More and More - The Jefferson Scandal Does Appear to be a Nigerian Fraud

In late May, I did a post about the Jefferson scandal - where money was discovered in a freezer - that was allegedly "earmarked" for the Vice President of Nigeria, Abubakar Atiku.

At the time, Vice President Atiku stated "that Jefferson was name dropping and obviously committing a 419 (Nigerian Penal Code for Advance Fee) scam."

For anyone that is unfamiliar with advance fee (419):

"Nigeria is one of main sources for all sorts of Advance fee fraud (419) fraud scams. The Advance Fee scam is where a ruse is used to get a victim to part with their money (nowadays normally via wire-transfer) in anticipation of riches (or sometimes love) to come. The best known is the "Nigerian Letter," but the activity has mutated into romance, lottery, auction, check cashing, work at home and reshipping scams."

I also wondered in the post, whether or not, the EFCC (Economic Financial Crimes Commission) would investigate further. Apparently, they did with assistance from the FBI.

Brian Ross of ABC news is reporting:

Acting on information provided by the FBI, Nigerian fraud investigators have now indicted Vice President Atiku Abubakar on 14 counts of corruption, involving tens of millions of dollars allegedly diverted from government accounts.

According to Nuhu Ribadu, head of a new anti-corruption squad created by Nigeria's president, $23 million of the diverted money is still missing. Ribadu said $6.7 million of the missing funds has been traced to a U.S. company tied to Congressman Jefferson's family.

Link to Brian Ross story, here.

Meanwhile both Congressman Jefferson and Vice-President Atiku still deny everything and Mr. Jefferson -- who is running for re-election -- has yet to be charged.

In the original AP story, two of Jefferson's associates have been found guilty of bribery and admitted giving Jefferson other money to bribe African officials. The story also reports some pretty "damning" statements Jefferson made while being taped without his knowledge.

I wonder if and when he (Jefferson) will be charged - $90,000.00 in a freezer is a little hard to explain - even if it is a drop in the bucket when compared to the 6.7 million alleged by the Nigerian investigation.

The EFCC site has a lot of coverage (from a Nigerian perspective) on Mr. Atiku's woes.

Sadly enough - Congressman Jefferson is leading in the polls:

Congressman Jefferson Race Gets National Eyes And New Orleans Ayes

Of note - Jefferson has lost the support of the Louisiana Democratic Party, which seems a wise move on their part.

Nigerian fraud is legendary on the Internet - and the EFCC has had a lot of success in "taking a bite" out of it. Here is a picture of Nuhu Ribadhu, who is in charge of the EFCC and managed the Nigerian part of this investigation:

Since most fraud today has a global reach, some might argue the EFCC is stopping people from being victimized, worldwide.

You can view Mr. Ribadhu's biography, here.

FTC Smacks Zango with Civil Judgment

Paul Young "Digging a little Deeper" inspired my original post on Zango. Having had my now (Mac Techie) daughter download Kazaa a few years back - I "ran away" (fast) whenever I spotted Zango while surfing.

Now the FTC has responded (undoubtedly to massive complaints) and smacked Zango with a civil judgment.

From the FTC news release:

Zango, Inc., formerly known as 180solutions, Inc., one of the world's largest distributors of adware, and two principals have agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they used unfair and deceptive methods to download adware and obstruct consumers from removing it, in violation of federal law. The settlement bars future downloads of Zango's adware without consumers' consent, requires Zango to provide a way for consumers to remove the adware, and requires them to give up $3 million in ill-gotten gains.

"Consumers' computers belong to them, and they shouldn't have to accept any content they don't want," said Lydia Parnes, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "If consumers choose to receive pop-up ads, so be it. But it violates federal law to secretly install software that forces consumers to get pop-ups that disrupt their computer use."

FTC release, here.

To complain about issues like this to the FTC, link here.

Starbucks Joins the "Data Breach Hall of Shame" by Compromising 60,000 "Partners" (Employees)

According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse -- which tracks data breaches where personal and financial information was compromised -- 97,148,596 million people have had their personal information exposed since February 2005.

Now Starbucks has joined their list by compromising their "own." Four laptops have mysteriously "gone missing" from their corporate headquarters - two of them contained the information of 60,000 "partners" (employees).

My question is - what was on the other two?

In keeping with keeping these breaches as quiet as possible, it's being reported that Starbucks has been looking for the missing laptops since September.

And of course, the official spin from Valerie O'Neil, their spokesperson is, "The company has not received any reports that anyone's personal information has been compromised."

Ms. O'Neil, there might be a reason for this - Thomas Harkins - who was operations director for MasterCard International's fraud division for about twenty years (now COO of the security firm Edentify) told TopTech news:

"There's so many stolen identities in criminals' hands that (identity theft) could easily rise 20 times." "The criminals are still trying to figure out what to do with all the data."

Since "good identities" fetch a measly $10.00 (estimate) each in these carder forums, the "insider" - who is more than likely responsible for this - could make quite a bit of money for their misdeed.

Ms. O'Neil also stated that we don't have to worry about any secret recipe's being on the stolen laptops. Please note the news account stated she "chuckled" when saying this.

Does this mean that Starbucks values their recipes more than their employees? Would they leave recipes "unattended" on outdated laptops gathering dust in a closet?

Missing laptops are a common theme in data breaches and with all the previously reported breaches, the entire affair bespeaks a lack of "common sense" when it comes to security.

After all - most of these breaches we read about could have been avoided - with a little "common sense."

So far as the victims of all this - the employees compromised - the FTC has a lot of good information on what you should do to protect yourself, here.

To read the press version of this story from the AP (courtesy of the Washington Post), click on the title of this post.

FBI is Going After the Carder Forums

There have been a LOT of us (who have been frustrated and amazed) at the carder forums that openly provide a marketplace for "stolen" personal and financial information on the Internet.

Today on Pogowasright.org, I was led to an article by Brian Krebs of the Washington Post - which had (in my opinion) some great news.

Brian is reporting:

"The FBI is cracking down on an international identity theft operation that involves the trading of social security numbers; the sale of stolen credit card account information; and phishing, the practice of using e-mail to trick consumers into handing over personal information, authorities said yesterday."

"Called Operation Cardkeeper, the investigation has brought about the arrests of more than a dozen people in the United States and other countries who are members of online communities that specialize in "carding," the trafficking of stolen identities and credit card and bank account information."

Let's hope that this operation is a BIG success and more arrests are forthcoming!

Brian's report, here.

These Internet crooks have victimized a lot of people and would have no qualms about stealing your grandmother's hard earned money.

Of note, the FBI can be credited (in my humble opinion) with developing the right strategy to address a worldwide problem that reaches across borders. Here's a post, I did about this:

Does Teamwork Make Sense in the Age of Compliance