Suit Against Bank of America for $30 Million Tax Scam

A lawsuit has been drafted against Bank of America to retrieve $30 million that flowed through accounts held by Harriette Walters and others in the D.C. tax scam, Acting D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles told yesterday.

During an almost eight-hour confirmation hearing before a D.C. Council committee, Nickles said the city is negotiating with the bank in hopes of reaching a financial settlement. If they cannot agree, he said, the District would likely follow up on the lawsuit.

"Our complaint lists checks through Bank of America," said Nickles, who proposed to let the council see copies of the draft.

In an interview, Nickles said he has given the bank until Friday to respond to a settlement offering, the terms of which he would not disclose. Under an accord with the bank that extended the statute of limitations, the District has until Nov. 10 to file the lawsuit.

Nickles said the draft of the lawsuit also includes charges under the "False Claims Act," which could triple the pecuniary damages.

In the tax scam case, Walters, an erstwhile tax office manager, and 10 confederates have pleaded guilty to stealing $48 million over 20 years from the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue. The amount mentioned in the draft of the lawsuit is based on the amount of the checks cashed at Bank of America, Nickles said.

Bank of America was the elementary bank used by Walters and most other participants in the scam, and the vast bulk of the money stolen from the District flowed through the institution. One defendant, Walters's niece, Jayrece Turnbull, transferred more than $24 million through various accounts there.

Read more!

The Presidential Library Scam

Acting like a four-year-old, George Bush has squashed his eyes tight and placed his fingers in his ears, arrogating that he has no approximation of who is chipping in the big bucks for his half-a-billion-dollar presidential library to be raised in Dallas. He says he doesn’t want his staff to say him the names of these special-interest givers while he’s still in office, as if his temporary ignorance can clean the malodor of such clandestine fundraising by a sitting president.

One of the canvassers for Bush’s ego temple unknowingly outed himself. Stephen Payne, a Houston businessman and sometime political arranger for Bush, was captured on video in July offering White House privileges to foreign interests in substitution for a suggested contribution of $200,000 to the library fund.

It is, of course, giddy to believe that George and his Oval Office managers don’t know who is funding his legacy library, but it is horrific that they want to hide this knowledge from the people. After all, the people pay millions of tax dollars each year to sustain these things. Yet, last year, at the bidding of the White House, Sen. Ted Stevens killed a bill to require revelation of such donors.

Not that this is a partisan cover up. Bill Clinton raised $165 million for his presidential palace, and he remains to keep his donor list inserted away in his vest pocket, safe from public scrutiny.

What are they hiding? If no privileges are being interchanged for these high-dollar donations, why not divulge them? Indeed, if the contributors are simply selfless souls with no self-agenda, wouldn’t they want their names colored on the walls of a presidential library?

By the way, there’s no requisite that every ex-president has to have one of these memorials – and very few deserve them.

Read more!

Web Hit By Hit Man E-Mail Scam

This is a new and funny e-mail scam. The e-mail scam sender declares that he is a hit man and someone has paid him to kill you.

The sender even lists the names of your dear ones. Even though the details lend an air of authenticity, authorities say many of the e-mails are not very sophisticated.

"When you open this e-mail, you feel a little bit more like it's specifically aimed at you," said FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko.

However, no one have been a victim to this but who knows about the rare person becoming a prey.

It seems that e-mail scams have no way left now!

Source: CIO Today, Woodland Hills, CA, USA

Read more!

Presidential Debate Scam

This is what Walter Cronkite, former CBS news anchor wrote in 1998, "The debates are part of the unconscionable scam that our political campaigns have become ... the candidates participate only with the guarantee of a format that defies meaningful discourse."

To expand upon Walter Cronkite's viewpoint the following articles may be very helpful:

The Presidential Debate Scam - The presidential debate scam - by A.J. Nomai

Presidential Debate Fraud - Pt.1 - US presidential debate is image driven fraud. Questions are restricted and unworthy of true debate. If you took the last ones at face value...

The Presidential Debates Are a Scam - Have you wondered why the presidential debates don't present any serious ideas or encourage any substantive exchanges about policy and political philosophy...

What are your thoughts about the Presidential Debates?

Read more!

Error Uncovers Credit Card Scam in Walmart

Wal-mart employees made a small mistake during the sale of a computer laptop. This led to the rather frightening discovery of a Valleywide scam that involved stolen credit card information.

The hint to authorities came about 4 p.m. Sunday when Wal-Mart workers got mistrustful about three men who claimed they had bought a laptop only to get an empty box, according to police spokesman Detective David Ramer.

When police officers came at the store on Arizona Avenue near the SanTan Freeway to look into the suspected fraud, the three men ran and threw a bunch of credit cards to the ground, Ramer said.

The 19 recovered cards, made to look like ones issued by banks in Mexico, turned out to be counterfeit cards that bear valid American account numbers. They were used to buy electronic equipment across the Valley, Ramer said.

Ironically, police said, Wal-Mart employees did unknowingly gave the men an empty box for the purchase they had made.

Arrested were Adolfo Paz Gracia, 35, Javier Carreno Cruz, 29, and Jose Diaz Valenzuela, 29. The suspects told police they are Mexican nationals who had entered the country legally to make purchases on the credit cards, Ramer said.

Each was booked on three counts of forgery and one count of fraud schemes.

Source: Arizona Republic, Phoenix, AZ, USA

Read more!

Fake Bride Scam Fixer Women Arrested in Glasgow

Janet Cathie is a fake bride fixer who earned thousands by arranging fake marriages in a scam with African gangster. She was arrested by the UK Border Agency and Strathclyde Police.

The raid came after a series of articles by the Record exposed the huge fake bride racket in Scotland.

Cathie setup at least eight fake weddings. It includes her own, her live-in boyfriend's and her daughter's. She is suspected of having a hand in many more now not known.

She operated at tough Tarfside Oval estate in Pollok, Glasgow, rounding up skint single mums and drug addicts she could bully into signing up for fake ceremonies.

She charged £1000 from her clients for arranging the marriages. She also took a double fee by appearing as a witness at several ceremonies in registry offices in Glasgow and Paisley.

Some of the ill-fated women who were lured by promises of money received nothing. Cathie even paid her own daughter Amanda McCourt, only half of the promised £2000 wedding fee.

Cathie was a close associate of Lamin Manneh. He was an African who was jailed for two years at Paisley Sheriff Court earlier this year for operating a parallel scam.

Source: Glasgow Daily Record, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Read more!

Grants Scam Dupes Northern Illinois Residents

Several people throughout Northern Illinois are receiving checks worth nearly three thousand dollars. This is a part of a grant they allegedly have been awarded for fifty thousand dollars.

The Better Business Bureau of Chicago and Northern Illinois has issued a warning regarding the grant scam coming from a company calling itself Mutual Grants Inc.

The grants checks and notifications are being sent from a location in Canada through U.S. Mail not through email as usual. After the mail is received, the recipient is asked to sign and deposit the enclosed check and return the 2,970 dollars to cover fees. The letter also includes a phone number to a “processing agent”, James Bentley, who will provide instructions on returning the money using either Western Union or MoneyGram.

The victims scrub their heads when they become aware that the check they deposited is fake and their banks informs them that they are responsible for the funds they withdrew.

So, be careful of this grants scam.

Source: eNews Park Forest, Park Forest, IL, USA

Read more!

Tommy Peacock Pays You $187000 E-mail Scam

Tommy Peacock might be a treasure hunter or some sort of magician. He sends e-mail to people promising the recipients $187,000 which can be picked at any Western Union outlet.

The email also states that if the recipient wants to receive his or her money they need to get a Western Union Promo Card. In order to get one, certain information must be sent through e-mail.

He asks for name, money transfer control number, telephone number and address. Peacock also provides an e-mail address of a Western Union agent to whom people should send their information.

The e-mail also mentions that Peacock is on his way to Chile to complete a bridge project, so he won't be around to reply to e-mails.

So be aware and don't let this Mr. Peacock fool you!

Source: Canada.com, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada

Read more!

Federal Regulators Sue Democrat Fundraiser for $60 Million Scam

On Monday, federal regulators sued political fundraiser Norman Hsu for allegedly operating a $60 million investment scam and using some proceeds to contribute to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and other prominent Democrats.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. It accuses Hsu of using a company called Next Components to solicit investments that promised high rates of return by providing short-term loans to other companies.The lawsuit also states that Hsu used the investments to pay off early investors in a classic Ponzi scheme while using the rest to make political contributions and support a lavish lifestyle.

The SEC is seeking to recoup the investors' money and financial penalties.

In May, a federal judge in Los Angeles ordered Hsu to pay $28.8 million to aggrieved investors who sued him. Hsu wasn't represented by a lawyer in that case and never responded to the lawsuit.

Source: The Associated Press

Read more!

Canadian Granny Scam Dupes Americans

Telephone scammers in Canada love Americans. They also have found that some of the American people are incredibly easy to fool with a scam. If they can concoct a convincing story, they can get people to send them thousands of dollars.

With the Granny Scam the caller pretends to be a grandchild in trouble in Canada who needs money immediately. The caller often says he’s been arrested, was in a car accident or had some type of medical emergency.

“I fell for it completely,” says Bill Wilson, 79, of Sequim, Wash., who got taken for $6,500. The caller, who pretended to be his grandson, said he was in jail in Canada.

This deviously clever scam is very effective because it catches the potential victims off guard and tugs at their heartstrings.

In 2007, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Call Centre received 128 complaints about this scam. Since the beginning of the year, more than 317 complaints were filed, and the majority of those were in July and August.

This sort of scam, based on an “emergency situation” has been around for years. But the Canadian Anti-Fraud Call Centre, also known as PhoneBusters, reports a dramatic increase in the number of complaints.

“We’ve seen tremendously high losses, usually $3,000 to $4,000 a hit,” says PhoneBusters’ spokesperson Debbie Bell. But some victims lose much more.

Because they are in another country, it’s hard to track down, let alone prosecute these telephone con artists. They know many tricks to avoid law enforcement.

The way to fight back is to make sure your friends and family members don’t become victims. Explain how the scam works. Tell them to be suspicious of anyone who calls unexpectedly and wants them to wire money – especially to Canada. Make sure they know the right thing to do is to call you or someone else in the family, even if they’re told to keep it a secret.

Source: MSNBC, USA

Read more!

Aussies Sue International Olympic Committee for Ticket Scam

Australians and other victims of the online Beijing Olympic ticket scam are suing the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for millions of dollars.

Texan class-action lawyer, Jim Moriarty, is representing the 400 victims.

He also has his legal sights set on the London-based touts allegedly behind the scam, the US Olympic Committee and the official US provider of Beijing tickets, JetSet/CoSport.

Mr. Moriarty said, “The ultimate bad guys are the crooks in England and then the people that aided and facilitated their fraud and that clearly goes back directly to the IOC.”

Mr. Moriarty was also one of the victims of the ticket scam.

The 62-year-old lawyer lost $US12,000 ($14,235) in the ticket scam.

Mr. Moriarty said his lawsuits also would likely reveal why sports fans and the families of athletes were unable to secure tickets through the official Olympic ticket suppliers.

Many victims were told official ticket supplies were sold out despite plenty of vacant seats visible during the TV broadcast of the Olympics.

Source: News.com.au, Australia

Read more!

Scam Artists Fine-Tune their Portfolio with Armed Robbery

Police are looking for a few scam artists in Austin, Texas, who just upped the ante from theft to armed robbery.
These scam artists first talk to people very gently for giving them donation. They say it is for a charity organization. However, if the victim refuses, they pull out a gun and force them to hand over money.

Seems like they have perfected their new art!

The suspects have African accents and are working in groups of two or three.

One of the suspects is a man in his 50s in a black felt hat with a short brim and a tattoo on his left arm with the letter E or H.

Source: KXAN-TV, Austin, TX, USA

Read more!

China's Dangerous Milk Scam

Nearly 10 percent of milk samples from three top Chinese dairy companies contained toxic melamine, the government quality watchdog found in tests for the banned chemical that has killed four children.

Melamine is a toxic industrial chemical rich in nitrogen. It is added because it can make watered-down milk's protein level appear higher.

Melamine is very dangerous. Four infants have died in China, and hundreds of children have been diagnosed with kidney stones after drinking the contaminated milk. It was linked to the deaths of cats and dogs in the United States last year.

Coffee chain Starbucks fears it may have taken contaminated milk from supplier Mengniu Dairy It has pulled the company's milk from its 300-plus cafes in mainland China.

Source: Forbes, NY, USA

Read more!

100 Arrested in Passport Scam Using Dead Americans' Birth Certificates

Federal authorities on Tuesday announced the arrests of more than 100 people including 30 from the Bay Area. These people are suspects in a US Passport Scam using birth certificates of dead Americans.

Between July 2005 and August 2008, 112 individuals across the country were charged with federal passport fraud and related offenses, according to the U.S. State Department. The individuals charged include fugitives, military deserters, delinquent taxpayers, parolees, convicted felons, habitual drunken drivers and undocumented workers from more than 20 countries, all of whom wanted passports to hide from law enforcement, according to authorities.

Dubbed "Operation Deathmatch," the investigation was a joint effort by the U.S. Department of Diplomatic Security's San Francisco and Los Angeles field offices and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Sacramento field office.

Senior security service officials from both agencies, who did not want to reveal their names, said investigators merged California's death record database, going back to 1940, with passport requests. Though this type of investigation is ongoing, the officials said, this operation was the largest and most successful because computer technology is so much more advanced than it used to be.

The Deathmatch defendants include Chih-Fong Chen of Atherton, an undocumented Chinese immigrant. She stole the birth certificate of a deceased woman, Lorena Lew, while she was working for the Jocelyne J. K. Lew Immigration Law Firm.

And while it's possible for terrorists to steal and use other people's identities, senior diplomatic security officials with the U.S. State Department said there were no defendants charged with terrorism as part of this investigation.

Officials also said that there was no particular reason for announcing the results of Deathmatch Tuesday, especially since the work is ongoing and began in 2005.

Most of the people charged were arrested or surrendered in federal courts, according to the U.S. State Department. Some remain fugitives. Federal passport offenses carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

Law enforcement officials also seized three firearms, $650,000 in cash, a Mercedes and more than 80 of the fraudulently obtained U.S. passports.

Related Links:
Some here snagged in fake ID-passport sting
Two Santa Cruz County men busted in passport fraud sting
Nationwide Passport Scam Investigation Nets Bay Area

Read more!

Concordia E-mail Phishing Scam

During the past several weeks, Concordia e-mail users have received emails requesting for details about their e-mail accounts, including requests to provide “usernames” and “passwords”. It also states that if you fail to provide the information your account will be disabled.

These requests are from individuals attempting to gain access to your e-mail accounts so that they can send SPAM from them . . ., which is also something that has happened over the past several days. Unfortunately, several users provided their account information, which resulted in those specific e-mail accounts being used to send thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands or even millions of SPAM messages to individuals across the world. Over the past weekend, Concordia received such notification that some of their student e-mail accounts were used to distribute SPAM. When they receive such notices, they reset the account password so that those accounts can no longer be used for spamming.

Those individual account owners who are unable to log-into their mail, please contact the Solution Center – 3375 – to have your password reset.

Please be cautious and suspicious when anyone ask for your account information. If you have any doubts about the request, follow your instincts and DO NOT respond.

The only ITS staff at Concordia who are likely to contact you about your accounts, and who will NEVER request your password via e-mail are:

Dennis Duncan, Director, Infrastructure Services Rasul Shishehbor, Systems Administrator Tony Pietrzak, Systems Administrator Rick Meidinger, Network and Security Engineer Bruce Vieweg, CIO.

Read more!

100's of Workers Fall Prey to 2012 Olympics Job Scam

2012 Olympics – get a job now! Thousands have fallen to this trap, mainly eastern European workers on a fake website claiming to have non-existent jobs for the 2012 London Olympics.

BBC London alleges that more than 500 Slovakians paid £600 deposits to a convicted fraudster who then disappeared.

Olympics minister Tessa Jowell is working with the police to investigate the scam.

It is claimed that Nigel Lewis had advertised for some staff to work in the Olympics Village in a programme.

For a deposit transferred into Mr Lewis's firm UK CruiseLine Ltd, the would-be employees would be given accommodation on a cruise ship in London Docklands and a job on the site of the Games.

However, after 550 Slovakians had handed over their money, Mr Lewis disappeared, it is alleged. Some took out loans to raise the capital needed for the deposit.

Any Slovaks who did come to London found that the UK CruiseLine offices were deserted and the three cruise ships that were supposed to be moored at the King George V dock near Stratford had also gone, the BBC programme states.

The BBC tracked down Mr Lewis working in a Dartford hotel. He told them that no profit had been made from his UK CruiseLine venture.

"I've worked on this project almost 12 months solid and I've got nothing for it, just heartache," he said. He also insisted that he had intended to buy three cruise ships and secure jobs on the Olympic site but that "it just went out of control".
Programme-makers have now handed over their evidence to the police.

Read more!

Fake E-mails Purports to be from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

An email arrives from the foundation asking people to go to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation International Training Workshop. The invitations sent by the email looks very inviting and real but alas! there is no such summit or workshop.

People who got the e-mail were told to send a registration fee to Dr. Norman Trevor of Togo in West Africa. The money but would never reach the foundation. The people, those who sent their money, were made a hypnotist’s cock and the scammer’s, now, probably are lavishing under the African sky.

So, be on the lookout for such e-mail and just delete them and warn your friends.

Source – David Colker

Read more!