Scams – Page 4 – Thiefhunters in Paradise

H&R Block reneges on promise, cops-out on client

When a giant corporation closes its shutters and bolts its doors against its own client, its like a reverse prison. I, the client, feel like a tiny, pesky ant searching for a chink in the fortress wall so I can shout in my small voice: “hear me, and respond without boilerplate.” I’m almost deafened by the fortress’s PA system which occasionally blares “NO. JUST NO.”

The fortress does not spend time formulating thoughtful replies or building strong arguments. Those mundane activities are not necessary for fortresses, which have shutters, boltable doors, huge legal departments, and very large boots for squashing pesky ants.

All this over $725.

Come to think of it, $725 is exactly the average fee I’ve paid H&R Block for tax preparation each year for the past ten years. (I don’t have handy our prior twenty years’ fees.)

H&R Block is using bully tactics. Its M.O. is to stand impenetrable and unresponsive while its clients exhaust themselves arguing H&R Block’s arbitrary defenses.

Apologies. I have not allowed this blog to become a platform for personal complaints. But wait a minute. The theme of Thiefhunters in Paradise is thieves, thugs, and gangsters… So this report fits.

H&R Block reneges on promise

scam

Speeder fakes carjacking

“John Smith” was driving 180 kph when he realized he’d just blasted through a speed trap outside of Johannesburg, South Africa.

“Knowing the police would come after me, I sped up. When I got around a bend I pulled over, jumped out of the car, and locked myself in the trunk. When the cops pulled up behind me I started banging on the trunk lid, as if I’d been locked in by carjackers.”

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Three: Getting There—With all your Marbles

A pickpocket cab scam

Traveler Tim Hopkins reports on an “ingenious cab scam theft.”

Lessons learned, disaster averted
I recently purchased two copies of your book, one for me, and one for my father. We had planned a trip to Africa, and after reading the book, I wanted to be ready! I had purchased a PacSafe Wallet Safe, with a zippered opening, and a pretty strong chain. While in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, we were victims of a cab-theft scam that was ingenious! The hotel had arranged a cab for us, and when he dropped us off at the restaurant, we exchanged cell numbers, and tested them. He said to call for our ride home, and left.

The cab scam

After dinner, we called him, and he said he’s be there in 5 minutes. Exactly five minutes later, another similar cab (they are all very dilapidated and patched-up) shows up, and flags us to come get in. Dad asked the driver if he had been sent for us, and of course he said, “yes, yes, come on!”, so we got in. As he started to roll away, he asked us where we wanted to go. I realized he wasn’t our guy, and told him to pull over and let us out. He said, “no problem”, and pulled over. Small problem, though—he had removed the inside door handles! I tried to get the door open, as did Dad from the back seat—and the guy starts to reach across my lap (I am in the front seat), pulling on some wires he had rigged in the door, yelling “push, push!,” and causing quite a fuss. He “couldn’t get it open,” and had me sit more forward, hollering and fussing, and pushing, and slid down behind me to work the door. “Push, push!” “I am pushing!,” jostle, fuss, fuss, yell—quite a scene in that little cab! Finally the door pops open, and I pop out. Dad didn’t wait for his turn, and came over the front seat and out. The guy shut the door, and took off. I reach behind me, and no wallet! Just a dangling chain, broken or cut about halfway down!

Fortunately, I had followed your advice, and this was a ‘disposable’ travel wallet, with around $100.00 worth of local money, two of my four cards, and a license; mostly very replaceable stuff. Essentially it was his to steal, and he got it! The beauty of it was that for a hundred bucks and three phone calls, I got a combat lesson in what “the fuss” feels like. We were both astounded at how we had prepared, yet were still unable to recognize the escalation of the situation. This has let to our adopting some new policies!

I also bought a Pacsafe DuffelSafe and Pacsafe backpack, which are both slash-resistant, and lockable (also with a cable for securing to an object). These were both great for the hotel and when leaving bags in the car for things like shopping or our safari.

Thanks again—you have a fascinating job.
Happy travels!
Tim and Don Hopkins

pickpocket taxi thieves

10,000 shipping containers lost at sea each year

Cargo ship, shipping containers lost at sea, ocean freight

Cargo ship — Source: http://www.cargolaw.com/2006nightmare_apl_panama.html

> Even more! See edit at the bottom.

10,000 shipping containers are lost at sea each year! From my naive perspective, I’m shocked by this number. Twice, I’ve sent an entire household from one continent to another by sea. To think of my container just…tumbling into the sea in a storm! Or worse, ordered jettisoned by the captain to ensure the safety of the ship.

Five to six million shipping containers are being transported at any given moment, and it’s estimated that one is lost about every hour. A goner. True, the percentage is low; but the number is high. Ten thousand containers and their cargo, every year, sunk to the bottom of the deep blue sea. Or presumably, the rough gray sea.

Containers dropped from cargo ships are never recovered and rarely reported. There are no legal repercussions for the losses; no accountability.

There are other repercussions though. Hazardous materials are leached into the ocean. Artificial habitats are created for aquatic life, strung like stepping stones along shipping routes, possibly giving species an unnatural ability to migrate across oceans.

And these cargo containers may float for days or weeks before they sink to the ocean floor. Huge farting boxes the size of houses, invisible just below the surface of the sea, they create a deadly hazard for other ships and yachts. “Very, very dangerous,” a ship’s officer told me. “At night you cannot see them at all.”

While this subject matter doesn’t quite fit my usual categories of Travel or Theft, it interests me mainly in terms of loss and responsibility (and also freak accidents). And there seems to be a huge potential for fraud.

Apparently, expediency in loading cargo ships doesn’t allow for stacking containers logically. Therefore, heavy containers may very well ride on the top layer. On the other hand. I read somewhere that top layer positions go for cheap—or was that a joke?

In a global industry represented by straight-laced and corrupt nations and every banana republic in between, I’m not surprised that:

They overload container vessels on purpose, raising the center of gravity of the ship. If there is smooth sailing, you make millions extra a year. If you hit rough seas, you cut loose your entire top layer of containers, lower your COG, and still come out ahead in the grand scheme of it all.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2070698&cid=35729890

So, if a ship lists or rolls a container or two could go flying. Connecting pins might break or shear off, as they are designed to do at a list of a certain number of degrees. And if a ship is in danger its captain may choose to sacrifice a number of containers in the hope of saving the ship and its remaining cargo.

…essentially the shipping company is not liable for the ‘disposed [of]’ containers, either. If the shipping company has enough losses on a vessel to declare a “General Average,” then the compensation for the losses (including vessel damage, if any) are assessed against the other *customers* with cargo on that vessel.

Basically, the vessel is carrying the cargo as a courtesy; any risk of loss belongs to the owners of the cargo(s) collectively, NOT to the carrier.
So as a forwarding agent, not only do you get the pleasure of telling someone that their container of goods has been lost, you get to tell them that…¨a) they still have to pay freight shipping costs, AND…¨b) they’re going to be legally liable for their ‘share’ of whatever the general average costs work out to be

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2070698&cid=35731376

Other than keeping his average rate of loss low, there doesn’t seem to be much to motivate a captain to deliver his full complement of containers. Would it be an exaggeration to suggest that the odd seaman or two might be induced to “lose” a container now and then?

The potential for foul play intrigues me. I hear the whisper of a thumb gently rubbing two fingertips… The master of a ship turns his head away at the screech of metal scraping metal followed by a mighty splash. What might be in that locked steel box? Incriminating evidence? Treasure, bundled with a GPS transmitter, for later retrieval? Hazardous waste too costly to dispose of properly? A secret marine biology laboratory in which creepy experiments will be activated by contact with water, to be carried out in the cold, dark, compressed environment of the sea floor? Bodies?

> Edited 2/22/14 to add link to interesting article about a cargo ship that lost more than 500 containers in heavy seas.

> Edited 1/29/22 to add link to interesting article about a container collapse in which 60 were said to go overboard.

> Edited 6/2/22: In November of 2020, a ship called the one Apus, on its way from China to Long Beach, got caught in a storm in the Pacific and lost more than eighteen hundred containers overboard—more in one incident than the W.S.C.’s estimated average for a year. The same month, another ship headed to Long Beach from China lost a hundred containers in bad weather, while yet another ship capsized in port in East Java with a hundred and thirty-seven containers on board. Two months later, a fourth ship, also on its way from China to California, lost seven hundred and fifty containers in the North Pacific. When Shipping Containers Sink in the Drink

fraud odd scam

Ghost in the Wires

I thought Kevin Mitnick was a friend of mine—but that was before I read his forthcoming book, Ghost in the Wires. Kevin’s the consummate liar, it seems. He’ll say anything to get what he wants, going to extreme efforts to research, then set up support for elaborate cons. He’ll claim to be a cop, a utility employee, or your colleague from a remote office, if it serves his purpose. A faceless voice on the telephone, he’ll sweet-talk one minute, and command with authority the next. At least he used to do this, before spending five years in federal prison…

To become the boldfaced name in social engineering, Kevin honed a natural knack for people-reading from childhood. He was a telephone Zelig who rarely needed to get out of his sweats. He always found a plausible pretext for his capers and pursued them with outrageous chutzpah. Rarely would he fail to obtain the information he sought.

Can one retire a talent like that? I doubt it, but as I can’t think of what use Bob and I are to Kevin, I prefer to think that we really are his friends.

Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker is Kevin’s third book, to be published in August 2011. I love that title. The book chronicles how Kevin, from an early age, tinkered with communication devices: ham radios, telephones, cellphones, computers, and the software that runs them all. Although he was obsessively compelled to dig deeper and deeper into the gizmo-code, he never tried to make or steal money from his exploits. He did it out of his own curiosity, to learn more, and to challenge himself to do what seemed impossible.

Sometimes, in his relentless pursuit of knowledge, he simply had to break into a company’s computer to get the software, the code, or the user names and passwords that he needed. In an electronic sense, that’s breaking and entering. And when he copied that proprietary information for his own use, well, that’s stealing.

Once he’d gained access to his target computer, he’d usually fiddle with its inner settings just enough to plant a “backdoor,” an easy way in for his next visit. He might read his target’s emails and even copy them, but he never destroyed the files.

Imagine an intruder who breaks into your house, sneaks around and looks into your secret hiding places, rifles your files, and picks through your drawers. Satisfied, he then backs out quietly leaving everything just as it was, sweeps up his footprints and, oh yeah—copies your house key on the way out.

I’ve heard Kevin call himself a “non-profit hacker.” Sure, he got himself free phone calls, but throughout his hacking career, he was always gainfully employed. With the information he had at his fingertips, he could easily have enjoyed a life of leisure from credit card fraud. He could have sold proprietary source code in the hackers’ underworld. But no; Kevin lacks a vital attribute. He has nerves of steel and gigantic balls, but he does not possess a criminal core. He was simply educating himself.

That is, until he got himself in trouble for snooping. Then he needed that information to protect himself, so he could make untraceable phone calls, so he could listen in to others. As the Feds closed in on him, he needed to know how much they knew about him, too.

Many times while reading Ghost in the Wires I wanted to smack Kevin. I wanted to shake him and say “you just got out of juvenile detention for doing just this—why are you doing it again?” He makes it clear that his hacking was his idea of fun and entertainment, to see if he could get to the next level. Like an addicted gamer.

It turns out, after all, that Kevin was busy educating himself. From “the world’s most wanted hacker” he has become one of the most wanted security experts in the world. He’s now considered the ultimate social engineer and an “ethical hacker,” one who’s challenge is to break into his clients’ systems, whether electronically or by social engineering. In other words, as Mitnick Security, he’s now paid to do what he loves, and he no longer has to look over his shoulder.

Social engineers are an ominous bugbear to security. A company (or you!) can have the tightest security system in place, but humans are its weakest link. For a hacker like Kevin, it’s easier to simply ask for the key to the front door than to steal it. He simply has to ask in the right way. Because social engineers are basically skillful actors playing a role, they’re an invisible threat and a daunting challenge for businesses.

I’m no hacker, that’s for sure, nor even a programmer. Yet, I found it fascinating to read exactly how Kevin finagled himself into systems and tweaked them to his advantage. Kevin wanted to include more of the nitty-gritty hackery in the book, but his co-author, Bill Simon, saved us readers from too much esoterica. I think they struck an excellent balance. I never felt bogged down by the technical bits.

In fact, some might worry that Ghost is a hackery cookbook, complete with lessons in how to get others to spill their secrets. I worried about this aspect with my own book, Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams.

Does an exhaustive explanation of theft techniques actually teach the thieves? Kevin and I obviously came to the same conclusion: no, there’s more to gain by putting all the details out there, the better to protect yourself.

I feel a little sorry for all the good people whose trust Kevin exploited. They bought into his ruses in a good-faith effort to be helpful. No doubt that he used them, and probably got many of them into big trouble. Well, in my line of work too, thiefhunting and training the public to avoid theft, a kernel of cynicism is not a bad seed to plant. Kevin’s patsies will think twice before giving out sensitive information.

Ghost is 400+ pages of tension, broken only by Kevin’s sentimental musings about his mother and grandmother, who are constant supportive figures in his life, and the heartbreaking side-story of his brother. It’s fast reading—a tribute to the clear writing and exciting story.

Yeah, yeah, you think I’m all positive because Kevin’s my friend. He gave me an unedited galley copy of the book (littered with typos), but didn’t ask me to write about it. If I hadn’t liked it, I wouldn’t have written a word.

Or maybe I would have. After all, Kevin might not be a real friend of mine…

computer fraud friend kevin mitnick review social engineer

Money-changing scam

Some years ago, before Bulgaria was part of the EU, Dodie B. and two male friends visited one of that country’s small port towns. She had a $100 bill with which she hoped to buy euros. (Not a smart strategy, exchanging one currency for another currency in a country that uses neither, but that’s not the point here.)

The first two foreign-currency-exchange booths Dodie tried refused. They would sell her only Bulgarian money for her US dollars. Eventually she found a closed money exchange kiosk where a man was changing money on the street in front of the shop. She asked him if he would give her euros for US dollars. He said yes.

Dodie’s two friends wandered a bit away when she asked the rate. He quoted a price and she thought to herself, wow, great rate, and agreed. He counted out the euros for her and put them, folded, on top of his wallet. She held onto her $100 bill. They joked and bantered a bit, until Dodie finally said hey, are you going to give me the euros or not? She started to put her bill into her pocket.

Just then there was shouting. “No, no money change on the street!” She grabbed the folded money and the man took her bill. Another man, large and intimidating, was suddenly looming over her, shouting that she cannot change money on the street. She walked toward her friends and the goon followed, uncomfortably close to her. She shoved the cash deep into her pocket and walked faster. When she reached her friends the thug turned and left.

The friends asked what took her so long and she explained, shaken but happy to have accomplished her goal. She took the cash out of her pocket and saw right away that she’d been scammed. The pile was made of one 5-euro note wrapped around a pile of worthless old Yugoslavian bills, taped together. Of course the goon was gone, and so was the “money changer.”

Her friends wanted to go to the police, but Dodie was afraid to, since changing money on the street is a crime. Dodie still has the bundle of bills and promised to send me a photo of it, but I got tired of waiting.

The critically-timed loud and scary threat by a third party is typical in many scams, and is designed to conclude the deal in a rush and quickly separate the vic from the perp. The interrupting third party always seems to be an uninvolved stranger, or a pseudo cop as in this example. But he’s always part of the game. Note also the con man’s intentional establishment of a friendly rapport with his mark—that’s the CONfidence-building that gives the con artist his title.

con con artist money scam

Hotel Front Desk Safe Theft

Hotel front desk safe

Natalie is a tour sales manager for one of the major cruise lines. She’s an experienced world traveler and accustomed to advising others on travel dos and don’ts. She and a girlfriend, both Australian, took a trip to Bali, Indonesia. A wide range of hotel options exists there, from luxury six-star resorts to shacks on the beach that rent for two dollars a night. Natalie and Linda booked a “decent” hotel; one with a lobby, private bathroom, rooms that lock, and a sense of organization. In America and Europe, it would fall into the three-star range.

At check-in, the two women were each given a manila envelope in which to put their valuables. They sealed and signed the envelopes themselves and gave them to the reception clerk, who put them in the hotel front desk safe.

Admittedly, they had a splendid holiday on the exotic isle, carefree and uneventful.

At check-out, the two were given their envelopes and they turned to get a taxi. But as they were leaving, they overheard another guest complaining at the front desk. Cash was missing from her envelope.

Natalie and Linda tore into their envelopes and also found cash to be missing. Yet, their envelopes did not appear to be tampered with in any way. The hotel denied any responsibility and, after a brief argument, Natalie and her friend chose to leave in order not to miss their flight home. Later, Natalie wrote to the hotel, but never received a reply. She didn’t take the issue any further.

Did the hotel make a system of this nasty theft? If so, it’s particularly underhanded with its intentional implication of security. As in the “pigeon drop” scam, the villain suggests and the victim voluntarily complies with the transference of valuables to the bad guy. A con if ever there were one.

The timing, too, is strategic. Most guests, like Natalie and Linda, will have a plane to catch. They’ll often plan to fight the matter later, but rarely follow through.

So how was the envelope opened? Could it have been a magician’s trick?

In my former career as a graphic designer, I occasionally used wax to fix a graphic element to a page. Rarely, because most page design was completely electronic. The wax I used was in stick form. It looked and acted exactly like a glue stick, except that it never dried.

If hotel guests were handed a wax stick with which to seal their envelopes (I don’t know that they were), they’d likely never realize the temporary condition of the closure. A duplicitous staff member could later open a supposedly sealed envelope, then glue it shut properly. Who’d know? Who’d even notice?

Alternatively, the bottom flap of the envelope could have been lightly glued, then later opened and resealed.

There are just too many people in this world who cannot be trusted, and it’s best to avoid the necessity at all, if possible. Then what to do?

Travel with hard-sided luggage and use your largest as your safe. True, the entire suitcase can be stolen, but we feel that would be highly unlikely in most situations, while a small tempting object might, on occasion, “get legs.”

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams

Chapter Four: Hotels—Have a Nice Stay

hotel safe scam Travel Advisory

Russian gas-guzzler scam #3

Unlike the Russian gas scams in my previous two posts, this one is recent, perpetrated by Russians in America. They’d steal a car—say, a Mercedes—take it to a shop, and completely gut it. Then they’d abandon the still-pristine but empty body on the side of a road.

Eventually the shell of the car would be picked up and sold for pittance at auction. And there to buy it would be one of the Russian crew. The body came with a clean title after a legal purchase. And you know what happened next. The car went back to the shop where all its innards were replaced and a good-as-new Mercedes would be legally exported to Russia.

This was an easy scam. So easy that the crew got lazy and left one too many stripped-down bodies on the same road. And that’s how they were caught.

As told to me by an elderly Russian couple, along with this story, and this one.

Russia scam

Russian gas scam #2

Around the same time as Russian Gas Scam #1, a resident in one of those gigantic apartment buildings—I’ll call him Boris—found a way to warm his home for free throughout the frigid winters. Each apartment had its own coin-operated gas heater. For each coin dropped into the meter, the gas would come on for a set period of time to heat the home. Every month, the gas company would come collect the coins from the meter boxes.

Boris’s box was always empty; yet, his apartment was warm. It took a long time before the coin collector got suspicious, and even longer before the gas company showed up to ask questions. Finally, the gas company begged Boris for his secret, promising free gas for life if only he’d tell.

Simple, Boris said. He carved coins out of ice. They melted, evaporated, and left no evidence.

As told to me by an elderly Russian couple, along with this story, and an upcoming one.