris Parker
When you're good at something, you want to leverage that. Monsanto's specialty is killing stuff. In the early years, the St. Louis biotech giant helped pioneer such leading chemicals as DDT, PCBs and Agent Orange. Unfortunately, these breakthroughs had a tendency to kill stuff. And the torrent of lawsuits that......
Christopher Dennis and Reginald France of the Miami HEAT task force; Credit: PHOTO BY LILIANA MORA

How Medicare Fraud Became the Nation's Most Lucrative Crime

Chris Parker
Houston Riverside General Hospital specialized in the kind of medicine its better-heeled brethren did their best to avoid: treating the poor, the mentally ill, the drug-addled. So it's no surprise that the 95-year-old nonprofit — formerly known as Houston Negro Hospital — shared the same broken finances as the people......
Credit: ILLUSTRATION BY VLAD ALVAREZ

Barbarians in the Ivory Tower

Chris Parker
Bobby Ruffin Jr. was only 14 when a recruiter from Ashford University called. The Birmingham, Mich., boy thought he'd clicked on a link promising help finding money for college. It was actually just a lead generator for the for-profit, online school's sales staff. At the time, Bobby was an A......
Credit: ILLUSTRATION BY JESSE LENZ

Black Friday: How the Feds Shut Down Online Poker

Chris Parker
When you've turned nothing into something once already, you tend to believe you can do it again. There's faith your luck will turn. Perhaps it's delusion. But for a professional poker player, self-confidence is essential. So it is for Walter Wright, who now finds himself in Costa Rica. He left......