Archive for June, 2010

29
Jun/101

Credit Card Fraud: Tiny Grains of Sand Can Result In Large Piles

I learned of this scam against credit cards while volunteering during my shift in the kitchen at our church’s bingo one night.

A small charge, an amount under a dollar up to a few dollars, appears on your credit card statement.  Due to the insignificance of the amount, you don;t bother spending any time trying to figure out what it was for, and having it reversed off your account.  You try and recall where the charge could have come from, perhaps an adjustment to a legitimate purchase.

I never thought much about thieves stealing million of credit card accounts, and simply charging a few dollars to each stolen account.  But as it turns out, that’s exactly what they do, and a few dollars charged to millions of accounts, results in millions of dollars.

I went home that night and checked my credit card statements, and sure enough, I found these insignificant charges on my account.  The total of them do not warrant my doing anything about it, but they are there.  I’ll bet if you look, you’ll find them on yours as well.

Here’s the link to an article where the FTC just busted a very organized ring was stealing credit card accounts and doing this very scheme.

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Filed under Battle on Fraud 1 Comment »

13
Jun/106

Embezzlement and Gambling… In Connecticut?

After speaking at a recent session following a presentation of gambling as an addiction, I started paying closer attention to this issue.  In Connecticut we have two casinos that opened about ten years ago.  While embezzlement to support a gambling problem has come up in my cases, it hasn’t been as prevalent as one would think with two casinos in the state.

What amazes me more than the gambling is the amounts that can be lost, and with the embezzlements, the amounts that can be diverted from an organization to support gambling without the organization missing the funds.

Case in point comes from an article in today’s Journal Inquirer, a local Connecticut newspaper.  “Woman gets 9 months for thefts.”

The woman in the article was convicted of embezzling $335,000 from a local school lunch program.  She was the director of dining services for the local town, and took cafeteria receipts, concealing the thefts with falsified logs.  The article also stated she lost more than $380,000 over six years gambling at the slot machines.

The real questions I have after reading this article are 1) how much funds flow through this town’s cafeteria services to have been able to loose $335,000 and not miss the funds, and 2) where were the basic level internal controls over cash receipts, collections, entries and deposits to have both prevented this from happening in the first place, and also to have detected discrepancies as soon as they started to occur?

I guess a third question would be fair as well – towns like this town undergo annual financial audits by outside accounting firms.  Given the existence of casinos in CT and the high risks of gambling and embezzlement, why wasn’t such a large theft detected as part of any year’s audit?

Just makes me wonder just how much fraud, theft and embezzlement is occurring as we speak, waiting to be detected or discovered, or more likely, waiting for accidental identification after the snowball effect has occurred.

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Filed under Battle on Fraud 6 Comments »

9
Jun/103

Another Sad Sign of our Society

I received an email tonight that just saddens me because of the potential implications it has on our society.

The email describes a new issue posing a significant risk, where individuals use empty soda bottles and common household items to make bombs out of empty plastic soda bottles.  Then they put these bottles into folks’ mailboxes or leave them on people’s lawns.  The unsuspecting person sees an empty bottle on their lawn, picks it up to properly discard or recycle it, and it explodes.   The chemicals inside heated to a boiling point, and cause severe thermal and chemical burns, likely to the hands and face, and the explosion can take off fingers.

We teach our kids to be litter conscious, and if they see things on the ground, to pick them up and recycle the things that shouldn’t be discarded.  The kids I know at our school and in our boy scout troop get this message repeatedly, and have become accustomed to seeing things laying around and picking them up.

Now what do we tell them to do.  Do we simply leave all litter and bottles on the ground for fear that what looks like an empty soda bottle with a little soda left in it is actually a bomb?  How do we re-train our kids to ensure they don’t have one of these explode on them?  I know for myself I don’t want to even touch one again after reading the article and viewing the video.

Think about the implications this likely will have on our environment, recycling, and our safety.  Just sad.

What can be done so individuals stop ruining our society and our way of life?

Here’s the link to the story and video:

http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/bottlebomb.asp

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Filed under In General 3 Comments »