That’s the simple message behind a press release just issued by the government agency. They were forced to put out this release because many residents in the state of Mississippi have received a scam email which claims to be from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The FBI says that they don’t send out these types of emails and that clicking on any embedded link could result malware, phishing, or any number of headaches.

Here’s what the email in question looks like:

From: FBI ALERT

Date: February 2, 2013, 5:47:06 p.m. CST

To: undisclosed-recipients:;

Reply-To: FBI ALERT

We have an information for you regarding the person you are transacting with online. You need to see this yourself. Contact us immediately for this is very important to you. Keep it to yourself and contact us, get back to us immediately. There is something you need to know about this person or you might end up loosing everything you ever worked for. Stop e-mailing until you hear from us. Contact FBI secret service with the e-mail below fbisecretservice@careceo.com FBI secret service.

Other than the fact that it sounds like total horsecrap, you should be tipped off by the ibgen.com.br address. And what the hell is the FBI secret service?

Anyway, the advice here is the same as with any scam email. Don’t reply with any personal information and don’t click anything. That’s the surest way to maintain your safety.

And in the future, know that the FBI will never send you unsolicited emails. It’s that simple.

[FBI via Forbes]

HP stated that it discovered the fraudulent accounting practices during an internal investigation and forensic review into Autonomy’s accounting practices before the 2011 acquisition. It claims more than $5 billion of the impairment charge is linked to the Autonomy accounting.

HP’s statement on the matter:

“HP is extremely disappointed to find that some former members of Autonomy’s management team used accounting improprieties, misrepresentations and disclosure failures to inflate the underlying financial metrics of the company, prior to Autonomy’s acquisition by HP. These efforts appear to have been a willful effort to mislead investors and potential buyers, and severely impacted HP management’s ability to fairly value Autonomy at the time of the deal. We remain 100 percent committed to Autonomy and its industry-leading technology.”

The investigation into Autonomy’s accounting practices commenced after Autonomy founder Mike Lynch left the company. A “senior member” of Autonomy’s leadership stepped forward and blew the whistle on what he or she alleged were “a series of questionable accounting and business practices at Autonomy prior to the acquisition by HP,” and provided details that HP had no knowledge of.

HP stated that its investigation is still ongoing. It provided two examples of the types of accounting improprieties it accuses Autonomy of practicing:

• The mischaracterization of revenue from negative-margin, low-end hardware sales with little or no associated software content as “IDOL product,” and the improper inclusion of such revenue as “license revenue” for purposes of the organic and IDOL growth calculations.

  This negative-margin, low-end hardware is estimated to have comprised 10-15% of Autonomy’s revenue.

• The use of licensing transactions with value-added resellers to inappropriately accelerate revenue recognition, or worse, create revenue where no end-user customer existed at the time of sale.

The forensic accounting review was undertaken by PricewaterhouseCoopers under the oversight of John Schultz, HP’s general counsel. HP has referred the matter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office. The company is also “preparing to seek redress against various parties in the appropriate civil courts to recoup what it can for its shareholders.”

However, the story doesn’t end there. According to authorities, Price is believed to have embezzled over $17 million, which he hid from his superiors by funneling the money through a “clearing firm” out of New York. Instead of suicide, federal investigators feel that Price might be on the run, as he owns property in both Venezuela and Guatemala. What’s more, the FBI suspects that the missing Georgia banker may have a boat in his possession that would allow him to easily travel between Florida and Venezuela, a country he visited towards the beginning of June.

Agents from the FBI believe Price defrauded over 100 investors out of nearly $17 million over the course of two years while working with Montgomery Bank & Trust in Ailey, Georgia. According to reports, Price was supposed to wisely invest the bank’s capital in order to keep the troubled establishment afloat. Instead, he committed a number of fraudulent wire transfers through a dummy company and kept all of the money for himself.

“Certainly we are receiving any information that arrives locally, but any updates or comments would have to come from the U.S. attorney’s office in New York,” Stephen Emmett with the FBI Atlanta Field Office explained to CNN.

In short, this missing Georgia banker is currently thought to have $17 million in his possession while he hides out in a foreign country. If authorities manage to get their hands on the guy — assuming that he isn’t dead, of course — he could face up to 30 years in prison.

A majority of the jobs being lost will be the result of consolidating overseas manufacturing efforts and reducing the size of their already troubled camera business. Depending on who wins out in the bidding over shares of Olympus, Either Sony or Panasonic will be dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the Company.

This comes at a bad time for Sony and Panasonic as both are currently recovering from considerable quarterly losses and poor sales performance. The decision as to who will control the ten percent stake at Olympus should be decided by the end of June.

Olympus has been in a state of limbo since a scandal involving several ex-Olympus executives and bankers was exposed by, then fired, chief executive Michael Woodford. Apparently, ex-president Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, former executive vice president Hisashi Mori and former auditor Hideo Yamada conducted fraudulent dealing in order to cover up enormous losses incurred from high-risk investments during the late 1980′s financial bubble.

In December, Olympus filed five years worth of corrected financial reports that revealed over $1 billion in losses from its balance sheets and an additional $410 million loss projected throughout the remained of 2012 for shortcomings in their existing camera business.

Darrell Bingham, 49, posed as an American football player and subjected his 21-year-old girlfriend to a six month hoax, in which he tricked her into performing sex acts using blackmail.

Bingham posed as “Grant,” an American football player, on Facebook, pestering the girl to send him topless pictures. When she naively complied, he began blackmailing her into performing sex acts on herself.

She told her boyfriend, Bingham, about the blackmail, who told her to continue, telling her it might be over soon. One day, he told her he had killed “Grant”, producing fake photographs as proof.

But Bingham wasn’t through with her yet. He then posed as “Chad”, a friend of the slain “Grant”, and continued to blackmail her, saying “Grant” had given him the photographs.

The girl broke down in her office one day over the ordeal. Concerned co-workers called the police, who traced the source back to Bingham.

Bingham has since been convicted of causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent and has been sentenced to seven years in prison.

The girl had this to say after the whole ordeal, “I feel betrayed and heartbroken. When I found out it was Darrell I was absolutely devastated. He was the only person I could turn to and that is why it makes this ordeal so hard. He tortured me for six months.”

“From the moment I woke to when I went to bed, it was constant. I was so scared and frightened all the time I just didn’t trust anybody.”

Facebook has been used as a tool of deceit in the past, people posing as someone else to elicit sex or scam people out of money. Recently, a Pennsylvania man was charged with 68 felony counts after tricking underage girls into sex by using fake Facebook profiles to lure them in.

Picard is the court appointed trustee for Madoff’s victims and is responsible for seeing that many of them receive compensation from the bankrupt estate of Madoff and any other money generated through lawsuits derived from the case.

Picard was ready to testify in the Mets trial regarding their owner, Fred Wilpon’s criminal neglect of the fact that Madoff was producing fraudulent returns. Madoff was using his communication line with Diane Henriques, author of a book about Madoff’s deceptions titled, “Wizard of Lies”, to send messages to Picard.

Henriques commented on what Madoff expressed to her:

“He wrote me last weekend that he was so looking forward to that trial,”

“He was hoping that the Mets’ defense would make the case he was making to me that they had no reason to doubt Madoff.”

“He calls Picard a fool, an amateur, says he doesn’t understand the market, says he never understood the market, that he’s just lost on Wall Street,”

So it appears the man, Madoff is still taking satisfaction in knowing people are suffering because of his actions. I am glad you are rotting in a prison cell the Emperor, I mean Bernie Madoff. I hope many of your fellow inmates are enjoying intercourse with you.

Jasmine Jamrus-Kassim was arrested last March in Kent by State Patrol troopers and investigators from the Office of the Insurance Commissioner. Kassim was desperate to leave the country after the big take and raised some red flags as she attempted to liquidate her assets by selling her house in a short sale.

Kassim was charged with 21 first degree counts of theft. This clever con artist was able to swindle the million from only five elderly residents by earning their trust and presenting herself as one of the nicest women they had ever met.

Her process for obtaining the big score was to have her clients endorse checks to her teenage daughters’ names and proceed to bounce those checks into her own account. Kassim told her victims that she was investing their money for them and that she was not a thief.

One of her prey, an 81-year-old Bellevue man, died knowing that he got scammed out of $130,000. He passed away in January of 2011 and never got to see Kassim brought to justice.

In December 2009, the son of the Bellevue man contacted the Office of the Insurance Commissioner (OIC) to file a complaint against Kassim. Three days later, 92 year old Dorothy King also filed a complaint against her. Kassim returned $25,000 to her in an effort to convince the woman of her innocence.

The act of cashing her clients’ annuity checks was what eventually got this cold-hearted monster caught. That and the fact that she started doing irrational things with the money like donating $20,000 to the Online Psychic Network website in January of 2009.

Because her victims were viewed as extremely vulnerable (they were 74-90 years of age) prosecutors pushed for an exceptional sentence of five years, eight months and got more than they originally asked for; the standard sentence range is three years, seven months to four years, nine months.

Jumping on the bandwagon and attempting to make some cash is president and CEO of Long Island-based Applied DNA Sciences, Inc, Dr. James Hayward. He proposes a DNA-based identification system that could prevent these types of identity fraud in educational testing. Regarding cost he claims:

“This is a very affordable approach and it’s one we think will become widespread as a consequence …..and the beauty of DNA is that it would elevate any rapid screening to a forensic-level identification method that would [be upheld] in court.”

Hayward explained further to FoxNews.com:

“We start with the whole genome of a plant and it doesn’t matter which one. Plants are a great choice because they have quite complex DNA, in some cases as complex or more complex than humans and they also have systems that enable them to endure stressors we don’t normally expose humans to.”

Doesn’t sound like it will be cheap to me. Why is this guy is even involved? I think this is another case of seizing an opportunity to get rich. The school system has really changed over the past decade since I graduated.

What happened to the days of teachers and administration handling matters in the school system. Do we need the police and DNA experts handling the mischief of minors? I don’t think so! Why don’t we just send our kids into the prison system to learn and we can all be protected from ourselves like inmates?

A seamingly more sensible man, ETS spokesman Tom Ewing made this statement to FoxNews.com regarding the testing issues:

“ETS and The College Board have heard from a number of organizations offering unique technological solutions to address the test impersonation issue…While many of these solutions have been interesting, none have managed to eliminate impersonations without unduly disrupting test day, raising privacy concerns, or unduly adding to the operational burden of cost of the SAT Program. While we remain open to all ideas, we are focused on designing a solution utilizing technologies readily available to us to address this issue.”

I don’t think a big production is necessary to address this issue. If people are committing fraud, report it, and let it be dealt with in a manner appropriate for the crime. The school system doesn’t need to spend thousands of dollars on high-tech solutions or disrupt everybody else’s learning to dig deeper into the issue. Waste of time!

Here’s what another overpaid official, Tom Rudin, The College Board’s senior vice president for advocacy, government relations and development, had to say:

“In the end, it is the responsibility of local enforcement to take action…again, we are deeply committed to working with local law enforcement.”

Sounds like he’s really committed to learning and the students education. How can 20 cases of fraud even take place right under the nose’s of those administering the tests?
Who proctors these tests, robots?

Best Buy, Future Shop, Walmart, and London Drug have all reported similar returns from customers. Clearly the Merchants (and consumers) have been victimized in a scam to return fake merchandise in for a profit. As many as 25 of these fraudulent devices have been sold in the Vancouver area and more victims have come forward since the break of this story on Monday.

Most of the victims have already been issued refunds however, some consumers report being persecuted at the time of return. Obviously there is always a chance that one of the perpetrators is posing as a legitimate customer. I like to think most sellers would give paying customers the benefit of the doubt even at the cost of a overlooking a few bad apples (no pun intended)

It sounds like it is safe to say, retailers will be inspecting these products more closely at the point of purchase in order to protect themselves and consumers. Still it leaves some asking; why hasn’t this been the policy all along? iPads are not inexpensive devices. Sellers should be checking for damage and also that everything is in order with the packaging from the factory.

Apple has agreed to cooperate in the investigation in any way possible but has not made any specific comments about the incidents. Consumers beware; scams like these are becoming more common in the fast-paced world we live in.

[Source: CTV News]

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called it a “massive and sophisticated scheme.”

The fraud was perpetrated by seven individuals, all of whom the U.S. is trying to get extradited. Six of the seven are Estonian nationals and have been taken into custody. The seventh is a Russian national and he remains at large.

Here’s how the scheme worked:

Malware installed to millions of computers allowed the perpetrators to manipulate online searches in order to redirect clicks to certain sites and ads. They used these falsely-acquired clicks to generate ad revenue.

Some examples of this included links to Apple’s iTunes, Netflix, and even the IRS being redirected to unrelated sites.

The malware also interfered with the computers’ anti-virus software, making the intrusion even harder to identify.

As alleged in the Indictment, from 2007 until October 2011, the defendants controlled and operated various companies that masqueraded as legitimate publisher networks (the “Publisher Networks”) in the Internet advertising industry. The Publisher Networks entered into agreements with ad brokers under which they were paid based on the number of times that Internet users clicked on the links for certain websites or advertisements, or based on the number of times that certain advertisements were displayed on certain websites.

Thus, the more traffic to the advertisers’ websites and display ads, the more money the defendants earned under their agreements with the ad brokers. As alleged in the Indictment, the defendants fraudulently increased the traffic to the websites and advertisements that would earn them money. They accomplished this by making it appear to advertisers that the Internet traffic came from legitimate clicks and ad displays on the defendants’ Publisher Networks when, in actuality, it had not.

It’s shocking to see that the scheme apparently went on for more than 4 years.

The schemers also operated ad-replacement fraud, replacing certain ads on websites with their own. For instance, the infected computers that visited the Wall Street Journal site saw ads for “Fashion Girl LA” as opposed to what should have been there – an ad for the American Express “Plum Card.”

More than 500,000 of the computers that were hit came from the U.S. And we’re not just talking about personal systems – but systems from within U.S. government agencies like NASA as well as colleges & universities and non-profits.

The suspects face 27 charges, including wire fraud and computer intrusion.

The FBI wants to hear from you if you think your computer might have been involved in this scheme. They say standard, up-to-date antivirus software should be able to detect the malware.