Leveraging Knowledge to Manage Your Data Risks
Thank you to Jon Schaefer for this post. Jon focuses his practice on environmental compliance counseling, occupational health and safety.
On July 30, 2024, the U.S. EPA Office of Inspector General issued a fraud alert to bring attention to an increasing number of companies reporting that they have received fraudulent EPA Notice of Violation…
There was a big win for the good guys against the bad guys this week. On December 13, 2023, after obtaining an order from the federal court in the Southern District of New York to seize U.S. based infrastructure and take offline websites used by a group Microsoft identifies as Storm-1152, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit…
There are lots of package deliveries this time of year. When shopping online, companies are great about telling you when to expect the delivery of your purchase. Fraudsters know this and prey on unsuspecting victims especially during this time of year.
Scammers send smishing texts (smishing is just like phishing, but through a text), that…
In response to a rash of employment offer scams, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently issued a scam alert intended to educate job seekers so they can avoid being victimized.
Not only are individuals subject to these scams, but legitimate businesses are spoofed and used to conduct the scams and they only find that out…
Another fall-out from the pandemic is that impersonation fraud has increased dramatically. According to the Federal Trade Commission, “the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a sharp spike in impersonation fraud, as scammers capitalize on confusion and concerns around shifts in the economy stemming from the pandemic.” Impersonation fraud costs “have increased an alarming 85 percent…
Gift card scams continue to be one of the most frequently-reported scams to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). According to its recent Scam Alert entitled Scammers are tricking more people into buying gift cards, “40,000 people reported losing a whopping $148 million in gift cards to scammers during the first nine months of 2021.”…
My phone was ringing this week with inquiries from clients, friends and acquaintances who received a Form 1099 in the mail for an unemployment claim that they did not file, asking what should they do.
The statistics on the successful filing of fraudulent unemployment claims throughout the country in 2020 are staggering. The pandemic created…
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…
On June 3, 2019, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a fraud alert to notify consumers about genetic testing fraud schemes (the Alert). According to the OIG, fraudulent actors are using the provision of free genetic testing kits to obtain Medicare information from unwitting consumers, and…
A new Harris Poll for the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), which called 1,006 U.S. adults for the report, shows interesting statistics regarding American adults’ attitudes and fears about identity theft and financial loss as a result of cyber intrusions. The poll’s conclusion is that 48 percent of U.S. adults believe that identity theft will…
