Posted by Tracy Coenen on December 30, 2005 · Leave a Comment
Testing of airport screeners, using images of guns and banned objects during the airport X-ray of bags, had some interesting results. When using a library of 250 images, the performance of the screeners (how often they detected the items) went up over time. When the image library was changed, performance dropped dramatically.
The new images were [...]
Posted by Tracy Coenen on December 28, 2005 · Leave a Comment
49 people have been indicted for participating in a scheme that defrauded the Red Cross out of hundreds of thousands of dollars earmarked for Katrina victims. 17 of the people worked at a Red Cross claim center in Bakersfield, CA. This call center received calls from victims and authorized payments to them. The remaining fraudsters [...]
Posted by Tracy Coenen on December 27, 2005 · Leave a Comment
My all-time favorite doughnut maker is still feeling the pain related its recent accounting woes.
The company’s New England franchisee is giving up rights to Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, and is also giving back stores in those states. In addition, a franchisee in Philadelphia has closed its four locations.
All this is happening in light of [...]
Posted by Tracy Coenen on December 23, 2005 · Leave a Comment
Gary Linsey Slater of Harrogate, Tennesee was sentenced to nine years in prison for committing mail fraud and money laundering. Slater owned a company that leased employees to coal mining companies. He conspired to hide the number of employees employed through his company in order to reduce his workers compensation premiums.
The company employed over 100 [...]
Posted by Tracy Coenen on December 22, 2005 · Leave a Comment
A tax audit creates fear and anger in individuals and business owners. It also creates a need. The need for documentation to prove income and expenses when the auditor is scrutinizing them. It is not uncommon for documents to be lost or discarded by business owners and individuals.
As soon as a taxpayer is notified of [...]
Posted by Tracy Coenen on December 20, 2005 · Leave a Comment
An e-mail directing someone to a website called ebaychristmas.net was reported to eBay as potentially fraudulent. The website requested users to enter their eBay user names and passwords, as well as information about e-mail accounts.
The investigations team for eBay reported back that the email was an official email from eBay. The recipient of the original [...]
Posted by Tracy Coenen on December 19, 2005 · Leave a Comment
The former world Santa of the Year, Ron Horniblew of Great Britain, suspects a campaign to prevent him from winning the crown again is damaging “Santa morale”.
Each year, up to 50 Santas compete for the world title in the Santa Winter Games. This year the contest came down to the reindeer sled race. While Horniblew’s [...]
Posted by Tracy Coenen on December 16, 2005 · Leave a Comment
Richard Scrushy, former CEO of HealthSouth, is suing the company for $70 million related to his March 2003 firing. He was fired following the discovery of a $2.7 billion fraud at the company.
Scrushy claims that since he was acquitted on 36 criminal counts related to the fraud, he should still be an employee. His employment [...]
Posted by Tracy Coenen on December 15, 2005 · Leave a Comment
If yesterday’s post about ID theft made you feel badly, this post will probably make you feel worse.
The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has assembled a listing of the security breaches since the February 15, 2005 Choicepoint breach. These breaches were reported to consumers because the compromised information included Social Security numbers, account numbers, and/or driver’s license [...]
Posted by Tracy Coenen on December 14, 2005 · 2 Comments
An analysis done by ID Analytics, a San Diego fraud detection company, shows that people whose personal data is compromised have a low risk of becoming victims of identity theft. This includes those whose credit cards are lost or stolen.
Their findings showed that the smaller the security breach (how many people’s identifying data is compromised [...]
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