by Keith Lubsen

Chris Hansen, correspondent for NBC News “Dateline NBC” next spoke about the televised report “To Catch an ID Thief” and how it took his team at NBC roughly $400,000 and one year to produce.

Chris Hansen NBC

Chris focused on a scam that involved US citizens receiving merchandise purchased with fraudulently obtained credit cards. The merchandise was purchased and shipped from the merchant to middlemen in the US who then take the same merchandise and ship it overseas. The crooks ship merchandise to a US address initially to avoid alerting the merchants to fraud due to foreign shipping addresses.

Chris’s team set up CH Delivery, a fake shipping company and began delivering some of the packages to one of the middlemen named Jeff Ball.

Chris began an ongoing conversation with Jeff and found that this middleman like many of the individuals in the US who are receiving and reshipping merchandise oversees are often victims themselves.

Jeff had met a woman named Wendy online who asked him to help her with her electronics business by taking delivery of items and reshipping them to Africa. Wendy sent sexy photos of herself along with electronic correspondence and Jeff took the bait. Ultimately, he paid for about $40,000 of the shipping charges out of his own pocket.

Jeff got caught up in an international identity theft crime ring and would have continued unknowingly aiding criminals unless Chris and his team exposed Jeff to the truth.

There was no Wendy and Jeff was out all of the money he had spent.

Chris and his team proceeded to travel to Switzerland to meet Wendy’s representative and confront him. The representative eventually broke when Chris confronted him and admitted to lying.

Chris’ body of work demonstrates how a broad range of crimes are related to identity theft. 

You can see more of the work Chris and his team at NBC produce online at The Hansen Files.

Thank you to the Utah AG’s office: Mark Shurtleff, Scott Morrill, Rich Hamp, John Kimball and everyone else at the Utah Office of The Attorney General for their tireless and outstanding work in the fight against identity theft.  The 2008 Economic Crime Conference was both educational and inspirational.

by Keith Lubsen

The second day of the Utah Office of the Attorney General – Economic Crime Conference was led off by Bryan T. Allen and Brian G. Lloyd from the law firm Parr Waddoups Brown & Loveless.

The topic was securities and securities fraud.

The attorneys told how notes are currently the most prominent area of securities fraud, specifically unregistered notes and oral notes.

 
Thank you to the Utah AG’s office: Mark Shurtleff, Scott Morrill, Rich Hamp, John Kimball and everyone else at the Utah Office of The Attorney General for their tireless and outstanding work in the fight against identity theft.

by Keith Lubsen

Michael Blackburn, COO of Perfect Home Living (www.PerfectHomeLiving.com) a 501 (C)(3) Nonprofit Corporation spoke about the topic of real estate fraud. Perfect Home Living’s goal is to “eliminate existing and emerging patterns of real estate fraud.”

Michael effectively demonstrated how widespread real estate fraud is in the state of Utah. According to the MARI Index, the state of Utah ranks #1 in the nation for mortgage fraud. Criminals often target college students, returning LDS missionaries and recipients of recent monetary awards (e.g., inheritance or legal settlements) to victimize in real estate scams.

Michael presented a video which showed a college age student sitting on the steps of a million dollar house which he supposedly owned. The student worked as a waiter and was certainly not qualified financially to qualify for a mortgage on such an expensive property. The student admitted that he had provided false information on his loan application which showed him owning a business. He therefore stated his income to be much higher that it actually was. He went on to tell how the accountant he worked with to obtain the mortgage had given him directions to provide the false information on the loan application. The student is left in hot water and the accountant denies any wrongdoing.

The moral of the video is that uneducated victims think that they can either make a fast buck or get themselves into a home far beyond their means. They don’t think they are hurting anyone by bending the rules upon the advice of their advisors.

Michael’s mission is to inform these consumers and he provided the following tips. Where to catch real estate fraud:

• Loan application – never provide falsified information and be very wary of others who instruct you to do so.

• If Truth in Lending Statement, Good Faith Estimate and HUD-2 Settlement Statement reflect different dollar amounts from the borrower. Michael said the amounts rarely match and that this mismatch is a very good indication the something is wrong.

• Beware of the ‘All in One Day’ transaction Thank you to the Utah AG’s office: Mark Shurtleff, Scott Morrill, Rich Hamp, John Kimball and everyone else at the Utah Office of The Attorney General for their tireless and outstanding work in the fight against identity theft.

Thank you to the Utah AG’s office: Mark Shurtleff, Scott Morrill, Rich Hamp, John Kimball and everyone else at the Utah Office of The Attorney General for their tireless and outstanding work in the fight against identity theft.

by Keith Lubsen

FBI Special Agent Kim Jensen gave an introduction to Terrorism. Agent Jensen clearly has a commanding knowledge about Radical Islamic Terrorists and their surrounding networks. He presented a fascinating and very in depth outline of some known terrorists, their background and belief systems.  If all Americans were able to see Agent Jensens presentation I feel there would be a much greater understanding of Radical Islamic Terrorists.

Next, FBI Special Agent Bretzing made a clear connection between various terrorists, Identity Theft and related crimes. As these terror organizations need funding, many have turned to economic crimes to fund their operations. It is difficult for law enforcement in the United States to prosecute individuals funding terrorists as those sending money from the US to abroad can only be prosecuted if they are knowingly funding terrorists. Thus, the individuals sending funds just say that they are sending money to a friend or family member to help them and that they have no idea what the funds are being used for.

Agent Bretzing described the Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR’s) used by financial institutions to report suspicious financial activity to law enforcement. These reports on their own are of little help, but when many reports are put into a database and carefully looked at, patterns begin to appear. These patterns can help law enforcement identify which SAR’s reports merit further investigation. The SAR’s are required to be filed by financial institutions within 30 days of the suspicious transaction.

Thank you to the Utah AG’s office: Mark Shurtleff, Scott Morrill, Rich Hamp, John Kimball and everyone else at the Utah Office of The Attorney General for their tireless and outstanding work in the fight against identity theft.

by Keith Lubsen

The next speakers on the agenda were Carl Snyder, Senior Vice President Director and Preston Wood, Chief Information Security Officer both from Zions Internet Bank (www.ZionsBank.com).

At the beginning of their presentation they put forth a statistic that seemed incredibly interesting to me. They said that the amount stolen by the average physical bank robber is between $500 and $1,000 US.  This amount may seem like a lot to some, but the risk taken by a physical bank robber is great (e.g., they are likely to get physically pursued by police).

A cybercriminal, on the other hand, takes comparably little risk by remotely gaining access to just one wealthy users account and can steal hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.  This statistic made it very clear how import online banking security has become.

Security steps taken by Zions Bank include:
• Strong authorization (both that the user sees and non-visible measures that the bank monitors).
• Account monitoring systems – computer systems that detect activity that is not normal activity on individual accounts.

Carl and Preston’s presentation made it clear that Zions Bank spends a great deal of resources making sure that their online bank and its customers are safe from cybercrime.  They are well versed on the ‘Red Flags Rule’ which went into effect November 1st, 2008 as well as other fraud fighting laws and technologies.

Thank you to the Utah AG’s office: Mark Shurtleff, Scott Morrill, Rich Hamp, John Kimball and everyone else at the Utah Office of The Attorney General for their tireless and outstanding work in the fight against identity theft.

by Keith Lubsen

The 15th Annual Economic Crime Conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah was a combination of knowledgeable speakers and interesting topics.

The conference was organized by the Utah Attorney Generals Office.

Linda Criddle (www.Look-Both-Ways.com) began the conference by discussing online safety. Linda’s background includes being Microsoft’s child safety expert and her knowledge about online safety quickly became apparent.

Linda’s specialty is knowledge about how criminals profile their victims. She demonstrated how quickly and easily a criminal can build a profile on a victim. Using social networking sites, public records and other profiling techniques Linda quickly amassed enough data about a female teenage example to send a chill down the spine of audience members. The moral of this part of the presentation is that individuals need to be responsible about what sort of information they post about themselves online (particularly at social networking sites).

Linda also touched on criminal email spam networks. She told how less than reputable psychologists, sociologists, and other human behavior experts are being hired by spammers to craft more effective messages for spam campaigns.

Linda also put forth the fact that criminals are now developing digital dossiers on individuals. Over time criminal’s warehouse pieces of information about individuals until the crooks have enough data about a person to defraud the victim.

Thank you to the Utah AG’s office: Mark Shurtleff, Scott Morrill, Rich Hamp, John Kimball and everyone else at the Utah Office of The Attorney General for their tireless and outstanding work in the fight against identity theft.