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fraud

A report by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says that there has been an increase of 5% in the number of reports by the elderly of fraud committed against them. The total losses, however, increased by 22%. And they are not the only victims, the ACCC found.

Londoners, pay attention: slag isn't what you think it is. For those from mining communities, slag is what's left over after coal, etc. has been washed. It's poured into conical mountains and left lying around, in theory to dry but occasionally the slurry undermines it and it slides down whatever gradient it is sitting on, sometimes with terrible results, as in the Welsh mining village of Aberfan in 1966. What might be in those "ancient slag" heaps in addition to wet dust? A 77 year old Californian claimed to know and to have a method of extracting the good stuff.

FCRO Subsection: 

The return, with increasing frequency, of internet domain name fraud, is usually at least accompanied by a form of what the fraudster hopes is a sufficient disclaimer to prevent prosecution. The latest iteration omits even that and resorts to blatant threats. Also, it seems that the criminals have obtained access to the domain sevenresortsnet.com to send mail and to present a landing page for those who click to respond to the demand.

CoNet Section: 

The flood of sextortion e-mails demanding payment in bitcoin continues. However, while the body of the mails is increasingly standardised, the anti-avoidance methods used by the criminals is mutating, analysis of reports at GlobalKYC.com indicates.

CoNet Section: 

Yet another case of false and fraudulent billing under the USA's Medicare system demonstrates how easy it is for medical practitioners to defraud both national and insurance-backed medical funding providers in the USA and elsewhere. Benjamin Rosenberg, D.D.S., 58, of Los Angeles, pleaded guilty to a sample count of health care fraud before U.S. District Judge John A. Kronstadt of the Central District of California. Sentencing will take place on May 23 before Judge Kronstadt. There weren't many big insurance companies he didn't defraud.

FCRO Subsection: 

Fraud is cyclical. Historically, frauds would lie dormant for, perhaps, five years then come back. But the cycle has become much shorter, often only two or three months. Some frauds have become perpetual, aided by e-mail that hits so many prospective targets at such a low marginal cost. Others have a few days in the light before disappearing into relative darkness for a matter of weeks, perhaps because the targets are sorted by e.g. alphabetical order, into batches. One such is fraud relating to domain names. They take several forms but the same basic structure. The fraudster hints that, if you don't pay up, your domain name will stop working. Here's the anatomy of one such fraudulent mail that has reached us multiple times in the past several days.

CoNet Section: 

It's not rocket science. Ever since (I think) 1998 when the BBC's lawyers blocked an explanation I gave to BBC TV on how the nature of HTML facilitates on-line fraud (the feared that it would increase the number of criminals using it) criminals have, indeed, used certain features of HTML to hide what they are up to and ordinary people have lost many millions of dollars and have suffered innumerable attacks on their computers simply because of one, very simple, trick, writes Nigel Morris-Cotterill

CoNet Section: 

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority released this statement at 17:30 HKG time (11:30 GMT) today.

BIScom Subsection: 

The fraud is old hat. The bitcoin address is, presumably, valid and enforcement agencies may wish to track and attack it. And, of course, any financial institution which has records of it should identify it as a suspicious account.

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FCRO Subsection: 

It has come to our notice that one or more persons are fraudulently delivering e-mail purporting to come from BankingInsuranceSecurities.com. It is impossible for that mail to originate at that domain and you may safely blacklist it at server level. For more information, see below.

The fraud has interesting timing and holders of internet domains should be aware of a possible new threat to reputation. The threat does not, on the face of it, have any immediate cyber-security implications but there may be hidden dangers.

BIScom Subsection: 

It is often said (by our boss, Nigel Morris-Cotterill) that those who succumb to Nigerian (419) frauds are either greedy or stupid. And that old scams never die, they just hibernate for a while and that spam-scammers often time their contact to hit while people are in a sanguine or relaxed state of mind. This spam-scam, he says, proves all of that.

It's now clear: posting message on social media such as twitter, facebook and instagram is regarded by the USA's Securities and Exchange Commission in the same light as any other statement and the consequences for false or misleading information are the same as any other means of disseminating such information. Elon Musk, hardly a shrinking violet when it comes to grabbing headlines for his various ventures, is the defendant in a civil action brought by the SEC: what happens here will define both how corporations use social media and whether others who have posted material they should not have done will be brought to book.

BIScom Subsection: 

ASIC has taken action to stop several proposed initial coin offerings or token-generation events (together, "ICO"s), targeting retail investors.

Notice issued by FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority relating to pump and dump and other frauds.

Beware of Stock Fraud in the Wake of Hurricane Florence

It may not be possible to predict when the next natural disaster will take place. What you can count on is that when it happens, scammers will try to take advantage of the situation. The tips below will help you protect yourself at any time.

It takes something of a cheek to solicit investment in a fraudulent scheme and to publish a website with comments falsely attributed to the Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore who also happens to be the country's deputy prime minister. But as MAS has warned, that's exactly what someone is doing...

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