Archive for the ‘Battle on Fraud’ Category

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6
Jul/103

Another natural disaster, another opportunity for fraudsters

It has already begun.  The oil continues to flow albeit slower in the Gulf of Mexico, and fraudsters have been hard at work establishing ways to exploit the general public using the disaster as their lure, just as they have exploited pretty much every other world wide disaster over the years.

Scams identified to date include on-line stock sale offers in companies appearing to be associated with the cleanup efforts,  bogus job offers relating to clean-up companies, and solicitations of funds and contributions to be sent for oil spill relief efforts.  The goal of these exploits is to fraudulently obtain your personal information and your funds, neither of which will be used legitimately.

You need to be careful.  Due diligence is in order.  Before you provide any information or send any contributions relating to the oil spill disaster, do your homework and assure yourself that the organization and offers are legitimate.  If you can’t legitimize the information objectively, run don’t walk away from their sites and offers.

It is just another sad sign of the state of our society, and so unfortunate that so many seek to take advantage of our emotional willingness to help in times of need for their own personal exploits.  Not only does it make everyone more skeptical to help at all, furthering the erosion of our society, it significantly effects the legitimate organizations who truly want to help those in need.

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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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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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