When you pay in advance for tickets to a food festival, you expect an event that serves large quantities of said food, right? Yet people who bought tickets to pizza and burger festivals held in Brooklyn on Saturday found tiny and cold slices of pizza, warm drinks, and a long wait before they could even get to that subpar food. [More]
Crime & Fraud
Only One Bank Was Indicted For Mortgage Fraud Tied To The 2008 Collapse — And It Was Innocent
By 9.12.17
If you’ve walked Canal St. in lower Manhattan’s Chinatown, you’ve probably passed by the modest headquarters of Abacus Federal Savings, a family run community bank that has served New York City’s Chinese immigrant population for more than three decades. It’s more than a mile away — and a world apart — from the more famous banks on Wall Street whose reckless behaviors during the housing bubble led to trillions of dollars in economic loss, the failure of financial institutions nationwide, an unprecedented federal bailout of the banking and auto industries, and continued fraud by big banks in a rush to foreclose on large numbers of homes as quickly as possible. [More]
Don’t Take Equifax Up On Its Credit Monitoring Offer
By 9.11.17
As anyone able to tear themselves away from hurricane bulletins last week knows, credit reporting bureau Equifax shared the news that the personal information of 143 million Americans was compromised earlier this year. Yet while plenty of companies, including Equifax itself, are happy to give or sell you credit monitoring services after such a massive breach, that doesn’t mean you should take them up on it. [More]
Equifax Announces Data Breach Affecting 143 Million Customers
By 9.7.17
Credit reporting agencies have access to basically all of our most sensitive financial information, and we pretty much all have our records collected and collated by them whether we want to or not. So that makes it a particularly big problem when one of the big three credit agencies in the country has to announce a data breach affecting all its customers, because that basically means all of us… and this one is bad. [More]
Feds Break Up $20M Shoplifting Ring That Stole Clothing From Coast To Coast
By 9.7.17
Federal authorities say they’ve arrested more than a dozen people and broken up a massive shoplifting network that trafficked in some $20 million in apparel and other items stolen from stores all over the country and then sold in Mexico. [More]
Sports Radio Host Arrested In $5.6M Investment Fraud Involving Non-Existent Concert Tickets
By 9.6.17
Longtime New York sports radio personality Craig Carton was arrested this morning on federal charges of securities and wire fraud in connection with a scheme that allegedly tricked investors into thinking their money was being spent on blocks of concert tickets that would then be resold at a huge profit. Problem is, say prosecutors, those tickets didn’t exist, and the money just went to cover Carton’s casino debts. [More]
Fake Architect Sentenced In ‘Vandelay Industries’ Investigation
By 9.5.17
If someone is a successful architect, people assume that he or she actually is an architect. Yet a man in upstate New York who drew up renderings of over 100 buildings and received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments for designing commercial and residential buildings has been charged with pretending to be an architect for more than half a decade. [More]
How Much Is Instagram Verification Worth On The Black Market?
By 9.1.17
Here in the social media era, everyone is a brand — but some more than others. Verified “influencers” on social media platforms can make a pretty penny selling access to their influence… and so it perhaps is unsurprising that the ability to influence is, itself, a hot commodity you can buy. [More]
16 USPS Workers Join Mail Carrier Hall Of Shame For Allegedly Taking Bribes To Deliver Drugs
By 8.31.17
It looks like The Mail Carrier Of Shame may soon have a slew of new members: Federal officials have accused 16 Atlanta-area U.S. Postal Service workers of accepting bribes in exchange for delivering cocaine along their routes. [More]
If You’re Getting Robocalls About Flood Insurance, They’re Scams
By 8.31.17
The world is full of really horrible, lazy people looking to steal your money while putting in the least amount of effort. Take, for example, the scammers who are blasting out automated, pre-recorded robocalls that try to scare people into believing they have to pay up or lose their flood insurance. [More]
Feds Shut Down Debt Collector That Allegedly Collected $2.1M In Unowed Debts
By 8.31.17
Once again, as part of its ongoing efforts to crack down on unscrupulous debt collectors, the Federal Trade Commission has accused a North Carolina company of running a “phantom” debt collection scheme that went after people for money that they did not actually owe. [More]
Unruly Passenger Owes Hawaiian Airlines $98,000 For Interfering With Flight Crew
By 8.31.17
The next time you’re even thinking about doing something you shouldn’t on an airplane, take a second and ask yourself: Is this worth tens of thousands of dollars? One Hawaiian Airlines passenger has learned not to mess with flight crew the hard way, and is now on the hook for almost $98,000. [More]
Wells Fargo Fake Account Fiasco Grows By 1.5 Million Customers
By 8.31.17
It’s been nearly a year since Wells Fargo was slapped with a $185 million fine for pushing their employees to increase their sales numbers by opening new accounts without proper authorization from the customer. Now the bank has revealed a new estimated number of so-called ‘fake accounts‘ that is 1.5 million higher than the bank had previously disclosed. This brings the new total to 3.5 million. [More]
Best Buy Claims $43 Cases Of Water Were Mistake, Not Post-Hurricane Price-Gouging
By 8.30.17
Most of us can walk into any big box or warehouse store and buy a case of bottled water for less than $10. But one Best Buy store in hurricane-devastated Texas was caught charging between $30 to $43 just for cases of water, leading to claims of price-gouging. Amid the blowback for its egregiously overpriced water, Best Buy is apologizing and claims it was all a mistake. [More]
Hacker Broke Into Hotel Rooms Electronically, Stole Customers’ Stuff
By 8.30.17
Key cards may be a convenient way for hotels to issue room keys, but a bug in one popular model made it convenient to electronically pick the locks. An override code to open doors was programmed into the locks, making them easy to open after a quick shopping trip to RadioShack. One man took advantage of this bug and used it to gain access to rooms across the country, stealing stuff from hotels and guests alike. [More]
Did Uber Violate Bribery Laws Involving Foreign Officials?
By 8.30.17
Uber’s brand new CEO already has a lot to deal with: The U.S. Justice Department is in the first stages of investigating whether managers at the company ran afoul of a federal law that prohibits companies and their employees from bribing foreign officials in the course of doing business. [More]
The Latest Powerball Winner Is Not Trying To Be Your Facebook Friend Or Give You Money
By 8.29.17
You’re probably a really nice person. However, that doesn’t mean that the winner of last week’s record Powerball multi-state lottery jackpot wants to be your pal on social media, or wants to give you money. Profiles that impersonate the real winner and promise to give money away to her followers are not real. [More]
Hundreds Of Android Apps Pulled From Google Play Store After Researchers Discover Botnet
By 8.29.17
Google pulled nearly 300 malicious apps from the Google Play Store this week, after a team of researchers from several internet companies discovered that they were all hijacking phones’ power into a massive international botnet spanning more than 100 countries. [More]
