The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts is warning small businesses that received loans through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) of a dramatic increase in reports of business email-compromise schemes related to the program. Scammers are using information about PPP recipients posted by the Small Business Administration (SBA) to impersonate PPP lenders requesting
DOJ
SolarWinds Cyber-Attack Has Significant Implications for Developers and Contractors
ICYMI, on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) issued an update about what it termed “a major incident under the Federal Information Security Modernization Act”: the global SolarWinds cyberattack that had compromised its email system. (SolarWinds is a software provider. In December, 2020, SolarWinds revealed that cybercriminals had injected malware…
Privacy Tip #256 – COVID-19 Scams Continue to Plague U.S. Public
It has been widely reported that hackers are taking advantage of the pandemic to perpetrate scams and frauds. We have seen attacks against workers of companies through phishing emails that include an attachment or link offering information or access to specialized treatment for COVID-19 to lure people to click on them. Once they click on…
Privacy Tip #251 – DOJ Charge Four Men with Defrauding Thousands of Senior Citizens in Mail Schemes
The Department of Justice recently indicted four men—two of whom are located in Canada and two in New York—for a mass-mailing scheme that bilked thousands of senior citizens out of tens of millions of dollars.
According to the indictments, the accused Canadian fraudsters sent mail to thousands of elderly individuals whose names and addresses they…
Chinese and Russian Hackers Targeting COVID-19 Vaccine Makers in U.S. Crosshairs
Last week, authorities from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada accused a well-known hacker group tied to the Russian government, APT29 a/k/a Cozy Bear of using malware to exploit security vulnerabilities to enable it to steal COVID-19 vaccine research from companies located in these countries working to develop a vaccine. This was after a…
Federal Reserve White Paper on Synthetic Identity Payments Fraud—A Growing Problem in the U.S. That Affects Consumers, Businesses, Financial Institutions, Government Agencies and the Health Care Industry
In the Federal Reserve’s July 11, 2019 White Paper, “Synthetic Identity Fraud in the U.S. Payment System, A Review of Causes and Contributing Factors,” the authors conclude that synthetic identity fraud is a serious and growing problem for the U.S. payments ecosystem that can only be addressed by a collaborative effort among all payments…
Department of Justice Announces Significant False Claims Act Settlements Tied to Electronic Health Records Arrangements
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced two high-dollar False Claims Act (FCA) enforcement actions involving allegedly fraudulent arrangements tied to the implementation and use of electronic health record systems (EHRs). The respective settlements enable recovery by DOJ of over $100 million, and immediately precede the government’s recent proposal of new rules to promote the…
Department of Homeland Security Says the U.S. Isn’t Ready for the Growing Threat of Drones
Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen M. Nielsen, wrote in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been worrying about the dangers of drones for years; so much so, that DHS has sought legal authority in the past (and continues to do so) to protect the U.S.…
DOJ Announces Criminal Conviction of Physician for HIPAA Violation
On April 30, 2018, a Massachusetts physician was convicted of a criminal violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), as well as one count of obstruction of a criminal health care investigation, in a Massachusetts federal court. The convictions relate to the purported sharing of confidential patient information by the…
Remote Identification of Drones: For Commercial Operators Only or Hobbyists Too?
Last month, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) received recommendations regarding remote identification of drones in a report from the unmanned aircraft Identification and Tracking (UAS ID) Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC). One of the topics at issue: whether we need remote identification (ID) of all drones in the national airspace. Beyond the FAA, the Department of…