Oper­a­tion Slip­knot has completed:

EXCELLENT WORK!

Oper­a­tion Slip­knot is com­plete. Even though three sus­pects remain at large, your work rep­re­sents a huge step for­ward in clean­ing up our beloved city.

The fugi­tives are being arrested, hand­cuffed, and extra­dited back to Gotham for prosecution.

Doesn’t it feel bet­ter to be on the right side of the law for once?

Thanks to you, Gotham can hold its head high once again. But do me one favor… stay out of trouble.

–Gor­don.

Click­ing each of the sus­pects shows how they were caught. Shortly after the com­ple­tion (despite three missed sus­pects), par­tic­i­pants received a phone call from Jim Gor­don (DOWNLOAD).

humanresources@whysoserious then sent out a text to the mobiles in the pack­ages received — point­ing us towards a new Why So Seri­ous Page: “It’s All Part of the Plan”.

There’s a four day count­down and a lever in the top right — click­ing the lever reveals a brand new Dark Knight Poster: “Wel­come to a world with­out rules” (Down­load Super Hi Res­o­lu­tion Image)

Sam­ple of the high res­o­lu­tion poster:

Pack­ages handed out to the lucky few involved in Jim Gordon’s covert Oper­a­tional Slip­knot have today received their travel packages.Those with the details on the fugi­tives have been slowly fill­ing in the gaps and the cor­rupt offi­cers are going to be “apprehended”:

The enve­lope itself con­tains a joker card, tele­phone (as expected), a Gotham city dri­ving license, a for­eign lan­guage phrase book, a Gotham City bank bond, a let­ter from Joseph Can­do­loro, a travel con­fir­ma­tion let­ter from Kinsly Travel and an itin­er­ary for ticket-less travel.

Andriz­zle, upsince­four, gob­ru­tus and RawWulf at Super­hero Hype have kindly posted detailed pic­tures of the package:

Enter­ing the flight details at Kinsly Travel for GAL/2567:

Depar­ture City: Chicago
Depar­ture Time: 0745
Des­ti­na­tion City: Ban­ga­lore
Arrival Time: 0215
Sta­tus: On Time

TCA/1298:

Depar­ture City: St. Louis
Depar­ture Time: 0543
Des­ti­na­tion City: Dus­sel­dorf
Arrival Time: 0235
Sta­tus: On Time

The Assign­ment also updated:

OPERATION SLIPKNOT

Within the last twenty-four hours, many of your col­leagues inter­cepted pack­ages intended for the 30 fugi­tives pic­tured here.

These infor­mants are now receiv­ing this crit­i­cal evidence.

MCU is stand­ing by. We need the infor­ma­tion in the pack­ages to be uploaded AS SOON AS IT IS RECEIVED. We will process the infor­ma­tion and imple­ment our final apprehension/extradition plans by 6:00 pm.

Time is of the essence. Do not let these sus­pects escape the long arm of Gotham City jus­tice at the last minute. Upload the infor­ma­tion immediately.

Today Jim Gor­don sent out a new email to the Acme Secu­rity System’s Delos crowd:

OK friend, you’re up to bat now. You have your­self a new assign­ment: Oper­a­tion Slipknot.

Link­ing to a new Gotham Major Crimes Unit page ded­i­cated to “Oper­a­tion Slip­knot”.

Click­ing each of the police images reveals details about the indi­vid­u­als. The assign­ment states,

OPERATION SLIPKNOT

Gotham Police Major Crimes Unit, in coöper­a­tion with the GPD Inter­nal Affairs Divi­sion, needs you to help track down numer­ous offend­ers that are fugi­tives from jus­tice. Inter­est­ingly, we’ve tracked all of these indi­vid­u­als to the same last known loca­tion: Gotham Inter­con­ti­nen­tal Hotel. But we don’t know where they’ve gone from there.

Call the hotel and con­vince the concierge to ship you a cer­tain pack­age that’s been sent there for each fugi­tive. Use the pro­vided intel and what­ever means you can to con­vince him that you’re the intended recip­i­ent, your travel plans have changed, and he needs to send the pack­age to you. Once received, you should have all you need to fill in the blanks as to that fugitive’s location.

We will add details about addi­tional fugi­tives as they become avail­able. Time is of the essence, as we have only a short time before the trail runs cold. Your coöper­a­tion in this oper­a­tion will go a long way. Good luck.

Head­ing over to the Gotham Inter­con­ti­nen­tal Hotel, we are pre­sented with a tele­phone num­ber to call their concierge — 1 866 306 5589.

The aim is to state that you are the offi­cer and pro­vide your ref­er­ence num­ber — as out­lined by the INTEL:

You should have received your dupli­cate care pack­ages by now. If not, con­tact the concierge at the Inter­con­ti­nen­tal and have him for­ward you your orig­i­nal pack­age (ref­er­ence #‘s, as always, the total num­ber of let­ters in your name fol­lowed by your last name shifted for­ward one let­ter, like 15DBOEPMPSP). He’s been instructed to send no-questions-asked if these ref #‘s are used. Do NOT con­tact me.

Bön Voy­age!

Then you must state that your travel arrange­ments have had to change, the concierge shall ask for a mail­ing address and then con­firm that a pack­age shall be sent out to that address overnight. You also need to pro­vide a tele­phone num­ber in case of prob­lems. The phone lines are VERY BUSY and new fugi­tives are being added regularly

When you get your pack­age, their is a sub­mit but­ton to pro­vide the rel­e­vant details and turn them in:

If you have received a pack­age, enter any per­ti­nent intel on your sub­ject here: the con­fir­ma­tion # of their ticket, the last name of the alias they’re trav­el­ing under, and the city they’re fly­ing to. If every­thing checks out, we’ll for­ward it so that appro­pri­ate action can be taken.

Thanks Bruce, Maeghan and Carlos!

Update: All fugi­tives have been assigned and pack­ages sent out. The game has gone quiet until tomor­row morn­ing, when I’m sure it will return with more surprises!

I recently got a call to my cell phone, via the num­ber I sub­mit­ted to the Acme Secu­rity Sys­tems web­site, ask­ing me to take part in a Gotham Vot­ers Sur­vey. The call asks your opin­ions about Har­vey Dent with a rat­ing of 0–9 for each ques­tion, they are very prob­ing ques­tions and ask how Harvey’s men­tal state, fail­ure to file tax returns and links to organ­ised crime affect your view of him.

At the end of the call they pro­vide a num­ber to give to friends if they wish to take part — 8777776197.

Down­load the recorded call with secret mes­sage at the end

This cor­re­sponds with an update on CCFABG,

Mes­sage from the Webmaster:

You may be won­der­ing why I haven’t updated this site recently. Well, you wouldn’t either, if you were fac­ing legal actions like slan­der charges and defama­tion of char­ac­ter accusations.

I can’t afford to get sued for hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars, espe­cially now that every­one who sup­ported this site is “unavail­able” or “can’t remem­ber” they had any­thing to do with the site.

If I weren’t wait­ing for my last pay­check, I’d go on a lit­tle “vaca­tion” myself. In fact, if you don’t get any more updates from me in the next few days, it means I did just that.

This whole smear cam­paign has been a real SOURCE of con­ster­na­tion for me. I’ll be glad when it’s all in the past. And you know what? I just might vote for Har­vey Dent.

William Bucksworth-Haven, Web­mas­ter Extraordinaire

In the source code for the page is this comment:

<!-- <ACCESS: 164938> -->

Which, when entered as answers on the sur­vey reveal a secret message.

Edmund has also sent in this mes­sage (thanks!) that he received from Jim Gor­don (jim.​gordon@​gpdmcu.​com):

My friend,
Indict­ments are about to be handed down. If you don’t want your name on one, we’ll need your full coöper­a­tion in an upcom­ing operation.

In case you haven’t heard, we are strug­gling with a bit of cor­rup­tion in the depart­ment. I’m not about to let the Gotham PD col­lapse in on itself, so we’re tak­ing action. We’ve iden­ti­fied a group of offend­ers that need to be appre­hended. Prob­lem is, most of these cops are high­tail­ing it out of the city. But a C.I. just like you just gave us some infor­ma­tion on their last known where­abouts. Now all we need is to catch them. This is where you come in.

Con­sider your­self on deck. I’ll con­tact you next week, and let’s just say it’s in your best inter­est to play along. County’s not a place you want to spend the rest of your life.

Lt. Jim Gor­don, MCU

Glenn Barhyte’s email, acces­si­ble through the Gotham Police secure doc­u­ments web­page, has a new mes­sage from Mel Finn, in the inbox reading:

Seems MCU had your boy’s diner under light sur­veil­lance. Wire­tap showed noth­ing unusual, just phone orders for var­i­ous menu items. That is, until just before the inci­dent. Check out MCU3932571. It’s odd, one caller seemed to know some­thing was ready to go down, but didn’t feel like warn­ing anyone…

That num­ber refers to a secure doc­u­ment which con­tains a record­ing of the deli’s order line:
Down­load Wire­tap MP3

I Believe in Har­vey Dent has also updated,

4/15 HARVEY DENT RESCUES WOMAN IN HOSTAGE STANDOFF

HOSTAGE-TAKER WAS “SMEAR COP”

LISTEN TO RAW AUDIO HERE

A MESSAGE FROM HARVEY DENT

Friends, my entire cam­paign I’ve talked about how this cam­paign is a strug­gle for this city’s soul. On the one hand, there are those peo­ple who prey on the inno­cent cit­i­zens of Gotham. On the other hand, there is our move­ment to take back Gotham from crime and corruption.

At Rossi’s Deli, we saw that strug­gle play out. Play out inside the head of the hostage taker, Sgt. Frank Notaro. Some are call­ing him a “crazed smear cop” but he encap­su­lates the choice fac­ing us. Do we con­tinue to allow our worst nature to lead us? Or do we take a chance on hope?

That’s the choice I laid out to Frank Notaro. And he responded. He released an inno­cent, ter­ri­fied girl. He turned him­self in. And he is now talk­ing to the police about mob involve­ment in the smear cam­paign against me.

That’s the real les­son of the inci­dent. We must, all of us, have the courage to hope. If we have the power to change our­selves, if we have the power to change one per­son, then we have the power to change Gotham.

From the Har­vey Dent website,

Today’s press con­fer­ence was unex­pect­edly can­celled due to a hostage cri­sis located at a nearby deli. In a self­less move, Mr. Dent entered the premises, exchanged him­self for a woman who was being held at gun­point, and nego­ti­ated the suc­cess­ful release of the remain­ing patrons in the restau­rant. Watch this site for updates. We will release more details when they become available.

Down­load the MP3 Audio of the situation

The hostage sit­u­a­tion was insti­gated by des­per­ate cop, Frank Notaro, he takes a woman hostage before request­ing wit­ness pro­tec­tion for him and his fam­ily. Har­vey Dent exchanges him­self for the woman before Notaro is arrested.

This all took place at Rossi’s Deli — Notaro’s mad­ness was tripped in the event of see­ing his part­ners (Cis­neros) death in a car explo­sion, also killing his entire fam­ily — all whilst leav­ing a mes­sage on Rossi’s answer phone. Down­load the voice­mail mes­sage and lis­ten to the scene

For some back story on Frank Notaro I rec­om­mend read­ing our cov­er­age.

Glenn Barhyte’s email, acces­si­ble through the secu­rity pages at Gotham Police, has two new mes­sages from Frank:

Deal’s Off
I saw it. With my own eyes. Best part­ner I ever had. Dead. What the hell’s going on?

Thank’s For Nothin
Looks like you’re out hav­ing break­fast or some­thing. I knew I couldn’t trust IA to keep my fam­ily safe. I’m going to Rossi’s Deli to take care of Con­do­loro myself, don’t try to stop me.

This is a very large, though side inves­ti­ga­tion tak­ing place as part of the Dark Knight’s viral mar­ket­ing. A lot of inter­est­ing details, doc­u­ments and images have been unveiled as a result of this sleuthing, so I’m going to do my best to relay all of this to you now.

Back­ground on Francis

Fran­cis Notoro is a Gotham police offi­cer that appears on the “Con­cerned Cit­i­zens for a Bet­ter Gotham” web­site, one of the eight that damned Har­vey Dent in a press conference:

Eight Gotham police offi­cers stood up for the truth today at a morn­ing press con­fer­ence at Gotham’s Hotel Inter­na­tionale. One by one, the police offi­cers took the podium and told their story. Their dev­as­tat­ing tes­ti­mony showed that Dent is a dis­hon­est, cor­rupt, out-of-control pros­e­cu­tor who threat­ened police offi­cers in order to get them to tes­tify against inno­cent cops who Dent wanted in jail. Fran­cis Notaro, Sergeant, told the press corps that Dent had offered him money to tes­tify against an inno­cent cop, Jimmy Scaliano.

He cur­rently fea­tures in CCFABG’s lat­est adver­tise­ment: CCFABG Ad

And update to the Gotham Police web­site, award­ing him the Gotham Medal of Com­men­da­tion:

At a cer­e­mony in City Hall’s Ban­quet Room yes­ter­day, Gotham Police Depart­ment Sgt. Fran­cis X. Notaro received the Gotham Medal of Com­men­da­tion. It is the high­est medal one can receive from the Mayor of Gotham, and requires “an extra­or­di­nary act of courage in the face of real dan­ger to one’s self.” Mayor Gar­cia as well as numer­ous other dig­ni­taries were there to honor Sgt. Notaro, who was accom­pa­nied to the event by his wife Han­nah and his two chil­dren, Samuel, 7, and Rachel, 4.

The com­men­da­tion emerged from Sgt. Notaro’s actions of May 13 of last year. A crazed gun­man began shoot­ing up passers-by in an alley down­town off of Jack­son and Colum­bus at around 2 AM.

Notaro, who was not on duty at that hour but hap­pened to be close by, heard the shots, went straight to the scene of the inci­dent, and shot and killed the per­pe­tra­tor. Notaro’s actions put him­self at grave risk of death, while sav­ing the lives of inno­cent bystanders.

“Sgt. Notaro reflects the very best of Gotham,” said Mayor Gar­cia. “He rep­re­sents the spirit of ded­i­ca­tion, duty, and com­mit­ment to the rule of law that we all can admire.”

The Fan Inves­ti­ga­tion and Mystery

“jlevine”

All the infor­ma­tion posted so far is read­ily avail­able on the viral sites. Here is where the jour­ney really begins. Look­ing at the updated Gotham Police page, the pic­ture of Frank Notaro used asks not to be hotlinked — this begs us to look at the URL:

the​gotham​times​.com/​m​e​d​i​a​/​j​l​e​v​i​n​e​/​p​u​b​l​i​c​/​g​t​p​0​0​3​3​9​.​jpg

By incre­ment­ing the num­ber on the image we can find a few more pic­tures of Frank with his chil­dren. The name in the URL, ‘jlevine’ refers to one James Levine, cited in The Maiden Avenue Report:

TIMES REPORTER LEVINE: “MEDIA PACKRAT” PREPPING EXCLUSIVE NOTAROINTERVIEW?

Using the known folder and try­ing some dif­fer­ent file names, this inter­view is uncov­ered: Down­load, here’s an excerpt:

Notaro: Har­vey Dent offered me cash money to lie about a good cop.
Levine: Yep, that’s what the ad says.
Notaro: Cash money. To lie.
Levine: What cop was he try­ing to pros­e­cute?
Notaro: James Scaliano.
Levine: Scaliano, Scaliano…Ahh, Scaliano, this is the guy who was found guilty of shak­ing down shop own­ers for pro­tec­tion money and roughin’ up guys for the shy­locks.
Notaro: Lies. All lies. Scaliano was a good man.

Voice­mail Messages

Mov­ing swiftly on, hope you are with us so far. Onto a site we uncov­ered a short while ago, that of CCFABG leader Joseph (aka Joe) Can­do­loro. On this page is a tele­phone num­ber, 1866 626 8049, com­bin­ing it with the price of “Joe’s favourite” at Rossi’s deli (1149), yields voicemail.

Joe’s Favorite
An 8oz sir­loin cooked to order and 3 fan­tail shrimp, breaded and fried. $11.49

The first mes­sage we hear is a lit­tle gem from Albert Rossi which reveals a secure doc­u­ment num­ber, IA176495U (“killed by the men upstairs”) and he leaves his num­ber at the end of the mes­sage, 1866 580 3840. Use the pin “9482” to access his voice­mail — these let­ters cor­re­spond to his mother’s name Zita (we found this out at St Swith­uns). Using this a series of voice mes­sages were uncov­ered. These mes­sages reveal the secret sto­ries of three char­ac­ters — Can­do­loro, Rossi and Notaro. Within a mes­sage to Rossi, Notaro reveals his num­ber to be 1866 626 608 3515. Com­bin­ing this with his date of birth as a pin (32976 — aka 3/29/76) we get access to another phone and set of messages.

Down­load Pack of all MP3 Voicemails

Secure Inter­nal Documents

Now onto the real nitty gritty. Every­thing so far has been triv­ial. For those that didn’t know, the Gotham Police web­site has a secret login page at this loca­tion. Back in Decem­ber we used this to retrieve some secret doc­u­ments. We login using user­name: Barhyte­Glenn, pass­word: tevre­den­heid,

By sub­mit­ting Frank’s name to the We Are The Answer web­site, you get this email response,

Thank you for your sub­mis­sion. Offi­cer Fran­cis Notaro is cur­rently being inves­ti­gated to deter­mine his guilt or innocence.

We Are The Answer will keep the cit­i­zens of Gotham informed regard­ing this, and other, inves­ti­ga­tions of police officers.

UmVmOg0KSUE4MjM0OTcxDQpJQTgzNzYxMjENCklBODM4ODU1NQ0KDQo=

That code at the end is very intrigu­ing. It turns out that it is Base64 encoded, decod­ing this gives us three doc­u­ment num­bers, IA823497, IA8376121, IA8388555.

Log­ging into the secure doc­u­ments page and enter­ing the num­ber from Rossi’s voice­mail reveals the offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tion into the use of deadly force by Franci Notaro — this shows that his story has incon­sis­ten­cies. The doc­u­ment has since been removed from the archives (as per the voice message).

Next up we have the first of the Inter­nal Affairs num­bers, which gives us a wire­tap record­ing between Rossi and Notaro which reveals details of a cover up, regard­ing the events that led to Notaro’s commendation.

Down­load Wire­tap MP3

The sec­ond of the encrypted doc­u­ments is Notaro’s Bank state­ment. Note the $10,000 deposits from JC, believed to be Mr Candoloro.

Last but not least, there is some DNA evi­dence from the crime scene:

These sam­ples prove the victim’s innocence.

Many many thanks to the mem­bers at Super­Hero­Hype

This new viral site links in with the Acme Secu­rity Sys­tems mes­sage where the Gotham Police Major Crimes Unit was unveiled with logo. The URL was dis­cov­ered very close to the time but the site hadn’t gone live, today it has:

GPDMCU: www​.gpdmcu​.com

The site lists a con­tact email address (which was orig­i­nally incor­rectly point­ing to a .org address), contact@​gpdmcu.​com.