Fat Leonard faked his escape with an Elvis mannequin. Now he wants a pardon.

01 • 20 Minute Read

The Washington Post

Craig Whitlock

He Fleeced the Navy for Millions, Then Fled the Country. Now He Wants a Pardon.

Leonard Glenn Francis, known as Fat Leonard

An ankle monitor, an Uber, and a chartered jet got Leonard Glenn Francis across the Mexican border in under thirty minutes. He left an Elvis mannequin behind as a farewell taunt. Craig Whitlock tracks how the con man known as Fat Leonard bilked the Navy of $35 million, implicated dozens of admirals, then vanished from house arrest and spent fifteen months on the run through Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela before he was traded back to the U.S. in a prisoner swap. Now battling stage 4 kidney cancer, Francis says his lawyers are drafting an appeal straight to the Oval Office.

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02 • 35 Minute Read

NYT Magazine

Nathaniel Rich

How a Gang of Thieves Pulled Off a Multimillion-Dollar Data Center Heist

Illustration of a London data center heist

Terry Ellis was one of Britain's most reliable thieves when a fixer named Ray offered him the job of a lifetime: break into a Verizon data center in King's Cross and steal roughly 80 servers holding evidence of subprime mortgage fraud. The building had bulletproof glass, biometric locks, and eleven guards. Nathaniel Rich reconstructs how Ellis's crew disguised themselves as police, hired a snarling Alsatian named Buster, and hauled the servers out in laundry bags within the hour. Newspapers reported a "£5 million burglary." Ellis believes the actual value was far higher. He never learned what was on the drives.

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03 • 50 Minute Read

The New Yorker

Jonathan Blitzer

Locked Away

ICE detention tent complex at Camp East Montana

Rey carried two thousand dollars in his pocket and no idea he wouldn't come home. An ICE case manager called him in for what looked like a routine check-in. Hours later he was on a bus to a tent complex at Fort Bliss called Camp East Montana, where toilets didn't flush and his diabetes medication never arrived. Jonathan Blitzer traces how a facility built to hold thousands became the site of three deaths in six weeks, including a man whose autopsy was ruled a homicide. Rey eventually signed his own deportation papers just to see a doctor again.

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04 • 15 Minute Read

Victory Journal

Amos Barshad

Queen of Darts

Darts players competing at the Dutch Open

A postal worker who takes racist abuse mid-throw and a mother who hasn't lost a tournament since 2017 are the two names every dartsperson in Assen is watching. Amos Barshad finds Deta Hedman and Mikuru Suzuki cutting through 5,857 entrants at the world's biggest open darts tournament, one a night-shift lifer who once quit the sport for five years, the other untouchable once she locks onto the board. Suzuki closes out the final with a clean double 20. Hedman, three legs up in her own match, watches it slip away again.

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Fat Leonard's Great Escape

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