PI Newswire

Authorities are investigating an elaborate counterfeiting operation involving stolen mail from throughout Marin County, credit card numbers of more than 200 people, counterfeit cash, fake checks, printers and laptop computers.

The operation came to light Aug. 27, when Novato police Officer Blake Dunbar checked up on a parolee whose name he recognized on a log as one of the guests at the Days Inn motel on Redwood Boulevard.

“I checked the registry for the hotel just to see who was there,” Dunbar said. “We do that from time to time.”

Patrick Fahy, a detective with the Northern California Computer Crimes Task Force in Napa, said Dunbar dropped in at an opportune moment.

“They were right in the middle of making fraudulent checks, counterfeit money, credit cards and drivers’ licenses,” Fahy said. “That officer being very proactive in his job has probably saved hundreds of victims their identity theft, and I don’t know how many thousands of dollars.”

Charges have been filed against three Marin County men in connection with suspected identity theft and counterfeiting, said Barry Borden, Marin’s chief deputy district attorney.

The computer crimes task force, a five-county agency with investigators from throughout the region and managed by Marin District Attorney Ed Berberian, has taken over the investigation. The stolen mail came from Mill Valley, San Rafael and Novato.

“Most of those mailboxes were in rural areas with high-dollar property values,” Fahy said.

He said the identities of several of the Marin mail theft victims were used to make fake checks that were cashed in Sonoma County. After the August arrests, police confiscated two more computers that were in the possession of one of the suspects. One of them is suspected to have been stolen from Loma Verde Elementary School during a 2009 break-in, Fahy said.

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MANHATTAN (CN) – A group of U.S. entertainment agents bilked a Brazilian concert promoter of $435,000 by pretending to book pop star Rihanna for three concerts in Brazil and then pocketing the down payments and “booking fees,” the promoter claims in New York County Supreme Court.

Promoter Unique Sports & Marketing/Ingreso Facil says it got in touch with Araken Barbosa, who was well-connected in the music industry, to help it book a high-profile entertainer for the concerts in Brazil.

Barbosa allegedly introduced Unique to Tony Camillo, a Grammy award-winning composer who claimed he could connect Unique with “agents and promoters that represent high profile musicians.”

Camillo introduced Unique to Adrienne Harris, whom he said he “trusted implicitly,” and her business colleague Vincent Carroll, according to the lawsuit.

Unique says Harris and Carroll gave it a list of possible artists they claimed they could help book, including Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Shakira and Miley Cyrus. Unique says it chose Rihanna because Harris and Carroll claimed she had the earliest availability.

Unique allegedly agreed to pay Barbosa, Harris and Carroll 30 percent of its net profits from Rihanna’s Brazil concerts.

Unique says Harris and Carroll sent it a fake letter, purportedly from Ray Annis, vice president of operations at Rihanna’s label, Roc Nation. The letter authorized Carroll and his company, Vegas Style Entertainment, to act as an intermediary for the deal, according to the complaint.

But Ray Annis didn’t work for Roc Nation, the lawsuit states. Instead, Annis helped Carroll and Harris “perpetrate a fraudulent scheme.”

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NEW ORLEANS (BNO NEWS) – BP on Saturday warned individuals and businesses about potential scams from door-to-door attempts by unauthorized individuals who seek personal information or are charging fees for safety training or other purposes in connection with the Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico oil spill response.

“There have been isolated reports of incidents in which individuals posing as BP employees have gone to people’s homes to scam residents,” Mike Utsler, Chief Operating Officer of BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration Organization, said. “We want the community to know that neither BP nor its claims agency go door-to-door to collect personal data. Any data required for the claims process, employment opportunities, or other matters is accepted only at BP claims centers and through authorized BP employees or representatives.”

He continued, saying that those seeking spill response jobs should know that neither BP nor its contractors are charging fees for any safety instruction or other training. Utlser noted that BP wants everyone along the coast to be safe from predatory or illegal actions that could diminish the restoration efforts that are underway.

BP instructed anyone that suspects fraudulent activity should call BP’s fraud hotline at 877-359-6281, and immediately contact local law enforcement authorities if you’re approached by anyone requesting personal information or payment while claiming to represent BP or the Deepwater Horizon response team.

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Aviva USA Corp. and the federal government are pursuing separate legal actions against a former employee of the life insurer accused of embezzling nearly $6 million from the company through a fraudulent commission payments scheme.

Around April 2004, Phyllis R. Stevens, who was employed as a compensation specialist, “devised a scheme to convert and embezzle funds” from Aviva USA by causing commission payments to be paid from Aviva into a bank account she jointly held with Marla Stevens, her spouse, the company alleges in its civil complaint against both women filed last September in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa.

Phyllis Stevens was also charged last October in an 18-count indictment, with crimes ranging from wire fraud and money laundering to aggravated identity theft, according to a recent ruling in the criminal case by the United States against Stevens.

A trial for both women in the government’s case is set for Aug. 16.

Though Stevens had recently maintained she was incompetent to stand trial because she suffers from multiple personality disorder, Senior U.S. District Judge Ronald E. Longstaff ruled Phyllis Stevens is competent to stand trial on the charges in the indictment. She “is presently able to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against her and assist appropriately in her defense,” Longstaff ruled in the government’s criminal case.

Stevens’ indictment charged that she “used her position as an employee with Aviva USA” to divert almost $6 million of Aviva’s funds into accounts she and Marla Stevens controlled.

The company can’t comment on the government’s case, said Kevin Waetke, a spokesman for Aviva USA, in an e-mail. “However in cases of this nature, where employee misconduct has been detected, we are committed to taking swift and strong actions to protect our company, customers, distribution partners, and employees — including notifying law enforcement when appropriate.”

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A devious mother posed as another parent in an attempt to remove a rival child’s name from a school waiting list.

The woman created a fraudulent Gmail account to fool school authorities at the “outstanding” Coleridge primary school in Crouch End, London.

Using this fake account and quoting the name and correct date of birth of the child, she wrote to education officials at Haringey council and told them to remove the four year-old girl from the list. Which they did.

The ruse unravelled when the victim’s mother phoned to inquire about the progress of her child’s application.

Police have launched an investigation and the council is to improve admission procedures.

The subject of the identity fraud, a mother of two in her late thirties, told the London Evening Standard: “Everyone is desperate to get their kids into a good school but this is extreme behaviour. This person clearly has issues to think doing this is acceptable.”

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Once again, a business customer is on the verge of suing its bank in the wake of fraud losses from corporate account takeover.

Michelle Marisco, owner of Village View Escrow Inc., Redondo Beach, CA, has her attorney ready to file a lawsuit against Professional Business Bank, Pasadena, CA, after losing $465,000 in fraudulent account takeovers.

The crimes occurred in March, when hackers were able to hack the company’s network, steal bank credentials and send 26 consecutive wire transfers out of the country. Marisco says she’s struggled to keep her business afloat ever since.

“I am treading water here,” Marisco says. “I had to let one of three employees go because of this fraud loss.”

Village View Escrow is but the latest business to step forward and threaten legal action against banking institutions following such fraud incidents. Among other high profile cases, Dallas-based Comerica Bank and Michigan’s Experi-Metal Inc are exchanging court motions in their dispute. And Patco, a Sanford, Maine-based construction company, has sued Ocean Bank of Portsmouth, NH, for failing to detect and prevent over $500,000 in bogus transfers.

How it Happened

Professional Business Bank did not respond to requests for comment on the Village View Escrow incident.

But Marisco says that the 26 wire transfers were made without her knowledge, and she never received any email notification from the bank, as she normally would when money was moved out of the escrow account. The cybercriminals apparently disabled an email verification service offered by the bank.

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Apple on Tuesday said it has taken steps to remedy a situation that arose over the weekend with one of its iPhone developers, who it said used other people’s iTunes accounts to purchase his apps.

“The developer Thuat Nguyen and his apps were removed from the App Store for violating the developer Program License Agreement, including fraudulent purchases,” Apple said in an e-mail sent to CNET on Tuesday.

Nguyen showed an incredible increase in sales over the July 4 holiday weekend, to the point where this one developer accounted for 42 of the top 50 books by revenue. At the same time, users were reporting that their accounts had been hacked into and used to purchase apps on the App Store.

Despite that, Apple said the iTunes servers were not compromised. “An extremely small percentage of users, about 400 of the 150 million iTunes users–that is less than 0.0003 percent of iTunes users–were impacted,” an Apple representative said.

Apple also reassured customers that Nguyen and other developers “do not receive any iTunes confidential customer data when an app is downloaded.”

AppleInsider on Sunday said legitimate iTunes accounts are under organized attacks from people in China. Information is reportedly sold to users for a few dollars and used until the credit card is turned off.

Apple said it has implemented a new security measure on the iTunes Store to help curb such activity in the future. Beginning on Tuesday, users will be asked to enter the code on the back of their credit card more frequently, when making purchases from the iTunes Store or when accessing their accounts from a different computer.

Apple recommends contacting your financial institution, if you notice unauthorized iTunes charges on your credit card. The company also recommends changing your iTunes password immediately. You can find other iTunes security tips on Apple’s Support Web site.

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One detail in the ongoing “illegal” Russian spy scandal in the USA, seems to involve the abuse of a British Passport.

BBC copy of the District Court Indictment against 9 illegal spy suspects (.pdf) i.e. Christopher R. Metsos, Richard Murphy, Cynthia Murphy, Donald Howard Heathfield, Tracey Lee Ann Foley, Michael Zottoli, Patricia Mills, Juan Lazaro and Vicky Pelaez.

Will the Home Office and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office investigate this alleged abuse of the British Passport system by Yet Another Foreign Intelligence Agency ?

It is still unclear whether or not an Israeli diplomat was actually expelled, following the abuse of British passports in the Dubai assassination affair

See the previous Spy Blog article and comments: Has the Israeli diplomat / intelligence officer been expelled from London yet ?

Note that this Internet Message , presumably hidden through stenography and / or encryption, appears, given the abbreviations, to have been written in English rather than Russian.

N.B. the current British Passports no longer force you to sign page 32, your signature on the specified box on application / renewal form, which your are warned to to exceed the boundaries of, is digitised.

How this is meant to be of any use it for comparison with your “usual signature” ? Many people will had had to modify their “usual signature” to fit within the cramped, “one size fits all” box on the application form. To then reduce this in size by a factor of two as it appears on the front of the laminated main passport page, completely devalues this as a “security” feature.

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Easy-to-obtain Puerto Rican birth certificates are such a hot commodity among identity thieves that all Puerto Ricans born before July 1 will need to apply for a more secure replacement before they are voided on September 30.

Over the weekend, the Puerto Rican government granted a 3-month extension for invalidating the certificates from July 1 to to September 30, but the cutoff date for voided documents still applies to those issued on or before June 30, according to The Providence Journal.

Starting Thursday, the island will begin issuing security-enhanced birth certificates. More than 5 million natives of the territory, 1.4 million of whom live inside the continental United States, must now reapply for the new birth certificates under a Puerto Rican law passed in December in collaboration with the U.S. departments of State and Homeland Security.

But that move doesn’t eliminate an unknown number of fraudulent but valid passports and drivers’ licenses acquired using stolen documents and currently circulating throughout the United States. According to the Associated Press:

The law only aims to make it harder to get false documents in the future, but does nothing to target those already in circulation. And a person holding a stolen birth certificate could conceivably apply to receive one of the new ones, which will have special seals and be printed on counterfeit-proof paper — though they would have to present other personal data that they might not have, McClintock said.

According to Allentown, Pennsylvania’s The Morning Call, 40 percent of all passport fraud cases start with a stolen Puerto Rican birth certificate. Identity thieves have targeted Puerto Ricans because their names provide the perfect cover for Hispanic illegal immigrants entering the country and are worth as much as $6,000 on the black market. The documents are so valuable that drug addicts trade them for a fix, the AP reports, while a Puerto Rico-based FBI agent said he worries these documents could be used by terrorists.

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North Miami Beach police said that some of the iPhone applications that make life easier for users can also make life easier for criminals.

“If it’s a benefit to society, it can also be used against society,” said Officer Tom Carney, of the North Miami Beach Police Department.

Carney said law enforcement is struggling to keep up with the iPhone’s technology.

“Technology is usually way ahead of everything, so we usually have to play catch-up,” he said.

Local 10’s Sasha Andrade sat down with Justin Wetherille, the owner of an iPhone repair business called U Break I Fix, to find out why.

First, Wetherille talked about the Trapster and Marco Popo apps, which pinpoint police checkpoints. Wetherille said Marco Popo also tells users where red light cameras and speed traps are located.

If you tap on the caller ID faker app, you can change the way your number appears on someone else’s screen. It’s usually used for prank calls but, Wetherille said there could be other uses.

“I can see where it can come off as bad, people trying to disguise themselves as a credit card company, doing fraudulent things,” he said.

There’s also a new type of skimmer that attaches to the iPhone and can run credit cards. It’s good for small businesses. It’s also good for con artists.

“You can run someone’s card right there, right then, authorize it and charge it for as much as you want,” said Wetherille.

According to Carney, the police departments don’t have the kind of funding that Apple does.

A more advanced version of the iPhone is in stores on June 23. It is expected to be packed with even more technology. How do crime fighters fight back?

“We can’t. We just have to make people aware, and that’s what we’re here for,” said Carney.

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PHOENIX — Sheriff’s deputies raided two Sizzler steak house restaurants in Phoenix, arresting nine employees who are suspected of being illegal immigrants and using fraudulent documents to get jobs.

The Saturday raids were part of an investigation into whether the operators of the two Sizzler locations broke a civil law by knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office says in a statement that it received a tip from a former Sizzler manager who claimed he had been fired for his refusal to hire employees without the proper documents.

A message left at one of the two restaurants wasn’t immediately returned Saturday afternoon. A manager at the other restaurant declined to provide his name and publicly comment on the raid.

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Remember the health-care issue? Well, the fiscal consequences of the socialized medicine scheme enacted by President Barack Obama and Congress just two months ago are already beginning to snowball.

Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, was one of the key architects and advocates of ObamaCare. He was back on the House floor on Friday delivering an urgent plea to fellow Democrats that inadvertently — or, perhaps, unavoidably — revealed the fraudulent nature of our new national health-care regime.

It was supposed to save the taxpayers money, remember?

“This legislation will lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government, reducing our deficit by over $1 trillion in the next two decades,” Obama said when he signed the bill.

On Friday, Waxman declared that the sky is about to fall on the Medicare system. He went to the House floor to “urge” his colleagues to vote for a bill that includes $102 billion in new federal spending and would add $54 billion to the national debt over the next 10 years — $25 billion of it in the few months remaining in this fiscal year.

Why did Waxman believe this new borrowing-and-spending was necessary?

“It’s absolutely critical to do this if we are going to keep doctors in Medicare and keep the promise to Medicare beneficiaries that they will have access to physicians’ services,” said Waxman. “This provision will provide a moderate increase in physicians’ fees, 2.2 percent for the rest of the year. If we don’t act, doctors’ fees will be cut by 21 percent from where they are today. This would be unconscionable.”

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