PI Newswire

Nicholas Taaffe sued the NHS for £500,000 after his wife, Eleanor, died of heart failure following an error by paramedics, who had failed to take her to hospital six days before she died.

Although a judge ruled that the paramedics had been negligent, he almost halved the amount Mr Taaffe would have received thanks to his wife’s well-paid job because he said the marriage would probably not have survived.

Sir Robert Nelson, the judge, also said that agreeing to another part of Mr Taaffe’s claim, for the loss of “a spouse’s love and affection”, would have been inappropriate and “highly artificial” given his infidelity.

The judge said: “I have come to the clear conclusion … that there was a substantial risk that the marriage would not have lasted for any significant number of years after February 2007.

“Of course, there can be no certainty in these matters, but the evidence satisfies me that the relationship between them was so poor, and the underlying continuing problems between them so grave, that there was a very high risk that their relationship and marriage would have ceased.

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Forget your broken heart and wounded pride. The true cost of Internet romance scams is $50,399,536.16, the amount of losses reported by Americans in 2011 to the The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a low-key quasi-project of the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center.

Women constituted more than $39 million of the losses, with the most vulnerable segments of the population being specifically women in their fifties and over the age of 60; however, even within that group, women in their fifties are more likely to hand over large sums of money to scammers than their older counterparts. As the IC3 soberly puts it, the scammers “use poetry, flowers and other gifts to reel in victims, while declaring ‘undying love.’” Then, of course, the PayPal payments and checks start arriving.

The IC3 is one of the nation’s top authorities on cybercrime, and each year it releases an annual report that details the latest trends in online fraud. Unlike most government reports, the IC3′s annual Internet crime report is an engrossing read that melds the craziest parts of Elmore Leonard, David Pogue, and inbox spam into a coherent whole.

In addition to outlining details of complaints about online romance schemes, the report states that work-from-home scams are the most prevalent form of Internet fraud in America after stolen credit card numbers. More than 17,000 Americans reported victimization by work-from-home scams last year–and lost over $20 million in the process. Unscrupulous criminals, often based in Nigeria, Russia, or elsewhere, use Craigslist, Monster.com, newspaper classifieds, and other outlets to rope the naïve unemployed into envelope-stuffing or financial services “jobs” that are really fronts for money laundering and identity theft. In one case highlighted by the IC3, a woman in Long Beach, California was arrested by police on suspicion of facilitating the U.S. operations of a Nigerian work-from-home scam. The woman would allegedly accept packages, sell the contents, retain 20% of the profits and then wire the remaining funds back to unknown suspects in Nigeria. All the victims “had posted their resumes or ads online seeking job opportunities.”

Other scams are just plain ingenious. More than 70 New York residents received emails from a spoofed nyc.gov email address that claimed to be from the New York State Police. The New Yorkers, who apparently failed to realize that the New York State Police were unlikely to send mail from a New York City government Internet email addresses, were told they had an outstanding traffic ticket to pay. Payment was supposed to be sent to an address in the upstate town of Chatham Hall–which does not exist. What did exist, however, were the malware-loaded file attachments recipients were instructed to download for “antivirus” purposes.

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Social media, especially Facebook, can open up an entirely new world of communication and connection for users. As many have discovered, though, it has a dark side.

One of the ways that dark side manifests itself is the fact that divorce attorneys are reporting that more and more married couples are splitting up because of affairs that begin on Facebook.

For one man, a seemingly strong marriage of more than two decades came crashing down when he got a phone call from an unidentified stranger.

“She said, ‘I hate to have to tell you this, but I think that my husband and your wife are having an affair.’” he said. The man says his wife’s affair began with a seemingly innocent reconnection over the internet with an old high school boyfriend.

He’s not sure if his wife’s walk down memory lane began on Facebook or on another networking site, classmates.com, but regardless of where it started, social media provided her with the escape.

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When it comes to adultery, women tend to accumulate more extra-marital lovers than men, according to new research.

Researchers conducted a survey of 4,000 self-professed adulterers and found that women are more promiscuous than men, with women having an average of 2.3 secret lovers compared to men averaging at 1.8 mistresses.

Results from the UK Adultery Survey 2012 show that once women decide to cheat, they are significantly more likely to play the field in search for love compared to cheating men, who report wanting sexual excitement, boredom with their marriage and the need for an ego boost as being the top reasons for being unfaithful.

Women, on the other hand, are far more likely to list improving their self-esteem, romance and emotional fulfillment as the main reasons for cheating.

Female cheaters are also significantly more likely to fall in love with their extra-marital lovers than male adulterers with 57 percent of female participants report being in love with their current affair partner and only 27 percent of male participants reporting the love for their illicit lovers.

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Financial infidelity appears to be on the rise. No matter how close the marriage, apparently there are often secrets around money. A new study suggests it’s mostly women who are financially cheating on their husbands.

4 On Your Side Money Saver Suzanne McCarroll found happily married couples who admit to keeping some money secrets. A lot of the secrecy revolves around shopping and credit cards.

The majority of those who admit financial cheating say they have a credit card tucked away that their spouse knows nothing about.

Patty Spurway keeps her shopping bags in her trunk so her husband of 40 years doesn’t know what she buys.

“It’s easier on me and easier on the marriage,” Spurway said.

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Whenever a client tells me that her husband has said, “We don’t need lawyers,” I become wary. When he is self-employed, I become downright suspicious. If his career is in high finance, my suspicion grows twofold.

My reaction is based on years of seeing this same pattern play out. I’m not a financial divorce specialist, but I am an experienced divorce therapist and one of the main reasons I began working with people (primarily women) in this realm is that I saw the less financially savvy spouse or the “outspouse” (the term used by the court for the spouse who does not own the business from which income may be hidden) fall victim to the spouse in charge of the finances.

All too often, the reason the knowledgeable spouse doesn’t want attorneys or accountants involved is that they don’t want their schemes to be uncovered.

Divorce is hard enough, especially if an affair is involved, but add to it an additional layer of deception and betrayal and it can make the trusting spouse wonder if the entire marriage had been a sham. It’s nothing short of devastating.

People hide income to avoid paying taxes — a federal crime — and, during a divorce, people hide income and assets to avoid paying higher child and spousal support.

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Frank VanderSloot, an Idaho billionaire and one of Romney’s donors, appears to be under attack by a Democrat who is doing opposition research against him. VanderSloot appeared very publicly on a list cited by the Barack Obama campaign website, describing him and others as wealthy individuals with less than reputable record. Now, this Idaho CEO has discovered that a private investigator is digging for more dirt on him, specifically looking for his divorce papers.

Is it fair to target private citizens when they make donations to public politicians? Chris Hahn and Chris Plante joined America Live today to discuss this matter.

Hahn said this disturbs him a little, but went on to say, “When you put yourself out there in such a big way, you’ve got to expect some scrutiny.”

Plante doesn’t see it that way. He said that just because Vandersloot donated money for a political cause, doesn’t mean he and his family need to be demonized. He said, “This president has a long list of enemies; if you’re not on President Obama’s enemy list, I don’t know what you’re doing wrong.”

Megyn asked Hahn how he’d feel if someone was investigating his own personal records. While Hahn agrees it should be off limits to look into donors’ personal lives, he said that when someone gives $1 million you can’t be that surprised.

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The man who founded Best Buy announced his resignation today, after an investigation found that Richard Schulze had known about ex-CEO Brian Dunn’s affair with a female employee, but hadn’t alerted the audit committee, the AP reports. Best Buy had until now kept mum about reports of Dunn’s dalliances, but today it announced that an outside law firm it had hired to investigate found that Dunn had a “close personal relationship” with a female employee.

Investigators said Dunn had exercised poor judgment, but had not, as had been rumored, misused company resources or aircraft. But the inquiry found the Schulze had acted improperly by keeping the relationship quiet. Schulze has been with the company for its entire 46-year history. He will be replaced by audit committee chair Hatim Tyabji.

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A jobless woman who was visiting her husband in hospital ended up stabbing him over suspicions of his extramarital affairs.

This happened on September 22 last year, which was the day he was to be discharged.

The court heard that Quek Chin Fern, 38, visited her husband at Singapore General Hospital, where he had been receiving treatment for acid burn injuries sustained in an earlier assault by three unknown assailants.

During the visit, she raised the issue of his suspected infidelity.

This escalated into an argument.

Quek then took out a knife from her bag and swung it at her husband.

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Meet Mecklenburg County’s top two deadbeat moms: 40-year-old Bridgett Barbour owes more than $10,000 in child support and 51-year-old Patricia Ramirez owes more than $20,000, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

“(I’m) seeing a lot more situations where mom is not the good guy anymore,” says local family law attorney Tonya Graser Smith. She says deadbeat moms make up 25% of her child custody caseload. That’s up from about 15% five years ago.

When deadbeat parents don’t pay, state and federal resources are used to take care of their children. Smith says, “It becomes every body’s problem and everybody ends up having to pay for that parent that’s not in place.”

“The ones we’re coming across are getting a lot better at hiding,” says local private investigator Keith Hollen. He says over the past few years, more dads have hired him to find deadbeat moms. At first, it was economy driven. Women went back to work, earned more money, but didn’t want to pay more child support. Now, Hollen says many of his cases involve deadbeat moms who are starting new businesses and losing interest in their kids.

“We are finding it’s a lot of females that are doing that. They’re just trying to get that established and to do that, it’ll take 24 hours, 7 days a week almost,” he says.

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NOT long ago suspicious spouses had to depend on hoodlums and thugs in seedy private investigation firms, located alongside brothels in dark alleys of rundown neighbourhoods.

Today, one need only catch a taxi or bus, or take a look behind one, to nab a straying partner.

MVD International chief strategy officer (CSO), Rebecca C., says their clever advertising campaign has got the phones ringing off the hook.

“I first penned the phrase ‘Catch Cheating Spouse’ for an investigation campaign in Singapore. It was well received by the people there, I suppose because adultery was and still is one of the highest investigated matters in the country.

“Two years later, it was only natural to start running the same campaign here in Malaysia. We were not sure how the public would respond, but the feedback has been overwhelming.

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NOT long ago suspicious spouses had to depend on hoodlums and thugs in seedy private investigation firms, located alongside brothels in dark alleys of rundown neighbourhoods.

Today, one need only catch a taxi or bus, or take a look behind one, to nab a straying partner.

MVD International chief strategy officer (CSO), Rebecca C., says their clever advertising campaign has got the phones ringing off the hook.

“I first penned the phrase ‘Catch Cheating Spouse’ for an investigation campaign in Singapore. It was well received by the people there, I suppose because adultery was and still is one of the highest investigated matters in the country.

“Two years later, it was only natural to start running the same campaign here in Malaysia. We were not sure how the public would respond, but the feedback has been overwhelming.

“Since the ads first appeared at the back of taxis and buses in the Klang Valley, we’ve been getting calls asking us to investigate spouses every single day.

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