Tag Archive for: bank fraud

The Global Scam Network: A Deep Dive into International Fraud

In the age of digital globalization, scams have become a widespread problem, often orchestrated from across the globe. While scam stories are far from new, the evolving nature of fraud, the countries from which they originate, and the staggering financial losses for the United States require fresh analysis.

Key Scam Originating Countries

Several nations have been linked to high levels of fraud targeting American citizens and businesses, ranging from phishing and romance fraud to business email compromise (BEC). Here’s a breakdown of the most prominent ones:

  • Nigeria: Nigeria has long been associated with various forms of fraud, especially email scams, commonly known as “Nigerian Prince” scams. In recent years, sophisticated fraud networks have emerged, often involving cybercrime syndicates. These groups use social engineering tactics, romance scams, and fake business proposals to siphon billions from unsuspecting victims worldwide. The FBI estimates that Nigerian BEC scams alone result in losses of over $1.8 billion annually globally.
  • India: India has seen a rise in fraudulent call centers that target American consumers. These scams often involve tech support fraud, IRS impersonation scams, or fake credit card services. Criminal networks run many operations in cities like Delhi and Mumbai, where scammers impersonate IRS or Microsoft representatives. In 2022, it was estimated that tech support fraud originating from India led to losses exceeding $347 million in the U.S.
  • China: Chinese scammers are often linked to counterfeit goods, intellectual property theft, and fraudulent online marketplaces. China’s rise as a global e-commerce powerhouse has also enabled fraudsters to use platforms to sell fake products, affecting the fashion and pharmaceutical industries. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported that Chinese counterfeit scams cost the U.S. economy upwards of $600 billion annually.
  • Russia: Russian cybercriminals have become some of the most notorious worldwide. They are frequently linked to sophisticated hacking schemes and ransomware attacks. Russian crime groups target American corporations, government institutions, and critical infrastructure. The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in 2021, for instance, which was attributed to Russian hackers, resulted in a payout of $4.4 million in Bitcoin.
  • The Philippines: Call center scams, especially related to online dating, romance fraud, and fake investments, often originate from the Philippines. Scammers build elaborate counterfeit profiles, usually targeting emotionally vulnerable Americans. In 2023 alone, the FBI reported that romance scams from the Philippines resulted in over $700 million in losses.

The Growing Threat of gift cards scams

A significant and growing portion of the fraud ecosystem revolves around gift card scams. Scammers increasingly prefer gift cards to defraud people, as they are easy to purchase, widely available, and provide minimal protection for the buyer.

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), one in four people who report losing money to fraud have fallen victim to gift card scams. Typically, these scams begin with a phone call from someone posing as a well-known – demanding the numbers on the back of gift cards to resolve a “security issue” or prevent arrest.

Popular Targets for Gift Card Scams

Target gift cards have become the most frequently reported brand for scams, followed by Google Play, Apple, eBay, and Walmart.

Scammers often instruct victims to purchase cards from retailers like Target, Walmart, Best Buy, CVS, and Walgreens, ensuring anonymity and complicating law enforcement efforts.

Scammers typically coach victims to purchase multiple gift cards across various locations and to remain on the phone with the scammer to prevent interference from store employees.

Between 2018 and 2021, gift card scams increased yearly, with total losses reaching $148 million in just the first nine months of 2021. The median loss for victims of these scams rose from $700 to $1,000 during this period, with Target gift cards accounting for a median loss of $2,500 – 30% of victims reported losing $5,000 or more on a single Target card.

If someone demands payment via gift card, it is unequivocally a scam. Gift cards should be used for gifts, not payments. Victims are encouraged to report fraud to the card issuer and file a complaint with the FTC.

Fresh Insights: Emerging Scam Hubs

While the countries above remain at the forefront, newer countries are joining the ranks of global scam hubs driven by economic inequality, weak regulatory oversight, and internet access.

  • Eastern Europe: Countries like Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria are becoming hotbeds for digital fraud and cybercrime. These nations host many fraudulent websites, phishing networks, and money laundering operations. Losses attributed to Eastern European fraud networks are challenging to quantify, but they are believed to contribute significantly to global BEC losses, estimated to cost the U.S. $43 billion since 2016.
  • Ghana: Known as “the new Nigeria” regarding online romance scams, Ghana is becoming a significant player in defrauding American citizens. Many Ghanaian scammers pose as U.S. military personnel stationed abroad, developing relationships with their targets before requesting money. In 2022, U.S. losses from romance scams tied to Ghana reached over $300 million.

Quantifying the Financial Impact

Quantifying the amount of money lost to scams is challenging, as many victims are reluctant to report their losses. However, estimates suggest that the annual cost to the United States alone is staggering. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC),

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) recorded over 800,000 complaints in 2022 alone, with reported losses exceeding $10 billion – a 60% increase from the previous year

Yes, Americans lost billions of dollars to scams in recent years. Here’s a snapshot of the financial toll on the U.S. from scams in just the last few years:

  • Business Email Compromise (BEC): $2.4 billion in 2021 losses
  • Phishing schemes: $1 billion in 2022 losses
  • Romance scams: $1.3 billion in 2022 losses: Victims are lured into romantic relationships with scammers who ultimately exploit them financially.
  • Tech support fraud: $347 million in 2022 losses: Scammers pose as technical support representatives to gain access to victims’ computers and steal personal information.
  • Investment scams: Victims are promised high returns on investments that are ultimately fraudulent.
  • Phishing scams: Scammers send emails or messages to trick victims into revealing sensitive information.
  • Ransomware attacks: Roughly $20 billion in global economic damages in 2022, much of it targeting U.S. institutions

Beyond the Numbers

The financial toll of scams extends far beyond monetary losses. Victims often suffer emotional distress, damaged credit, and a loss of trust in others. In some cases, the psychological impact can be severe, leading to depression and even suicide.

Why America is a Primary Target

  • High Disposable Income: Scammers target the U.S. because of its vast population of individuals with higher disposable incomes. Americans are more likely to have access to credit, savings, and online banking.
  • Advanced Technology Infrastructure: While the U.S. leads in technology adoption, it is more vulnerable to cyber-attacks and online scams, exploiting the systems designed to offer convenience.
  • Weak International Coordination: Despite efforts, international law enforcement needs help to keep up with cybercrime’s ever-evolving nature. The lack of cohesive international regulations and jurisdictional challenges enables scammers in foreign nations to operate with impunity.

Combating the Global Scam Epidemic and the Road Ahead

Addressing the global scam epidemic requires a multifaceted approach. Governments, law enforcement agencies, and technology companies must work together to:

  • Enhance law enforcement cooperation: Strengthen international collaboration to track and prosecute scammers.
  • Improve consumer education: Raise awareness about common scams and provide tips on how to protect oneself.
  • Strengthen cybersecurity measures: Develop and implement robust security protocols to prevent scammers from exploiting vulnerabilities.
  • Support victim recovery: Offer resources and support to victims of scams.

As fraudsters continue to adapt and exploit new vulnerabilities, international coalitions must focus on intelligence sharing, cybersecurity investment, and policy enforcement. Another critical strategy is to empower consumers with better education about emerging scam tactics.

In the age of hypoconnectivity, the battle against scams has indeed become a global one. However, with innovative approaches to cybersecurity and international cooperation, there’s hope that the financial hemorrhaging from the U.S. to global scam hubs can be curtailed.

By understanding the origins of global scams and their devastating impact on individuals and communities, we can take steps to combat this growing threat and protect ourselves from becoming victims.

©2024. Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

Those Clinton Women

Listening to the reports of obscene speaking fees earned by Bill and Hillary Clinton… Bill commanding fees of from $500,000-750,000 a speech and Hillary demanding $200,000-300,000, along with private jets and presidential suites… I turned to my wife and said, jokingly, “What do you suppose Chelsea gets for a thirty or forty minute speech?”

In her lifetime, Chelsea Clinton has had a front row seat to more corruption and more sexual excess than an aging mob-connected porn star, so it might be interesting to hear what she has to say… if she could be totally candid.  And while we enjoyed a brief chuckle over the silly notion that a young woman of her age and inexperience would have anything interesting to say, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to hear her drone on and on for thirty or forty minutes about her recent domestic battles with colic and diaper rash while suffering through a $500 plate of cold string beans, soggy au gratin potatoes, and “rubber chicken.”

But then it occurred to me that she is only slightly less experienced than her mother’s former boss, Barack Obama, and he’s sitting in the Oval Office making big decisions on my behalf.  So if people would be dumb enough to vote for her mother or for Barack Obama as president of the United States, and if there are those who would actually pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to hear one of the elder Clintons speak, well, who knows…?

Chelsea Clinton was born on February 27, 1980, early in her father’s first term as governor of Arkansas and almost five years after her mother was fired from the staff of the House committee that impeached Richard Nixon.  She was fired when the chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee described her as “an unethical, dishonest lawyer,” who “conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee, and the rules of confidentiality.”

During her undergraduate years at Wellesley College, near Boston, Hillary became an admirer and a protégé of the evil mastermind of the Democratic Party playbook, Saul Alinsky.  In fact, Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals, was not only the subject matter of Hillary’s senior thesis at Wellesley, it has been the “bible” that has informed Barack Obama’s ideological evolution since his college years at Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard, and perhaps before.  To understand Alinsky’s utter disdain for American culture and the U.S. Constitution we need look no further than his ideological offspring, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom view the  U.S. Constitution as a document that means whatever they would like it to mean on any given day.

Chelsea was born just two years before her mother turned a modest $1,000 investment in cattle futures into a $100,000 profit in just one year… taking her trading advice from a lawyer for the largest corporation in Arkansas while her husband served as the state’s attorney general.  Then, in 1993, when Chelsea was twelve, her parents uprooted their criminal franchise in Arkansas and moved it from the governor’s mansion in Little Rock to the White House in Washington.

In November 1998, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) announced that he would not seek reelection to his senate seat in 2000.  It was Hillary’s signal that, after six years as first lady of the United States, and after washing her husband’s “dirty laundry” for nearly twenty-five years, it might be fun to represent the State of New York in the U.S. Senate.  However, as a lifelong resident of Chicago, Little Rock, and Washington, DC, her New York credentials were slightly “underwhelming.”  To solve that problem the Clintons purchased a 5,200 sq. ft. colonial mansion in Chappaqua, New York, for $1.33 million and Hillary embarked on an extensive “listening tour” to learn what was on the minds of people in upstate New York.

After winning the Democratic nomination, Hillary knew that white liberals and blacks would be with her, but she was less than popular in the Jewish community and totally unknown in New York’s large Puerto Rican community, so she concentrated on solidifying her support within those constituencies.

In the years between 1975 and 1985, a Puerto Rican terror group, the FALN, exploded some 120 bombs in public places, mostly in New York and Chicago.  In those bombings, six people were killed and dozens more, including police officers, were permanently maimed.  Sixteen FALN members were convicted and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 35 to 105 years.

But with Hillary combating charges of being one of the most shameless carpetbaggers of all time, the Clintons knew they’d have to “pull out all the stops” to win the New York senate seat.  Accordingly, on August 11, 1999, Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of all sixteen members of the FALN.  However, the commutations were not universally popular.  They were strongly opposed by the U.S. Attorney, the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Fraternal Order of Police, the families of FALN victims, and members of Congress (a resolution opposing the commutations passed the Senate by a vote of 95-2 and the House of Representatives by a vote of 311-41).  Nevertheless, Clinton proceeded with the commutations and the Puerto Rican community fell in line behind Hillary.

With the Puerto Rican vote in the bag, there was still work to be done in the New York Jewish community.  Late in her campaign, on August 8, 2000, Hillary visited the small Rockland County village of New Square, New York, a community of orthodox Hasidic Jews, where members of the local community had their tzitzits in a knot over the 1999 conviction of four Hasidic men charged with swindling the federal government out of some $40 million in education grants, small-business loans, and housing subsidies.

Although Hillary is said to have been warmly received by local residents, it is not known what was discussed during her stopover.  However, what is known is that on Election Day, November 7, Hillary won New Square by a vote of 1,359 to10, and that, six weeks later, on December 22, 2000, Grand Rabbi David Twersky of the New Square congregation, participated in a closed door meeting with Bill Clinton in the White House Map Room.  And although it is quite possible that the two men discussed nothing more than Clinton’s preference in cigars, the meeting had a positive outcome for the Jews of New Square.  On his last day in office, Bill Clinton reduced the

prison sentences of the New Square Four from as much as 6½ years to no more than 2½ years.

From the outset, not everyone in the Rockland County Jewish community was optimistic that a pardon for the New Square Four could be arranged.  What they failed to understand is that, when Bill and Hillary Clinton “pull out all the stops” to win an election, they don’t worry much about legal or political repercussions.

And now comes 34-year-old Chelsea Clinton Mezvinsky (Mrs. Marc Mezvinsky), the daughter of former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the daughter-in-law of former congressman Ed Mezvinsky (D-IA) who pled guilty in 2001 to thirty-one counts of obtaining nearly $10 million through bank fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud.

When most of us sit down to dinner with our extended families we might be able to discuss the few traffic tickets we’ve received over the years.  But when Chelsea and her husband sit down to dinner with their parents they are sitting down with people who have first-hand experience with bank fraud, bribery, concealing evidence, conspiracy, contempt of court, evidence tampering, extortion, influence peddling, lying to federal investigators, mail fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, official secrets act violations, Pendleton Act violations, perjury, rape, sexual assault, subornation of perjury, theft of government property, vote fraud, wire fraud, witness tampering… and more.

After leaving her $600,000 per year job as a special correspondent for NBC News in August 2014, Chelsea was taken into the family business as vice-chairman of the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.  However, according to a July 10, 2014 Associated Press story by Ken Thomas, she is represented, along with her father and mother, by the Harry Walker Agency, in New York, which arranges speaking engagements for notable such as former vice president Dick Cheney, former senator Rick Santorum, and former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.  And while the Washington Speakers Bureau reports that speakers such as former senators Bill Bradley (D-NJ) and Christopher Dodd (D-CT), earn $25,000 to $40,000 per speech, the AP reports that Chelsea Clinton commands speaking fees as high as $75,000.

But it appears that all is not roses at the Clinton Foundation.  It is reported that Foundation staff find Chelsea as difficult and unpleasant to work with as Arkansas State Patrolmen, the Secret Service, and White House staff did with her mother… resulting in an unusually high turnover of Foundation staff.

According to a May 19 report by James Dunn, of Mailonline, “A lot of people left because she was there.  A lot of people left because she didn’t want them there.”  Dunn reports that among those “displaced” since she arrived are former CEO Bruce Lindsey (former White House chief of staff who lied so frequently and so convincingly that he was able to keep Bill Clinton out of jail); Chelsea’s former spokesman, Matt McKenna; and Ginny Ehrlich, the founding CEO of the Clinton Health Matters Initiative.

First indications are that the apple does not fall far from the tree.  But with a charming, affable philanderer for a father and a cold, calculating shrew for a mother, what are we to expect?  If there is such a thing as “genetic disposition,” the long term prospects for Chelsea Clinton are not good.  Let’s hope that is not the case and that, for Marc Mezvinsky’s sake, the Clinton women turn out to be polar opposites.