Tag: FRAUD

Here's a fascinating look at the world of Sakawa, a unique blend of e-mail fraud and African religious tradition that has become a cultural force in Ghana. The young and unemployed people who use scavenged computers and Juju priests for their scams also drive a thriving music and movie scene centered on the lives of e-mail conmen. The video above is 20-minutes long, so if you're working, ...

Police in South Carolina have arrested a teenage boy who has been accused of impersonating an officer on Facebook in hopes that his false identity would convince women to have sex with him. Horry County police were alerted to the teen's scheme on March 14th, when a woman named Tonya Godwin complained that an officer was harassing her on Facebook. According to Godwin, a man going by the name of ...

Early this morning, Anonymous released a collection of internal e-mails sent between employees at Bank of America, in an attempt to expose what the group calls widespread "corruption and fraud." The e-mails, allegedly obtained from a former bank employee, document discussions among workers at Balboa Insurance, a Bank of America subsidiary that offers mortgage and car insurance to banks and home ...

Well, you dun goofed, Internet. When 21-year-old St. Lawrence University student Maya Gilsey took to Reddit to solicit donations for Golisano Children's Hospital in Syracuse, New York, the hive mind immediately branded her a fraud. A Redditor named Beertime led the pack against a user named mtcame07, who pledged to shave her head in solidarity with cancer-stricken children at Golisano, while also ...

The father-son team behind a massive 'scareware' scam will have to pay $8.2 million to the Federal Trade Commission, in order to settle a complaint filed by the government agency. Marc D'Souza and his father Maurice were allegedly at the center of the scam, which tricked Internet users into buying fake security software to combat computer infections that didn't really exist. The operators ...

Update: Facebook has temporarily suspended contact information sharing with developers. Share On Friday, Facebook quietly announced that app developers will now be able to access users' home addresses and mobile numbers, in a move that has already raised concerns among privacy advocates and security experts alike. Developers who take advantage of this new feature will still have to request ...

If you're a spectacularly average guy looking for love on Facebook, you could spend some time meticulously crafting your profile with Photoshopped self-shots, or quirky interests, in an attempt to make yourself seem more handsome and/or interesting than you really are. Or, if you have absolutely no soul whatsoever, you could just pretend that you're a dead soldier, and use someone else's heroism ...

Thousands of iTunes accounts have been stolen, and are now for sale in China. According to the BBC, up to 50,000 fraudulent accounts are being sold on taobao.com, a Chinese version of eBay, at prices ranging from 1 yuan ($0.15) to 200 yuan ($30). Many listings for the accounts guarantee that buyers will enjoy unlimited downloads, including "software, games, movies, music and so on." Free ...

Watch out, West Coast Web jesters, because a new California law prohibiting online impersonations officially went into effect this weekend. Violators of SB 1411 will face a fine of up to $1,000 and/or a year in jail. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed SB 1411 back in September, and immediately drew the ire of free speech advocates from around the country. While the law doesn't explicitly ...

Share A prison guard in Rhode Island has been arrested after he admitted to posing as his boss on Facebook. The guard, 27-year-old Matthew Lacroix, reportedly created the fake profile using a computer at his neighbor's house. Authorities first discovered the page in August, and eventually tracked the IP address to the home. Eventually, Lacroix pleaded guilty to "use of fraudulent information," ...

Poor Winklevoss twins. First, Mark Zuckerberg "stole" their idea for Facebook, and turned it into a billion-dollar social networking empire. Then, in 2008, Zuck had the gall to compromise on a $65 million settlement -- which, in these troubled economic times, isn't nearly enough to put bread on Tyler and Cameron's dinner table. That's why the square-jawed twins have relaunched their legal ...

Reuters reports that a recent study conducted by a risk consulting firm shows that, worldwide, electronic theft is now costing companies more than physical theft. While it's a marginal difference, according to Kroll's Global Fraud Report, electronic theft accounts for about 27.3-percent of fraud losses reported globally while physical theft accounts for about 27.2-percent of that total. Fraud in ...

There was once a time when crooked dock workers pulled off relatively straightforward, conventional crimes, like drug smuggling or human trafficking. Today's law-breaking longshoremen, however, are apparently expanding and embellishing their criminal operations, thanks to social networking. As Reuters reports, federal prosecutors have charged 11 suspects, including one New York Harbor ...

As the head of the world's most important cross-border police force, INTERPOL security general Ronald K. Noble clearly knows a thing or two about security -- except, apparently, when it comes to Facebook. At the inaugural INTERPOL Information Security Conference held in Hong Kong last week, Noble revealed that his personal identity was stolen through Facebook. According to the Daily Mail, ...

According to a new study from McAfee, searching for "free" things online can significantly increase your chances of landing on a site with malicious software. In the report (PDF), McAfee addresses the "true cost of free entertainment," suggesting that searches for free music or ringtones can increase the chances of finding a malicious site by 300-percent, while searching for the lyrics of a ...