I stopped making new year's resolutions a long time ago because I wasn't very good at keeping them. The pressure to maintain the effort became another stressor in my life. You can only fail at losing 15 pounds or daily teeth flossing so many times. I still set yearly goals but they are something that I have developed a plan and a roadmap to achieve.
Making new years resolutions is still popular for others and I have heard many declare their ill-fated intentions over the past few days. One of the most frequent themes I've heard has been the desire to “return to normal” referencing the Covid-19 pandemic and the way it's turned our lives upside-down since 2019.
What is normal at this point? I can only assume the declarants mean a return to life as is it was in December 2019. Do we really want to go back there at this point? And how would we do that? You can't put the past two years back in the bottle.
This longing for “normal” is foreign to those of us that defend against, or investigate cyber-financial crime. The concept of normalcy doesn't exist. Well, other than the bad guys are unrelenting in their attacks and continuously evolving their tactics to defeat us. There isn't a normal because the game is continuously evolving. Much like a virus, threats such as ransomware, phishing emails, business email compromise attacks, money laundering methods, and social engineering techniques are continually mutating in response to the tactics of security and law enforcement. There are new variants every day! The theme may be the same but the characters and their schemes are ever changing.
We never have the desire to return to normal because there is no normal. Normal is chaos. Everyday.
Welcome to 2022 and another year of combating cyber-financial crime. Normalcy is not an option.
Did they read the rest?
Someone made a funny social media post from the IRS Publication 17 which is the agencies 2021 guidance for preparing individual tax returns. The post referenced the “other income” section and the fact that income earned from “illegal activities” must be reported. The item was picked up by some news media outlets who seemed bemused that income from drug dealing and fraud must be reported as income. Why wouldn’t it? But the funny thing is that they didn’t pick up some of the other ill-gotten gains that must be reported including “kickbacks”, “stolen property”, and “gambling”, state sanctioned or not. https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17#en_US_2021_publink1000172116
Government fails again
This could also be titled “Who didn’t see this coming?”. The government legalizes marijuana and taxes it to get their blood money. And then taxes it even more. Street sellers don’t tax their product and undercut the dispensary marijuana prices. Guess what the consumer chooses? Yep, the demand for “illegal” marijuana is greater than ever. https://reason.com/2021/12/28/californians-learn-that-raising-taxes-on-marijuana-fuels-black-markets-for-drugs/
This actually makes sense
The chip has changed the way we use credit cards - from horizontal to vertical. We now insert the card into a chip reader so the orientation of the card has changed. It makes sense that the card design should change also. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/credit-cards-future-1.6261182
The fraud isn’t that interesting
The SEC charged the president and chief operating officer of Medallion Financial Corporation with offenses related to a scheme to pump up its stock price. The company was paying media sources to publish flattering, but false, articles about the companies business successes. It was quite an elaborate scheme. BUT wait, that’s not the interesting part of the story. The intriguing part is what the business actually did - lend money to taxi drivers so they could pay for the coveted operating licenses AKA medallions. The medallions are so expensive they must be financed. No wonder taxi drivers hate Uber and Lyft drivers that can operate without such licenses. https://www.complianceweek.com/regulatory-enforcement/sec-charges-medallion-financial-with-fraud-illegal-touting/31211.article
The Rest…
The United States is “falling behind” in the battle with cybercriminals. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-u-s-is-falling-behind-in-fighting-cybercriminals-heres-what-has-to-change-11640696809
Cryptocurrency is not a SAR option, literally. https://securitiesanalytics.com/cryptocurrency-sars-what-do-we-know/
“Unprecedented fraud” is causing a significant delay in the delivery of Pennsylvania unemployment benefits. https://www.wpxi.com/news/local/fraud-causing-delays-unemployment-benefits/WXWW3VLRBFAOBPXQ5JLC5STBPU/
Cool Tools
A fantastic collection of online calculators - https://calcforme.com/
Cool Job
Get them tax cheats - Criminal Investigation Special Agent : IRS
“YOU CAN SAVE A LOT OF TIME BY LETTING PEOPLE “WIN” THE ARGUMENT”. - someone with more free time than me.
Homophones are hard
Rote - A mechanical routine; a medieval stringed musical instrument
Wrote - to form words, or to cover, fill, or fill-in by writing; to compose
Thank you for opening the email and reading this weeks edition of the newsletter. There is a tremendous demand for your attention and appreciate that you gave me a few minutes.
See you next Tuesday.
Matt