Blog posts with "fraud"

  In an exciting story pulled from the leaves of a crime thriller paperback, we have news from Las Vegas, by way of Macau. From the city that pioneered the casino, violent organized criminals strike again. This time hailing from the east.   Macau, an island off the cost of Hong Kong, is a vibrant city of industry and entertainment. Five men were convicted of crimes in a Hong Kong court last year stemming from a plot to punish, and kill, a dealer from the Sands Macau casino. The perpetrators...

In an interesting use of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), a state run refinery group, claims that Daimler AG paid bribes to one of its staff. An interesting move for a company that could be potentially liable for soliciting bribes if charges were filed in the US.   As the article below notes, this was part of a wider investigation of bribery charges against Daimler by the United States Department of Justice. Potentially, US prose...

In a great article by Ben Bain at GCN, he stresses the need for an improved educational system to better prepare students for future cyber-security threats. Here is the article: "Strengthening education in science, technology, engineering and math is crucial to U.S. cybersecurity efforts, a senior Homeland Security Department official said today. Richard Marshall, director of global cybersecurity management in the Homeland Security Department’s National Cybersecurity Division, said improvi...

In an interesting development to the Mariposa Botnet take-down I reported earlier on, a large batch of cell-phones were apparently shipped by Vodafone containing the trojan powering the Mariposa Botnet. Here is the story from the Register: "Vodafone Spain has accepted that 3,000 customers were potentially exposed to malware after Mariposa botnet agents strayed onto the HTC Magic smartphone. The admission to Spanish media on Thursday follows a meeting between the mobile phone giant's Iberian...

A new class of hackers has emerged: the Ponzi Hacker. Well maybe hackers perpetrating frauds isn't new, but assisting a billionaire to fool the Securities and Exchange Commission through clever coding as part of a much larger ponzi scheme is, well, novel. Yes, you guessed it, we're talking about good old Bernie Madoff. Here is a quote from the Register: "A federal grand jury has indicted two computer programmers on fraud and conspiracy charges for developing programs used by Bernard Madoff ...

  Lehman Brothers chapter 11 examiner's report has become available. Anton R. Valukas, chairman of the law firm Jenner & Block, performed the examination, and points the finger squarely at Lehman for culpability in the fall of the financial giant. Here are some quotes from the L.A. Times regarding the recent report:  "The uncompromising report should put to rest the self-serving claims by Lehman’s ex-Chairman Richard S. Fuld that the firm was destroyed by rumors, short selling, stoc...

  According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center's (iC3) 2009 Internet Crime Report, Washington D.C. is the Cybercrime capital of the U.S. with 116 cyber-criminals per 100,000. Here is an excerpt from a news story from WTOP summarizing the findings: "IC3, a joint effort of the National White Collar Crime Center and FBI, says Nevada and Washington hold the No. 2 and No. 3 spots.  Cyber-crimes are so common victims often neglect to report them. But the number of complaints to IC3 jumped mo...

  Just ran across this story about criminals replacing the credit card key pads at the cash registers at some Hancock Fabrics stores with fraudulent ones that stole pin numbers and other personal details of users. Here are some quotes from the Register:  "Crooks planted bogus payment card processing terminals at multiple locations operated by the Hancock Fabrics chain store that allowed for the theft of sensitive financial data from customers, the company warned. The personal identificatio...

The Miami Herald just ran a story about the questionable use of a fund intended to support environmentally green activities that the Division Chief used for all manner of other things including sun glasses and GPS units. "Among Miami-Dade police, it was known simply as 'Vecin's trust fund.' That fund, earmarked to fight environmental crime with a $5 million infusion of public money over the past decade, is the focus of widening investigations into whether the bounty evolved into an unchecked...

  Spanish authorities, with the help of private cyber security companies, have identified and arrested three individuals, whose online names are "jonyloleante," aged 30, "netkairo," 31, and "ostiator," 25. The three were identified as the ring-leaders of a massive botnet know as "mariposa." The network was started in 2008 and infected nearly 13 million computers. Over half the Fortune 1000 companies were infiltrated by the botnet, including over 40 major banks. The botnet was present in near...