Manpreet Dandiwal - Former employees of a high-profile Toorak-based real estate agent claim he was a secret director of syndicates that bought two development sites on Melbourne’s outer fringes that he or his company were selling, in an alleged breach of the law.
DOJ official’s blog on this effort
BBB updates pet scam study
- Fake web sites use Christmas theme
- Complaints continue to increase dramatically
New FTC spotlight looks at scam losses paid by gift card
- $148 million lost first nine months of 2021, more than all 2020
- Target gift cards most popular, more than twice any other brand
- Scammers send victims to Target stores to buy them
- Median amount of loss to Target cards $2500; twice that for others
BBB Studies. Here are links to the study topics of my studies: 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, job scams, and online shopping fraud.
Virus Scams
- Georgia:Owner and spouse of tax prep business plead guilty; $1.9 million PPP fraud and stolen identity refund fraud for $3.8 million
- Three NFL football players suspended for using fake vaccination cards
- South Carolina: Nurse indicted for selling fake vaccinations cards
- Singapore investigating 404 people for romance and other online scams
- Black Axe busted in South Africa; did romance, BEC, ransomware; ties to Ireland
- Florida: Two Peruvians plead guilty to defrauding Spanish speakers from call center there that threatened arrest or deportation if they did not pay for various products and programs
- New US rules regulating debt collectors; they can use social media to reach out
- Puppy scams use address of Virginia family; victims appear at house looking for the pet
- Alaska: Canadian man charged with cyberfraud; separate charges in Canada
- Google sues two Russians that are behind a botnet that infected 1 million PC’s; botnets used to send spam messages from computers of others
- Guam: Man pleads guilty to inheritance scam
- Man in Kirkland Washington wears pink bunny suit and is arrested for purse snatching; flees but can't blend into crowd
- Man arrested for shooting flamethrower at neighbors
- Houston: 9 years prison for man who used PPP funds for a Lamborghini and strip clubs; got $1.6 million
- Maryland: Head of nonprofit pleads guilty to PPP and EIDL fraud
- UK lost billions in covid relief bounce back loans
- Washington: Las Vegas man gets four years for PPP fraud; also engaged in bogus political fundraising
- Kansas City: two indicted for money mule work for BEC scams
- Texas: Guilty plea by BEC money mules who handled money from businesses and a church
- Attack on Planned Parenthood risks personal information on 400,000
- Closes schools in Riverhead, NY
- Hits French school board in Ontario
- Ransomware operations increasingly stealing data
- US military acknowledges taking affirmative action to tackle ransomware operations
- Ransomware group from Cuba has hit 49 critical infrastructure sites in the US; have received $43 million in ransom
- US and Canada governments becoming more active in disrupting ransomware
- Ottawa, Canada man arrested for ransomware
- Hits Tennessee community college
- FBI seizes $2.3 million in bitcoin from Russian ransomware affiliate of ReVIL
- Colorado electric utility loses 20 years of billing data; not clear if ransomware involved
- St Louis: Man pleads guilty to laundering romance scam money; handled $500,00 from victims in 24 states; sent money to Nigeria; pretended to be US military
- UK finds Nigerian romance scammer guilty; even took money from a woman who was terminally ill
- Singapore: Two Nigerians get prison for romance fraud; also used victims as mules