Opinion | ‘The View’ adds a controversial new co-host
Reports say she's a 'far more thoughtful, tempered on-air presence' than predecessor Meghan McCain
Crap Economics The American Conservative
Amazon Workers in North Carolina Are Building a Union Jacobin
The Bizarre Bird That’s Breaking the Tree of LifeThe New Yorker
The Other Side of the Canvas John Ganz. Fascist art in Italy.
The Plague of Resilience Meanjin
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Nevada: Ukrainian man pleads guilty to scheme that illegally debited bank accounts of US victims in sophisticated theft scheme; got at least $1.5 million
Kansas: DOJ files suit to forfeit $500,000 in crypto ransom paid by US healthcare companies to North Korean fraudsters
Need an expert witness for consumer protection or fraud issues? Let me know.
Book of the Week: How the World Really Works, by Vaclav Smil. How hyrocarbons (oil, gas, coal) made the modern world, and how we will continue to be dependent on them for electricity, food production (through fertilizer), and making steel, concrete, and plastics. We could not feed half the world’s people without the fertilizer. So its not just gasoline at issue.
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, job scams, online shopping fraud, and crypto scams
Fraud News Around the world
- New Jersey: Operator of crooked moving company gets 22 months prison; raised price after goods were loaded
- Maryland: Nigerian man gets 8 years prison for scam claiming to be offering government grants; operated on social media
- West Virginia AG settles with California based debt settlement company; to pay $500,000
- Texas: Two Ukrainian men plead guilty to laundering money for cyber crimes; advertised to online scammers
- Florida: Palm Beach art dealer indicted over sales of counterfeit/forged artwork
- Australia adopts new rules to fight text message spam
- Eight common Facebook Marketplace scams and how to avoid them
- Harper’s: Blaming victims for being gullible to scams
- Scammers are somehow changing your password at the credit reporting agencies
Humor
- Americans got 13 billion robocalls last year about extending their car warranty
- Drunk driver blames Covid for driving with two missing tires on freeway
FTC and CFPB
- Chamber of Commerce sues FTC over failing to produce documents under Freedom of Information Act
- Analysis of recent FTC right to repair cases; can’t tie warranty to using OEM parts
- FTC sending $25 million in refund checks to victims of Next-Gen sweepstakes scams, includes victims in Canada and 50 other countries
Virus Benefit Theft
- Oklahoma: Man pleads guilty to PPP fraud; got $200,000
- Georgia: Solider at Fort Stewart pleads guilty to PPP fraud; submitted 190 applications; got millions
- Georgia: Woman pleads guilty to PPP fraud; spent money on breast augmentation and liposuction
- Florida: Couple get four years prison each for PPP and EIDL loan fraud; got over $800,000
- Dallas: Wedding planner gets 31 months prison for PPP fraud
- Detroit: Woman charged with unemployment fraud got job with State of Michigan examining claims flagged as suspicious and had bogus ones approved
- Virginia: Woman pleads guilty to PPP fraud; got millions
- Chicago: Four employees of Cook County committed PPP fraud says IG
- Florida: Sarasota man gets more than 5 years for PPP and EIDL fraud
- Los Angeles: Man gets 11+ years for PPP fraud; got $27 million
Business Email compromise fraud
Data Breaches
Bitcoin and cryptocurrency
- How a fake job offer took down the most popular crypto game
- $8 million lost in phishing attack on a crypto exchange
- Hackers steal $421,000 from NFT platform Premint
- FBI warns crooks are increasingly creating fake crypto apps to defraud investors
IRS and tax frauds
- Georgia: Man gets 19 years prison for phony returns on behalf of bogus trusts; got more than $5 million
- Maryland: Man gets more than ten years prison for stolen identity refund fraud; used data on disabled; got more than $2.2 million
Romance Fraud and Sextortion