Patent Office Insider Funnels $500k To Minister

from the ah,-the-uspto dept

This certainly isn't a condemnation of the USPTO itself, but apparently a financial analyst within the PTO worked with a minister to steal more than $500,000. The minister has plead guilty, but the PTO employee is still just under investigation:

One of the patent employee's tasks was to process requests for funds from customers who had completed the application process, documents said. In his guilty plea, Reid said the patent office employee identified accounts that had gone dormant. She then changed the name on the accounts to Redeemed Music House and wired the cash to the company's bank account.

Court documents show that the patent worker stole a total of $534,338 over 32 transfers, 27 of which were to Reid. It is unclear from documents where the other $80,000 went.

This is obviously a scam by a corrupt employee, but a couple folks submitted it, noting that with so much interest in the USPTO around these parts, some folks might be interested. It's certainly not a condemnation of the USPTO (it does plenty of things officially for that), as it's pretty clearly a bad employee scamming money.

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Yet Another Run On A Virtual Bank

from the but-don't-get-too-excited-over-it dept

A couple years ago, there were stories about how there was a "run" on the virtual banks of Second Life. Later on, some reporters tried to suggest that the Second Life "credit crunch" was a predictor of the real world's credit crunch. That wasn't even close to true. Yet, with yet another story about a virtual world, we're once again hearing in-apt comparisons to the real world. The latest is a run on a bank in the game EVE Online. In this case, it looks like one of the guys involved in running the "bank" simply took some of the virtual currency out of the bank and exchanged it for real world cash (about $5k). The BBC headline calling it "billions stolen" is inaccurate, since it was only "billions" in the meaningless virtual currency. In the real world, it translated into not very much at all. The BBC article also calls it a "virtual version of the credit crunch." Again, this is quite inaccurate. In both the Second Life bank run and this bank run the problem was simply outright fraud by the "virtual banks" or those who run them. That's quite different than what has happened with the real world credit crunch, and it does little good to pretend otherwise.

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Tim Berners-Lee Conned By Web Scam?

from the that's-cold dept

Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web, has now admitted that he was recently conned out of some money by a "fake company" that he found online, when searching for a place to buy some presents. While some will leap to the conclusion that "something needs to be done!" when even the web's inventor can become a victim of fraud online, I don't see how it's really any different than traditional fraud. People can and will get taken in by frauds. It's what happens. That the fraud happened online, or that it happened to the guy who invented the web hardly seems particularly meaningful here.

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Students Using Speed Cameras To Frame Other Kids

from the guilty-until-proven-innocent dept

In general, we have trouble with things like speed cameras and red light cameras -- both of which don't tend to do much of anything to make the roads safer (rather, there's evidence that they lead to more accidents). The reality is that they are really about boosting revenue for local governments, not about safety -- which explains why plenty of places have been found illegally changing parameters to make them bring in more revenue.

But the biggest problem of all is just that these cameras aren't reliable at all, and without any human witness it seems unfair to charge someone with a crime -- especially when they do things like charge a stationary brick wall with going 58mph or accuse a woman of driving a car at a stunning 480 mph. And, of course, when you have an automated system sending out violation notices, you just know it's going to get gamed. That's exactly what appears to be happening. Slashdot points out a story of students in Maryland making fake license plates matching other students' plates, slapping them on their cars and speeding by speed cameras in order to get other students slapped with fines. And, of course, others have seen similar attempts for more nefarious reasons. At what point did we decide it was okay for automated systems to issue fines without any human review?

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Online Poker Cheating Scam Unraveled

from the whodunit dept

Slashdot points us to the news that the well known online poker playing site UltimateBet.com has been fined $1.5 million as part of an ongoing investigation into what appears to be a rather massive scheme to defraud online poker players by giving some insiders the ability to see all the cards other players held. Over the past year, this story has been building up steam, as the fraud was actually called out by some other players who questioned how certain players had been able to win so much. Using statistical analysis, it was shown to have been close to impossible, without inside knowledge, and the latest report does, indeed, pin some of the blame on a well-known poker player who was an initial "consultant" to one of the companies involved in this mess. If you read the MSNBC link above, you'll see that there are a number of different companies involved, but it sounds as though many are simply shell companies for the same group of people, with attempts to move assets around for a variety of purposes. So, it's not yet entirely clear who was involved beyond the one player named, but more names are expected to be released later this year, as investigators finish up their investigation.

What may be most interesting about the whole ordeal was that it was exposed not by the body charged with actually regulating the online casino, but other players who were able to sniff out the details working together in online forums. Chalk another one up to the wisdom of the crowd.

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'Free Software' Scammers Fined $2.2 Million

from the this-is-not-the-'free'-business-model-we're-talking-about dept

We've seen various incarnations of the scam (often found in infomercials) where a company offers you something for "free," but in the fine print, you're really signing up for an ongoing paid service. For years, some of the biggest "ringtone" companies made much of their money this way, offering "free" or cheap ringtones that actually involved the user signing up for a monthly service without realizing it. The infamous "Video Professor" has been accused of running a similar system, though the company vehemently denies this.

Either way, it appears that the FTC is starting to crack down on some of these practices, fining a competitor to "Video Professor," called ThinkAll, $2.2 million. Apparently ThinkAll took this scam to a new level. It offered "free" software, where you simply had to pay for the shipping and handling -- though, it sounds like that was really just so the company could get your credit card on file. After receiving that first free CD, customers were offered 3 more titles totally free (not even any shipping). If you decided to accept that software (and why wouldn't you?) it made you check a box saying you had read the terms of service. Of course no one reads the full terms of service, which include (hidden down in the 7th paragraph) the fact that in accepting this "free" software, you're actually agreeing to sign up for a monthly fee-based service. Quite sneaky... until the FTC stepped in. Hopefully other businesses take notice and start avoiding these types of scams.

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Just Because Craigslist Is Used In A Scam, Doesn't Make People Craigslist Victims

from the blame-the-scammer,-not-the-platform dept

It's amazing how often Craigslist gets blamed for stuff that it didn't do. The latest, as sent in by an anonymous reader, is that a scammer used Craigslist to rent the same house out to at least 20 different people. The guy who owned the house put up ads on Craigslist, saying the house would be available May 1, and then collected first and last month's rent from at least 20 people. Those 20 people and their families discovered the situation as they showed up to the house on May 1. Clearly, these folks are the victim of a scammer (most likely the guy who owned the house). But the local newspaper, the Pasadena Star News refers to them as "Craigslist victims" as if it's the fault of Craigslist. It makes you wonder, if the same scam had been done via a classified ad in the Pasadena Star News, would the headline have read: "Number of Pasadena Star News victims increases"? Somehow, I doubt it.

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State Sues Unclaimed Money Site After Finding It Told Wile E. Coyote He Had Unclaimed Money

from the batman-too dept

Pennsylvania is suing a website that promised to help people get access to unclaimed money they were owed after investigators determined that the site was convincing people to pay $24.95 for a membership by telling them they had unclaimed money, no matter who they were. Investigators used the scientific method of testing whether Spiderman, Batman and Wile E. Coyote had unclaimed money. After discovering that all three were told they did (on a free search, details only available if you paid), they decided that the site was perhaps being less than honest with users.

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Craigslist Ransacking Was To Cover Up Burglary

from the well-that-didn't-work dept

Remember that story last week about someone posting a fake ad on Craigslist, leading to people ransacking a house and taking all sorts of stuff? It turns out that the folks behind the fake ad were simply trying to cover up their own burglary of the house. Apparently, they had stolen some stuff from the garage and figured the best way to hide the theft was to get a ton of other people to steal stuff as well, via the Craigslist ad. Of course, by posting the ad, they made it that much easier to track them down, as police retrieved the IP address and were able to figure out who was responsible. Once again, despite those who tried to "blame" Craigslist, it looks like Craigslist helped the police catch the crooks.

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Latest 419 Scam: Asking Your Friends For A Loan

from the HOPE-TO-READ-FROM-YOU… dept

It's been interesting to see how the so-called Nigerian 419 scams have evolved over time as people have become more familiar with them. In the past, it's often been difficult to feel too sorry for victims, as they were taken in by their own greed at the possibility of sharing in a large amount of illicitly gained loot. However, it appears the recent variations play less on greed and much more on charitable emotions. Last month, we wrote about Nigerian scammers exploiting the idea of cute puppies needing a home, and now comes a report that the latest trick is to combine phishing with a 419 scam to try to get your friends to wire money to Nigeria, thinking it's to help you. It starts with a typical phishing scam, in an attempt to get your webmail password. Then, once the scammers have access to your webmail, they send an urgent email to all of your contacts, saying that you are in Nigeria, and you lost your wallet and are in serious trouble, and are requesting a quick loan wired to Nigeria. Of course, the emails seem to be sent out to just about everyone, meaning that many people will realize it's not true. At least in the example above, it's written in typically bad 419-scam "English," making it obviously fake. However, it's likely that this will continue to evolve and get better as well -- again, preying on people's best interests rather than their greed.

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