How 1800’s bunco artists scammed people’s money in the shell game; the tricks they used are still working

 analysis: Did the royal commission fix banking or are banks back to behaving badly?

Good news for a change!  Enforcement efforts by the FTC, FCC and DOJ seem to be making a difference. FTC releases annual report about Do Not Call list; robocalls down by half in 2022, from 3.4 million in 2021 to 1.8 million in 2022 
 
BBB updates online shopping fraud study; complaints and losses are very high
 

Consumer tip of the week:  Many people shop online for gifts at this time of year, and all too often the only method they use to make sure it is a real company that will ship the items actually advertised are online reviews.  Please alert the public that these are NOT reliable.  Reviews, even on supposedly independent sites, are often faked.  Check companies out at BBB.org, and be sure to use a credit card so you can challenge the transaction if it goes bad.

 
New links!
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, and crypto scams
 
Fraud News Around the world

• Ukrainian hacker wanted in the US is arrested in Geneva; used malware to steal bank login credentials and steal money
• Which? in the UK reports that the Home Office has little sense of the volume of fraud
• Fintrac in Canada reports that Black Axe organized crime group is also behind car theft, massive fraud there; real estate used to launder money
• Fake online reviews are a real problem, and the FTC and States ramp up plans for fighting them
• San Diego: Two women sentenced from group that did grandparent scam; one 57 months prison, the other time served; one ordered to pay $1.25 restitution
• Los Angeles: Customs seized $1 billion in counterfeit goods; included fake Lysol
• More than half of spam emails advertising black Friday deals are scams
• Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes gets more than 11 years prison for massive fraud
• Consumers are complaining that it is hard to cancel auto-renewals of online subscriptions; FTC takes note
• How 1800’s bunco artists scammed people’s money in the shell game; the tricks they used are still working

Humor 

• Drunk man arrested for threatening to blow up hotel in Nashville over potato chip dispute
• Man uses Uber to rob bank, has driver wait to take him home
• UK fugitive arrested after coming out of hiding to buy video game

FTC and CFPB  

• CFPB settles with Carrington Mortgage over illegal lending practices during the pandemic; to pay $5.25 million fine
• Court issues injunction against paint maker who claimed it provided insulation benefits; must pay $14,000
• St. Louis: FTC, DOJ, Wisconsin Attorney General file civil case for deception against 16 operating timeshare resale operation

Virus Benefit Theft

• Couple from California were convicted of PPP/EIDL fraud; bailed out and fled; found in Montenegro and back to serve long prison sentences; got $20 million
• West Virginia; Man gets probation for PPP fraud; ordered to repay $41,666
• Michigan: Former state employee, three others, arrested for PPP fraud; got $1 million
• Did Russian gangs steal more in virus benefits than the US has provided to Ukraine?$600 billion lost

Social media

• Group of 40 State Attorneys General settles with Google over claims that that it didn’t track locations – but did; company to pay $391.5 million
• Massachusetts, with help from Google, alleged to have secretly installed spyware for Covid tracking on all cell phones in the state

Business Email compromise fraud 

• Ten defendants, seven of them from Georgia, charged with BEC fraud; targeted Medicare, Medicaid, and health insurers; got more than $11.1 million; some of the money went overseas
• Texas: Two men indicted for laundering money from BEC and romance scams; sent money overseas; got $2.4 million

Ransomware  

• US says Hive ransomware gang has made $100 million in ransom since June 2021
• Attack on Quebec suburb

Data Breaches 

• Hackers leaking personal info on 5 million customers and employees of Malaysian airline AirAsia

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency

• Former owner of FTX tries to explain himself
• How crypto theft became one of the top sources of income for North Korea
• SEC sues to stop registration of new crypto assets
• Ohio man arrested for $10 million crypto Ponzi scheme
• Seattle: Two men in Estonia arrested there and indicted for crypto fraud totaling $575 million; had people invest in mining equipment that didn’t exist; also had fake crypto bank that just stole money

Jamaica and Lottery Fraud

• Jamaica: lottery task force arrests four men for lottery fraud

Romance Fraud and Sextortion

• Police in Peel, Canada, arrest man who was money mule for romance fraud

People:        
Former FTC Chairman Mike Pertschuk dies at 89

ICIJ Trafficking Inc and More

 

It’s been nearly three years since ICIJ’s Luanda Leaks investigation exposed how decades of corrupt deals turned Isabel dos Santos into Africa’s wealthiest woman – and drained hundreds of millions in public money out of one of the world’s poorest countries. Since then, the Angolan billionaire’s business empire has largely been dismantled, battered by investigations in multiple countries, frozen assets, lawsuits, audits and more sparked by ICIJ’s reporting. Now, Isabel dos Santos herself is wanted for arrest by the international police organization Interpol. The agency issued a “Red Notice” request, which is a call to law enforcement worldwide “to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action.” Dos Santos, the daughter of Angola’s ex-president who autocratically ruled the country for decades, has homes in Dubai and London and is believed to visit Portugal often. Sources in Lisbon report that in the warrant, Interpol alleges dos Santos created corrupt financial mechanisms “with the intention of obtaining illicit financial gains and whitewashing suspicious criminal operations.” The Luanda Leaks investigation meticulously showed how unscrupulous deals were cut and lucrative assets funneled away through a labyrinth of companies and subsidiaries, many of them offshore, with the help of Western financial advisers. One of the standout insider deals was made with Angolan state oil company Sonangol. Interpol’s warrant reportedly accuses dos Santos of acting upon information she had obtained as then-head of Sonangol. SHADOW DIPLOMATS WORLDWIDE ICIJ media partners investigated honorary consuls tied to their countries, unearthing cases of wrongdoing by the part-time diplomats and a critical lack of government oversight. INVESTIGATIVE TRAINING ICIJ’s research editor Emilia Díaz-Struck will be taking part in upcoming training opportunities for investigative journalism. On Wednesday, Nov. 23, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism is hosting a webinar on how to involve non-data journalists in collaborative data reporting (in English and Arabic). And on Saturday, Nov. 26, ICIJ partners in Chile are hosting Festival CIPER for citizens interested in investigative journalism (in Spanish). LAST WEEK TONIGHT ICIJ’s recent Trafficking Inc. investigation was highlighted in a segment of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver about human rights violations committed against foreign workers involved in Qatar World Cup efforts and the role of the kafala system in the labor behind the games. Thanks for reading! Asraa Mustufa ICIJ's digital editor P.S. If you've enjoyed our coverage this week, remember to tell your friends and family and share our work on social media. Send them an email now!

 

 

 

 

| LATEST NEWS

 

A drug cartel godfather bid millions to buy a fleet of old Egyptian military aircraft US sanctions financial network linked to Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov

 

Accused terror financiers, arms traffickers and drug runners among hundreds of rogue diplomats Shadow Diplomats: Meet 14 controversial honorary consuls

 

The team behind the world’s biggest journalism collaborations meets in person for the first time Australia aims to force corporations to report which countries they pay taxes to

 

Abuses on US bases in Persian Gulf ensnare legions of migrant workers ‘We co-opted democracy,’ Uber Files whistleblower tells European Parliament

 

Study: Provinces pose threat to Canada’s bid to curb corporate secrecy Researchers uncover Canadian forestry giant's hidden links to deforester

 

‘Most-wanted’ Chilean arms dealer concealed ties to companies with help from Panama’s offshore industry ‘Even one hour after we published we started to receive threats’

 

Magazine spread of ‘most beautiful house in America’ conceals allegedly stolen Cambodian relics Flurry of seizures intensify pressure on the Met over allegedly trafficked artifacts

Czech Museum of Literature

Knowledge is having the right answers. Intelligence is asking the right questions. Wisdom is knowing when to ask the right questions.

Chalmers: "Dolly Parton wrote Jolene and I Will Always Love you in 1 day. It took shadow treasurer 19 days to write that question."

       What used to be -- for almost seven decades -- the National Literature Memorial has now moved and recently re-opened as the Czech Muzeum literatury, and at Radio Prague International Ruth Fraňková reports on it, in Museum of Literature opens in Prague. 

Germany set to declare starvation of Ukrainians under Stalin a genocide Guardian

China: Protests erupt over COVID curbs after deadly fire Al Jazeera

FROZEN:  Newborn twins born from embryos frozen 30 years ago.

I am Once Again Asking the White House Press Corps to Stop Being a Gigantic Embarrassment. The Present Age. On the White House wedding.

1. “Utilitarian longtermism is objectionable. Longtermism sans consequentialism is another matter” — Elliott R. Crozat (Purdue Global) considers deontological longtermism
2. “Most of Earth thus mobilized toward figuring out what is widely thought to be the easiest problem of the three: the line between Anna and not Anna” — a story by Patrick House about how to delineate the boundaries of consciousness
3. “Aesthetic value makes the world worthwhile, and… a good life is lived in pursuit and reflection of that aesthetic value” but “evil forces a significant qualification to aestheticism” — Tom Cochrane (Flinders) defends aestheticism but lets some moralizing in
4. “Your love of pleasure, Callicles / Is like a jar that always leaks / Like a jar that leaks and then gets filled again. / Leaking, filling, running wild / Like a tyrant, like a child / Ceaseless wanting is, in fact, a kind of pain” — a song by Luisa Cichowski about the dispute in Plato’s Gorgias between Socrates & Callicles over the place of pleasure in the good life
5. “The last unit we cover is on ‘The Ethics of Horror,’ and we discuss whether there is something morally dubious about watching and enjoying horror” — Kenneth L. Brewer (UT Dallas) describes his course on the philosophy of horror films

1. Feel like you’re not good enough to be an academic? Turns out it’s because your parents weren’t good enough at encouraging you — a new study finds that “the less encouragement a doctoral student received from their parents in childhood and adolescence, the more likely they were to suffer impostor feelings”
2. “It might sound strange, or even offensive, to suggest that writing about threats to free speech could make people afraid of speaking. The thing is, we know this is how behavior works in other domains” — Eve Fairbanks on the gap between talk of cancel culture and its reality

THIS IS BOTH IMPRESSIVE AND DISTURBING: Meta researchers create AI that masters Diplomacy, tricking human players.

I’ve been playing Diplomacy since middle school, and there are no random elements like dice or cards — it’s all human interaction.

Even before Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997, board games were a useful measure of AI achievement. In 2015, another barrier fell when AlphaGo defeated Go master Lee Sedol. Both of those games follow a relatively clear set of analytical rules (although Go’s rules are typically simplified for computer AI).

But with Diplomacy, a large portion of the gameplay involves social skills. Players must show empathy, use natural language, and build relationships to win—a difficult task for a computer player. With this in mind, Meta asked, “Can we build more effective and flexible agents that can use language to negotiate, persuade, and work with people to achieve strategic goals similar to the way humans do?”
…
The resulting model mastered the intricacies of a complex game. “Cicero can deduce, for example, that later in the game it will need the support of one particular player,” says Meta, “and then craft a strategy to win that person’s favor—and even recognize the risks and opportunities that that player sees from their particular point of view.”
…
At the same time, this technology could be used to manipulate humans by impersonating people and tricking them in potentially dangerous ways, depending on the context. Along those lines, Meta hopes other researchers can build on its code “in a responsible manner.”

Meta claims to have taken steps to prevent Cicero from being abused (or from becoming abusive, I suppose), but the source code is also open-sourced on GitHub.

From the comments at Ars: “Unbelievable. Training a non-conscious AI to ruthlessly deceive, manipulate and enlist humans towards the achievement of an arbitrary value function no matter the cost, as one of the first AI functions to develop. It’s like these guys want a paperclip-optimising singularity apocalypse.”

And yet: META WORKS ON AN AI, INSTEAD PRODUCES a “random bullshit generator.”

Tania, Nique Irena on mEdia dRagon

 On 25 November 2022, the Hon Virginia Bell AC delivered the report of her Inquiry into the Appointment of the Former Prime Minister to Administer Multiple Departments to the Prime Minister, the Hon Anthony Albanese MP.

Report into former prime minister Scott Morrison’s secret ministries released ABC Australia. The report.

National Anti-Corruption Commission legislation passes Senate with amendments, paving way for its establishment

“You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.”

It is said that is it in the public interest to know what our leaders are up to! If they are up to doing good, then they are only too happy to let us know.

The government can keep track of every $600 transaction the average person makes, but couldn't keep track of billions FTX stole

Former High Court justice Virginia Bell described as “improbable” and “difficult to reconcile” some of Scott Morrison’s versions of the secrecy around his multiple ministries as she sought and failed to get a face-to-face meeting with the former prime minister.

A press conference and two Facebook posts by Morrison formed the bulk of his assistance to the inquiry despite Bell offering him a three-week window in which to talk directly to her, either in Sydney or his Canberra office.

Former High Court judge Virginia Bell sought to hear directly from Scott Morrison about the secret ministries affair.CREDIT:GILLIANNE TEDDER

Instead, Morrison relied on a solicitor to respond to Bell’s queries, including through a letter this week that warned Bell she would be unable to make any “inferences or conclusions” around national security issues because she would have to rely on incomplete information.

The review by Bell was ordered by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after it was revealed in August that Morrison had himself secretly sworn in to administer the departments of treasury, home affairs, health, finance, and industry, science, energy and resources during his last term in government.

Bell’s inquiry shows the extent to which she went to hear from Morrison.

Bell wrote to Morrison on September 19 to “seek his assistance” with the inquiry. She proposed a meeting to hear directly his “account of the facts and circumstances” of his ministerial appointments, saying she could meet him on any date in the three weeks from September 26…

Former PM’s accounts of his decisions ‘difficult to reconcile’: Bell

 Analysis: Did the royal commission fix banking or are banks back to behaving badly?

Ex-MP Daryl Maguire charged with criminal conspiracy over visa scheme

• A wealth tax by another name? Inheritance tax and CGT raid on the middle class to rake in £130bn in the coming years (20 Nov 2022)
  
• How will Jeremy Hunt’s budget affect me? (18 Nov 2022)
• Office for Budget Responsibility Economic and fiscal outlook November 2022 (18 Nov 2022)
  
• Overview of the November 2022 Economic and fiscal outlook (18 Nov 2022)
• HM Treasury Analysis - AUTUMN STATEMENT 2022 (18 Nov 2022)
• HM Treasury - Impact on households: distributional analysis to accompany Autumn Statement 2022 (18 Nov 2022)
• The Autumn Statement 2022 speech (17 Nov 2022)
• HMRC: Energy Taxes Factsheet (17 Nov 2022)
  
• Should the UK have a wealth tax? Almost certainly (16 Nov 2022)
• Tax squeeze on British business leaves UK shareholders worse off than French (16 Nov 2022)
• Impose climate tax on fossil fuel giants, media groups urge (16 Nov 2022)
  
• Should We Have A Robot Tax? Part 2 (15 Nov 2022)
  
• Pertemps tycoon Timothy Watts faces huge tax-avoidance bill (15 Nov 2022)
• Global corporations ‘cheating public out of billions in tax’, say campaigners (15 Nov 2022
• I was the chairman of Greggs. The wealthy should be paying more tax (14 Nov 2022)
• Should We Have a Robot Tax? Part 1 (3 Nov 2022)
  

France, investigation into illicit financing of Emmanuel Macron’s electoral campaign: his assignments at the McKinsey company are in the sights (Google Translate) Il Fatto Quotidiano (DJG). Imagine that!

“Researchers, governments, and civil society must come together to help. This paper explores how CERN can serve as a model for developing the Institute for Research on the Information Environment (IRIE).

By connecting disciplines and providing shared engineering resources and capacity-building across the world’s democracies, IRIE will scale up applied research to enable evidence-based policymaking and implementation. Where CERN “exists to understand the mystery of nature for the benefit of humankind,” IRIE will exist to understand the mystery of the information environment for the benefit of democracies and their citizens. 

While the laws of physics change slowly, the conditions within the information environment are little understood and changing rapidly through the addition of new technology. Additionally, studying the information environment will require analysis of personal and at times sensitive data of internet users, increasing the need for international collaboration. As CERN did by inventing new collaboration tools, IRIE will leverage those same technologies to unlock the collective genius of researchers and practitioners from a variety of fields to strengthen democracy, alongside interested citizens who contribute their own data and expertise. While there are obvious differences between the field of physics and those emerging to study the information environment, aspects of CERN’s development can guide the creation of IRIE, an institution that can uniquely address the growing needs of researchers.”

EFF: “This week, EFF’s Atlas of Surveillanceproject hit a bittersweet milestone. With this project, we are creating a searchable and mappable repository of which law enforcement agencies in the U.S. use surveillance technologies such as body-worn cameras, drones, automated license plate readers, and face recognition. It’s one of the most ambitious projects we’ve ever attempted.