Happy Halloween… witch tales

A court in Munich, Germany has ruled that a witch must refund a fee paid by a client, for whom her “love spell” failed. The client paid about $1,275 for the witch to help win back her boyfriend, who left her in the fall of 2003.
The court ruled that the service offered by the [...]

Carnival of Fraud 9

Another week of fraud busting and exposing scams! Get your submissions in for next week’s Carnival of Fraud.

David Maister discusses a topic of great interest to me: Companies creating blogs that speak favorably of the company and/or its products, but don’t disclose who the blogger really is. (A public relations person hired [...]

Scam busting: Being indoctrinated into the Mary Kay world

When I first became involved in Mary Kay Cosmetics, I had no intention of making it a career or anything close to it. I saw it merely as a way to make some extra money with a flexible schedule that was under my own control. I thought it would be fun to sell [...]

Hacking into ATMs with a few internet searches

Who would have thought it would be this easy to break into an ATM and run off with all the money?
CNN recetnly reported that a man was able to reprogram an ATM at a gas station, so that it would dispense $20 billions instead of $5 bills. Someone went to work to find out [...]

Guilty pleas in Coca-Cola trade secrets case

Two of the three people accused of conspiring to steal trade secrets from Coca-Cola and sell them to rival Pepsi pleaded guilty on Monday to one federal charge of conspiracy. The attorney for the third accused conspirator, Joya Williams, says she will not plead guilty.
Ibrahim Dimson and Edmund Duhaney each face up to 10 [...]

Jeffrey Skilling gets a long prison sentence

Today a federal judge sentenced former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling to 24 years and 4 months in prison for his conviction on federal charges of conspiracy, fraud and insider trading. Skilling, 52, was also fined over $18 million for his crimes. He was denied bond while waiting to report to prison, and instead [...]

Carnival of Fraud Eight

Welcome to this week’s Carnival of Fraud. As always, we’re showcasing blog posts that discuss issues related to frauds, scams, and other shady dealings. If you’d like your post included in a future Carnival of Fraud, you can make your submission here.

Your Credit Advisor offers tips to help prevent identity theft. This is [...]

MassMutual appeals ruling on firing of CEO Robert O’Connell

An arbitrator ruled that Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. fired its chief executive officer, Robert J. O’Connell, without cause. MassMutual’s board of directors fired him last year after alleging that he improperly increased the value of a retirement account by tens of millions of dollars.
The arbitration panel ruled that MassMutual didn’t follow the [...]

Should internal audit report to the CFO?

Who does your head of internal audit report to? If your company is like many, the chief internal auditor reports to the chief financial officer (CFO). That makes sense to some because they are both a part of the finance function. However, that’s not the best control a company could have.
It’s [...]

Scam Busting: Speaking out against Amway

Eric Scheibeler was once a highly successful IBO (independent business owner) with Amway. He reached the “Founder’s Emerald” status, which represented the top 1/25th of 1% of the IBO’s. After developing his pyramid for almost ten years, Eric discovered documentation that revealed the fraud behind the company.
Eric thought the fraud was just at the [...]

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