If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't (especially on the Internet). A spam e-mail, I received today informed me that I've won Google's lottery and 500,000 euros.
Trusted names are used to provide a false sense of legitimacy. Since I myself am a Google fan (user), I decided to comment on this one.
When the (eventually unfortunate) winner answers one of these, they are asked to send (wire transfer is preferred) money to cover taxes and tariffs to get their prize released.
Frequently, the scammer will send a counterfeit check (normally official, or cashier type) for their intended victim (winner) to cash. Eventually, the counterfeit check is discovered and the lottery winner is left hold the bag. Besides, financial consequences, (if I am to believe people reading this blog), cashing these items can cause someone to get arrested, also.
Unfortunately, the crooks behind these scams are normally safe in another country and rarely (if ever) get caught.
For a more detailed explanation on how these scams work (the lottery variety is one mutation of them), I did a post:
Counterfeit Cashier's Checks Fuel Internet Crime
A lot of the spam deploying these scams is facilitated using botnets (groups of zombie computers) that were taken over after another unfortunate Internet user opened an attachment in a spam e-mail, they probably shouldn't have.
Here is a post, I did at the beginning of the year describing this problem (getting worse all the time):
2006 was the Year of Internet Crime - 2007 is predicted to be even worse
Here is the e-mail I received (complete with all the bad grammar and spelling mistakes). Bad grammar and spelling mistakes are common in these e-mail lures.
Another clue is always the instruction not to tell anyone they are a winner.
From:nelson@nelsonbeilean.orangehome.co.uk
Subject:ISP Nomination/Email Award.
Date:Wed, 4 Apr 2007 17:53:07 +0200 (CEST)
To:FROM: LOTTERY COORDINATOR,INT. PROMOTIONS AND PRICE AWARD DEPARTMENTGOOGLE. Bolos Avenue 12900 kd .RESULTS FOR CATEGORY "A" DRAWS
Congratulations to you as we bring to your notice, the results of the First Category draws of E-MAIL LOTTERY organised by GOOGLE INT. We are happy to inform you that you have emerged a winner under the First Category, which is part of our promotional draws. The draws were held on 30th of March 2007 and results are being officially announced today 4th of April 2007. Participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from 5,500,000 email addresses of individuals and companies from Africa, America, Asia, Australia, Europe, Middle East, and Oceania as part of our International Promotions Program. Your e-mail address, attached to ticket number 675432890044/376, with serial number 2200-33 drew the lucky numbers 1-0-11-44-03-22 and consequently won in the First Category. You have therefore been awarded a lump sum pay out of One million (1,000,000.00) euros, which is the winning payout for Category A winners. This is from the total prize money from 1,500,000 euros shared among the 2 winners in this category. Your fund is now deposited with the paying Bank. In your best interest to avoid mix up of numbers and names of any kind, we request that you keep the entire details of your award strictly from public notice until the process of transferring your claims has been completed, and your funds remitted to your account. This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming or unscrupulous acts by participants / non participants of this program. Please contact your claims agent immediately for due processing and remittance of your prize money to a designated account of your choice:To file for your claim, please contact the CLAIMS agent.
Mr.Windy Smith.Cable Trust AgencyEmail: *(e-mail
addresses and telephone numbers removed) Academias53,11269 Athens
Greece.
You are advised to contact the agents by Email address.
NOTE: For easy reference and identification, find below your reference and Batch numbers.
Remember to quote these numbers in every one of your
correspondence with your claims agent.
REFERENCE NO:GPINT/7980/4376/06 BATCH
NO: 33/904/G3K. Congratulations once again from all our staff and thank you for
being part of our promotions program.
Sincerely Yours,
Dr.
Nelson Beilean.
PROMOTIONS COORDINATOR.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Is tax fraud being enabled by too many dishonest preparers?
In February, I wrote about fraudulent tax returns being filed using forged W-2s.
Another story recently surfaced from the SF Bay area, where Jackson Hewitt preparers were complaining this seasonal type of fraud is getting out of control.
Kate Williamson (Examiner) wrote:
Interestingly enough, Jackson Hewitt preparers were quoted for this story and in another story - a lot of Jackson Hewitt franchises are being taken to task by the Justice Department for (allegedly) committing tax fraud, themselves.
The AP (courtesy of CNN) is reporting:
Dishonest tax preparers and people using forged W-2 forms is nothing new. In the past couple of years, there were even stories about this being done by prisoners. W-2 blanks are easily purchased at office supply stores, or over the Internet.
This phenomenon is probably being enabled by large payouts for what is known as the earned income tax credit and a huge business in refund anticipation loans. Refund anticipation loans often carry a triple digit interest rate, when considering the term (normally less than a month).
The AP article states that the dishonest franchises cost the government $70 million and this represents about 2 percent of Jackson Hewitt's business.
Some believe, the huge business in refund anticipation loans, has been inspired by the large dollar refunds lower income people get based on the earned income tax credit.
Currently, our tax gap (yearly difference between what is taken in and paid out) is 354 billion, according to the AP article.
Maybe, we need a better way to verify that W-2s are legitimate?
We can all help the IRS if we suspect tax fraud by reporting it, here.
Someone is going to say, we spend too much time going after the poor (people filing for earned income tax credits). Before they do, I would like to point out that in the instance cited, the Justice Department seems to be going after an "enabler" (Jackson Hewitt).
With our resources coming up $354 billion short every year, we can't afford to keep looking the other way on issues, such as these. The result will be more taxes to pay for needed government services.
Another problem is that a lot of the criminals doing this are using other people's information (identity theft). A lot of people are filing their taxes - only to discover someone else has already gotten a refund using their name.
From what I hear, this can be pretty hard and (painful) to clean up, once it occurs.
Of course, this isn't the only type of tax fraud being committed. A great place to learn all about the various schemes is Quatloos.com, which can be read by linking, here.
Another story recently surfaced from the SF Bay area, where Jackson Hewitt preparers were complaining this seasonal type of fraud is getting out of control.
Kate Williamson (Examiner) wrote:
If successful, the fraud allows tax cheats to receive thousands of dollars, either from the federal government or from companies making tax refund anticipation loans. It is sometimes coupled with identity theft, which can create problems for law-abiding citizens when they go to file their own taxes.Kate Williamson article, here.
Interestingly enough, Jackson Hewitt preparers were quoted for this story and in another story - a lot of Jackson Hewitt franchises are being taken to task by the Justice Department for (allegedly) committing tax fraud, themselves.
The AP (courtesy of CNN) is reporting:
The franchises were either totally or partially owned by Farrukh Sohail, the Justice Department said, and involved "a pervasive and massive series of tax-fraud schemes," according to court filings.AP story, here.
Sohail and other defendants "created, directed, fostered, and maintained a business environment" at the Jackson Hewitt franchises "in which fraudulent tax return preparation is encouraged and flourishes," according to court documents.
Employees were encouraged to ignore telltale signs of fraudulent information and to file claims even when it was obvious customers were using fake W-2 forms or false
deductions.
A sample of returns prepared by franchises connected to Sohail found 31 percent contained false information such as phony earned income tax credit claims, bogus deductions and fraudulent W-2 forms.
Dishonest tax preparers and people using forged W-2 forms is nothing new. In the past couple of years, there were even stories about this being done by prisoners. W-2 blanks are easily purchased at office supply stores, or over the Internet.
This phenomenon is probably being enabled by large payouts for what is known as the earned income tax credit and a huge business in refund anticipation loans. Refund anticipation loans often carry a triple digit interest rate, when considering the term (normally less than a month).
The AP article states that the dishonest franchises cost the government $70 million and this represents about 2 percent of Jackson Hewitt's business.
Some believe, the huge business in refund anticipation loans, has been inspired by the large dollar refunds lower income people get based on the earned income tax credit.
Currently, our tax gap (yearly difference between what is taken in and paid out) is 354 billion, according to the AP article.
Maybe, we need a better way to verify that W-2s are legitimate?
We can all help the IRS if we suspect tax fraud by reporting it, here.
Someone is going to say, we spend too much time going after the poor (people filing for earned income tax credits). Before they do, I would like to point out that in the instance cited, the Justice Department seems to be going after an "enabler" (Jackson Hewitt).
With our resources coming up $354 billion short every year, we can't afford to keep looking the other way on issues, such as these. The result will be more taxes to pay for needed government services.
Another problem is that a lot of the criminals doing this are using other people's information (identity theft). A lot of people are filing their taxes - only to discover someone else has already gotten a refund using their name.
From what I hear, this can be pretty hard and (painful) to clean up, once it occurs.
Of course, this isn't the only type of tax fraud being committed. A great place to learn all about the various schemes is Quatloos.com, which can be read by linking, here.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Will law suits stop Spam Kings?
Spam is a vehicle for a lot of deceptive (false) advertising and financial crimes when phishing schemes are deployed using them.
Here is an announcement that MySpace is going after a Sanford Wallace (described as a spam king) with a civil action.
From the Business wire release:
Full release, with other MySpace actions (commendable), here.
With each release of their statistics, the Anti Phishing Working Group seems to report that phishing and spam are breaking new records.
It would be nice to see governments (which manage law enforcement resources) take some of these cases for investigation and (if warranted) file criminal charges, also.
I'm not sure if forcing spam kings to pay fines is a very effective deterrent. They are liable to view it as a "cost of doing business." Perhaps if a few of them lost their freedom, the statistics (growing all the time) might start to go down.
Statistics are numbers, but they relate to real people being victimized by this activity.
Here is an announcement that MySpace is going after a Sanford Wallace (described as a spam king) with a civil action.
From the Business wire release:
MySpace announced today that it filed suit against Sanford Wallace for violations of state and federal laws including the CAN-SPAM Act and California's anti-spam and anti-phishing statutes. The suit, filed in United States District Court in Los Angeles on Friday, seeks a permanent injunction barring Wallace and his affiliated companies from the MySpace site in addition to unspecified monetary damages.
Full release, with other MySpace actions (commendable), here.
With each release of their statistics, the Anti Phishing Working Group seems to report that phishing and spam are breaking new records.
It would be nice to see governments (which manage law enforcement resources) take some of these cases for investigation and (if warranted) file criminal charges, also.
I'm not sure if forcing spam kings to pay fines is a very effective deterrent. They are liable to view it as a "cost of doing business." Perhaps if a few of them lost their freedom, the statistics (growing all the time) might start to go down.
Statistics are numbers, but they relate to real people being victimized by this activity.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Did we waste too much time last week blaming TJX for the dark side of the Information Age?
With the (estimated) 45.7 million records being compromised in the TJX breach, everyone seems focused on placing blame on the retail industry.
We seem to quickly forget that others, including institutions of higher learning, the financial services sector and even the government have been compromised pretty frequently, also. And even though massive data-breaches facilitated by hackers makes good press, the truth is that information is stolen on a less newsworthy basis, daily.
Brad Dorfman (Reuters) might have put it all in perspective when he wrote:
They might also need to stop paying taxes, serving their country and getting an education (my emphasis).
Brad's story about why retailers are one (my emphasis) of the targets, here.
Meanwhile the retail and financial services industries seem on the verge of fighting a battle of who should be (financially) responsible for all of this. Of course in the bigger picture, I can think of a few other industries to push the blame towards, also.
We spend a lot of effort and resources trying to spread out the financial burden of information theft. While this might be enabling some of those concerned (industries starting to point fingers) to keep writing the costs of information theft off, it isn't stopping very many of the facilitators.
I sometimes wonder how much better we might be off if we went after the facilitators more aggressively? Resources to do this are minimal and if you don't believe me ask any victim, who tried to get something done with their individual case. Even better, ask someone who has the unfortunate job of trying to help some of these victims.
Until we make stealing information harder to do and start punishing the facilitators, problems associated with the dark side of the information age are probably going to continue have a ever growing financial burden.
In the criminal world, the 45.7 million compromised records, were yesterday's opportunity. What opportunity are they exploiting right now?
We seem to quickly forget that others, including institutions of higher learning, the financial services sector and even the government have been compromised pretty frequently, also. And even though massive data-breaches facilitated by hackers makes good press, the truth is that information is stolen on a less newsworthy basis, daily.
Brad Dorfman (Reuters) might have put it all in perspective when he wrote:
Consumers who want to be sure about protecting their personal data and preventing identity theft might need to pay solely with cash, shun retailer loyalty programs and only make returns when they have a receipt.
They might also need to stop paying taxes, serving their country and getting an education (my emphasis).
Brad's story about why retailers are one (my emphasis) of the targets, here.
Meanwhile the retail and financial services industries seem on the verge of fighting a battle of who should be (financially) responsible for all of this. Of course in the bigger picture, I can think of a few other industries to push the blame towards, also.
We spend a lot of effort and resources trying to spread out the financial burden of information theft. While this might be enabling some of those concerned (industries starting to point fingers) to keep writing the costs of information theft off, it isn't stopping very many of the facilitators.
I sometimes wonder how much better we might be off if we went after the facilitators more aggressively? Resources to do this are minimal and if you don't believe me ask any victim, who tried to get something done with their individual case. Even better, ask someone who has the unfortunate job of trying to help some of these victims.
Until we make stealing information harder to do and start punishing the facilitators, problems associated with the dark side of the information age are probably going to continue have a ever growing financial burden.
In the criminal world, the 45.7 million compromised records, were yesterday's opportunity. What opportunity are they exploiting right now?
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