fraud
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Feds allege actor's $690 million Ponzi scheme lied about selling movies to Netflix
A small-time actor has been arrested and charged with fraud for allegedly stealing hundreds of millions from investors by claiming he could sell film rights to Netflix and HBO.
Hacker sells access to hundreds of corporate executives' email accounts
A hacker is selling access to email accounts for hundreds of CEOs and other high-level executives.
Facebook is running a national ad campaign to encourage voting
Facebook is launching a national consumer awareness campaign around voting, with information on registering, a “vote-a-thon” and in-app consumer marketing campaign.
PayPal has a fraud problem
A string of 'invoice' scams suggests PayPal isn't doing enough to prevent fraud.
Two Nigerians face US charges over online fraud worth 'hundreds of millions'
Two Nigerians have been sent to the US to face charges over massive online fraud schemes.
EPA orders Amazon and eBay to remove products posing as coronavirus remedies
eBay and Amazon will face fines if they don't ensure fraudulent 'COVID killing' products are removed from their sites.
Fraud ring uses stolen data to scam unemployment insurance programs
Fraudsters have been using stolen identity data to milk unemployment insurance systems with poor security.
Nintendo blocks legacy logins after 160,000 accounts were compromised (update)
Some 160,000 Switch users have been the subject of a data breach.
COVID-19 scammers may have stolen millions from the German government
Fraudsters may have stolen tens of millions of dollars earmarked for German COVID-19 financial aid after a province failed to properly check the identity of applicants, according to Handelsblatt. The cybercriminals used a classic phishing scheme.
FCC, FTC give providers 48 hours to block COVID-19 scam robocalls
The US government's quest to fight robocalls is taking on added urgency in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The FCC and FTC have demanded that gateway providers cut off COVID-19-related scam robocalls of overseas origin within 48 hours or else face "serious consequences." Other phone companies will have permission to block all traffic from those providers if they don't heed the warning, the agencies said.
Russia busts card fraud ring that included an infamous hacker
Russia tends to turn a blind eye to some fraudsters and hackers, but it just clamped down on a particularly large group. Investigators have charged at least 25 people involved in a credit card fraud ring that included a notorious hacker. While Russian authorities didn't provide a formal list of those caught in the bust, records and security blogger Andrey Sporov have revealed that one of those arrsted was Alexey Stroganov, also known as "Flint." As a Krebs on Security source said, Stroganov apparently had a stake in "almost every major [card] hack" from the past 10 years, and sent "hundreds of millions of dollars" through the seized cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e.
Extortionists threaten sites with bad traffic to make Google ban ads
A creative extortion scheme is threatening websites with revenue loss by unleashing bad traffic that activates Google's AdSense anti-fraud systems, according to Krebs on Security. First, a fraudster threatens to flood the publisher's site with sketchy bot traffic. Then, Google's AdSense anti-fraud systems would pick up on that traffic and suspend the user's AdSense account. Naturally, all you have to do to make this problem go away is pay said fraudster $5,000 in bitcoin.
Puerto Rico's government lost $2.6 million to a phishing scam
An email phishing scam duped the government of Puerto Rico into transferring more than $2.6 million into a fraudulent account, The Associated Press reports. A government agency transferred the funds on January 17th, but the incident was just discovered this week. Puerto Rico is working with the FBI to investigate and recover the funds.
FCC asks telecom companies to help trace international robocalls
Last year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) banned robocalls from international numbers. Now, it's calling on phone companies to help trace international robocalls back to their "fraudster" sources. Today, the FCC sent letters to seven gateway service providers asking them to help track down robocall sources, prevent apparently illegal traffic originating outside the US and provide more info on how they may be facilitating illegal calls.
Russian hacker behind an elite crime forum pleads guilty to multiple charges
Last week, a well-connected Russian cybercrime boss, Aleksei Burkov, pleaded guilty to running an online criminal marketplace and a site that sold stolen credit and debit card data. What's even more intriguing, than the $20 million in fraudulent purchases that Burkov's site facilitated and the exclusive cybercrime ring he ran, is how badly Russia wanted to prevent Burkov from being extradited to the US.
Facebook and eBay crack down on fake product reviews after UK warning
Facebook and eBay are taking steps to crack down on fake and misleading product reviews, following an advisory notice from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Both companies have signed agreements to better identify, investigate and respond to fake reviews, resulting in Facebook removing 188 groups and disabling 24 user accounts, and eBay permanently banning 140 users.
DOJ charges two Russians with using malware to steal millions
Officials are offering a $5 million reward for information that leads to the capture of Maksim Yakubets of Moscow. Yakubets is one of two Russian nationals charged with cybercrimes that resulted in tens of millions in losses. The $5 million reward is the largest amount offered for a cyber criminal's capture to date.
Fraud forces Valve to kill ‘CS:GO’ loot box key trading
Valve's policy of allowing Counter Strike: Global Offensive players to buy and re-sell keys to access in-game loot boxes is no more. The company has announced that the marketplace has apparently been taken over by large fraud networks as a way of laundering money. On the CS:GO blog, an unnamed staffer wrote that "nearly all key purchases that end up being traded or sold on the marketplace are believed to be fraud-sourced."
Echo Fox co-owner sues team partners over fraud claims
The tumult at Echo Fox isn't subsiding any time soon. The esports team's co-owner Rick Fox has sued business partners Amit Raizada and Stratton Sclavos over allegations of both fraud as well as defamation stemming from the earlier racism claims. According to Fox, Raizada and Sclavos illegally profited off his name. Raizada supposedly misused Echo Fox's venture capital funds to both reward Sclavos for raising money and give himself both a $350,000 salary and cover the lease of his $20,000 per month Beverly Hills home. They also made it possible to oust general partners through a shareholder vote (albeit a supermajority) instead of a court order, which led to Rick Fox getting the boot in an August vote that will see him depart October 21st.
Internet metrics giant settles charges it faked its own numbers
The online ad world (among others) thrives on metrics to gauge how well its campaigns are working, but what happens when the company providing that data is cooking its own books? The industry is grappling with that issue today. Comscore and its former CEO Serge Matta have settled SEC charges they committed fraud to artificially inflate revenue by $50 million and otherwise inflate their metrics between 2014 and 2016. Reportedly, Matta had Comscore join "non-monetary transactions" where it would exchange data without expecting money, but recognized revenue on that data based on an inflated sense of its value -- and lied to both accountants and auditors about it. That, in turn, made it look like Comscore was growing at an unrealistic pace.
