Florida man accused of stealing, selling Smokey Bear signs online for $1,900 a piece
Florida man accused of stealing, selling Smokey Bear signs online for $1,900 a piece. The KRAK 11 News hour: The World Desk, Criminal Intent, Animals, Sports. Real stories from named sources, read by Chip Marlowe and Deb Sarkissian.
Aired 2026-08-19 20:54 UTC · 5 segments · 10 min · complete transcript below
Rundown
KRAK 11 NEWS
Good evening, I'm Chip Marlowe.
And I'm Deb Sarkissian. This is the top of the hour on KRAK 11 News.
Coming up this hour: THE WORLD DESK, where Canada and the United States say a new trade deal is nearly finished, but the details remain undisclosed.
CRIMINAL INTENT brings you a Florida man who allegedly stole Smokey Bear signs from state forests and sold them online for nineteen hundred dollars apiece.
ANIMALS has a whale using rocks to scrape off barnacles, and that video has climbed to number five on the KRAK 11 countdown. And SPORTS, where firefighters in Toledo are battling an industrial blaze.
The Toledo fire is not sports.
Firefighters are athletes of crisis, Deb.
Still ahead this hour: THE WORLD DESK, where Prime Minister Carney says the trade talks represent significant progress, and the deadline is this weekend. That's next.
THE WORLD DESK
Good evening.
The chair is still at an angle.
I have made peace with the angle.
We turn now to international news. Croatia has arrested a Ukrainian man in connection with the twenty twenty-two sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline. Authorities say new intelligence led them to the suspect, who had been living under an assumed identity in Zagreb for eighteen months.
The Nord Stream pipeline runs from Russia to Germany beneath the Baltic Sea, and the explosion severed one of Europe's primary energy arteries during a period of maximum geopolitical tension.
There are two Nord Stream pipelines.
Both were damaged.
Croatian intelligence says the suspect was one of several scuba divers who planted explosives on both pipelines in September of twenty twenty-two. The suspect has not been formally charged and Croatia has not announced whether extradition proceedings will follow.
We move now to Washington, where a Trump administration aide is drawing scrutiny for her proximity to the president. Natalie Harp has been described as one of the longest-serving members of the president's inner circle, a role that drew attention this week during Senate testimony.
Harp previously worked as a correspondent for One America News before joining the Trump campaign in twenty nineteen. She currently holds the title of Deputy Director of Oval Office Operations, though her exact portfolio remains undefined.
The position of Deputy Director typically handles scheduling and operational flow within the White House communications infrastructure.
Her position does not have a formal job description.
We turn now to Germany, where an eighty-one-year-old man has confessed to the nineteen ninety-four murder of an American tourist, bringing a close to a cold case that remained unsolved for three decades. The confession came earlier this week during questioning by German federal investigators.
Amy Lopez, a twenty-eight-year-old tourist from Texas, was last seen alive in September of nineteen ninety-four while visiting the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress in Koblenz. Her body was discovered six days later in a wooded area two kilometers from the fortress. Cause of death was strangulation.
The Ehrenbreitstein Fortress sits on a hill overlooking the Rhine River and is one of the most visited historical sites in the Rhineland region.
It overlooks the junction where the Moselle meets the Rhine.
Which is what I said.
German prosecutors say the suspect lived in Koblenz at the time of the murder and had no prior criminal record. Advances in forensic DNA analysis allowed investigators to match evidence collected in nineteen ninety-four to the suspect, leading to his arrest last month.
Formal charges are expected within the week.
Still ahead, CRIMINAL INTENT.
A Wexler County woman is facing multiple charges after investigators say she staged a break-in at her own home, then filed an insurance claim for items that were never stolen.
The claim included a laptop she had sold on Facebook three weeks earlier.
That's next.
CRIMINAL INTENT
Good evening. I'm Chip Marlowe.
And I'm Deb Sarkissian. Chip has been standing for the last forty seconds.
I am testing a posture adjustment. Network anchors project authority through verticality.
Sit down, Chip.
Back in July of this year, a Florida Panhandle man was charged with stealing Smokey Bear signs from state forests and selling them online for nineteen hundred dollars apiece.
Federal prosecutors say the suspect removed multiple signs from national forest property and listed them for sale on online marketplaces.
Authorities began investigating after forest service personnel noticed the signs missing during routine inspections. This is theft of government assets during peak fire season.
The signs are federal property. Each one is marked with U.S. Forest Service identification numbers.
The person of interest allegedly operated for several months before detection, which raises questions about forest patrol frequency in the region.
Prosecutors allege.
Back in June of this year, an escaped emu led Maryland state troopers on a three-hour chase across two counties, survived being struck by a vehicle, and kept running.
The bird escaped from a private farm, crossed Interstate Ninety-Seven during morning rush hour, and dodged multiple capture attempts by animal control.
Authorities deployed nets, tranquilizer equipment, and coordinated roadblocks. The suspect evaded all three.
The emu.
The emu. It was eventually cornered in a residential backyard and returned to its owner, who was cited for inadequate fencing.
A Fairmont man was sentenced yesterday to eighteen months in federal prison for mail fraud. Prosecutors said he ran a scheme targeting elderly residents through fake sweepstakes notifications over a three-year period.
Restitution was ordered in the amount of two hundred fourteen thousand dollars to be distributed among forty-one victims.
Back in July of this year, a New York school district paused a sixty-thousand-dollar program to bring an AI-powered robot into the classroom after parents raised privacy concerns and discovered the manufacturer also produces sex dolls.
The robot was designed to assist with language instruction and featured facial recognition software to track student engagement levels.
Parents discovered the connection during a routine internet search of the company name.
The district issued a statement saying the program is on hold pending further review of the vendor's product line and data collection practices.
Still ahead, a story involving an animal that did not evade capture, and we have the video.
That's next.
ANIMALS
Time now for the good news desk.
Your chair is back at an angle.
The chair is fine.
You're listing to the left.
An endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle has completed a five-thousand-mile journey from Wales back to Texas, arriving safely Wednesday morning.
The turtle was found off the coast of Anglesey in November, treated for six months, and released in March.
Five thousand miles. That is Houston to London and back again.
And it remembered. Six months in recovery and it still knew where home was.
That is remarkable.
A Scottish wildcat has been filmed swimming, which researchers say is the first documented sighting of that behavior.
A wildlife camera in the Highlands captured the wildcat crossing a stream.
There are fewer than three hundred Scottish wildcats left in the wild.
Three hundred. And someone got this.
The whale barnacle video remains at number five on the KRAK 11 animal countdown with one hundred one thousand five hundred thirty-eight new views in the last three hours.
Still number two on YouTube's trending chart.
Two point three million total views.
Still ahead, a college athlete makes a decision that will change the conference and we'll tell you which one.
Sports is next.
SPORTS
Good evening. I'm Chip Marlowe.
And I'm Deb Sarkissian. Welcome to the KRAK 11 Scoreboard.
Deb, the chair is back at an angle and I have made peace with it.
You're listing to the left.
In Major League Baseball tonight, the Chicago Cubs defeated the Cincinnati Reds eight to five at Wrigley Field. Pete Crow-Armstrong went two for four with a run scored, continuing what I believe is the most underreported hot streak in the National League.
He's batting two-eighteen on the season.
Which demonstrates growth.
The White Sox defeated the Twins seven to three in Minneapolis. Dylan Cease pitched six strong innings, allowing two runs on five hits.
In the National Football League, preseason continues. The Cleveland Browns lost to the Minnesota Vikings twenty-seven to twelve Saturday night in Canton at the Hall of Fame Game. Deshaun Watson did not play, which I believe is becoming a pattern worth examining.
It's the preseason.
Which is when patterns form.
In Ohio State football news, the Buckeyes are ranked number four in Yahoo Sports' preseason college football top twenty-five. Head coach Ryan Day enters his sixth season with a record of fifty-six and eight, but Ohio State has not won a national championship since twenty-fourteen.
Ten years. That is a decade without a title for a program that considers itself elite, and I believe the pressure on Coach Day this season is not just significant but career-defining.
The article does not say that.
The article does not have to.
In chess, Magnus Carlsen has successfully defended his world championship title and will compete again at the twenty-twenty-six Esports World Cup. Carlsen, widely considered the greatest chess player of all time, has held the number one ranking for more than a decade.
Prize money for that tournament is five hundred thousand dollars, which, as I have said before, is more than some professional athletes earn in an entire season of actual physical competition.
His heart rate during tournament play has been recorded at one hundred thirty beats per minute.
Which is elevated but not athletic.
In Formula One, Honda has admitted it only realised the full scale of its power unit problems in January of this year. The manufacturer returned to Formula One in twenty-fifteen but has struggled with reliability and performance issues throughout its current partnership with Red Bull Racing.
January is eight months ago. That is two-thirds of a season spent knowing you have a problem you cannot solve, and I believe that is not engineering failure, that is organisational failure.
The season ends in December.
Exactly.
That's the Scoreboard for tonight. Still ahead, we'll return at the top of the hour with the next KRAK 11 News, where we're tracking a developing story out of Nevada.
What appears to be human remains have been discovered in Lake Mead as water levels reach record lows. The National Park Service is investigating.
That's next, right here on KRAK 11.
Reporting behind this episode
- 81-year-old confesses to German cold case murder of US tourist in 1994
- Who is Natalie Harp, Trump's right-hand woman?
- Ukrainian man arrested in Croatia over Nord Stream pipeline blasts
- Florida man accused of stealing, selling Smokey Bear signs online for $1,900 a piece
- NY school pauses $60K AI robot teacher over privacy fears, maker’s sex doll ties
- Emu causes traffic back-up, hours-long pursuit on Maryland highway
- How whales get rid from the barnicales.
- How whales get rid from the barnicales.
- How whales get rid from the barnicales.
- How whales get rid from the barnicales.
- How whales get rid from the barnicales.
- Apparent human remains found in US reservoir as water levels hit record low