Phone fraud drives rise in identity theft

Identity fraud accounted for 74% of all card fraud in the first six months of this year ( Barclaycard) 

This news is about increasing offenders who pose as other people via phone for data card.

IDENTITY theft has surged to account for nearly three-quarters of all credit card fraud this year, driven by a sharp increase in criminals impersonating others over the phone to obtain their victims’ account details.

The figures, calculated exclusively for The Sunday Times by the fraud prevention service Cifas, show identity fraud accounted for 74% of all card fraud in the first six months of this year, up from 63% in the same period of 2013.

The rise has been driven by “vishing”, where fraudsters phone victims and pretend to be someone else to con them into giving security details.

In the latest scam, criminals trick restaurants into helping them gain access to customers’ bank details. Police say fraudsters have targeted restaurants in London’s West End, as well as Twickenham and Canary Wharf.

 

Woman Gets $18 Million In Divorce Fraud Case

 Of the New York Time

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., June 14— A woman who claimed her ex-husband ruined her relationship with their children and defrauded her during their divorce has won an $18 million judgment against him.

A jury reached the verdict against Raymond Cohea Gracia last week. Joyce Lozoya won $6 million in compensatory damages and $12 million in punitive damages.

Mrs. Lozoya filed for divorce in 1985 and in 1989, Mr. Gracia was granted custody of their four children.

In 1993 a judge ruled in a lawsuit filed by Mrs. Lozoya that Mr. Gracia had intentionally inflicted emotional distress and fraud on his ex-wife and ordered a trial to determine the amount of the damages he should pay.

The children all live in New Mexico. The youngest is 19.

Mr. Gracia is co-owner and manager of Plains Oil Company.

At trial, Mrs. Lozoya testified that Gracia threatened her life if she continued efforts to gain custody and visitation rights. Her lawsuit contended that Mr. Gracia concealed assets during the division of property.

Domestic Abuse Fraud It’s Rarely Suspected and Rarely Detected

Domestic Abuse Fraud: of New York Time

  From New York Times

In the city’s rich history of fraud schemes, the cases described this week by the city’s Department of Investigation would not seem to rank up there with mortgage scams or fake Medicare patients: Six women were accused of posing as victims of domestic violence to gain subsidized housing.  

Such cases are so rare, and the issue so sensitive, that city officials and advocates for domestic violence victims said that they are not usually on the lookout for fraud when people come forward with claims of abuse. 

“The screening process that we have is really designed to understand what situation the person is in and how to best go about developing a safety plan for the individual and their children,” said Yolanda B. Jimenez, the commissioner of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence, which operates two free drop-in centers, one in Brooklyn and one in Queens. “For everybody who calls, everyone who walks through the door, their claims are taken at face value.”

More than 36,000 people have sought help at the centers since 2005 and can receive legal support, counseling and emergency shelter, among other services. Ms. Jimenez said she believed that there was no fraud involved in any of those cases.

There would not seem to be much financial gain to domestic violence fraud. But there are a range of public benefits available to women who have been beaten by their spouses or companions. The women who were arrested forged documents, including police reports, identifying themselves as abuse victims to gain priority for government subsidized housing, officials said this week.

There are long waiting lists for the housing, and only three groups of people are given priority: former foster care youths, intimidated witnesses referred by prosecutors, and victims of domestic violence.

Nonprofit organizations offer services including immigration assistance, financial counseling and free legal advice to domestic violence victims. Victims who are not legal United States residents can gain eligibility for a so-called U visa, which will eventually lead to a green card, said Chris Rhatigan, a spokeswoman for United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. The agency screens applicants through law enforcement agencies, which provide referrals and documentation, Ms. Rhatigan said.

In certain cases, victims of domestic violence who receive welfare are granted a waiver from work requirements. They also can stay in one of 42 emergency shelters for abuse victims, which are often smaller and more nurturing than typical shelters, with a higher staff-to-client ratio.

At the city office in the Bronx where families apply for shelter, people who identify themselves as domestic violence victims are interviewed for up to an hour to determine if they need emergency shelter.

No documentation is required to prove abuse, said Barbara Brancaccio, a spokeswoman for the city’s Human Resources Administration, which operates domestic violence shelters.

At the shelters, employees occasionally discover that women have exaggerated their abuse, but they are not forced to leave the facilities, Ms. Brancaccio said.

Bonnie Genevich, a division director for Good Shepherd Services, which runs a 20-bed shelter in Brooklyn for domestic violence victims, said staff members conduct thorough interviews. “We ask them a lot about the relationship to the abuser, the level of abuse, if there is a criminal record, if there’s been drug abuse, whether they’ve been abused during pregnancy, how often the incidents have occurred, where they occurred,” she said. “As you go on and on, you could tell if the story doesn’t hold together.”

That said, the system is not “set up to catch people,” she said, adding that she has never encountered a case of fraud.

Howard Marder, a spokesman for the New York City Housing Authority, where the suspected housing scheme was uncovered, said the agency reviewed all applications to check for “irregularities or alterations.”

At least two forms of documentation are required to obtain abuse victim status, and they could include a police report, order of protection and family court petition.

But in many cases, agencies will provide help even if victims of abuse have not called the police or sought treatment for injuries.

“Some of them can’t or don’t have the documents they need,” said Maureen Curtis, the associate vice president of Bronx Criminal Justice and Community Programs for Safe Horizon. “Does it mean that the person is not a victim of domestic violence? No.”

Robo-Signing Fraud Case Is Settled

Of New York Time

The mortgage servicing company Lender Processing Services agreed to pay $35 million to resolve a federal criminal investigation into foreclosure fraud, the Justice Department said on Friday.

The settlement resolves allegations over the company’s involvement in what the government called a six-year scheme to prepare and file more than 1 million fraudulently signed and notarized mortgage documents in property recorders’ offices nationwide from 2003 to 2009. The practice became known as robo-signing.

The accord also follows a guilty plea last November by Lorraine Brown, the former chief executive of the company’s now-closed DocX unit, to a felony charge of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud over the scheme.

Prior to DocX’s closure in 2010, Lender Processing Services had handled more than half of the nation’s foreclosures.

The company entered into a two-year non-prosecution agreement that requires it to meet many conditions, including cooperating in federal investigations, and alerting the government to any abuses in mortgage or foreclosure documentation services at the company.

The company said on Friday that it has a $223 million reserve that covers the Justice Department accord and prior settlements.

Foreclosure abuse became notorious in 2010 as borrowers, politicians and regulators accused lenders of pursuing cases that were based on defective or fraudulent documentation.

Many documents were found to have been signed systematically without being read.

Indictments for 28 More in Fraud Case

Of the New York Times 

Twenty-eight more people, including retired police officers and firefighters, have been indicted as part of the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into an extensive scheme to defraud Social Security disability insurance, law enforcement officials said.

The new defendants include the sons of two of the accused organizers of the scheme who were arrested last month along with 104 others, including dozens of former police officers and eight former firefighters, the officials said.  

Prosecutors have accused the defendants of feigning mental illnesses to obtain more than $21.4 million in disability payments from the federal government. Many of the accused falsely claimed to have been unnerved and mentally impaired while working during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, court papers said. 

According to the court papers, the defendants were coached by a retired officer, Joseph Esposito, 64, to pretend to have symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder during exams by psychiatrists from the Social Security Administration.  

Prosecutors say the scheme was orchestrated by a Long Island lawyer, Raymond Lavallee, 83, who specializes in representing people with disability claims, and a consultant, Thomas Hale, 89, who had been convicted of operating a similar fraud involving veterans on Long Island in 1983.

John Minerva, 61, a former disability consultant for the Detectives Endowment Association, was also a major player in the scheme, prosecutors say. He referred retired officers and firefighters sent to him by Mr. Esposito to two psychiatrists who said they had mental illnesses. The doctors have not been charged.

All four men have pleaded not guilty. 

The newly indicted defendants were expected to be arrested Tuesday and taken before Justice Daniel FitzGerald in Supreme Court in Manhattan. They include Sam Esposito, a retired officer and the son of Joseph Esposito, and Douglas Hale, whose father is Thomas Hale, law enforcement officials said. The 28 people are accused of grand larceny and filing fraudulent documents.

Prosecutors have said the scheme stretches to 1988 and may involve as many as 1,000 people, making it the biggest case of its kind in the history of the Social Security Administration. Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, has estimated the total loss to the government at about $400 million.

More than 100 people have been arrested, though only a few have pleaded guilty. Anthony Maher, 44, a retired officer who now lives in Pima, Ariz., pleaded guilty earlier this month to grand larceny and agreed to repay $192,000 in exchange for probation. A similar deal was reached by a retired sanitation worker, Raymond Herlihy, 66, who pleaded guilty to grand larceny and agreed to repay $165,000.

A Hacker Is Indicted In Computer Fraud Case

News about fraud of New York Time.  

 RALEIGH, N.C., March 10— Kevin D. Mitnick, the fugitive computer hacker who was captured by Federal authorities on Feb. 15, was indicted Thursday on 23 counts of fraud involving computer-access devices.

The indictments, filed in Federal District Court in Greenville, N.C., some 85 miles from here, charged Mr. Mitnick with one count of possessing device-making equipment, one count of possessing unauthorized access devices and 21 counts of using a counterfeited access device.

The indictment charges that Mr. Minick, 31, electronically broke into computer systems from Feb. 4, when he leased an apartment in Raleigh, until his arrest. "This just looks at several days before his arrest in Raleigh," John Bowler, an assistant United States attorney, said.

Mr. Bowler declined to discuss whether Mr. Mitnick could face additional charges, but said that an investigation was continuing.

Investigators say Mr. Mitnick possessed and used illegal equipment that allowed him to make a cellular telephone work as someone else's phone. Prosecutors said he commandeered a cellular-compatible modem to gain access to computer systems, where he stole information worth more than $1 million, including some 20,000 credit card numbers, although he apparently did not use the card numbers for financial gain.

Because he may face Federal charges elsewhere in the country, it is uncertain whether Mr. Mitnick will be tried in Raleigh, Mr. Bowler said. Mr. Mitnick is also wanted by state and Federal authorities for a parole violation in California and could face charges in other states.

He is being held in Federal custody in eastern North Carolina. Officials would not give the exact site, saying that disclosing it would jeopardize security.

His court-appointed lawyer, John A. Dusenbury, could not be reached for comment today.

Mr. Mitnick first became known for his computer skills as a teen-ager when he electronically broke into a computer of the North American Air Defense Command.

In 1989, he was convicted in Federal court of stealing software worth $1 million and doing damage estimated at $4 million to the Digital Equipment Corporation. He served one year in prison and was on probation when he disappeared in 1992, remaining on the run from Federal authorities until his arrest about a month ago.

Supreme Court Decides 2 Securities Fraud Cases

The second case Securities Fraud Cases of New York Time 

In the second case decided Wednesday, Gabelli v. Securities and Exchange Commission, No. 11-1274, the court ruled unanimously that the commission must act promptly when it seeks civil penalties.

The case concerned Marc J. Gabelli and Bruce Alpert, who were executives affiliated with a mutual fund company, Gabelli Funds L.L.C. They successfully argued that the S.E.C. had waited too long to sue them for what the agency said were abuses related to rapid trading by a hedge fund.(fondo de cobertura).

The law in question, which applies to many kinds of government requests for civil penalties, says lawsuits “shall not be entertained unless commenced within five years from the date when the claim first accrued.” The agency sued more than five years after the disputed conduct.

“The question,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the court, “is whether the five-year clock begins to tick when the fraud is complete or when the fraud is discovered.”

In ordinary civil litigation, it is not unusual for courts to say that the clock starts running in fraud cases only when the plaintiff discovers or should have discovered the wrongdoing. That is because of the nature of fraud, Chief Justice Roberts explained.

“When the injury is self-concealing, private parties may be unaware that they have been harmed,” he wrote. “Most of us do not live in a state of constant investigation; absent any reason to think we have been injured, we do not typically spend our days looking for evidence that we were lied to or defrauded.”