StellarCrowandClaude Fable 5.1
439e83a4cb
Second and third rounds on the dossier pipeline, reviewed locally before commit. Retrieval - wayback_pass.py: retries every BLOCKED/DEAD/THIN/ERROR linked source through the Wayback Machine; blocks carry the snapshot date, archive URL and the live verdict. 143 slots retried: 93 fetched, 37 no snapshot, 12 script shells, 1 PDF. - fetch_sources.py: fetch_wayback() helper. - add_extra_sources.py: files staged extra_* finds (web search, not on the DB record) into the store with a provenance note. - Cases re-sourced by web search: 248 (Oslo: Document.no, Avisa Oslo, NRK; the linked Le Parisien piece is case 242 and is marked OFF-CASE), 258 Kharkiv, 260 Singapore, 358 Bangkok, 365 Las Vegas, 388 Verneuil-sur-Seine, 390 Zoersel, 430 Homestead. 341 of 364 cases now hold a fetched article; 11, 66 and 399 have no public text source (podcast, police video, direct victim report). Trimming - auto_trim.py: case-anchored furniture cut for UNTRIMMED blocks. Finds the body run that mentions the case, merges across subheadings and short furniture gaps, drops teasers, share bars, date/URL/caption lines and subscription pitches; refuses pages with no record term or almost no body. 302 blocks trimmed; 16 left on auto-trim-review.md (7 OFF-CASE suspects). Every cut is labelled AUTO-TRIMMED, UNREVIEWED in the dossier; the full extract stays in staging/. Decisions with anchors in trim-decisions-auto.json. - build_cases.py / verify_all.py: banners for auto-trimmed and archived blocks, staged-file check extended to Wayback blocks, flag legend under the record. Detention rule - README "Definitions": the DB field `kidnappings` is the DETENTION violence type (victim, guard, staff or relative held to force submission or execute the theft), distinct from the Kidnapping scenario (taken away and held). - detention-flag-review.md / detention-flag-corrections.json: 40 records reviewed with evidence; 30 set-to-1 proposals accepted by the owner on 2026-09-06 (listed in corrections-approved.md), 10 still open. - apply_detention_wording.py: "Violence Used" in the 70 reviewed summaries now names detention explicitly (62 of 70 labelled), supported by the summary's own text; idempotent; supersedes the batch scripts' wording. Worklist and docs - sofia-worklist.md: 248 decisions, detention rule item replacing the old "no abduction" item, fresh-search section for the textless cases. - README-START-HERE.md: progress notes, run commands, next steps. - Bug fixed in passing: Wayback blocks stored in-memory text with carriage returns; now stored as read back from disk. verify_all.py PASSES (2321 checks). Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GZZENdTLzNGsbNy4DyF1yt
161 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
161 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
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CASE 232 | Festo Ivaibi | May 17, 2025 | Uganda
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DATABASE RECORD
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id 232
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date May 17, 2025
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original_date nan
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year 2025
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month 5
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quarter 2025-Q2
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victim Festo Ivaibi
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location Kampala
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country Uganda
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scenario Authority Misuse
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description Crypto founder abducted by men posing as military, forced to transfer $500,000 at gunpoint. Company claims at least 48! such cases in Uganda stay officially unreported.
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kidnappings 1
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violence_torture 0
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drugs_alcohol 0
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weapons 1
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theft 1
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life_taken 0
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money_wanted $500,000
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coin_type Crypto
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reports Decrypt
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notes The assailants impersonated military officers
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has_processed_date 1
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created_at 2025-11-13 05:44:45
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(flag legend: 'kidnappings' is the DETENTION flag — 1 when the victim was held against
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their will at any point, tied, locked in, held at gunpoint or taken away; it is NOT the
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same as the 'Kidnapping' scenario, which means taken away and held. See README, Definitions.)
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AI SUMMARY [revised on review, verified against the sources in this file. Live DB still holds the shorter bulk-import summary — apply this to it.]
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**Victims:** Festo Ivaibi, founder of the cryptocurrency education hub Mitroplus Labs, abducted near his home on Bunamwaya Road in Kampala, Uganda.
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**Attackers:** Armed men in military uniforms who claimed to be UPDF "security operatives"; according to a statement from Mitroplus's Afro Token Project, the plot allegedly involved informants posing as crypto traders, rogue officers and two Chinese nationals.
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**Attack Method:** On 17 May 2025 the armed, uniformed group seized Ivaibi near his residence.
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**Violence Used:** Detention — he was held at gunpoint and forced to unlock his cryptocurrency wallets.
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**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** He was made to transfer about $500,000 in cryptocurrency to a wallet the attackers controlled, and a portion of Afro Token (a meme coin) was sold under coercion.
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**Status:** Mitroplus Labs claims at least 48 similar attacks have taken place in Uganda, most of them unreported; Decrypt said it had approached Mitroplus and the UPDF for comment.
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LINKED SOURCES
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[url] https://decrypt.co/321273/crypto-founder-abducted-500k-gunpoint
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NOTES ON THIS FILE
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* matched to sheet row 233: exact match on victim + year, unique on both sides
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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ARTICLE 1
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Source Decrypt
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URL https://decrypt.co/321273/crypto-founder-abducted-500k-gunpoint
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Origin reported_K&R sheet, row 233, column "Articles"
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Length 3,709 chars
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Trimmed site furniture removed on review; kept text is verbatim. Full original (5,153 chars) archived, sha256 81a23111ca0065b68372f06e3b1cd6a45750cf3d4aa4181cc4c7287a858bcfb1
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Crypto Founder Abducted in Uganda, Forced to Send $500,000 at Gunpoint
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Mitroplus Labs said its founder was forced to send crypto from multiple wallets by men impersonating military officers.
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A crypto founder was abducted in Uganda, held at gunpoint, and forced to send crypto worth $500,000 to his attackers, in the latest of a spate of crypto kidnap attempts.
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Festo Ivaibi, founder of crypto education hub Mitroplus Labs, was abducted on May 17 near his residence on Bunamwaya Road in Kampala, Uganda.
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The attackers were reportedly armed, dressed in military uniforms, and claimed to be "security operatives" of the Uganda People's Defence Forces, or UPDF, according to a formal statement from Mitroplus's Afro Token Project account on X.
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The armed group allegedly forced Ivaibi to unlock crypto wallets and transfer $500,000 in crypto to their controlled wallet. A portion of Afro Token, a meme coin, was also sold under coercion, Mitroplus Labs claimed.
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CRYPTO ABDUCTION IN UGANDA.
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On Saturday, May 17th 2025, our founder @IvaibiFesto was abducted by individuals posing as security agents(@MODVA_UPDF) and forced under duress, to release his crypto assets. We thank God he is now safe, and all systems have been secured.
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"This is not just an attack on one person, it's an attack on a growing vision," the project said.
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Afro Token was created on SunPump, a meme coin platform on the Tron blockchain. The cryptocurrency used for the other coerced transfers is unclear, though some amounts were reportedly sent to a Binance wallet.
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Data from DEX Screener shows the token's value has dropped by roughly 16.7% since the day of the attack, with a remaining market cap of around $1.6 million, down from over $7.3 million in December last year.
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Decrypt has reached out to Mitroplus Labs and the UPDF for comment and will update this article should they respond.
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'Wrench attacks' on the rise
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Mitroplus Labs alleges that the attack is part of a coordinated pattern involving informants posing as crypto traders, rogue law enforcement officers, and two Chinese nationals.
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The firm claimed that at least 48 similar attacks have been identified, with many cases being dismissed "at the influence of their ring."
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Wrench attacks, thefts in which crypto holders are physically threatened, have proliferated in recent months.
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Earlier this year, David Balland, co-founder of hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger, was kidnapped and mutilated as part of a ransom demand. In February, a crypto broker broke his ankles attempting to flee captors.
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Just this month, the father of a crypto entrepreneur was freed in a police raid after kidnappers demanded almost $8 million for ransom in crypto.
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The challenge with wrench attacks lies in how they are executed physically "to reveal private keys or authorize transactions under duress," Michael Pearl, vice president of strategy at blockchain security firm CyVers, told Decrypt.
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Pearl suggests security methods such as multi-factor authentication could help make "forced transfers harder to execute without alerting others." Monitoring "unusual transaction patterns or access from new devices" could also help by "triggering alerts or temporary freezes to protect assets," he added.
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Still, wrench attacks continue amid “widening income disparity and the skyrocketing value of crypto,” Harry Halpin, CEO of decentralized VPN service Nym, told Decrypt in an emailed statement.
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And yet, governments are “demanding more transparency and identity data," which could easily get leaked to criminals trying to target crypto holders, Halpin noted.
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Using VPNs (virtual private networks) is one of a number of techniques that crypto users could practice to maintain security, Halpin suggested.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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FETCHED ARTICLE 1 [AUTO-TRIMMED — UNREVIEWED]
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!! Furniture was cut by a script keyed on this case's record, not by a person.
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!! It may still carry passages about OTHER cases from a round-up article.
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!! The full page extract is kept in staging/ if a cut needs revisiting.
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Source decrypt.co
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URL https://decrypt.co/321273/crypto-founder-abducted-500k-gunpoint
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Field url
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Retrieved 2026-09-05T12:47:18+00:00 via raw HTTP retrieval, deterministic extraction (HTTP 200)
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Language unknown
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Kept paragraphs headline [0] + 1-26 of 27
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Length 4,117 chars
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Integrity sha256 ba577dc8708da186ed507b9ced155c6df54406940b22ddb707c58aeff5159a7d
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Trimmed AUTO-TRIMMED, unreviewed: kept paragraphs 1-26 plus headline [0]; dropped 0 leading and 0 trailing paragraphs. Case-term hits on page: 28.
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Caveat retrieved from a live page on the date above. Unlike text copied
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from the spreadsheet, there is no second copy to hash it against.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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ORIGINAL (unknown, verbatim as retrieved)
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Crypto Founder Abducted in Uganda, Forced to Send $500,000 at Gunpoint - Decrypt
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Mitroplus Labs founder Festo Ivaibi was abducted near his home on May 17 and forced to transfer crypto worth roughly half a million dollars.
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The firm claims over 48 similar crypto-related attacks have occurred in Uganda, though most remain unreported.
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Experts urge better coordination between physical safety protocols and digital asset protections.
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A crypto founder was abducted in Uganda, held at gunpoint, and forced to send crypto worth $500,000 to his attackers, in the latest of a spate of crypto kidnap attempts.
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Festo Ivaibi, founder of crypto education hub Mitroplus Labs, was abducted on May 17 near his residence on Bunamwaya Road in Kampala, Uganda.
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The attackers were reportedly armed, dressed in military uniforms, and claimed to be "security operatives" of the Uganda People's Defence Forces, or UPDF, according to a formal statement from Mitroplus's Afro Token Project account on X.
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The armed group allegedly forced Ivaibi to unlock crypto wallets and transfer $500,000 in crypto to their controlled wallet. A portion of Afro Token, a meme coin, was also sold under coercion, Mitroplus Labs claimed.
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CRYPTO ABDUCTION IN UGANDA.
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On Saturday, May 17th 2025, our founder @IvaibiFesto was abducted by individuals posing as security agents(@MODVA_UPDF) and forced under duress, to release his crypto assets. We thank God he is now safe, and all systems have been secured.
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— Afro Token (@AfroTokenSUN) May 19, 2025
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"This is not just an attack on one person, it's an attack on a growing vision," the project said.
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Afro Token was created on SunPump, a meme coin platform on the Tron blockchain. The cryptocurrency used for the other coerced transfers is unclear, though some amounts were reportedly sent to a Binance wallet.
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Data from DEX Screener shows the token's value has dropped by roughly 16.7% since the day of the attack, with a remaining market cap of around $1.6 million, down from over $7.3 million in December last year.
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Decrypt has reached out to Mitroplus Labs and the UPDF for comment and will update this article should they respond.
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Mitroplus Labs alleges that the attack is part of a coordinated pattern involving informants posing as crypto traders, rogue law enforcement officers, and two Chinese nationals.
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The firm claimed that at least 48 similar attacks have been identified, with many cases being dismissed "at the influence of their ring."
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Wrench attacks, thefts in which crypto holders are physically threatened, have proliferated in recent months.
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Earlier this year, David Balland, co-founder of hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger, was kidnapped and mutilated as part of a ransom demand. In February, a crypto broker broke his ankles attempting to flee captors.
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Just this month, the father of a crypto entrepreneur was freed in a police raid after kidnappers demanded almost $8 million for ransom in crypto.
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The challenge with wrench attacks lies in how they are executed physically "to reveal private keys or authorize transactions under duress," Michael Pearl, vice president of strategy at blockchain security firm CyVers, told Decrypt.
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Pearl suggests security methods such as multi-factor authentication could help make "forced transfers harder to execute without alerting others." Monitoring "unusual transaction patterns or access from new devices" could also help by "triggering alerts or temporary freezes to protect assets," he added.
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Still, wrench attacks continue amid “widening income disparity and the skyrocketing value of crypto,” Harry Halpin, CEO of decentralized VPN service Nym, told Decrypt in an emailed statement.
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And yet, governments are “demanding more transparency and identity data," which could easily get leaked to criminals trying to target crypto holders, Halpin noted.
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Using VPNs (virtual private networks) is one of a number of techniques that crypto users could practice to maintain security, Halpin suggested.
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Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
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generated from attacks-export-Gart-website.json + reported_K&R | case 232
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================================================================================================
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