Thursday, April 09, 2026

Tax information for romance scam victims

 

World’s smallest QR code, smaller than bacteria, could store data for centuries

Science Daily: “Scientists have created a microscopic QR code so tiny it can only be seen with an electron microscope—smaller than most bacteria and now officially a world record. 

But this isn’t just about size; it’s about durability. By engraving data into ultra-stable ceramic materials, the team has opened the door to storing information that could last for centuries or even millennia without needing power or maintenance…

We live in the information age, yet we store our knowledge in media that are astonishingly short-lived,” says Alexander Kirnbauer. Magnetic and electronic storage devices often lose data after only a few years, especially without continuous power, cooling, and maintenance. In contrast, ancient civilizations carved their knowledge into stone, allowing it to survive for thousands of years. “With ceramic storage media, we are pursuing a similar approach to that of ancient cultures, whose inscriptions we can still read today,” Kirnbauer says. “We write information into stable, inert materials that can withstand the passage of time and remain fully accessible to future generations.” Another major advantage is energy efficiency. Unlike modern data centers that require significant electricity and cooling, ceramic-based storage can preserve information without any ongoing energy input, helping reduce environmental impact…”




 Australia releases 2024 scam data

  • Losses reported increased slightly to $2.18 billion
  • Complaints down 2.7%
  • Top scam reported was investments, presumably crypto romance frauds; accounted for nearly half of losses
  • Second were romance frauds, followed by BEC fraud and tech support fraud
WSJ says India suffering from “digital arrest” scams in which callers claim to be from banks or law enforcement and must turn over assets to keep them “safe,” “may spread” to the US  
(But it already does hit the US, and as readers know, it is already a serious problem)

DOJ disrupts four domains used by Iran for hacking and propaganda
 
Germany leads international effort that takes down 373,000 dark web sites selling child porn and supporting frauds; headed by man in China
 
White House suggests system for getting money back to cybercrime victims
 
St. Louis: DOJ and Wisconsin AG get summary judgment order against timeshare exit company that did presentations at venues around the country; must repay $140 million
 
Review and recommendation: I just read Shelby Foote’s 3 volume Civil War.  I really don’t think you can understand the US without knowing about that war. Hundreds of thousands died to eliminate slavery.  It is exceedingly readable and endlessly fascinating.  I highly recommend it.
 
Need an expert witness for consumer protection or fraud issues?  Let me know.
Fraud Studies: Here are links to the studies I’ve written for the Better Business Bureau: puppy fraud, romance fraud; BEC fraud, sweepstakes/lottery fraud,  tech support fraud, romance fraud money mules, crooked movers, government imposters, online vehicle sale scams, rental fraud, gift cards,  free trial offer frauds,  job scams,  online shopping fraud,  fake check fraud and crypto scams
 
Fraud News Around the worldHumorFTC and CFPBBenefit TheftScam CompoundsBusiness Email compromise fraud Bitcoin and Crypto FraudRansomware and data breachesATM Skimming                                                       Jamaica and Lottery FraudRomance Fraud and Sextortion 
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Bill Ferris - Inside the club more exclusive than the Chairman’s Lounge

 

Inside the club more exclusive than the Chairman’s Lounge

Private equity legend Bill Ferris explains why sending non-profit CEOs to Harvard is the ultimate investment in the “social glue” holding Australia’s economy together.
Macquarie Group Foundation executive director Lisa George and private equity legend Bill Ferris are both Harvard club members. Louie Douvis
Work and careers reporter
Every year for the past quarter-century, Bill Ferris has paid to send two not-for-profit leaders to Harvard because he does not trust government alone to maintain social stability through times of turmoil.
At 80, the father of Australian private equity believes a flourishing NFP sector is existential to the Australian way of life.
“It’s becoming a worldwide challenge, and you can’t just rely on governments at a time of global mess,” Ferris says, citing geopolitical volatility and social fragmentation.
His Family Ferris Nonprofit Fellowship is currently finalising its 2026 intake, a milestone that coincides with the 75th birthday of the Harvard Club of Australia.
With about 600 members, the club is one of the most exclusive in the country. It boasts members including the chairman’s chairman, David Gonski, former Labor leader Bill Shorten, former ANZ retail head Maile Carnegie and Seek co-founder Andrew Bassat.
But geopolitical and social fragmentation were not the primary concerns of a 23-year-old Ferris when he first set foot on the Harvard campus – which is sometimes euphemistically called “the little business school just outside of Boston”.
It was 1968 when Ferris arrived at Harvard on the back of a tag-team pair of academic scholarships – the Denison Miller from the University of Sydney and a Fulbright. “That enabled me to contemplate going to the US,” he says, a time he describes as “two very exciting years”.
Former US president John F. Kennedy had, as Ferris puts it, “sadly just been knocked off”.
“I was focused selfishly on what I could do in the world of business, with innovation, at that time,” he admits.
But a speech by the late president’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy, at the University of Kansas shook a young Ferris to his core.
Within three months of that speech on March 18, 1968, Robert would himself be dead, gunned down in the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California Democratic primary.
But on this day at the University of Kansas, he told a crowd of 20,000 supporters that gross national product was a poor measure of a nation’s character.
That speech, Ferris says, “was a wake-up call”.
He realised Australia’s globally high living standards, built on the back of a robust gross national product and replete with a world-class social safety net, needed a stronger “glue” than governments alone could supply.
“The socio-economic structure that this country enjoys is under lots of pressure,” Ferris says. “That glue has to be, in my view, provided by not-for-profits. I learnt during this time we could not just rely on government.”
Ferris returned to Australia in 1970 with the idea of starting the country’s first venture capital fund, which would go on to make him a lot of money.
And another idea: to get more Australians into the hallowed halls of Harvard, grow the local network of alumni, and eventually, bankroll non-profit leaders to attend with an idea to further professionalise the local sector.
These days, Australia has what Macquarie Group Foundation executive director – and Harvard Club member – Lisa George calls “a very large and professional” non-profit sector.
It employs more than 10 per cent of our workforce – more than 1.5 million people – and contributes over $200 billion annually to the economy – about 8 per cent of gross domestic product.
George, a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School, is one of the panel of judges who select the successful fellowship recipients.
Each year, the Ferris family forks out more than $20,000 per person for two candidates to receive the “once in a career opportunity”: a high-intensity, one-week executive course at Harvard Business School.
Lisa George and Bill Ferris are working to get more Australian not-fot-profit leaders into Harvard. Louie Douvis
“The original vision was a pebble dropped in a pond, and the ripple effect that comes from that,” says George, who has been involved with the fellowship for almost two decades.
“We’ve invested in the individual, but we’ve seen many go on to be chief executives of two or three other non-profits over their careers, and they’ve taken that experience and those learnings and those collaborations and networks with them.”
The fellowship’s 54-strong alumni is a who’s-who of Australia’s non-profit heavyweights: Salvos boss Matt Davis; Adrian Collette, former boss of Opera Australia who now directs how the government funds the arts as chief executive of Creative Australia; and Jerril Rechter, who was running the Footscray Community Arts Centre when she became the 2006 recipient and was recently appointed chief executive of the Australian Sports Foundation.
“We look at what is a relevant, topical issue for society, and what is pressing for that organisation in this moment,” says George.
Successful applicants arrive at Harvard with a honed and very specific problem to solve and spend the week workshopping solutions to that problem with the college’s brightest minds.
One of last year’s recipients was Gary Groves, chief executive of online youth-focused mental health organisation ReachOut. His Harvard experience coalesced around developing an ethical, safe way to use AI to meet the ballooning mental health crisis.
“If Gary can crack that, it would really have a multiplier effect on the impact [ReachOut] can have,” George says. “I’ve no doubt that model will be taken up by other organisations.
“I don’t want to pretend one fellowship is going to help solve [every challenge] in Australia, but I think if they are collaborative, work within their sector and across sectors, that goes a long way.”
Receiving a fellowship also affords these executives entry to a club more exclusive than the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge, and the opportunities to network that come with it.

Get ahead in the boardroom

Select from hundreds of executive courses, exclusive to The Australian Financial Review readers, in partnership with StudyNext.

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When people of conscience are removed from power, we all need to worry

“You can learn little from victory. You can learn everything from defeat.” 
~ Christy Mathewson

13

‘Can’t be trusted’: Reckless, improper conduct should rule former top official out for life


Confidential report found former home affairs boss Michael Pezzullo was ‘reckless’ in engagement with Liberal powerbroker

Previously unreleased report obtained via freedom of information battle says Pezzullo exceeded ‘boundaries of normal public service practice’

Rex Patrick - The mandarin who got caught. Mike Pezzullo inquiry details revealed


When people of conscience are removed from power, we all need to worry

As The Telegraph reported yesterday: Pete Hegseth fired the most senior US army officer one month into the war with Iran. The sacking is the latest
Read the full article…


30

Like it or not, the appeal of wealth taxes appears to be very strong

I am aware that we post a lot of polls on this blog these days, although I readily admit most are on our videos and
Read the full article…


ANAO report puts Australian Army Redback IFV procurement under the microscope


Repetti Presents “Private Equity, Health Calamity: How Our Tax Laws Aid Private Equity Investment in Hospitals and Nursing Homes” Today at Irvine

James R. Repetti (Boston College) presents Private Equity, Health Calamity: How Our Tax Laws Aid Private Equity Investment in Hospitals and Nursing Homes at Irvine, as part of its Graduate Tax Policy Colloquium:

The social welfare impact of investments by Private Equity funds (PEs) in various sectors of our economy is mixed due to the significant debt imposed on PE target companies and the short investment horizon of PE funds. With respect to PE investments in hospitals and nursing homes, however, most empirical studies suggest that PE investments significantly harm welfare. The large amounts of debt incurred by the targets of PE acquisitions increase the risk of default and contribute to excessive cost-cutting measures that harm patients. 

Our tax system contains two features that significantly promote PE acquisitions. First, our tax system exempts gain realized by charitable organizations from the sale of their hospitals and nursing homes to for-profit purchasers. Theory predicts, and empirical evidence suggests, that tax-exempt sellers are willing to sell hospitals for less than a taxable seller would be due to this tax exemption. Given that these assets will no longer be deployed in the charitable sector, our tax system should not subsidize transfers to for-profit purchasers that reduce social welfare by exempting the gain from taxation. Even if the tax-exempt seller is not sharing its exemption with the for-profit buyer, policy considerations suggest that gain from such a sale should not be exempt. Since the tax-exempt seller has chosen to stop participating in the health-related activity, this is an appropriate time to return the foregone tax revenue to the government for a determination of its future best use, rather than allowing the tax-exempt to unilaterally make that decision. 

NY Times: Justice Dept. Struggles to Respond to Trump’s Suit Against I.R.S.

In a previous post on TaxProf Blog, we had highlighted President Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS. In an article in The New York Times, Andrew Duehren and Alan Feuer report:

The Justice Department is struggling to decide how to respond to President Trump’s lawsuit demanding at least $10 billion from the I.R.S., as the department’s lawyers try to resolve by a mid-April deadline the profound ethical questions the case raises, according to two people familiar with the dynamic. . . .

While former Justice Department officials see clear flaws in the president’s case, some Trump administration officials worry that assigning a lawyer to contest it would pose an unworkable conflict, given that such a person ultimately works for the president, according to the two people. Defending the case could also contradict a White House executive order that binds all government lawyers to the president’s interpretation of the law. . . .

In a normal proceeding, the Justice Department would likely start by trying to throw out the case because it came too late, former department attorneys said. In other cases stemming from the leaks, government lawyers have also said the I.R.S. could not be blamed for Mr. Littlejohn’s actions, since he was a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton and not an I.R.S. employee.

Mr. Trump’s demand for at least $10 billion in damages for the leak struck several former tax lawyers at the Justice Department as outlandish.

The article notes that a group of former government officials filed an amicus brief, arguing, among other things, that the lawsuit has significant defects in it. The brief can be read in its entirety here.


LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your ComputerBrowsergate


What’s Cheaper: Fueling Your Car With Gas or Electricity?

A comparison on EV charging expenses state by state in the US. Any similar data in other countries based on recent electricity costs?


Why AI lies, cheats and steals ComputerWorld
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Wednesday, April 08, 2026

Trump isn’t immune from civil claims his Jan. 6 rally speech incited riot

 

The genius of The Sopranos' most shocking episode

In 2006, The Sopranos' season six opener gave viewers two of the most startling scenes in television history. Twenty years on, here's why it's time to reconsider Members Only.


Trump isn’t immune from civil claims his Jan. 6 rally speech incited riot

AP:  President Donald Trump is not immune from civil claims that he incited a mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol on Jan, 6, 2021, a federal judge has ruled in one of the last unresolved legal cases stemming from the riot. 

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled Tuesday that Trump’s remarks at his “Stop the Steal” rally, held on the Ellipse near the White House shortly before the siege began, “plausibly” were inciting words that are not protected by the First Amendment right to free speech. The Republican president is not shielded from liability for much of his Jan. 6 conduct, including that speech and many of his social media posts that day, according to the judge. 

But Mehta said Trump cannot be held liable for his official acts that day, including his Rose Garden remarks during the riot and his interactions with Justice Department officials. “President Trump has not shown that the Speech reasonably can be understood as falling within the outer perimeter of his Presidential duties,” Mehta wrote. “The content of the Ellipse Speech confirms that it is not covered by official-acts immunity.”

For context see this previous beSpacific post – A visual archive of Jan. 6, 2021 through the lenses of those who were there.


Hitler’s Edifice Complex

The Atlantic Gift Article: “He wanted it big. He wanted lots of gold, lots of marble. He wanted visitors awestruck by his architectural expansion of the country’s symbolic seat of power. “They should sense the strength and grandeur of the German Reich as they walk from the entrance to the reception hall,” Adolf Hitler told his chief architect, Albert Speer, outlining his plans for an extension to the old Reich chancellery, at Wilhelmstrasse 77 in Berlin. 

The new annex, connected to the chancellery by a marble corridor hung with crystal chandeliers, was part of Hitler’s ambitious plans to align the Berlin cityscape with his vision for the future of the country. Hitler wanted a Triumphbogen, a triumphal arch, twice the size of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. He wanted an “Avenue of Splendor” for military parades. “The Champs-Élysées is a hundred meters wide,” Hitler told Speer. “We will make our avenue twenty meters wider.” 

A planned Volkshalle was to accommodate 180,000. The Eiffel Tower could fit beneath its cupola. This “Hall of the People” was to be topped by the largest swastika on Earth. Berlin itself was to be rechristened as Weltstadt Germania, “Capital of the World.” Speer embellished these extravagantly outsized “Hitler branded designs”—Entwürfe Hitlerscher Prägung—with fascistic flourishes: bundled reeds, or fasces; spread-winged eagles; and enormous twisted crosses. 

In 1938, when André François Poncet, the French ambassador to Berlin, visited Hitler at the Berghof, the Nazi leader’s Alpine retreat outside Berchtesgaden, he was led through a “gallery of Roman pillars” to an “immense glassed-in rotunda” with a dramatic view that gave one the impression of being suspended in the air. “Was this edifice the work of a normal mind,” François-Poncet wondered in his memoirs, “or of one tormented by megalomania and haunted by visions of domination?”…

  • Archinect – See also Update March 31st, 2026: In the hours after this article was published, a federal judge blocked the Trump Administration from moving ahead with any further work on the ballroom. “The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!” Judge Richard Leon noted, adding “(U)nless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop!” Update April 1st, 2026: The National Capital Planning Commission has released slightly revised plans ahead of the April 2 meeting in response to the design criticism published by the NYT. The addendum focuses on reconfiguring the portico stair. President Trump’s controversial plans for a new ballroom on the site of the former East Wing of the White House have faced further criticism from architects and designers. Ahead of an expected National Capital Planning Commission vote to progress the scheme this week, on April 2, The New York Times has published a deep dive into the design criticisms expressed about the scheme. The analysis, whose authors include architect Junho Lee, identifies several apparent design flaws in the scheme, notably a dominant south portico with a grand staircase that nonetheless has no entrance to the ballroom, with a dense cluster of columns that may block light into the interior space. The move will also lead to the alteration of a symmetrical driveway by Frederick Law Olmsted. The piece notes that the ballroom itself is far larger than typical for a 1,000-capacity space, justified by the design team as a move to accommodate TV cameras, journalists, security, and ceremonial processions. An event with fewer than 1,000 attendees could feel “empty,” the piece notes. Overall, the proposed East Wing is 60% larger than the White House residence by floor area, and three times larger by cubic volume. “Viewed from the south, the ballroom’s size will make it the dominant building of the White House complex, with a portico bigger than that of the residence and a lopsided appearance disrupting any symmetry with the West Wing,” the piece argues…”
  • And of course – Trump’s ballroom gets the green light from loyalist-stacked commission


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