Battle on Fraud

Fundraising: Thing of the past or sign of today's economy?

My son’s boy scout troop did their annual door to door candy bar sales last evening, a beautiful night for walking neighborhoods as boy scouts, talking to people, picking up folks newspapers for them, and asking them if they would purchase a candy bar for one dollar to support the troop and their programs for the next year. After hours …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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Credit card skimming… watching for new opportunities (or vulnerabilities).

I just returned from speaking at a conference in Miami.  I checked into my hotel, and as part of my debriefing from the travel, I found the in-room safe to safely store my laptop, camera and other electronic devices. As I read the instructions it dawned on me that we used our credit and debit cards in many different contexts …

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