889 articles
Shakti Mills gang rape
Shakti Mills gang rape: 22 August 2013 assault of a 22-year-old photojournalist by five men in Mumbai's abandoned Shakti Mills compound; rapid arrests, first Section 376E death sentences, commuted to life by Bombay High Court in 2021.
Shanghaiing
Shanghaiing was the practice of kidnapping men, usually by drugging or trickery, to serve aboard merchant ships; crimps sold them to captains for a fee called blood money.
Sheena Bora murder case
Sheena Bora murder case: 2012 alleged killing of 24-year-old Mumbai executive Sheena Bora by her mother Indrani Mukerjea, with Sanjeev Khanna and driver Shyamvar Rai; surfaced in 2015, investigated by the CBI, trial still ongoing.
Shoplifting
Shoplifting is theft of merchandise from a retail store by a posing customer, also called retail customer theft. Lifetime prevalence about 10% of US adults; made a hanging offence in England by the 1699 Shoplifting Act; largely undetected, with about 2% of shoplifters arrested.
Shower Posse
The Shower Posse is a JLP-aligned Jamaican organized crime group from Tivoli Gardens, formed around 1980 in New York, led by the Coke family, blamed for over 1,600 murders, and weakened after Christopher 'Dudus' Coke's 2010 extradition.
Siders case
The Siders case is the 2026 Vinton County, Ohio prosecution of Gary Siders Jr., Elizabeth Siders, Gary Siders Sr., and Christina Siders after 16 children were found in squalid Hamden home; endangerment and sexual-abuse indictments, competency findings, and prior welfare contact.
Silk Road (marketplace)
Silk Road was a darknet marketplace on Tor using Bitcoin, run by Ross Ulbricht (Dread Pirate Roberts) from February 2011 until FBI seizure on October 1, 2013; it sold mainly drugs, processed about $1.2 billion, and led to Ulbricht's 2015 life sentence.
SIM swap scam
SIM swap scam (SIM hijacking, SIM jacking): account-takeover fraud where an attacker impersonates a victim to a mobile carrier to transfer the victim's phone number to an attacker-controlled SIM, intercepting SMS one-time passcodes to access bank and crypto accounts; FBI IC3 logged $68 million in 2021 US losses.
Simon City Royals
Simon City Royals: Chicago street and prison gang founded 1971 from the 1956 Simon City club; Folk Nation ally of the Gangster Disciples; now centered in Mississippi prisons and the target of major federal RICO convictions.
Simulated child pornography
Virtual child sexual abuse material, also called simulated child pornography, is digital imagery created via morphing or animation that depicts children in sexual acts. Few countries criminalize it globally.
Sinaloa Cartel
Sinaloa Cartel (Cártel de Sinaloa), Mexican drug-trafficking federation founded in the early 1990s by El Chapo Guzmán, El Mayo Zambada, and El Azul; federal, factional structure, Golden Triangle base, CJNG rival, and 2024 internal war after Zambada's arrest.
Sister Abhaya murder case
Sister Abhaya murder case: 1992 death of a 21-year-old Knanaya Catholic nun found in a well at St Pius X Convent, Kottayam, Kerala; closed as suicide, probed by the CBI, and in 2020 Father Thomas Kottoor and Sister Sephy were convicted of murder.
Skellefteå assault case
Skellefteå assault case: 7 July 2022 attack on a nine-year-old girl at Morö Backe, Skellefteå; a 15-year-old convicted of attempted murder and aggravated rape of a child (grov våldtäkt mot barn), case B 769-22, sentenced to forensic psychiatric care and SEK 730,000 damages.
Slender Man stabbing
Slender Man stabbing: May 2014 attempted murder in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, both 12, stabbed classmate Payton Leutner 19 times to please the fictional creepypasta character; both were found not guilty by reason of mental disease.
Smuggling
Smuggling: evading trade regulations by moving goods or people across borders illegally, avoiding duties or prohibitions. Also called contraband trade; spans mercantilist-era Atlantic trade, cigarette and drug smuggling, and modern migrant smuggling (90% of EU irregular arrivals use smugglers; €4.7–6 billion yearly).
Social parasitism (offense)
Social parasitism (tuneyadstvo, příživnictví) was a socialist-era criminal offense punishing able-bodied people who avoided work and lived by unfair means, used in the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and briefly Belarus against beggars, prostitutes, and dissidents such as Joseph Brodsky.
Soham murders
The Soham murders: the 2002 killings of 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman by school caretaker Ian Huntley, his 2003 Old Bailey conviction, the Bichard Inquiry, and his 2026 prison death.
Solntsevskaya Bratva (Солнцевская братва)
The Solntsevskaya Bratva, or Solntsevo Brotherhood, is a Russian organized crime group formed in the 1980s in Moscow's Solntsevo district, led by Sergei Mikhailov and Viktor Averin.
Sonora Cartel
Sonora Cartel: 1990s Mexican drug trafficking organization identified with Rafael Caro Quintero in Sonora state; its successor groups, the Caborca Cartel and Nuevo Cártel Independiente de Sonora, now fight Los Chapitos for the border desert.
South African farm attacks
South African farm attacks, or plaasmoorde, are violent crimes against farmers, farmworkers, and visitors on South African farms; the official motive finding is overwhelmingly criminal rather than political.
Spree killer
Spree killer: a multiple-homicide offender who kills several victims at two or more locations in a short, continuous episode without a cooling-off period; FBI dropped the category in 2005, but researchers such as Safarik and Ramsland still classify spree killers separately from serial and mass murderers.
Stabbing
Stabbing: assault or homicide with a pointed or bladed weapon, counted in UK statistics as knife-enabled or sharp-instrument offences; 54,587 recorded offences in YE Dec 2024, 41% of homicides, concentrated in London.
Stacey Castor
Stacey Ruth Castor, the New York "Black Widow," convicted in 2009 of antifreeze-poisoning her second husband David Castor and attempting to murder daughter Ashley Wallace; sentenced to 51 1/3 years to life, died in prison 2016.
Statutory rape
Statutory rape: sexual intercourse with a person below the age of consent, criminal regardless of willingness and usually without force; also called carnal knowledge or corruption of a minor. Strict liability as to age, with close-in-age and marital exceptions varying by jurisdiction.
Steubenville High School rape case
The Steubenville High School rape case: 2012 Ohio case in which football players Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond were found delinquent for raping an intoxicated 16-year-old, documented on social media, prompting an Anonymous campaign and a grand jury.
Steven Jay Russell
Steven Jay Russell is an American con artist known for audacious nonviolent escapes from Texan jails in the 1990s; he served a 144-year sentence until his 2024 parole.
Steven Pladl triple murder and suicide
Steven Pladl triple murder and suicide: on April 12, 2018 Pladl killed his infant son Bennett in Knightdale, NC, shot his daughter-wife Katie Pladl and her adoptive father Anthony Fusco in New Milford, CT, then died by suicide in Wingdale, NY, after incest arrests.
Steven Stayner
Steven Stayner, American kidnapping victim abducted at age 7 from Merced, California, on December 4, 1972, by Kenneth Parnell; escaped March 1, 1980, with fellow victim Timmy White; brother Cary Stayner later became the Yosemite murders serial killer.
Stolen Valor Act of 2013
Stolen Valor Act of 2013, Public Law 113-12, a US federal law amending 18 U.S.C. 704 to criminalize fraudulent claims of military decorations made for tangible gain, enacted after the Supreme Court struck down the 2005 Act in United States v. Alvarez.
Strangling
Strangling is compression of the neck or restriction of breathing, causing loss of consciousness or death; non-fatal strangulation is a domestic abuse risk indicator now a specific offence in England and Wales (2022), New York (2010), and New Zealand.