A former check-in agent for Air Canada put together a scam where he collected milage points of Air Canada passangers for his own use. His scam collected a total of five million miles in different accounts. He used the miles to fly friends and family around the world in first class.
April 20, 2004
The Star
Air Canada staffer guilty in Air Miles scam
Staffer created ghost accounts, deposited credits of boarding passengers
LONDON, England - A former check-in agent working for Air Canada has pleaded guilty to an air miles scam that allowed him and others to fly first-class around the world.
Satbal Singh, 24, pleaded guilty to charges of false accounting, obtaining services by deception and obtaining property by deception in a London court on Monday. A police spokesman could not say Tuesday what punishment Singh faces when he returns to court May 21 for sentencing.
In a news release, Britain's National Crime Squad said Singh credited phoney accounts he set up for himself with the air miles points of passengers he checked in while working for Air Canada at Heathrow Airport.
He fraudulently collected five million air miles in accounts with a variety of airlines.
There has been an increase in entertainment ticket scams. For example you go online and research ticket prices for a pro football game, tickets for a Broadway show, Disneyworld, Disneyland or tickets to the Olympic Games. You find an incredible deal and you pay for your tickets. Your whole trip is planned around going to this event. Maybe you are taking the family or you are taking business clients. But your tickets never show up, you’ve been scammed.
Here are some tips on how to avoid ticket scammers.
• If they won’t tell you their address or phone number, don’t do business with them.
• Check and see if they have a permanent address.
• See if your ticket broker belongs to the National Association or Ticket Brokers and that they are bonded at www.natb.org
It is very important to check these people out before you make a purchase. If they look legitimate then pay by credit card and if there are any problems you’ll have a better chance of getting the charges reversed to get your money back. However, if they do not look legit, do not give them anything let alone your credit card information. If they are scam artists there is nothing stopping them from using you personal financial information to commit identity theft against you.
There are more tips and advice in the article below, just click the “More >>” button.
Packer Fans Ripped Off in Ticket Scam
By Becky Freemal
With the Packers' 2004 schedule out, the phones are ringing off the hook at Packer Fan Tours, as fans of the green and gold scramble for seats.
"Our response has been quite overwhelming," says Packer Fan Tours' Dennis Garrity. "The schedule came out last Wednesday and the phones have been constant, and our Internet orders have been flowing in."
Unfortunately, this is also the time of year when ticket scams pop up. The Bureau of Consumer Protection is currently investigating several complaints from hundreds of Packer fans who paid big money for tickets...only to have those tickets never materialize.
Last season, Jim and Coleen Nall were finally supposed to be able to go to a regular-season game at Lambeau Field. Jim had looked around on several websites, finally finding a deal: four tickets for $690.
Attention all travellers using Kinko's computer rentals and other cyber cafe computers while on the road - read this article. It contains important information about protecting your personal/financial/password information while using these rental computers. The bottom line is - don't use rental computers to access critical financial or personal information. At several Kinko's in the New York City area, a person installed software that recorded the keystroke information gathered from people using the computer rentals.
He ended up getting personal and financial information from more that 450 different people. If you need to access and use a password protected account from a rental computer you should cut and paste the password from a word document where the password is in the middle of random or gobbleygook writing. say for example your password is "27bluebird" then in the word document you have a paragraph of stuff like "3445black85the9427marker94world9875baseball8765....." Then you would cut and paste the string of characters that contains "27" and then "black" then "bird". this will give you far greater security than just typing in your password on a computer that might have key capture software hidden on it.
July 27, 2003
Spy puts kink in public Web terminals
By Anick Jesdanun
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK - For more than a year, unbeknown to people who used Internet terminals at Kinko's stores in New York, Juju Jiang was recording what they typed, paying particular attention to their passwords.
Jiang had secretly installed, in at least 14 Kinko's stores, software that logs individual keystrokes. He captured more than 450 user names and passwords, using them to access and even open bank accounts online.
This is a great article on the dangers of pickpockets. It gives good advice and has a series of photographs that shows just how quickly a pickpocket can strike. According to the Justice Department, in 2001, there were over 158,000 victims in the US that lost $45 million to pickpockets. Don’t let this ruin your vacation.
Many pickpockets are tied into Identity Theft scams, so not only do they take your cash and credit cards, they take your good name and your credit and take it for a ride. And if you are on vacation while this is happening, the damage may be far greater when you get back home. Go to the “More” section and check out how to protect yourself from pickpockets.
06/17/2003
USA TODAY
By Edward Iwata,
Pickpockets may have eye on you
Easy pickings
Detective Cedric Mitchell of the Metro Transit Police Department in Washington, D.C., demonstrates how easy it is to swipe the wallet from the purse of model Ester-Leigh Rawson on a Union Station platform.
Beware, all travelers and shoppers. If you're carrying cash or credit cards, roving bands of pickpockets may be casing you now — whether you realize it or not.
"Picking pockets is one of the oldest crimes in the books," says Detective Cedric Mitchell of the Metro Transit Police Department in Washington, D.C. "It goes on every day, everywhere."
A 22 year old woman was sexually assaulted in the alley of a dance club. Earlier, she was given water while she was inside at the club. She started feeling dizzy and only remembers bits and pieces after that. She does remember being assaulted over the hood of a green car. Investigators speculate that GHB was slipped into her water.
Check out the free travel safety guide for the story of a traveling man who was drugged and robbed while riding on a bus through Latin America. The guide is available at www.mytravelsafety.com/guide.
A simple test kit for checking if food or drink contains one of the four most commonly used date rape drugs is available at www.collegesafe.com
March 21, 2003
Rocky Mountain News
By Hector Gutierrez
Date-rape drug eyed in assault
Boulder police on Thursday were looking for a man who may have slipped a date-rape drug into a woman's drink before sexually assaulting her last weekend.
The 22-year-old victim told detectives that she was at Soma dance club, 1915 Broadway, Saturday night when someone gave her water.
After drinking the water, the woman told police she suffered lapses in consciousness and felt dizzy. She remembered then being in the alley with a man, who went by the name of Zimmer.
She remembered being assaulted on the hood of a green car, she told detectives.
If you are going somewhere and you want to return home and find all your stuff still there, then you should read this article. This is a great article on how to protect and secure your home before you leave on vacation. Much of this information comes from Police Officers who have seen a lot of vacation related crime.
Check out the free guide on travel safety at www.mytravelsafety.com/guide.htm for mind blowing tips and information on travel and vacation safety.
Copyright 2002
Wpxi.com
Secure Home Before Vacationing
LANCASTER, Pa. -- While you're planning for a big family trip, a burglar may be making plans to spend a little time at your house while you're away.
"The main thing we want to do is have the house look lived in. We don't want it to look abandoned," Trooper Joe Reeves said.
Timers on lights are a good way to achieve that "lived in" look. You should use several different timers in various parts of your home, and there are now timers you can place on wall-mounted light switches to turn overhead or outdoor lights on and off.
Gone in 60 seconds? How about 26 seconds. That is how often a car is stolen in the US, one car every 26 seconds. Travelers should beware because thieves like to strike when they can get away and it will be a while before anyone notices the car missing. So they’ll check out the long term parking lot at the airport or people’s driveways where they look like they’ve been gone for a while. Here is the list of the top 25 cars that thieves just can’t resist. Is your car on the list?
This article lists the cars and the reasons why thieves like them so much.
By Bankrate.com
The 25 vehicles thieves love most
...Yes, vehicles vanish from street curbs, driveways, parking lots and even car dealership lots. But, says McGoey, the frequency increases when the dishonest can bet you'll be gone for an extended time. Think airports, movie complexes, large apartment complexes at night, shopping centers during business hours, fairgrounds and sporting events. They tend to avoid fee-based parking lots (too much hassle explaining to the old guy sitting in the little booth why they don't have a ticket) as well as stacked parking garages that offer just one escape route.
This article should alert ALL air travelers to ALWAYS keep their bags and carry ons in sight. In Portland Oregon one of the federal airport screeners was videotaped stealing $1,300 from a woman's purse at a security checkpoint.
In this particular case, the main reason the PDX screener was found guilty is because the victim's husband was videotaping her at the check out point.
During heightened security alerts at all airports, frequently travelers are searched with metal detector wands while going through security checkpoints. It is certainly understandable WHY this is needed.
HOWEVER - when you are being wanded, kindly ask the airport screeners to bring your bags into your view WHILE you are being wanded. Last week this happened to me while in Providence Rhode Island. They chose to wand me at the security checkpoint, but when I asked them to bring my carry on bags over to where I was being wanded, they refused and two guards began to yell at me. They finished wanding me, but only after putting my bags through the screening machine a second time, with my carry on bags OUT OF MY VIEW.
Eventually they let me proceed to my gate, but they were not done with me yet.
They then sent three more security guards to then check my carry on bags and shoes minutes before I was to board the plane. They found nothing suspicious in any of my bags or shoes. They could not understand WHY I would insist that my carry on bags were in my view at all times.
This attitude by the security screeners jeopardizes the personal safety of your carry on bags. At the airport, you constantly hear an ongoing message about being responsible for your bags and not letting them out of your sight. I attempted to follow that advice, but was treated as a security risk by the guards.
You have every right to have your carry on bags in FULL VIEW while you are being searched or wanded by security screeners. Insist on this, or you may wind up having items or cash stolen from your carry on bag like this woman in Portland. Imagine if you had a carry on bag with a business laptop containing thousands of dollars of private company data?
June 4, 2003
KATU News
PORTLAND - A federal airport screener at Portland International Airport is on unpaid leave after being accused of taking $1,300 in cash from a woman's purse last month at a security checkpoint.
Thirteen crumpled $100 bills were found in a garbage can near the checkpoint after the woman discovered the money was missing.
The passenger, 39-year old Leonora Usi of Aloha, said she has a video her husband took as she passed through airport security.
Over 500,000 Americans will be victimized by identity theft this year, and travelers will be especially hard hit. Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the US. It is worse for travelers because it is much harder to figure out where the theft occurred. It could be a waiter with a pager sized card reader, that takes a swipe of your card when no one is looking, a worker in a shop or store, or even a bogus ATM machine.
Think about how many different accounts are tied to your ATM card. Do you have a checking, savings, money market account tied to the card? If that is the case then an identity thief with access to your card information can drain money away from all of those accounts.
July 10, 2003
NewsObserver.com
By MEGAN CARROLL, Staff Writer
STAYING SAFE
Keep your identity protected
Staying Safe - Summer Vacation Perils
You don't want to forget the sunscreen when you go on vacation, but some other things you may want to leave at home.
More than a half-million people will have their personal identities stolen this year, making identity theft the fastest growing crime in the United States, according to Jim Vaules, a LexisNexis fraud consultant who wrote tips to help travelers protect their personal finances when on summer excursions.
When the crime occurs during travel, said A.L. Jackson, an investigator in the fraud unit at the Durham Police Department, they are harder to solve...
Identity theft is at an all time high and travelers and people on vacation are at a much greater risk than people in other situations. This article outlines how someone can tap into your bank account and drain it dry without your ATM debit card or PIN number and how banks are taking a tougher stance on correcting it in your favor.
High tech thieves have installed tiny card readers at ATMs to record the data off of your card while hidden cameras capture you punching in your PIN number. With this information they can make a duplicate card and drain your account. Take a look at the ATM before you use it. Does everything look like it belongs there? One man found that the ATM that he was about to use had a loose cover around the card slot. He pulled on it and found that it was not original equipment, someone added it to the ATM
Another scam used to drain your account involves a thin sheet of plastic, about the size of an ATM debit or credit card that is put into the card slot before you even get there. You put your card in and the machine can not read your card through the sheet of plastic. The machine doesn’t even know that your card is there. You punch buttons and nothing happens. You push the cancel button and still nothing happens. It looks like the machine has eaten your card. After a while when you walk away in frustration, the scam artist comes up to the machine and pulls out the plastic sheet and recovers your card. In addition they probably saw you enter your PIN number several times as you tried to get the machine to work.
If this happens to you, look for a little plastic tab or plastic edge in the card slot. Take it out and you can get your card back. Be sure to report it as soon as possible. Just watch out for the scam artist, he may be watching.
April 15, 2003
By E. Scott Reckard
The Los Angeles Times
Consumers, banks clash on ATMs
As fraud claims rise, some financial institutions are taking a tougher stance when it comes to giving money back
LOS ANGELES -- Despite bank promises of "zero liability" for customers victimized by automated teller machine fraud, getting credit for stolen funds isn't always automatic, as Kelly Quick of Studio City learned...
Quick discovered that someone had tapped ATMs to siphon $1,420 from his …checking account. He notified the bank, and the missing funds were credited to his account…
After about three weeks, the bank took the money back, saying it had "determined that the transactions in question were authorized."
But his ATM card had not been lost or stolen, and he had not disclosed his PIN to anyone.
Cody Kennedy was wading in waist deep water at Pensacola Beach, Florida, when waves and rip tides swept him out to the Gulf of Mexico. Attempts to rescue Cody were unsuccessful. Similar waves and rip tides have killed 17 people along the same stretch of beach the last two years.
If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, don’t try to fight the power of the ocean by swimming straight towards the shore against the current. This is what your instincts will tell you to do, panic will kick in and you’ll struggle to get back to shore a quickly as possible. This will only wear you out until you are too tired to swim anymore.
Try to control your panic and swim parallel even with the beach until you are past the rip tides. Once you are past the rip tides you can swim to the shore at a diagonal. Try to get the attention of a lifeguard.
If you are with children stay with them and keep a very close eye on them. If you see anyone in trouble in the water don’t try to go after them, get a lifeguard. Far too often, the rescuer gets into trouble in dangerous surf.
Mar 28, 2003
TBO.com
The Associated Press
Deadly Panhandle Island Claims First Victim of Year
PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. (AP) - A rescue attempt failed and a 19-year-old man apparently became the first person to drown this year off a barrier island where 17 people have died in the past two years.
Rip currents apparently swept Cody Kennedy, of Milton, into the Gulf of Mexico while wading in waist-deep water Thursday in this resort community at the western end of Santa Rosa Island. The narrow island stretches nearly 50 miles along the Florida Panhandle coast.
Imagine you are driving in the countryside of a beautiful foreign country. The weather is warm and your car window is open. All of a sudden a large rock hits you in the head and you're in severe pain. That is what happened to an English tourist visiting Australia. He was not seriously injured but did learn a few things. The rock was propelled into his car by a commercial grade lawn mower along the side of the road. A safety guard on the mower would have prevented this.
So, when in doubt, as you drive near large construction or commercial vehicles such as lawn mowers, play it safe and roll up your window. Also remember that different countries have different safety regulations, some more strict than others.
A close friend of mine was injured by a thrown rock while on the train going through India. The rock sailed through the open window and struck him in the head, causing a bloody mess. He needed to go to the hospital right away after it happened. He was so glad that he made sure that he had traveler's insurance that covered medical while he was away.
Make sure that you are covered for any emergencies while you are away.
Geelong Advertiser
Geelong, Victoria, Australia
Tourist has lucky escape
STONED: Andrew Hall is nursing a hole in his head after a rock struck
the English tourist after it hurtled through the open passenger side window.
He believes a City of Greater Geelong lawn mower flicked the rock.
Tuesday, February 24
KATE JOHNSTONE
AN ENGLISH tourist yesterday thought he had been shot in the head when blood
spurted from his forehead while enjoying a drive through Geelong.
But what Andrew Hall at first blamed on a bullet was a rock hurtled through
the open passenger side window.