Category Archives: Gangs and Crimes

Hotel Chains Credit Cards Hacked

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Not the first case for hotel chains not protecting guest records.

FromHotelManagement: A U.S. appeals court said the Federal Trade Commission has authority to regulate corporate cyber security, and may pursue a lawsuit accusing hotel operator Wyndham Worldwide Corp of failing to properly safeguard consumers’ information.

The 3-0 decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia on Monday upheld an April 2014 lower court ruling allowing the case to go forward. The FTC wants to hold Wyndham accountable for three breaches in 2008 and 2009 in which hackers broke into its computer system and stole credit card and other details from more than 619,000 consumers, leading to over $10.6 million in fraudulent charges.

The FTC originally sued Wyndham in 2012 over the lack of security that led to its massive hack. But before the case proceeded, Wyndham appealed to a higher court to dismiss it, arguing that the FTC didn’t have the authority to punish the hotel chain for its breach. The third circuit court’s new decision spells out that Wyndham’s breach is exactly the sort of “unfair or deceptive business practice” the FTC is empowered to stop, reports Wired.

BusinessInsider: In August, Visa alerted numerous financial institutions of a breach. Five different banks determined the commonality between the cards included in that alert was that they were used at Hilton properties — including Embassy Suites, Doubletree, Hampton Inn and Suites, and the upscale Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, Krebs reports.

Hilton Hotels investigates customer credit card security hack

FNC: Hilton Hotels announced that it is looking into a possible security breach that occurred at gift shops, restaurants, bars, and other stores located on Hilton owned properties across the U.S.

According to cyber-security expert Brian Krebs, Visa sent confidential alerts to several financial institutions warning of a security breach at various retail locations earlier this year from April 21 to July 27. While the alerts named individual card numbers that had allegedly been compromised, per Visa’s policy, the notifications did not name the breached retail location. But sources at five different banks have now determined that the hacks all had one thing in common–they occurred at Hilton property point-of-sale registers.

Currently, the breach does not appear to have comprised the guest reservation systems at the associated properties. The company released the following statement regarding the incident:

“Hilton Worldwide is strongly committed to protecting our customers’ credit card information. We have many systems in place and work with some of the top experts in the field to address data security.  Unfortunately the possibility of fraudulent credit card activity is all too common for every company in today’s marketplace.  We take any potential issue very seriously, and we are looking into this matter.”

The breach includes other Hilton brand name properties including Embassy Suites, Doubletree, Hampton Inn and Suites, and Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts. The hotel group is advising customers who may have made purchases at Hilton properties during the time indicated to carefully scan bank records for any unusual activity and contact their bank immediately.

According to USA Today, evidence from the investigation indicates that the hack may have affected credit card transactions as far back as Nov. 2014 and security breaches could possibly be ongoing.

Union Corruption Runs Far and Wide

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For a listing of union members corruption, investigations and indictments, go here.

For a chilling read of an 84 page report on union corruption and how cases play into the RICO Act, go here.  There is a long history of criminal activity and it is an enterprise that still occurs and grows.

Report: Government Unions Take from the Poor to Give to the Rich

White-collar professionals dominate public sector union ranks

FreeBeacon: The government employees who now make up a majority of the nation’s union members are a far cry from the blue-collar archetype of old, according to a new report.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute will release a report on Tuesday morning documenting the changing nature of unionism in America, as white-collar professionals in the public sector overtake the private sector working class as the face of unionism.

“Public sector unions may claim they stand up for the little guy, but generally they aren’t representing blue collar workers against a better-educated, white-collar management,” said Carrie Sheffield, a scholar at the institute, in a release. “Government unions represent skilled, white-collar workers who enjoy big benefits and job security, courtesy of the taxpayer.”

Government workers are more likely to work behind a desk and enjoy civil service protections than the manufacturing workers who stood at the forefront of the labor movement at the start of the 20th century, according to the report. A majority of them have college educations.

“A larger share of public sector than private sector workers are employed in “management, professional, and related occupations.” In 2013, 56.2 percent of public sector workers and 37.8 percent of private sector workers were employed in these occupations,” the report says. “As the percentage of public sector union members increased between 1971 and 2004, the fraction of union members in the top third of the nation’s income distribution increased by 24 percent, while the proportion of unionists in the bottom third of the distribution declined by 45 percent. This is because better-educated and more affluent workers are more likely to belong to public rather than private sector unions.”

Sheffield said that these paychecks and costs have grown rapidly—retired New York City cops, the report notes, now outnumber active duty ones—in recent years and have the effect of pitting taxpayers, including the working class, against well-paid civil servants.

Pension debt and other unfunded compensation for government workers have led to several major municipal bankruptcies. Detroit, for example, declared bankruptcy when it was unable to meet nearly $20 billion in debt, about half of which was attributed to worker retirement benefits.

“Unfortunately for taxpayers, government unions donate huge amounts to elected officials who then vote on those expanding benefit packages—much to the detriment of cities like Detroit and Stockton, California, and states like Illinois and New Jersey that are on the brink of fiscal insolvency,” Sheffield said in a release.

The shift has created incentives to grow government and spur political involvement from public servants. The current system allows government unions to pump millions of dollars to candidates, who become the agents that the unions negotiate with at the bargaining table.

Sheffield recounts how early private sector union boosters were skeptical of government unions. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a champion of organized labor, once said that “Collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”

The institute says that lawmakers should enact reforms akin to that of Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin to return to the balance outlined by Roosevelt. Walker was able to become the first sitting governor to survive a recall vote by highlighting the high costs associated with union-negotiated benefits and its effect on his state’s working class. Sheffield said that lawmakers should do the same.

“Government unions are a powerful interest group that is uniquely privileged in being funded by taxpayers. Their members generally have higher levels of education than the average private sector worker, and enjoy greater compensation and job security. David taking on Goliath they are certainly not,” the report says.

Federal Employees Stealing Gasoline, Cheating Taxpayers

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The fleecing of Americans at the hands of government employees file is getting thicker. What say you after you read the result of this investigation? Anyone else out there reading this have a matter to be investigated?

Fuel fraud: Government employees steal millions from taxpayers at the pump

As a federal employee at Arlington National Cemetery, Bobby Bennett Harris was authorized two fuel cards to maintain vehicles assigned to the nation’s most famous burial site.

But he got caught using those cards to fill up his personal SUV. What tripped him up?

One of the cards that paid for gasoline was assigned to an all-electric vehicle. Oops.

“Yes, that was an obvious sign,” Eric Radwick, special agent for the General Services Administration, deadpanned in an interview with Watchdog.org.

In April, Harris agreed to a plea deal with federal prosecutors in Virginia for theft of government property — two years of supervised probation, nine days of confinement and a $5,000 fine and restitution for the $5,354 he acknowledged stealing by using the gas cards.

Harris’ case may be noteworthy for his blunder, but, unfortunately, it’s hardly unusual.

The Office of the Inspector General at GSA has closed out 260 fleet card cases and recovered more than $2.4 million in federal taxpayer money between 2010 and 2014, but specialists in how to crack down on fraud say the real figure is probably much higher.

“It’s difficult to prove,” Allan Bachman, education manager at the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, told Watchdog.org. “Unless you look at every little charge and do mileage estimates on every vehicle and how many miles per gallon they get and how many miles per gallon were actually expended, then you’re in deep weeds.”

“I don’t think we can put a definitive number on how bad the problem is,” said Radwick, a member of the Inspector General’s team for 13 years, who said he’s seen the number of fuel fraud cases increase dramatically during that time.

A review of GSA cases by Watchdog.org of government employees accused of misusing fleet cards showed 10 guilty pleas, one military discharge and one arrest in just the past 11 months.

The thefts were as low as $976 and as high as $24,000, involving a range of federal employees that included a VA hospital volunteer, a U.S. Navy recruiter, an Amtrak employee, a contract driver for the Department of Homeland Security and a former inspector with District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Services.

But one fuel fraud case GSA uncovered in 2011 was more than 10 times bigger. That’s when a then-married couple had to pay restitution of nearly $300,000 for using multiple fleet credit cards to fill up non-government vehicles in Hampton, Virginia.

The cards were assigned to Colleen White, who worked at the motor pool at Fort Monroe military installation before it was decommissioned. Lanaire White was sentenced to 84 months of incarceration and three years of supervised release after being convicted in a jury trial of conspiracy, wire fraud, theft and firearms violations.

“Everyone’s got one or two gas card cases in their portfolio,” said Radwick of his IG staff of about 65 agents, including 10 in the Washington, D.C., office. “It’s very steady.”

But it can be hard to crack down on fuel fraud because of the sheer number of cards the federal government has distributed — some 590,000.

“The more cards that are out there, the more opportunities there are to take advantage of those cards,” Bachman said in a phone interview from the ACFE headquarters in Austin, Texas.

The government fleet is huge — more than 650,000 vehicles around the world, driving more than 5 billion miles a year, consuming $400 million in gas and costing $4 billion to maintain. The fleet includes some military vehicles that are leased through the GSA.

Is the job just too big for one agency to track?

“Just by the number of government employees and the vast mission of the federal government, there’s going to be large amounts of everything — computers, cars, what have you,” Radwick said. “With the design of the program, hopefully agencies aren’t paying for cars they don’t need because it’s coming out of an agency’s line-item budget … I know the vehicles that we have, we use ’em all.”

Bachman, who believes the problem is not worse in the federal government than in the private sector, said most companies and agencies use gas card systems because they’re just easier.

“If the purchasing department had to be responsible for handing out cash every time somebody had to get gas, or even taking the vehicle themselves to fill it up or to keep a fuel farm as many places do, that becomes really burdensome,” Bachman said. “It’s much cheaper just to say, ‘Here’s your credit card for gas, it has a limit, say, of $75 a transaction and you can’t use more than four times a month.’ If those kinds of controls are built it, it’s a tremendous advantage.”

The key is to make sure controls are put in place and enforced.

“We’re looking at a lot of data,” Bachman said. “The best thing you can do is sampling — not necessarily watching every transaction, but picking transactions and saying, do these transactions really make sense?”

Radwick has heard a slew of excuses from federal employees who misuse government-issued gas cards. One of the most common? That they simply mistook the government card for their personal credit card.

But GSA recently changed the gas cards to make them more distinctive on the front and back:

Photo from GSA website

 

“Once you put (the card) in the pump it requires you to do stuff that normal credit cards don’t, so that excuse goes out the window,” Radwick said.

“People are creatures of habit,” Bachman said. “An employee who is using the card legitimately, you can pretty much track when that person is going to use their fuel card. So when they use the card outside of that pattern, that raises a potential red flag.”

Online tools and data mining help GSA inspectors track down more cheaters and the agency has made a concerted effort to publicize convictions and guilty pleas.

“When you do catch someone, if you make it very public that you’ve caught someone abusing the procurement card, that they have been dismissed and, depending on the magnitude, possibly even looking into civil or criminal prosecution, that sends a message as well,” Bachman said. “That’s a big deterrent.”

So why do people do it?

“They don’t think they’re going to get caught,” Radwick said. “And a lot of times when they do get caught it’s ‘Yeah, I knew this was coming’ … We very rarely catch someone on their first, second or third time doing it. They’ve been doing it for a little while and they’ve gotten complacent and they think, nobody’s watching this, nobody’s paying attention.”

Radwick said he expected the drop in gasoline prices in the past 10 months would encourage cheaters to back off. But despite the risk, that hasn’t happened.

Despite more arrests, more convictions and more efficient technology in the hands of GSA agents, the problem persists.

“Are we getting more cases? Yes we are,” Radwick said. “Is that because it’s getting worse or are we getting better? I really don’t know.”

“It’s hard to tell if we’re chipping away at it and making real inroads or not,” Bachman said.

bin Ladin’s Bodyguard Transferred to SA from Gitmo

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Usama bin Ladin’s bodyguard is transferred to Saudi Arabia.

Full detainee file is here.

  1. (S//NF) Personal Information:
  • JDIMS/NDRC Reference Name: Abdul Shalabi
  • Current/True Name and Aliases: Abd al-Rahman Shalbi Isa

Uwaydah, Abdul Haq Rahman, Saqr al-Madani, Mahmud

Abd Aziz al-Mujahid

  • Place of Birth: Medina, Saudi Arabia (SA)
  • Date of Birth: 4 December 1975
  • Citizenship: Saudi Arabia
  • Internment Serial Number (ISN): US9SA-000042DP
  1. (U//FOUO) Health: Detainee is in good health.
  2. (U) JTF-GTMO Assessment:
  3. (S) Recommendation: JTF-GTMO recommends this detainee for Continued Detention

Under DoD Control (CD). JTF-GTMO previously recommended detainee for Continued

Detention Under DoD Control (CD) on 26 October 2007.

  1. (S//NF) Executive Summary: Detainee is a member of al-Qaida and a long-term bodyguard for Usama Bin Laden (UBL), serving in that position beginning in 1999.

Detainee received specialized close combat training for his role as a suicide operative in an aborted component of the 11 September 2001 al-Qaida attacks. Detainee participated in hostilities against US and Coalition forces and was captured with a group referred to as the Dirty 30, which included UBL bodyguards and an assessed 20th 11 September 2001 hijacker.

Detainee received basic militant and advanced training at al-Qaida associated training camps.

 

Bernie Sanders Donors: Labor and Shady

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The top donors for Bernie Sanders are labor unions and organizations.

PACs rule campaigns today, of this there is no exception. Candidates are called to tow their lobby line for money and access. Bernie loyalists have a dark side, a criminal side.

New filing raises more questions about shady pro-Bernie Sanders group

Sanders campaign has decried Americans Socially United super PAC

PublicIntegrity: Americans Socially United, a super PAC that recently received nearly $50,000 from James Bond actor Daniel Craig, has submitted its first official campaign finance report to the Federal Election Commission.

And it’s a mess: The report from the group that claims to support presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders is riddled with anomalies and raises as many questions as it answers.

The filing by Americans Socially United — whose founder, Cary Lee Peterson, has a history of financial and legal problems and is a wanted man in Arizona — came nearly seven weeks after the mandatory report was due and a week after the Center for Public Integrity raised questions about the super PAC’s operations.

The money from Craig appears to have come at a critical time for Americans Socially United, as the super PAC’s new report states it ended June about $50,000 in the red.

The new report further indicates Americans Socially United had raised about $100,000 from its formation in February through the end of June, although the exact amount is unclear.

That’s because one section of the report lists the super PAC’s total receipts as about $91,000, while other figures indicate it collected about $114,000.

Americans Socially United also states in its report that it refunded a significant portion of the money it collected. But the exact amount is again unclear.

One section of the report states the super PAC refunded about $54,000 in total to donors. Yet another indicates that that number is higher — nearly $80,000 — including $50,000 from a foreign national identified as Alejandro Fernandez of La Paz and $25,000 from a second foreigner simply identified as Anthony Rice.

Only U.S. citizens and green card holders are allowed to donate to federal candidates and political committees.

The report includes the names of about 30 donors but failed to provide federally required information about their addresses, employers and occupations.

Other donations were returned because Peterson’s super PAC got the money by mistake. Some contributions were intended for Sanders’ official campaign, the filing indicates.

Until recently, Americans Socially United listed the names of more than 500 people on its website who had donated, or pledged to give, to the group.

When contacted by the Center for Public Integrity, several of them said they thought they were contributing to the official campaign committee of Sanders, who has himself disavowed all super PAC support as he challenges Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

The Sanders campaign — which has itself collected $2,700 from Craig — even sent Americans Socially United a cease and desist letter in June demanding that Peterson curtail his operation.

Peterson has largely ignored the letter’s demands, which include taking down his social media pages and websites, which include BetonBernie.com, BetonBernie2016.com, PledgeSanders2016.com and SociallyUnited.org.

Among the super PAC’s biggest expenses during its first months of existence? Media, although the filing doesn’t offer many details.

Americans Socially United paid a company called EMW Services about $24,500 for “media services,” according to the report.

Two other donors — one from Naples, Florida, and one from Montreal — are listed as making in-kind contributions to cover five-figure media expenses.

Americans Socially United also paid $4,875 to Peterson’s own company — Robert Peterson Fields Associates — for unspecified “professional services” and spent about $2,500 on airline tickets, rental cars and hotels.

Reached via email, Peterson declined to comment for this story.

In a statement included with his super PAC filing, Peterson said he has been a “target of cyber-industrial sabotage and alleged acts of criminal syndicalism committed by specific financial service providers, a financial institution, web service providers and independent contractors.”

Earlier this month, Peterson declined to comment about the two active warrants out for his arrest in Arizona. Both stem from Peterson failing to appear in court for misdemeanor cases, including a disorderly conduct charge and an “extreme DUI” conviction.

Peterson has also routinely run afoul of creditors, as the Center for Public Integrity recently reported.

He most notably stiffed Dow Jones & Co. out of nearly $170,000 after one of his companies failed to pay for advertisements in the Wall Street Journal.

Moreover, Peterson’s been evicted twice from apartments in Texas in recent years for failing to pay rent.

Peterson told the Center for Public Integrity earlier this month that his past run-ins with the law were not relevant to the work he’s doing now — and that he started Americans Socially United because he’s just a fan of Sanders.

“You don’t need to look back on my past,” Peterson said. “I’m going out there trying to make a difference.”

Campaign finance watchdogs have raised concerns about Peterson’s activities, and the FEC has already told him that his group could face “civil money penalties, an audit or legal enforcement action” for his tardy campaign finance filing.

Ann Ravel, the Democrat who currently serves as the FEC’s chairwoman, told the Center for Public Integrity that she couldn’t speak directly to the actions of Peterson or his super PAC, as the agency does not comment on organizations that it might be actively investigating.

But she expressed general concerns about what she calls “sham PACs,” which primarily exist not to support a political candidate or cause, but the personal bank accounts of the people running the super PACs.

She also issued a warning to people to people considering making a contribution to a super PAC they don’t know much about.

“Make sure the organization you’re giving to is fulfilling the purpose for which you’re giving money,” Ravel said. “It would behoove people to talk to the actual candidate’s committees first” if they’re unsure about a super PAC purporting to support the candidate.

Matthew Petersen, the FEC’s Republican vice chairman, said that in general, people who want to contribute to a candidate’s campaign committee should take care to ensure they’re sending their money to the correct place.

“You really need to be sure to read the disclaimers that indicate whether a committee is an authorized committee” of a particular candidate, Petersen said.

He also said the FEC itself could also review the effectiveness of its regulations and guidance on how unauthorized committees may — or may not — incorporate political candidates’ names into their own.

Save for a few narrow exceptions, super PACs and other political committees are barred from using candidates’ names.

But the FEC hasn’t aggressively enforced these provisions, and a number of groups — chief among them pro-Carly Fiorina super PAC Conservative, Authentic, Responsive Leadership for You and for America, which routinely goes by CARLY for America — have seemingly danced on the fuzzy line between what’s legal and what’s not.

Peterson has also created seven other political committees this year, including several with seemingly official sounding names such as the Congressional Committee on Cuban Affairs and the Congressional Committee on Eurasian Affairs.

None of those groups have yet to file their mandatory mid-year campaign finance reports that were due on July 31.

***

When it comes to standing with government employees, Bernie Sanders in solidarity of increasing the minimum wage. He joined the strike.