Tag archive: fraud

Being in the music blogging business is becoming fraught with danger, as the owners of RnBXclusive.com have just found out, following the seizure of the domain by the Serious Organized Crime Agency in the UK. They haven't just lost their site either, but have been arrested for fraud. So, another day, another piracy-related site closure, but what's interesting here is the message that now greets visitors to the website. You can see… Read More

Email spam has been a problem for even longer than commercial activity has been permitted on the Internet, and thanks to botnet operators, scammers, and outright cybercriminals spam has ballooned to account for the vast majority of all email. Although antispam technologies and filters have improved considerable over the years—and there have been some notable victories, like the takedown of the Rustock botnet last year—email operators and end… Read More

The online commerce world continues to take a few ugly twists and turns, as online shoe and accessory retailer Zappos—now owned by Amazon—reveals more than 24 million customer accounts were compromised in a recent security breach. Although the company says passwords and credit card information were encrypted, information likes users' names, addresses, email, phone numbers and more. As a precaution, Zappos has expired all… Read More

Olympus Corporation has announced (PDF) it is suing 19 current and former executives over their roles in conducting and covering up years of financial fraud that as brought the prominent Japanese electronics company to its knees in recent months. Overall, Olympus is seeking over ¥90 billion (about US$1.17 billion). including some ¥3.6 billion (about US$47 million) from former chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa and ¥500 million (about… Read More

Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo, former Olympus CEO Michael Woodford announced he is giving up his bid to be re-instated as CEO of the troubled Japanese camera and medical device manufacturer. Woodford indicated that, while he might be able to win a proxy battle to retake control of the company, without support from Olympus's key Japanese institutional investors it would be a hollow victory that would leave Olympus significantly… Read More

Camera and medical equipment maker Olympus is still reeling from revelations that its leadership had been engaged in financial wrongdoing since the 1990s to hide losses, and recently wiped out 70 percent of its net assets by restating its last five years of earnings. As the company works to restore investor confidence—and hopefully investor cash flow—the company is apparently considering a move that would see recomposing its board… Read More

Japan's beleaguered Olympus Corporation has restated its financial results for the last five years along with the six months leading up to September 2011 in a last-minute bid to retain its listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The company withdrew its annual earnings guidance and says there will be no stock dividend for the first half of its fiscal year, but the overall damage from over a decade of cooked books doesn't seem to be as… Read More

Michael Woodford may no longer be CEO of scandal-rocked camera and medical equipment maker Olympus, but he still has a seat on the company's board. Attending the first board meeting since the company's decade's long financial scheme to hide losses came to light, Woodford described the board meeting as constructive and civilized as the company struggles to meet deadlines and retain its listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. But,… Read More

Symantec has released its Norton CyberCrime Report for 2011, and if you thought business was good for smartphone and mobile device makers…well, business appears to be good for cybercriminals too. According to Symantec, some 431 million adults worldwide were victims of cybercrime in the last year, with the total cost of those crimes amounting to some $114 billion. And when Symantec figures in the value of the time victims lost to that… Read More

Cameras, fake card readers, you name it… the list of schemes used to steal customer PINs at ATM machines is endless. Now it's time to add another possible technique. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego recently presented the results of a study in which they found infrared cameras could be used to steal a PIN even after the customer left the ATM. Led by Keaton Mowery, a doctoral student in computer science, the… Read More

The FBI has issued a fraud alert about a trend of cyber-scams resulting in large unauthorized wire transfers to economic and trade companies located in the Heilongjiang province in China. From March 2010 to April 2011, the FBI has identified 20 of these incidents aimed at small- to medium-sized U.S. businesses and public institutions that have accounts at small banks and credit unions. These cases have racked up a total of $11 million in… Read More

Vikram Ajjampur from Florida and William Devito from New York have banded together against the Cupertino, California-based tech giant and filed a lawsuit claiming that Apple is guilty of fraud and invasion of privacy. The suit is based off of findings which were revealed last week by researchers Alasdair Allen and Pete Warden. The security researchers stated there was an encrypted file in iPhones and 3G iPads running iOS 4 which logged the… Read More

The US Department of Justice has charged the owners of three of the largest Internet gambling sites for violating a cacophony of laws, including anti-gambling laws, money laundering and bank fraud, Reuters reports. The sites include Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker and PokerStars. New York prosecutors have issued restraining orders against 76 bank accounts in 14 countries that they say these companies used to launder billions of dollars in… Read More

At 12am EST Monday morning, a member of hacktivist group Anonymous released what he says is a cache of internal emails from a Bank of America-owned insurance company, which prove the too-big-to-fail financial institution engaged in mortgage-related “fraud.” The emails, referred to as “part 1″ by Anonymous, were originally released on the website BankofAmericasuck.com. That site has been consistently overloaded, and thus… Read More

Yesterday credit card processor VeriFone launched an outright attack on mobile payment processor Square, saying that the company's free mobile credit card readers (that can be used with Android and iOS devices) suffer from a fundamental security flaw that puts customer data at risk. VeriFone's CEO Douglas Bergeron called for all Square card readers to be recalled, and said his company was turning over its findings to major card… Read More