Random Thought Thread

SharpBits said:
Thieves like these scumbags really bother me. Our government does nothing these days to stem the tide. Everything else is more important, I guess.
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Making broad based comments without backup evidence is really just hyperbole. In reality, you probably have no idea how many cases are made, reviewed, accepted or rejected for prosecution by the U.S. Attorney's Office, or the investigating agencies.

There's lots of crime in the U.S. At some point it comes down to the manpower available, and the resources to prosecute.

It can be very disappointing to present a case to the U.S. Attorney with sufficient evidence to prosecute and convict only to have it turned down because it doesn't meet a threshold.

For instance, in Miami, federal prosecution (in my day) would not go forward for under 5,000 lbs of marijuana. (I'd hand such over to locals if they wanted it.) Other cases went without prosecution for political reasons and sensitivities...such as some regarding Cuba and other countries where either they didn't want a particular community to get lathered up and lead to civil disorder, or there were matters of security and intelligence which had to be considered.

I think your remark might be more palatable if you said that they aren't doing enough...but perhaps they do what they can.

(If you are talking about knife counterfeiting, that would be handled by the fraud unit in my former outfit...which handled all such issues if they crossed our borders in either direction. When you consider all the counterfeit goods, trademark violations, licensing, cloning, and other frauds, its an immense amount of work. Thankfully, I've never worked in the fraud unit, but I did have to explain to knife purveyors at shows why large consignments of their knives were confiscated...only because many of them knew what kind of work I was engaged in.

I've participated in cases involving the counterfeiting of U.S. currency with the Secret Service as narco-traffickers were famous for printing money in South America and I'd bring samples to them to initiate further investigation. )
 
We once had our corporate credit card hacked and someone used it to buy a plane ticket

My thinking is, they're going to have to present the boarding pass to get onto the airplane. You're going to have a name, an id, and the location and time.

Short of actually wrapping it up with a bow, how could it be simpler? Go get the motherfucker!

Nope

Nothing was done
 
I had a credit card hacked and they used it to buy an account on some gaming thing

I contacted the company and told them what happened and asked, can you tell me who this person is? Their name? Email? Username? Anything?

They couldn't, due to the privacy concerns of the criminal

I pointed out that, I paid for it, it's mine.

Nope
 
I once got put into collection by AT&T because someone claiming to be me bought a cell phone and phone service plan from them.

They were adamant that I should pay for it and threatened to wreck my credit. They literally put me in collections and I was being hounded by a collection agency.

I explained to them who I am, how ridiculous it would be for me to steal a cell phone from them, pointed out that the address they shipped it to is not my address, but it took many interactions and hours of wrangling with them, and finally threat of legal action, to get them to acknowledge that I was not their guy.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
I had a credit card hacked and they used it to buy an account on some gaming thing

I contacted the company and told them what happened and asked, can you tell me who this person is? Their name? Email? Username? Anything?

They couldn't, due to the privacy concerns of the criminal

I pointed out that, I paid for it, it's mine.

Nope
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About 2 decades ago, I saw a $39.99 charge on my card that I didn’t make, for a gaming website account subscription.

The charge was routed through Canada, for a company in California. I manage to get the IP address for the account, and traced it back to an apartment address about 45 minutes away.

I reasoned that this must have been a local, swiping my card info, and the only recent transaction with that card was dinner at a local restaurant. Did an info lookup, pulled the tenant’s name, and checked the restaurant’ employee roster. Sure enough, it was the waiter I handed the card to.

Printed everything out and called the local Sheriff’s office. A deputy came to the house. Explained everything to him and handed him the Manila folder with the printouts of everything I had and how I traced it back to him. Deputy said, “Wow. You’ve pretty much done all the work for us. We’ll get this taken care of. I’m assuming you’ve already contacted the card issuer to report this and cancel the card? Great. We take CC fraud seriously. We’ll take care of this guy”.

Didn’t really follow up to see what happened to the waiter.

I hate scammers, thieves and fraudsters. Yeah, I’ll spend some of my own time, if I can have charges brought against them.

Was also successful against an eBay fraudster, also 20+ years ago. I think I detailed that before in the Random Thoughts thread.

I’m pretty sure I’m the reason for eBay changing how they did things, because within a few months of that particular case, eBay changed how they posted things, so that no one other than the seller could contact the buyers in their listings (I basically figured out that this a-hole was a serial scammer, so instead of filing against him for the petit larceny $108, I contacted every single buyer in his history, and asked them if they had received their purchase, or if they’d been scammed, and to call the Brigham County PD to speak to detective #### to file their incident under case number ### vs John Scumbag, so the total amounts he’d scammed everyone out of crossed way over the grand larceny threshold).

Cheeky POS actually contacted me, after I explained everything to the Detective (apparently, they had a Detective assigned to internet fraud cases). The Detective said, “Oh, that address is really close to the station. I’m going to stop by and talk to him after lunch. I’ll call you back to see what he says”.

A-hole contacted me after the Detective paid him a visit, threatening to sue me for harassment 😂

Several weeks later, I found an official letter from the Utah State Attorney General’s office, and thought, “Don’t tell me this dumbass actually filed a lawsuit against me?”. Nope. It was a letter stating that the State had taken over the case. They issued me a check for reimbursement and would collect from the scammer.
 
Blues said:
It can be very disappointing to present a case to the U.S. Attorney with sufficient evidence to prosecute and convict only to have it turned down because it doesn't meet a threshold.
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Blues said:
There's lots of crime in the U.S. At some point it comes down to the manpower available, and the resources to prosecute.
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So, exactly what I said, that other things are more important than stopping the tide of fake goods. I'm sure Customs gets their orders from someone and that someone or someones has set different priorities.

We should all contact our Representatives and make it more of a priority. I worry that money from a certain far eastern country speaks louder than ours, however.
 
Do you know how many containers of goods come into U.S. ports on any given day...or cross our land borders, or fly in via commercial aircraft?

We can't even get our "representatives" to pass a budget or decide what to allocate to any particular branch of service.

Beyond that, only a very small percentage of goods gets examined...and of that, I'm sure a goodly amount of contraband slips through the cracks for one reason or another. Sometimes its luck, sometimes its duplicity, sometimes its the lack of the equipment and resources required.

But you said our gov't does nothing, and that is what I took exception to...regardless of which less than stellar administration, or knee jerk congress is at the helm at any given point in time. I happen to know that much for a fact.

The same goes for any policing agency. Some crimes take precedence over others if only because of available manpower and resources. Local, state, federal. Doesn't matter which.

How many fake Rolex dealers are still on the streets of NYC...and how much priority do you think they get?
 
The laws are already on the books. At this juncture, all that the agencies require of the legislature is funding. (And they're all competing with one another at the trough.)

And even then, the balance between proactive and reactive is always in flux. There's no win in sight...only keeping as much of the barbarian horde as possible from getting through the gates.
 
Do you know why all these hacks and other nonsense happen with credit cards or why someone can impersonate you when registering something?

It’s because of data parsers. Everything — your address, what you order online, how you pay, literally anything — is very often sold for like $200–300–500.

As a rule, data about people in developed countries sells for much more.

In poor countries, personal data usually costs from $10 to $30.

Pretty much anything you can imagine is for sale.

It mostly comes down to price.

Most often, such data is leaked by some insider employee of a company that we gave our information to.

Recently, I was transferring funds from my bank account to an exchange — normal stuff, paying taxes and all that boring stuff.

When I transferred a relatively small amount (really, nothing the bank should even worry about), they blocked my account.

For two days I had to prove that I am who I am and that I earned the money. I even showed them my tax returns.

When my personal banking assistant finally called me, I couldn’t hold back and asked: “Why is it that when victims of scammers transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars to accounts linked to god-knows-who, you don’t block anything — but when I transfer my own tiny amount, you freeze my account?”

They unblocked everything immediately.

But damn…

Sometimes people transfer or pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to scammers, and the bank’s system doesn’t see any problem at all…!


Nathan the Machinist said:
I once got put into collection by AT&T because someone claiming to be me bought a cell phone and phone service plan from them.
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Just imagine:


Scammers have access to this kind of thing, right?

They could make donations in your name to an organization recognized as a terrorist group.

???????????????????


:rolleyes:
 
Moorik said:
Do you know why all these hacks and other nonsense happen with credit cards or why someone can impersonate you when registering something?

It’s because of data parsers. Everything — your address, what you order online, how you pay, literally anything — is very often sold for like $200–300–500.

As a rule, data about people in developed countries sells for much more.

In poor countries, personal data usually costs from $10 to $30.

Pretty much anything you can imagine is for sale.

It mostly comes down to price.

Most often, such data is leaked by some insider employee of a company that we gave our information to.

Recently, I was transferring funds from my bank account to an exchange — normal stuff, paying taxes and all that boring stuff.

When I transferred a relatively small amount (really, nothing the bank should even worry about), they blocked my account.

For two days I had to prove that I am who I am and that I earned the money. I even showed them my tax returns.

When my personal banking assistant finally called me, I couldn’t hold back and asked: “Why is it that when victims of scammers transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars to accounts linked to god-knows-who, you don’t block anything — but when I transfer my own tiny amount, you freeze my account?”

They unblocked everything immediately.

But damn…

Sometimes people transfer or pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to scammers, and the bank’s system doesn’t see any problem at all…!



Just imagine:


Scammers have access to this kind of thing, right?

They could make donations in your name to an organization recognized as a terrorist group.

???????????????????


:rolleyes:
Click to expand...


The tragic irony is, they have access to my information because I'm a victim of the Experian data hack

So the very companies that are supposed to monitor our creditworthiness are the ones responsible for damaging my creditworthiness
 
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