Threats Without Borders - Issue 76
Threats Without Borders - Issue 76
Matt's Newsletter, Week ending May 1, 2022
RoboKiller is a smartphone application that blocks spam calls and text messages. The company publishes their analytics to a dashboard on their website. The numbers of spam text messages are astounding! The company recorded 11.36 BILLION spam text messages in April 2022. No surprise that the most targeted states pretty much mirror the most populated.
And the spammers are really good at it!
https://www.robokiller.com/spam-text-insights/
BNPL made for fraud
I had my first investigation involving a BNPL company. Buy Now Pay Later. These companies are exploding in popularity and it seems their fraud detection and investigation departments are not keeping up. It’s almost as if they were idealized by the bad guys to make identity theft as easy as possible. Here are some explainer articles to bring you up to speed.
https://www.quantexa.com/blog/bnpl-fraud/
https://www.fico.com/blogs/bnpl-fraud-when-buy-now-pay-later-backfires
Don’t stand on the carpet
A New York state senator has introduced a bill to regulate the crypto industry and criminalize “rug pulls”. A rug pull is a fraud scheme that tricks people into investing money in a fraudulent product. After the fraudsters attain significant investment in the fake product they abandon the project and take all of the money. The anonymous nature of cryptocurrency makes these scams very easy to pull off. The bill reads: A developer, whether natural or otherwise, is guilty of illegal rug pulls when such a developer develops a class of virtual token and sells more than 10 per cent of such tokens within five years from the date of the last sale of such tokens. No word on who will be the enforcer of such law. https://bitcoinist.com/new-york-clear-legal-framework-to-crypto-crimes/
Please don’t try to shoot down a drone
U.S. law enforcement is grappling with the increased criminal use of drones and little recourse to address it. The FAA bans anyone, including law enforcement from interfering with aircraft, maned or not, during its flight. And using a device to jam control signals is equally prohibited. Hopefully, new legislation will change this. A technical solution is needed that doesn’t involve the police trying to shoot the drone down with firearms. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2318239-the-us-has-a-new-plan-to-help-tackle-criminals-using-drones/
Maybe some fraud prevention too…
Georgia is the 13th state to mandate personal finance education for its students. This is a great trend as so many young people are clueless on money matters. Just give one of them a paper check! Hopefully, these classes include some fraud prevention education so they stop getting scammed through internet classified sites and giving their social media passwords away in phishing attacks. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/28/georgia-is-now-the-latest-state-to-mandate-personal-finance-education.html
The Rest…
Michigan men ran a massive fraudulent sports memorabilia racket offering signed items from Babe Ruth, Cy Young, Honus Wagner, Lou Gehrig, and others. https://www.pennlive.com/sports/2022/04/michigan-brothers-ran-massive-forgery-ring-from-barn-sold-fake-babe-ruth-autos-art-through-auction-houses-in-several-states-including-pa-feds-say.html
To make cyber investigations even more difficult, Microsoft is adding a free usage VPN to the Edge browser. https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-is-adding-a-free-vpn-to-the-edge-browser
Jumping on the “Everything Elon” bandwagon, a criminal group has launched an Elon Musk themed cryptocurrency scam. https://blog.malwarebytes.com/crypto/2022/04/elon-musk-themed-cryptocurrency-scam-uses-fake-medium-as-the-promotion-site/
Financial services application Plaid has tentatively settled a class action lawsuit against them by setting up a 58 million dollar fund to repay victims. https://www.plaidsettlement.com/
Cool Job(s)
Chief Taco Officer - Favor https://www.favordelivery.com/cto
Cryptocurrency Financial Investigations Analyst - Booz https://careers.boozallen.com/jobs/JobDetail/Washington-Cryptocurrency-Financial-Investigations-Analyst-R0139026/58425?source=JB-14400
Cool Tools
Advanced all-in-one search engine: https://xn--1-zfa.com/
Irrelevant
15 bizarre museums to stop at on your next road trip. https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/15-bizarre-museums-to-add-to-your-next-u-s-road-trip
Thank you for reading this weeks issue. Please find me if you’re attending the IAFCI Keystone conference next week so we can connect.
Matt
“A players hire A players, but B players hire C players and C players hire D players. It doesn’t take long to get to Z players. The trickle-down effect causes bozo explosions in companies.” - Steve Jobs