Fraud Relating to Katrina in Full Swing

As predicted, the cyberscum element is jumping on the fraud band wagon in the wake of the Katrina disaster. According to Louis Reigel (FBI assistant director Cybercrimes), "There were roughly 2,300 Katrina-related sites by midday Thursday. The number had more than doubled just since Tuesday. New sites are popping up faster than we can pound them down. The number of sites and the money being donated already exceeds what the FBI saw following the tsunami."

Before I move on with this post, you can help the FBI deal with cyberscum by reporting suspicious activity on line at the Internet Fraud Complaint Center. Although, you are unlikely to get a reply, or find out what happens due to the confidential nature of criminal investigations, the information can be valuable intelligence to the authorities.

In fact, U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has announced that they will form the "Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force." The task force will be run by Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher and will include resources several agencies including the Postal Inspectors, FBI and Federal Trade Commission.

Of the roughly 2300 suspected sites, the FBI has only been able to look at 800 of them. The majority of them (60 percent) are international. Please note that not all of these are fraud related, but many will probably prove to be scam sites.

Here is a story that hit the press about someone, who was already caught. Matthew Schmeider of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania sent out thousands of SPAM e-mails from the phony international aid group dubbed "Mercy Corps." When he was caught, he admitted he was going to use some of the money himself, but of course, he also intended to send some of it to legitimate charities. Schmeider had only received $150.00 in donations when he was confronted by the authorities.

As I have said in previous posts, the best way to a donation is directly to charities that are recognized as legitimate. There are third party entities that solicit, but if you give to them, they take a cut of the proceeds for their efforts. There is a previous post I did, which has a lot of resources on legitimate charities and how to check out if any charity is legitimate: http://fraudwar.blogspot.com/2005/09/being-prudent-in-donating-money.html.

On the State level, Florida and Missouri are already taking action. The Florida Attorney General (Charlie Crist) filed a civil lawsuit against a Robert Moneyhan for allegedly creating several Katrina related sites, which were not legitimate charitable operations. Missouri's Attorney General (Jay Nixon) has also filed against a man in St. Louis (Frank Weltner) for similar reasons.

The level of activity being reported is astronomical and seems to be everything from Spam marketing scams for sexual aids to phishing and pharming activity related to financial and identity theft. Security experts are also warning that "cybernasties" (trojans, malware, spyware etc.) are being embedded in pictures of the disaster sent out on Spam e-mails. Best bet is to not open anything with pictures and never download anything that is suspicious.

Here is a link to a page from Scambusters (which is highly recommended) on a lot of the Katrina Scams: http://www.scambusters.org/hurricanekatrinascams.html.

Getting Revenge on Phishers

Recently, I was contacted by Robin Grimes, who has launched a site: http://www.phishfighting.com/. Many of us receive numerous phishing e-mails daily, which can be extremely annoying. On Robin's site, you can submit a URL and the phisher will receive fake entries over and over again. The site describes how to (hover) over a link, or click (copy and paste) to get it's true URL, which you can then submit on the site. With malicious internet activity on the rise, I recommend using the "hovering" method versus actually opening anything on your computer by clicking on it.

More and more sites are showing up where you can catch all kinds of nasty software that can be used to steal personal and financial information. Viruses (malware, spyware, worms, etc.) are also known to be passed via attachments on e-mail. There are a lot of posts on my site about this, but here is a link to one that might be helpful:

http://fraudwar.blogspot.com/2005/05/keyloggers-newest-threat-in-identity.html.

Please note that this is one of many posts dedicated to this activity and I have a search box at the top if anyone cares to research it further.

Here is another post, I did on other sites that fight fraud and phishing by harrassing our friendly fraudster community:

http://fraudwar.blogspot.com/2005/05/robin-hoods-against-internet-fraud.html.

Artists against 419 and the Ebola Monkey Man are pretty interesting. I hear that the lads (dudes), who run Artists against 419 are shutting down fake sites on a consistent basis.

Again, a lot of these activities will serve to frustrate the internet fraudster, but it is prudent to be extremely careful given the people you might be dealing with. I wouldn't actually open any attachments, or go to a site where you might jeopardize yourself. I would also highly recommend that if you choose to engage in any of this activity that you ensure the protection on your computer is top notch and up to date.

As always, I have to strongly recommend that any suspected internet crimes be reported to the authorities. Here is a site from Anthony Elsop, which contains resources to report fraud over a wide spectrum: http://www.elsop.com/wrc/complain.htm.

Robin has joined our small community of people, who are sick and tired of this activity and want to do something about it. I welcome him to the effort!

Advance Fee Scams with Katrina

It was a matter of time, but the Advance Fee a.k.a. (419) scams have started using the Katrina disaster. 419 is the penal code in Nigeria for the advance fee scam. This scam involves tricking someone to pay an advance fee for untold riches they will receive at a later date.

In urban legend, the scam is Nigerian based; however it is now being done all over the world. These scams have not only been traced to Nigeria and Western Africa, but also to Europe, Canada, Australia and even within the United States. Historically, it would be a letter, or e-mail sent from a foreign prince etc., who had a lot of money that he was willing to share with you for passing it through your account. Besides tricking someone into sending money, if they got enough of your account information, they would wipe out the balance.

More recently, the scam has mutated into getting someone to think they have won a lottery, or that someone wants to buy something they placed on a auction. I have even seen a variation where they are approached by a (alleged) beautiful foreign model on a dating site, who needs their help to negotiate some financial instruments. In the end, the victim is duped into sending money and is left at a loss. This can be severe if they have negotiated a lot of money for them. In these more recent mutations, the fraudsters are sending counterfeit cashiers checks (cheques) and counterfeit money orders and duping their victim into to cashing them and wiring the money back. In a lot of instances, the items are intitally cashed and discovered to be counterfeit after the money has been wired (normally overseas).

For the person, who cashes these items, at a minumum they are financially liable. There are reports that people have had criminal charges brought against them as a result of passing the instruments.

Besides getting people to send them money in advance these criminals are very adept at stealing personal and financial information. This might include invading a computer if someone opens an attachment and using software to obtain what they need to do their misdeeds. The best thing to do is avoid these people like the plague.

Right after the Tsunami disaster and London bombings, the letters surfaced and today it is being reported that Katrina is being used in yet another variation. In an article from Gregg Keizer, it was reported that a letter is being circulated from an illegal Mexican national, who has discovered hidden treasure (boxes full of currency).

It amazes me that this variation still is out there despite all the publicity it has drawn.

Of more concern will be the phishing and pharming activity, which I wrote a previous post on:

http://fraudwar.blogspot.com/2005/09/fbi-reports-fraudulent-activity-on.html

In this post, I've listed recommendations from the FBI (who is noting a lot of sites being registered for Katrina) on how to avoid becoming a victim. In case you are interested on more detailed information on this scam and variations thereof, feel free to use the search box by keyword located at the top of the page.

FTC Publishes Telemarketing Fraud Legal Actions

In case anyone is interested the Federal Trade Commission is publishing it's results detailing their actions against telemarketing fraud on a new web site.

The FTC gathers a lot of data, which is available to law enforcement, including data on internet crimes, fraud in general and in particular identity theft.

For the main website, which has a lot of legal and political resources available, go to:

http://www.ftc.gov/

There is also a place to file any complaint you might have regarding fraud. They also sponsor the Do Not Call registry, which is a good start in avoiding telemarketing fraud and the pains associated with receiving unwanted calls!