From the Star-Tribune:

The couple and their three children, ages 2, 3 and 5, were living in a crowded trailer park in Blaine, when Bradley saw a newspaper advertisement touting real estate as the next quick way to make money.

"I didn't want to paint the rest of my life, and the trailer park scene was about as bad as parts of north Minneapolis," Bradley said.

Over a steak dinner at a Perkins restaurant, the couple met with two salesmen from Executive Premier Management Inc., a firm in Wayzata that described itself as a "property management company."

With no money down, they could buy properties in a fast-growing new subdivision in Otsego known as Otsego Preserve, near Interstate 94 and the Albertville outlet mall. They would get $5,000 in upfront cash for each house they purchased.

The Collins were also told that home values in Wright County were appreciating at 8 percent a year, much faster than the national average. At that rate, the Collins could make $24,000 a year for every $300,0000 house they bought in the county. They were told that rental income would cover their mortgage payments until the houses were sold.

Collin said the management company helped him apply for four mortgages within days of each other. The firm used a different lender each time, a way to hide from the banks the debt he was taking on and wouldn't be able to afford on his net income as a contractor, which averages about $60,000 a year. The "no documentation" and "no down payment" loans carried a much higher interest rate than conventional mortgages.

The couple purchased four houses — each for about $300,000 — hoping to quadruple their profits. The Collins received a $5,000 check after each closing. The cash payments were not disclosed on the mortgage statements sent to the bank, which Collin says he has since learned is illegal.

Executive Premier Management is not registered with the state, and the telephone number given to Collin no longer works. The two salespeople, Nathan Nordvik and Jonathan Matheson, do not have listed telephone numbers and could not be reached for comment.

Housing Bets Gone Bad [Star-Tribune] (Thanks, Rob!)
(Photo:Glen Stubbe, Star Tribune )

You could say the same thing about the TJ Maxx data breach. In that case, people's debit cards and PIN blocks were stolen. PIN blocks contain the PIN numbers you punch in at checkout, and they're encrypted as well, most likely in a way to make "unauthorized access extremely unlikely and difficult." But guess what again? Russian scammers were able to decode the PIN blocks and had cloned people's debit cards and went on an ATM withdrawal spree. It's not too far to think that motivated individuals might do the same with this magnetic tape. And there's no better motivator than filthy lucre.

GE Money Bank said it took two months to access the tapes and reconstruct whose Social Security numbers were possibly compromised. The tape loss was discovered in October. When did our readers start noticing these credit card fraud problems? Late December. November, December, that's also two months after October. So then, perhaps it also took our theoretical scammers two months to exploit the customer data.

It's entirely possible that the events are not related, and that the surge in credit card fraud could be a collection of random identity theft blips that just happen to spike at the same time. But it seems odd that on Tuesday Citibank tells one of our readers that his card has to be reissued because a "major retailer," had a data breach, "the kind of thing we would probably hear about in the news," and then on Friday, blamo, JC Penney and hundreds of other retailers report a missing tape with the data on over a half a million customers.

PREVIOUSLY: "Major Retailer's" Data Breach Results In Wave Of Credit Card Fraud?

However, hardcore video game collectors were irked. Reprints could not be distinguished from the originals, which brought the value down of their collection. That $85 copy of Persona 2 purchased used, dropped nearly 50% in price. Speculators who snagged up copies of Disgaea couldn t profit from eBay sales. Especially proud collectors weren t perturbed by the economics, but more that they lost exclusivity of being the only one on the block with these a rare game. In a way Game Quest Direct angered the audience they were searching for. On the other hand a bunch of gamers were happy with the situation. More gamers got to try out Disgaea and at a reasonable price.