How to uncover a scandal from your couch by Brad Racino and Joe Yerardi.
From the post:
News broke in San Diego last week about a mysterious foreign national bent on influencing San Diego politics by illegally funneling money to political campaigns through a retired San Diego police detective and an undisclosed “straw donor.” Now, the politicians on the receiving end of the tainted funds are scrambling to distance themselves from the scandal.
The main piece of information that started it all was an unsealed FBI complaint.
Fifteen pages in length, the report named only the detective, Ernesto Encinas, and a self-described “campaign guru” in DC, Ravneet Singh, as conspirators. The names of everyone else involved were not disclosed. Instead, politicians were “candidates,” the moneymen were called “the Straw Donor” and “the Foreign National,” and informants were labeled “CIs.”
It didn’t take long for reporters to piece together clues — mainly by combing through publicly-accessible information from the San Diego City Clerk’s website — to uncover who was involved.
A great post that walks you through the process of taking a few facts and hints from an FBI compliant and fleshing it out with details.
This could make an exciting exercise for a library class.
I first saw this at: Comment and a link to a SearchResearch-like story by Daniel M. Russell.