MetaFilter posts tagged with fraud

The Education of Little Fraud

reenum — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:12:49 -0800

Many kids read The Education of Little Tree in school, but the author of the book, Forrest Carter, was actually Asa Carter, a staunch racist and charlatan.

Iraq Swears by Bomb Detector U.S. (Correctly) Sees as Useless

Optimus Chyme — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:51:29 -0800

Iraq Swears by Bomb Detector U.S. (Correctly) Sees as Useless. Similar to the now debunked Sniffex (as seen previously on Metafilter), the ADE651 detects explosives, firearms, grenades, narcotics, elephant ivory, bank notes, and according to its manufacturer's website, "human research." There is no known mechanism by which the device can work, it has failed numerous tests, and the James Randi Educational Foundation has offered one million dollars if the ADE651 is successful in a double-blind test. With multi-million dollar profits already made from Iraqi and U.S. coffers, however, the various shell companies behind the ADE651 have so far declined.

Fundable.com is closed permanently

clockworkjoe — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:51:23 -0800

Fundable.com is closed permanently. According to the site's current index, there is bad blood between the two founders of the site, Louis Helm and John Pratt. The recent story of Mary Robinette Kowal being ripped off was apparently the final straw. (as a personal note, I've run 2 fundraisers/ransoms for my podcast through fundable and have no complaints. My third ransom was still underway and I have no idea if the money will show up or be refunded to the donors.)

"I have left a legacy of shame"

up in the old hotel — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:28:07 -0800

“One of the traditional notions of punishment is that an offender should be punished in proportion to his blameworthiness. Here, the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff’s crimes were extraordinarily evil.”

The 71-year-old man behind the biggest Wall Street fraud in history is sentenced to a maximum of 150 years in prison. The Justice Department has posted the sentencing transcript (.pdf)

Victim Sheryl Weinstein: He walks among us. He dresses like us. He drives and eats and drinks and speaks. Under the facade there is truly a beast.

Madoff: I apologize to my victims. I will turn and face you. I am sorry. I know that doesn’t help you.

The victim impact statements (.pdf). After the sentencing, Ruth Madoff broke her silence.

An Unclear Future

mattdidthat — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:41:18 -0800

Clear, the "security service" that allowed travellers to bypass TSA security lines, offered a Father's Day discount if you purchased a one-year membership by June 21. On June 23, Clear ceased operations. Sorry, no refunds.

Tomorrow, Tomorrow

Marisa Stole the Precious Thing — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 12:59:49 -0800

Michael Kinsell sees himself as the next Mr. Rogers. So much so, that he planned a gala event, replete with big-name stars and full orchestra, where Rogers would be honored and Kinsell would be introduced as his successor, telling potential investors he had the blessing of PBS and Rogers’ longtime production company, Family Communications Inc. The only problem was, none of his claims were true, and his charade quickly fell apart.

Saved By The Blog

grumblebee — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:00:43 -0800

The Girl Who Cried Webmaster: "I’m annoyed and exhausted, I have a considerable load of work to take care of, and after you’ve read what appears below, you’ll probably agree that I’ve earned it."

Protect Yourself, Your Family, Your Identity

netbros — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:42:49 -0800

The commercials are all over television — and they certainly are attention-grabbing. They’re the ones where the heavy, bald guy is sitting in his easy chair talking in a squeaky female voice about all the clothes he bought — including a bustier. Or the little old lady speaking with the gruff voice of a younger man about the sweet motorcycle she now owned. Identity theft is a serious crime — one that is occurring with an alarming frequency. The Identity Theft Manifesto explains how criminals get your personal info, and what you can do about it.

Accidental movement of large sums of money to the wrong people.

johannahdeschanel — Thu, 21 May 2009 00:08:22 -0800

Couple flee after bank mistakenly gives them 10m $

The rise and fall of a physics fraudster

gottabefunky — Sat, 02 May 2009 13:21:41 -0800

The rise and fall of a physics fraudster. In the spring of 2002, the world’s most productive young scientist was a 31-year-old physicist at Bell Labs in New Jersey in the US. With eight papers published in Nature and Science in 2001 alone, Jan Hendrik Schön was emerging with breathtaking speed as a star researcher in physics, materials science and nanotechnology...But in September 2002, managers at Bell Labs released a report [pdf] that...made clear that much of Schön’s data were fake. His discoveries were lies. Many of his devices had probably never existed...On the day of the report’s release, Schön was fired and fled the US to an unknown location. In all, 21 of Schon's papers were withdrawn from Nature, Science and Physical Review Journals.

Sir Allen Stanford, the Ponzi artist

Gyan — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:27:14 -0800

The Dark Knight - On Sir Allen Stanford

Banking on Fraud

ornate insect — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:23:46 -0800

Neil Barofsky, who helped prosecute the REFCO case, and who was appointed by the previous administration in late November to serve as Special Inspector General for TARP (more on him here and here), has released a report that claims TARP and related bailout programs are inherently vulnerable to fraud--and that there are at least 20 bailout/fraud investigations currently underway. The report comes on the heels of rumors that bailout money may convert to equity stakes: a move that may signal a change in current policy (but don't mention the n-word) .

The Hipster Grifter

R. Mutt — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 08:56:46 -0800

Kari Ferrell is on Salt Lake City's Most Wanted List. Apparently Ms. Ferrell has moved from Utah to New York and has been hanging out with the hipsters in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Within the space of a half-hour, Ms. Ferrell was peppering him with questions about his sexual history—how many women he’d slept with and so on. “She was coming on to me, and I was super into it for the first part of it,” he said. “I realized I could have fun after work—but then I was like, ‘Let me check this girl out.’”

ATM card skimmer removed and examined

thewalrus — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:48:18 -0800

In the Netherlands somebody has removed an ATM card skimmer and examined it in detail. This site is in Dutch only, but appears to show high resolution photos of an ATM card skimmer with integrated PIN-capturing video camera.

Pseudoscientists Win Prizes When Pigs Fly

jonp72 — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:54:45 -0800

On April Fools Day 2009, the James Randi Educational Foundation announced the Pigasus Awards for 2008 for the worst in pseudoscientific irrationality. The Scientist award was given to Dr. Colin A. Ross for his claims that he can shoot electromagnetic energy beams from his eyes. The Funding Organization award went to Walt Ruloff and his co-producers for bankrolling the Intelligent Design documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. The Media award went to cable channels such as Comedy Central that still run ads for Enzyte even though the company's owner is now serving a 25-year sentence for fraud. The Perfomer award was typically awarded in the past to cheesy psychics such as Uri Geller or Sylvia Browne, but this year the (dis)honor goes to actress/spokesmodel Jenny McCarthy for her antivaccination activism, a stance that inspired the Jenny McCarthy Body Count. Finally, a new award for "most persistent refusal to face reality" was presented to infomercial pitchman Kevin Trudeau, who continues selling his books on "natural cures" despite a judge slapping him with a $37 million fine for false claims.

Trust me, I'm an attorney

Inspector.Gadget — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:44:21 -0800

More brazen than Madoff? Former NYC hotshot attorney Marc Dreier (he of the now-defunct vanity firm), was arrested in Canada in late 2008, charged with spearheading an occasionally daring series of frauds. Read the bankruptcy filing, ponder the fate of former Dreier associates, and maybe pick up some flashy furniture at a deep discount.

We've only just begun

ryoshu — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 10:54:31 -0800

No, to us what the fraud Bernard Madoff is to individual investors, AIG is to the global financial community. [via] "In both cases, AIG was engaged in transactions that were meant not to reduce risk, but to hide the true nature of the risk in these companies from investors, regulators and the consumers who rely on these institutions for services. Keep in mind that while the SEC did act to address these issues, the parties involved received light punishments when you consider that these are all felonies that arguably would call for criminal prosecution for fraud, securities fraud, conspiracy and racketeering, among other things. Indeed, this is one of those rare cases where we believe AIG itself, as a corporate person, should be subject to criminal prosecution and liquidation." ... "As with the phony reinsurance contracts that AIG and other insurers wrote for decades, when AIG wrote hundreds of billions of dollars in CDS contracts, neither AIG nor the counterparties believed that the CDS would ever be paid. Indeed, one source with personal knowledge of the matter suggests that there may be emails and actual side letters between AIG and its counterparties that could prove conclusively that AIG never intended to pay out on any of its CDS contracts." "

The Alex Latifi trial was potholed with crazy.

Non Prosequitur — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:45:31 -0800

The Curious Case of Alex Latifi. "We don’t care if Latifi is innocent. Our goal is to put him out of business." Feds knock; a business is lost: all charges dropped years after the company was charged with violating U.S. export law by sending to China classified drawings of an Army Black Hawk helicopter part and falsifying related tests. "It appears that the principal offense committed by the defendant, Alex Latifi, was breathing while being of Middle Eastern extraction.”

Preparing for trial, Latifi’s lawyers were stunned by the first entry in the lead investigator’s official notebook. “It said Latifi was a Democrat and gave $30,000 to a Democratic politician’s charity for abused children.”

Maybe he needed some lobbyists: “The prosecutors said they knew Alex must be guilty of fraud,” Warren says. “How else could he afford to make Cadillac parts for Kia prices?”

Election Fraud in Kentucky

chunking express — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 06:20:10 -0800

Election Fraud in Kentucky. "I think this is the first documented case of election fraud in the U.S. using electronic voting machines (there have been lots of documented cases of errors and voting problems, but this one involves actual maliciousness)."

Madoff Congo scandal

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:07:10 -0800

The US Attorney's office has submitted email correspondence between Bernie Madoff and his victims, some of whom are more deserving than others. Via

The Great Imposter

Effigy2000 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:01:59 -0800

Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr was a prison warden, a monk, a lawyer and a religiously-oriented psychologist, and yet he was actually none of those things. Now known as "The Great Imposter", Demara held many careers as he faked his way through life, but his most famous exploit was to masquerade as surgeon Joseph Cyr aboard the HMCS Cayuga, a Royal Canadian Navy destroyer, during the Korean War. During his time as a surgeon on the Cayuga, Demara managed to improvise successful major surgeries and fend off infection with lots of penicillin. He performed surgery on 16 Korean combat casualties who were loaded onto the Cayuga. The way he pulled off this deception was as impressive as it was dangerous for his patients. Apparently after ordering personnel to transport injured patients into the ship's operating room to prep them for surgery, Demara would disappear to his room with a textbook on general surgery and proceed to speed-read the type of surgery he was to perform, including major chest surgery. Amazingly, none of these patients died as a result of his surgery. Ironically it was because of his skill as a surgeon that Demara was exposed. According to this article, the removal of a bullet from one wounded soilder made the papers, and when the mother of the real Dr Joseph Cyr read that her son, who operated a civilian practice, was now in the war, she rang him only to be assured by her son that he was indeed still in civilian practice. She then contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Demara was exposed for the fraud that he was. His life and exploits would go on to inspire a movie and the name of a band. When asked to describe why he did what he did, Demara is said to have responded "Rascality, pure rascality." Ferdinand Demara died in 1982.

A Medical Madoff

homunculus — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:10:21 -0800

A Medical Madoff: Anesthesiologist Faked Data in 21 Studies. "A pioneering anesthesiologist has been implicated in a massive research fraud that has altered the way millions of patients are treated for pain during and after orthopedic surgeries."

Can Vegetarians Still Eat the Rich?

saulgoodman — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:42:56 -0800

Newsweek discusses Obama's "War on the Rich," a timely story, considering Bloomberg's recent christening of the "Obama Bear Market." And on a tangential note, TPM points out that those bankruptcy law reforms enacted under the Bush administration specifically included new provisions aggressively lobbied for by the "International Swaps and Derivatives Association," which were designed to protect the derivatives and swap industries. Yet another example of good timing. Meanwhile, something smells foul at Merrill Lynch.

He's no Bernie Madoff

up in the old hotel — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:48:27 -0800

Another massive Ponzi scheme uncovered. Meet Sir Allen Stanford and his bank. Sir Allen stands accused of running an $8 billion fraud. Read the SEC filings here.

The high cost of Lisa's tiger-repellant rock

orthogonality — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 04:09:17 -0800

Leaving office, President Bush claimed "that he took 'a deliberate and comprehensive approach' to preventing terrorism that combined military action overseas with strong defensive measures at home."

[As early as 2002] "We knew that the mortgage-brokerage industry was corrupt... Where we would have gotten a sense of what was really going on was the point where the mortgage was sold knowing that it was a piece of dung and it would be turned into a security. But the agents with the expertise had been diverted to counterterrorism."
[. . . . FBI Director Robert] "Mueller actually circumvented the Justice Department and the OMB to get resources. But he was shut down" by the [Bush A]dministration. [. . . . Testifying in October 2004, ] Chris Swecker, then assistant director of the criminal investigation division said ... "The potential impact of mortgage fraud on financial institutions in the stock market is clear. If fraudulent practices become systemic within the mortgage industry and mortgage fraud is allowed to become unrestrained, it will ultimately place financial institutions at risk and have adverse effects on the stock market."