You know that old idea of sending random invoices to big companies in the hope it'll get buried in the system and paid?
Well...
Last week, Evaldas Rimasauskas of Lithuania plead guilty to US wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering charges, admitting that he had stolen $99m from Facebook and $23m from Google between 2013 and 2015.
Rimasauskas's grift was pretty bold. He merely sent Google and Facebook invoices for items they hadn't purchased and that he hadn't provided, which the companies paid anyway.
https://boingboing.net/2019/03/24/evaldas-rimasauskas.html
Most places I've worked have a system for signing off goods and services as delivered. I suspect these scams are a little more sophisticated and rely on the 'insertion' of such paperwork into the mark's processes. So probably an inside accomplice is involved.That's a helluva lot of money to go unaccounted for for so long. You would think there would be processes in place to ensure that such large volumes of money don't go missing without checks and balances. Apparently not.
The story of Anna Sorokin aka Anna Delvey, a fake socialite/wealthy heiress, who conned her way through New York and ran up huge hotel bills.
https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/how-anna-delvey-tricked-new-york.html
Most places I've worked have a system for signing off goods and services as delivered. I suspect these scams are a little more sophisticated and rely on the 'insertion' of such paperwork into the mark's processes. So probably an inside accomplice is involved.
Does sound like a scam.Well I got a phone call this morning to tell me that my internet was about to be cut off in 24 hours due to some illegal activity.
Threw me for a bit of a loop as I'm helping with a big demo next week that's already had some friction with the plod so I figured maybe this was some attempt at disruption.
Call was an automated voice that then put me through to an 'Indian' call centre where I was told that someone had tried to hack my router which had flagged up as something illegal and they could fix it if only I followed their instructions... became obvious it was dodgy when they asked me to open a command prompt lol
Person wouldn't give me their name when challenged, it all started falling apart when they claimed to be from Openreach ROFLMFAO who are not my ISP, managed to get an address from them which is the registered address of Openreach in the UK, expect they got that from companies house.
Oddly they did give me some sort of 30 digit number which they reckoned shoud match something, may just have been making that up.
When I called BS on the bugger on the grounds that I'm not with Openreach, they then tried to claim it didn't matter and that Openreach still ran the cable infrastructure, or something like that.
Hung up after that.
Openreach still ran the cable infrastructure, or something like that.
This part of it is true, I think. They are not an ISP and probably now independent of BT, which is. It still sounds like a scam, though.
An award-winning German historian has been stripped of a national blogging prize after she was found to have made up the stories of 22 Jewish relatives who she said “died in the Holocaust”.
Marie-Sophie Hingst, 31, rose to prominence thanks to her vivid accounts of her grandmother’s family, who she claimed had been killed in Nazi death camps during World War Two.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/wor...venting-family-s-holocaust-past-a4158841.html
Warning : Article in Swedish!
https://www.skovdenyheter.se/article/kd-politiker-atalas-har-berattar-han/
But summary : Local politician claims he fell for a Nigerian "You've inherited 6 million USD!" scam. Transferred about 1 million Swedish Kronor (SEK) of his own money. Then borrowed another 500 000 SEK from family. Unfortunately, he also had access to the bank accounts of his political party (the Christian Democrats)... 2 million SEK embezzled.
Grand total lost, 3.5 million SEK (about 285 000 GBP). Quite impressive (and sad).
It’s sad that it is still happening today, there have been a number of arrests due to false claims submitted following Grenfell; people trying to milk a tragedy for personal gain. We should bring back the stocks so these people can be publicly shamed and humiliated for their crimes.That is appalling, it's the sort of stuff that Holocaust Deniers seize on to spread their hate. This woman has a lot to answer for.
That is appalling, it's the sort of stuff that Holocaust Deniers seize on to spread their hate. This woman has a lot to answer for.
On Saturday, Rio de Janeiro-based drug trafficker Clauvino da Silva, currently serving 73 years, attempted to sneak out of the city’s most notorious prison wearing that disguise and in the hope of convincing guards he was in fact his 19-year-old daughter heading home after visiting hours.
But when Silva – AKA Baixinho (“Shorty”) – requested the return of his daughter’s ID card at the jail entrance officers saw through his low-budget disguise and asked him to strip in front of the cameras. That video has since gone viral in Brazil and around the world.
But Saturday’s farcical getaway was not Silva’s first. In January 2013 he was one of 31 prisoners who tried to tunnel out of the same prison complex through the sewers. Four dirt-covered inmates were immediately recaptured but Silva made it out alongside other gang members called “Fish”, “Spiderman” and “Sledge Hammer”.
The following month he was reportedly rearrested while attempting to seize control of a shantytown in Rio’s west region with a group of heavily armed men.
Reports on Monday said the 42-year-old drug trafficker had been moved to solitary confinement but was unlikely to face extra jail time since his unsuccessful bid for freedom had not involved violence.
His daughter, Ana Gabriele Leandro da Silva, who had remained behind in the prison as part of the ruse, seemed to have been less lucky.
According to Rio newspaper Extra she would be charged with abetting prison escape, a crime punishable with up to two years in jail. Seven other visitors – including a pregnant woman suspected of smuggling the disguise into the jail – are also being investigated.