http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsworld.php?id=581379
April 24, 2011 12:40 PM
SEOUL, April 24 (Bernama) — Chinese prosecutors have arrested 23 suspects over phone fraud on South Koreans, Seoul’s prosecutors said Sunday, the first bust on a scam ring after the two neighbouring countries agreed to thwart voice phishing scams that have caused huge financial damage in South Korea in recent years.
Voice phishing involves random phone calls to dupe victims to siphon their bank accounts, Yonhap News Agency reported.
Callers, growingly traced to networks in China, masquerade as police or bank officials, or sometimes demand ransom claiming they are holding a family member hostage.
The damage from phone fraud has reached over 200 billion won (US$185 million) over the last three years, according to South Korean prosecution data.
More than 1,500 suspects of the scams are believed to have fled to China during the past five years.
A Chinese ringleader and 22 other scammers allegedly swindled several billion won from South Koreans by impersonating officials of financial institutions and fooling them into depositing their money at certain bank accounts.
The Chinese prosecutors are also chasing other members of the busted phone scam ring that allegedly has about 100 members, according to Seoul’s prosecutors.
The bust came three months after South Korean Prosecutor General Kim Joon-gyu and Meng Jianzu, China’s public security minister, agreed to cooperate in rooting out voice phishing scams.
South Korean prosecutors said they can soon extradite 15 separate suspects from China over similar scams that caused some 150 billion won ($138 million) in damages from 20,000 victims. The prosecutors did not give any specific time frame.
– BERNAMA
We provide (subscription-based)
news coverage in our Newswire service.
Posts mit dem Label investment review solutions werden angezeigt. Alle Posts anzeigen
Posts mit dem Label investment review solutions werden angezeigt. Alle Posts anzeigen
Dienstag, 26. April 2011
Dienstag, 19. April 2011
Fisher Capital Management Scam Prevention News: Cyber criminals target owners of smartphones
http://www.independent.co.uk/money/spend-save/cyber-criminals-target-owners-of-smartphones-2268877.html
More people are sending sensitive information through their phones, making fraud easier. Paul Bicknell reports
KAREN BLEIER / AFP Unsocial Networks: Fraudsters are using sites such as Facebook to lure victims
More people are sending sensitive information through their phones, making fraud easier. Paul Bicknell reports
Sunday, 17 April 2011
KAREN BLEIER / AFP Unsocial Networks: Fraudsters are using sites such as Facebook to lure victims Smartphones and social networking coupled with illicit money transfer are making it easy for fraudsters to exploit members of the public. Figures released last week point to a growing £400m-a-year problem as naive and vulnerable individuals are being lured into cyber crime involving money transfers.
These losses make up 10 per cent of last year’s overall British fraud figure of £4bn. This covers losses to consumers targeted using social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. It includes mass-marketing fraud such as online ticketing and rental as well as advanced fee frauds.
“As social networks grow in popularity, there is a risk that they become increasingly targeted for fraudulent activities,” says Toby Jones, a spokesman for MySpace.
In broad terms, fraud has increased by 25 per cent over the past five years, according to the not-for-profit organisation Cifas. In 2010, 217,385 frauds were reported to the National Fraud Database by Cifas members.
In online banking, fraud increased 14 per cent, or £60m, last year, according to the National Fraud Authority.
The Office of Fair Trading has revealed that 39 per cent of people losing money to a scam in the past year did so through advance fees or money transfer, with 7 per cent losing more than £4,000. The consumer direct division of the regulator said this topped the list of complaints about scams and it receives more than 1,000 complaints about them each year. Further down the list are prize draws and sweepstakes, ticketing and foreign lotteries.
Money transfer operators such as Western Union, Money Gram and Hifx became regulated by the Financial Services Authority in November 2009 and since then consumers have been able to complain about them to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). They are a valued service used by a growing economic migrant population, more than 35,000 of whom travel from outside the EU and are given visas to work in the UK each year, according to the Home Office. Many of these workers do not have bank accounts and problems can arise with money not reaching the specified destination or the incorrect exchange rate being applied.
Complaints about money transfer operators have remained low against the background of banks and building societies. The FOS received 508 complaints about transfers carried out between banks or building societies in 2010 and 635 in 2009. It is currently upholding 43 per cent of these complaints. “During the 2010 calendar year, about 60 complaints were referred to us. This was up from 10 complaints received in 2009 – although obviously we were only able to look at complaints that arose after November 2009,” says FOS spokeswoman Emma Parker. “We upheld in favour of consumers around 47 per cent of these complaints in 2010.”
Overseas workers are statistically less likely to complain when something goes wrong financially, while, anecdotally, unregulated back-street money transfers exist. John Bownas, a spokesman for Croydon Council, says its trading standards division had stopped £100,000 worth of dodgy money-transfer activity in the past year alone. “That is fairly typical and we would advise our residents to get in touch with us as quickly as possible if they feel they have been a victim of fraud,” he says. “The first port of call for most people should be Consumer Direct, which will pass you to the correct authority for your area.”
It is a problem that is likely to grow. Companies such as Nokia are offering mobile transfers to a much wider array of destinations. Earlier this month, the handset maker rolled out a new service with Bank of India, where more than 800 million people have a mobile but more than half the 1.2 billion population do not have a bank account. Even in Britain it is fast becoming commonplace to shop, pay utility bills and top up prepaid cards using only a mobile phone.
New research from credit reference agency Equifax has shown nearly 70 per cent of smartphone users aged between 22 and 25 do not use passwords on their phones, and two-thirds of this age group use their phones regularly to access online banking. In addition, more than half of second-hand phones hold sensitive personal information which could become linked with fraud. In an experiment carried out last month by ID theft insurer CPP, 247 pieces of personal data including debit card PINs and bank account details had been left on second-hand smartphones they bought.
Janet Davis, 52, from London, sent £850 via Western Union money transfer to enter a competition to win £70,000 she thought was organised by the Royal National Institute for the Deaf. However, it was a scam; the Facebook message claiming to be from the charity was a fake. But worse was to follow for Ms Davis when the fraudsters using information she divulged hacked into her Facebook account.
“I started to get texts from friends – I had about 30 in just one day,” she says. “They’d all had messages from someone who must have hacked my Facebook account. Whoever was pretending to be me was trying to persuade even more people to give them money. I sent out a message to tell people to block me and I set up a new account, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to use it again just yet.” Ms Davis also had two people impersonating FedEx employees call at her house to ask for more money to cover what they described as “tax and insurance”.
Protect Yourself
Beware of suspicious links. If you think you’ve clicked on a link and have been taken to another site, be careful about what you click on. Social networking sites cannot protect against malicious content and urge users to report the link. If the website looks like a major web service but you think it might be fake, type the URL of the real website in the address bar to check.
Keep your computer’s software up to date. Visit your browser’s site to check the version you are using is the latest one. Make sure you have security software that includes anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-phishing protection and a firewall. Set your operating system to update automatically.
Use different passwords for your different online accounts, and keep them secret. If you use the same password everywhere, you could lose access to all of your accounts at once if one of your accounts is compromised. Think of a complex password. Avoid common words, and make sure your password is at least eight characters long and includes capital and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols.
Be careful when using an unsecured public wireless network. Unless a Wi-Fi network is secure, you may want to avoid transmitting sensitive information. If you’re using Facebook in a free Wi-Fi zone, consider using its high-security, https-encrypted connection. This is in your account settings area.
These losses make up 10 per cent of last year’s overall British fraud figure of £4bn. This covers losses to consumers targeted using social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. It includes mass-marketing fraud such as online ticketing and rental as well as advanced fee frauds.
“As social networks grow in popularity, there is a risk that they become increasingly targeted for fraudulent activities,” says Toby Jones, a spokesman for MySpace.
In broad terms, fraud has increased by 25 per cent over the past five years, according to the not-for-profit organisation Cifas. In 2010, 217,385 frauds were reported to the National Fraud Database by Cifas members.
In online banking, fraud increased 14 per cent, or £60m, last year, according to the National Fraud Authority.
The Office of Fair Trading has revealed that 39 per cent of people losing money to a scam in the past year did so through advance fees or money transfer, with 7 per cent losing more than £4,000. The consumer direct division of the regulator said this topped the list of complaints about scams and it receives more than 1,000 complaints about them each year. Further down the list are prize draws and sweepstakes, ticketing and foreign lotteries.
Money transfer operators such as Western Union, Money Gram and Hifx became regulated by the Financial Services Authority in November 2009 and since then consumers have been able to complain about them to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). They are a valued service used by a growing economic migrant population, more than 35,000 of whom travel from outside the EU and are given visas to work in the UK each year, according to the Home Office. Many of these workers do not have bank accounts and problems can arise with money not reaching the specified destination or the incorrect exchange rate being applied.
Complaints about money transfer operators have remained low against the background of banks and building societies. The FOS received 508 complaints about transfers carried out between banks or building societies in 2010 and 635 in 2009. It is currently upholding 43 per cent of these complaints. “During the 2010 calendar year, about 60 complaints were referred to us. This was up from 10 complaints received in 2009 – although obviously we were only able to look at complaints that arose after November 2009,” says FOS spokeswoman Emma Parker. “We upheld in favour of consumers around 47 per cent of these complaints in 2010.”
Overseas workers are statistically less likely to complain when something goes wrong financially, while, anecdotally, unregulated back-street money transfers exist. John Bownas, a spokesman for Croydon Council, says its trading standards division had stopped £100,000 worth of dodgy money-transfer activity in the past year alone. “That is fairly typical and we would advise our residents to get in touch with us as quickly as possible if they feel they have been a victim of fraud,” he says. “The first port of call for most people should be Consumer Direct, which will pass you to the correct authority for your area.”
It is a problem that is likely to grow. Companies such as Nokia are offering mobile transfers to a much wider array of destinations. Earlier this month, the handset maker rolled out a new service with Bank of India, where more than 800 million people have a mobile but more than half the 1.2 billion population do not have a bank account. Even in Britain it is fast becoming commonplace to shop, pay utility bills and top up prepaid cards using only a mobile phone.
New research from credit reference agency Equifax has shown nearly 70 per cent of smartphone users aged between 22 and 25 do not use passwords on their phones, and two-thirds of this age group use their phones regularly to access online banking. In addition, more than half of second-hand phones hold sensitive personal information which could become linked with fraud. In an experiment carried out last month by ID theft insurer CPP, 247 pieces of personal data including debit card PINs and bank account details had been left on second-hand smartphones they bought.
Janet Davis, 52, from London, sent £850 via Western Union money transfer to enter a competition to win £70,000 she thought was organised by the Royal National Institute for the Deaf. However, it was a scam; the Facebook message claiming to be from the charity was a fake. But worse was to follow for Ms Davis when the fraudsters using information she divulged hacked into her Facebook account.
“I started to get texts from friends – I had about 30 in just one day,” she says. “They’d all had messages from someone who must have hacked my Facebook account. Whoever was pretending to be me was trying to persuade even more people to give them money. I sent out a message to tell people to block me and I set up a new account, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to use it again just yet.” Ms Davis also had two people impersonating FedEx employees call at her house to ask for more money to cover what they described as “tax and insurance”.
Protect Yourself
Beware of suspicious links. If you think you’ve clicked on a link and have been taken to another site, be careful about what you click on. Social networking sites cannot protect against malicious content and urge users to report the link. If the website looks like a major web service but you think it might be fake, type the URL of the real website in the address bar to check.
Keep your computer’s software up to date. Visit your browser’s site to check the version you are using is the latest one. Make sure you have security software that includes anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-phishing protection and a firewall. Set your operating system to update automatically.
Use different passwords for your different online accounts, and keep them secret. If you use the same password everywhere, you could lose access to all of your accounts at once if one of your accounts is compromised. Think of a complex password. Avoid common words, and make sure your password is at least eight characters long and includes capital and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols.
Be careful when using an unsecured public wireless network. Unless a Wi-Fi network is secure, you may want to avoid transmitting sensitive information. If you’re using Facebook in a free Wi-Fi zone, consider using its high-security, https-encrypted connection. This is in your account settings area.
Fisher Capital Management Scam Prevention News: Exploring a Stock Investing Secret
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11081285/1/exploring-a-stock-investing-secret.html
By Steve Alexander
04/13/11 – 10:45 AM EDT
NEW YORK (MagicDiligence.com) — In recent weeks, Joel Greenblatt, the father of Magic Formula Investing (MFI), has been promoting his new stock investing book, The Big Secret for the Small Investor.
Because the book was published only Tuesday, we’re still reading it and should publish a full review as early as next week.
From Greenblatt’s interview with Morningstar, however, we already have a pretty good idea of what the book is about and what the motivation is behind it.
The “big secret” is value-weighted indexing.
Most indices, like the S&P 500 and Russell 3000, are weighted by market cap. That means that for every dollar you invest in them, the largest-cap stocks get more pennies then the smaller-cap stocks.
For example, if you invest $100 in a S&P 500 index fund (SPDR S&P 500 ETF(SPY_) is a popular one), about $3.48 is invested in ExxonMobil(XOM_), the largest-cap stock in the index, while about $2.52 is invested in Apple(AAPL_), the second largest, and so on.
Greenblatt believes that weighting the indices by value parameters, such as the operating earnings yield and return on tangible capital used by MFI, produces better stock investingresults.
In the Morningstar interview, he says that market-cap weighting removes about 2% of annual returns as opposed to equal weighting (where money is spread evenly among all stocks in an index).
A quick Google search will net you dozens of studies corroborating that fact, and it makes intuitive sense as well: Very large-cap stocks have more limited growth avenues and are more appropriately priced in general.
But the real upside is by placing bigger bets on firms in the index that rank higher by value parameters. Greenblatt contends that this adds 4%-6% of return a year over market-cap weighting over the long term. Furthermore, back-testing shows that this method is not any riskier or volatile than a market cap weighted solution.
To implement this system for investors, Greenblatt and his partners at Formula Investing have created “managed indexed” mutual funds. The U.S.-based ones use a universe of the 1,400 largest U.S.-listed stocks. Formula Investing U.S. Value A (FVVAX) chooses 800 to 1,000 of these, and the Formula Investing U.S. Value Select A (FNSAX) selects 75 to 120 of them. Both funds base their selections using MFI parameters and rebalance themselves frequently. There are also international variants of these two funds, choosing stocks in 26 countries outside of the U.S.
By Steve Alexander
04/13/11 – 10:45 AM EDTNEW YORK (MagicDiligence.com) — In recent weeks, Joel Greenblatt, the father of Magic Formula Investing (MFI), has been promoting his new stock investing book, The Big Secret for the Small Investor.
More on FVVAX
From Greenblatt’s interview with Morningstar, however, we already have a pretty good idea of what the book is about and what the motivation is behind it.
The “big secret” is value-weighted indexing.
Most indices, like the S&P 500 and Russell 3000, are weighted by market cap. That means that for every dollar you invest in them, the largest-cap stocks get more pennies then the smaller-cap stocks.
For example, if you invest $100 in a S&P 500 index fund (SPDR S&P 500 ETF(SPY_) is a popular one), about $3.48 is invested in ExxonMobil(XOM_), the largest-cap stock in the index, while about $2.52 is invested in Apple(AAPL_), the second largest, and so on.
Greenblatt believes that weighting the indices by value parameters, such as the operating earnings yield and return on tangible capital used by MFI, produces better stock investingresults.
In the Morningstar interview, he says that market-cap weighting removes about 2% of annual returns as opposed to equal weighting (where money is spread evenly among all stocks in an index).
A quick Google search will net you dozens of studies corroborating that fact, and it makes intuitive sense as well: Very large-cap stocks have more limited growth avenues and are more appropriately priced in general.
But the real upside is by placing bigger bets on firms in the index that rank higher by value parameters. Greenblatt contends that this adds 4%-6% of return a year over market-cap weighting over the long term. Furthermore, back-testing shows that this method is not any riskier or volatile than a market cap weighted solution.
To implement this system for investors, Greenblatt and his partners at Formula Investing have created “managed indexed” mutual funds. The U.S.-based ones use a universe of the 1,400 largest U.S.-listed stocks. Formula Investing U.S. Value A (FVVAX) chooses 800 to 1,000 of these, and the Formula Investing U.S. Value Select A (FNSAX) selects 75 to 120 of them. Both funds base their selections using MFI parameters and rebalance themselves frequently. There are also international variants of these two funds, choosing stocks in 26 countries outside of the U.S.
Fisher Capital Management Scam Prevention News: Couple of clowns duped in super scam muddy waters for true victims
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/couple-of-clowns-duped-in-super-scam-muddy-waters-for-true-victims-20110415-1dhof.html
April 16, 2011
The clowns came out to play when the federal government shelled out $55 million in compensation for certain investors in Trio Capital.
The clowns include the former Wollongong financial planner Ross Tarrant, on the front page of a rival newspaper this week moaning about how DIY super investors should be paid compensation.
And that bloke Peter Johnston, the head of the Association of Independently Owned Financial Planners, was out there whingeing about the same thing.
A quick recap: Trio Capital, a fund manager in Albury, was seized by regulators in December 2009. It has now been revealed to have been operating a big fraud in two particular hedge funds it managed: Astarra Strategic and ARP Growth.
On Wednesday the Assistant Treasurer, Bill Shorten, said government compensation would cover 5000 members of super funds overseen by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority with money in Astarra Strategic. All up, they will be paid $55 million.
But 295 self-managed super fund investors in Astarra Strategic and 70 investors in ARP Growth were essentially told to nick off. Collectively, along with some direct investors who are not being compensated, these investors lost up to $120 million.
Now, this should be a big warning bell for the self-managed super investors that account for $420 billion in Australia’s booming $1.3 trillion superannuation industry.
It’s a bell these pages have been ringing for a while. As we wrote here last April, people being ushered into DIY super should receive documents with large red letters on the front reading: ”You could lose the lot.”
My position is not a Ross Tarrant-style pitch for broad-based compensation for DIY super fund investors. For example, I wouldn’t include him in any compensation scheme.
Additionally, there are good reasons for the government’s current position to let people in DIY super look after themselves. The current setting, as played out in Trio Capital, is that government compensation looks after mainstream investors in funds regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.
I am alive to arguments of moral hazard that a broad-based compensation scheme for DIY super could create. I am also alive to the ridiculous situation of bailing out a DIY super husband in a case against a DIY super wife.
The reason I am sympathetic to the Astarra Strategic and ARP Growth DIY super investors is they found themselves in a managed investment scheme where a fraud was perpetrated. They entered those schemes on the advice of a trusted adviser. That trusted adviser failed them, often with a flurry of associated fees.
So, when Shorten considers the merits of broadly based compensation for investors, I believe there are grounds for a limited compensation scheme for DIY super investors.
At the same time, many problems will be addressed by forthcoming financial advice reforms that remove conflicted remuneration received by planners.
That brings me neatly back to Ross Tarrant. His business, Tarrants, received $840,000 from Trio Capital in commissions termed a ”marketing allowance”. That same “marketing allowance” was paid as about 200 Tarrants clients set up DIY super funds that invested $20 million in Astarra Strategic.
And Tarrant reckons he deserves compensation? It is beyond audacious.
Then there’s Peter Johnston. Johnston’s members in the association, including Tarrants, Dominion and Seagrims, were wildly overrepresented in the fallout of Trio Capital.
Johnston is the clown who squired around Shawn Richard – also known as Shawny Cash – proclaiming his innocence early last year. Shawny ended up being the front man for the Hong Kong mastermind of the scam, and now faces a lengthy jail term.
I am uncomfortable about the large number of association members who found themselves investing money in the Trio Capital scam. I am uncomfortable about the credulousness of the association’s leader.
Shorten’s reforms promise to make it more difficult for Trio Capital to happen again, and keep some of the clowns at bay. But there should also be consideration of compensation for DIY super investors sucked in by the clowns.
The clowns include the former Wollongong financial planner Ross Tarrant, on the front page of a rival newspaper this week moaning about how DIY super investors should be paid compensation.
And that bloke Peter Johnston, the head of the Association of Independently Owned Financial Planners, was out there whingeing about the same thing.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Really, who are these jokers? How anyone could quote them with a straight face is beyond me. They have zero credibility on the issue of Trio Capital. The fact they are presenting themselves as part of the solution is staggering; they were part of the problem. Worse, they are muddying the waters for DIY super investors who have what appear to be genuine claims for compensation.A quick recap: Trio Capital, a fund manager in Albury, was seized by regulators in December 2009. It has now been revealed to have been operating a big fraud in two particular hedge funds it managed: Astarra Strategic and ARP Growth.
On Wednesday the Assistant Treasurer, Bill Shorten, said government compensation would cover 5000 members of super funds overseen by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority with money in Astarra Strategic. All up, they will be paid $55 million.
But 295 self-managed super fund investors in Astarra Strategic and 70 investors in ARP Growth were essentially told to nick off. Collectively, along with some direct investors who are not being compensated, these investors lost up to $120 million.
Now, this should be a big warning bell for the self-managed super investors that account for $420 billion in Australia’s booming $1.3 trillion superannuation industry.
It’s a bell these pages have been ringing for a while. As we wrote here last April, people being ushered into DIY super should receive documents with large red letters on the front reading: ”You could lose the lot.”
My position is not a Ross Tarrant-style pitch for broad-based compensation for DIY super fund investors. For example, I wouldn’t include him in any compensation scheme.
Additionally, there are good reasons for the government’s current position to let people in DIY super look after themselves. The current setting, as played out in Trio Capital, is that government compensation looks after mainstream investors in funds regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.
I am alive to arguments of moral hazard that a broad-based compensation scheme for DIY super could create. I am also alive to the ridiculous situation of bailing out a DIY super husband in a case against a DIY super wife.
The reason I am sympathetic to the Astarra Strategic and ARP Growth DIY super investors is they found themselves in a managed investment scheme where a fraud was perpetrated. They entered those schemes on the advice of a trusted adviser. That trusted adviser failed them, often with a flurry of associated fees.
So, when Shorten considers the merits of broadly based compensation for investors, I believe there are grounds for a limited compensation scheme for DIY super investors.
At the same time, many problems will be addressed by forthcoming financial advice reforms that remove conflicted remuneration received by planners.
That brings me neatly back to Ross Tarrant. His business, Tarrants, received $840,000 from Trio Capital in commissions termed a ”marketing allowance”. That same “marketing allowance” was paid as about 200 Tarrants clients set up DIY super funds that invested $20 million in Astarra Strategic.
And Tarrant reckons he deserves compensation? It is beyond audacious.
Then there’s Peter Johnston. Johnston’s members in the association, including Tarrants, Dominion and Seagrims, were wildly overrepresented in the fallout of Trio Capital.
Johnston is the clown who squired around Shawn Richard – also known as Shawny Cash – proclaiming his innocence early last year. Shawny ended up being the front man for the Hong Kong mastermind of the scam, and now faces a lengthy jail term.
I am uncomfortable about the large number of association members who found themselves investing money in the Trio Capital scam. I am uncomfortable about the credulousness of the association’s leader.
Shorten’s reforms promise to make it more difficult for Trio Capital to happen again, and keep some of the clowns at bay. But there should also be consideration of compensation for DIY super investors sucked in by the clowns.
Fisher Capital Management Scam Prevention News: Card skim scams steal $170m
http://www.news.com.au/money/money-matters/card-skim-scams-steal-170m/story-e6frfmd9-1226039500227
By Janet Fife-Yeomans
From: The Daily Telegraph
April 15, 2011 12:00AM
Australia has recently been targeted by skimmers from Romania, Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka
These gangs are involved in large-scale card skimming, the Australian Crime Commission revealed in a report released today.
Organised crime groups have also moved into superannuation fraud, using stolen identities to access savings or unclaimed superannuation funds.
“Evidence has emerged of groups targeting superannuation holdings,” the report said.
One early-release scheme involving 121 clients netted crooked fund managers more than $685,000, which was moved out of Australia through low-value international funds transfers to the Philippines and Pacific Island nations.
The ACC warned that identity theft involving organised crime now posed a “critical” risk.
Last year there were 593,819 fraudulent credit card transactions worth $145,854,208, compared with 241,063 fraudulent transactions totalling $85,215,615 in 2006.
Debit card fraud last year totalled $24,471,348 from 63,894 fraudulent transactions.
When new chip and PIN technology becomes compulsory in Australia in 2013, so-called “card not present” fraud, when the card is used online or via the mail, is likely to explode.
The ACC warned that card skimming was now one of the main types of identity theft, with online fraud becoming the new front line in organised crime.
Details on a card skimmed in Australia can be sent immediately to another country to be used illegally, and the ACC said it had “intelligence” on large-scale identity fraud factories producing dodgy documents to order.
There have been no significant arrests to date.
The ACC said the popularity of wi-fi would make it easier to steal personal data, while high-speed broadband would make tracking criminal activity more difficult.
And Australians were still falling for the old Nigerian scams, with many individuals and companies being tricked out of “hundreds of millions of dollars each year” by paying upfront fees or providing their banking details for promised windfalls they never receive.
Fraudsters have also moved into chat rooms, dating and auction websites, social and business networking sites and internet gaming, the ACC said.
CREDIT and debit card fraud has tripled in just three years, with Australian consumers ripped off more than 657,000 times last year at a cost of $170 million.
The multi-million-dollar profits have attracted organised crime, with Australia recently targeted by crime groups from Romania, Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka.These gangs are involved in large-scale card skimming, the Australian Crime Commission revealed in a report released today.
Organised crime groups have also moved into superannuation fraud, using stolen identities to access savings or unclaimed superannuation funds.
“Evidence has emerged of groups targeting superannuation holdings,” the report said.
The ACC warned that identity theft involving organised crime now posed a “critical” risk.
Last year there were 593,819 fraudulent credit card transactions worth $145,854,208, compared with 241,063 fraudulent transactions totalling $85,215,615 in 2006.
Debit card fraud last year totalled $24,471,348 from 63,894 fraudulent transactions.
When new chip and PIN technology becomes compulsory in Australia in 2013, so-called “card not present” fraud, when the card is used online or via the mail, is likely to explode.
The ACC warned that card skimming was now one of the main types of identity theft, with online fraud becoming the new front line in organised crime.
Details on a card skimmed in Australia can be sent immediately to another country to be used illegally, and the ACC said it had “intelligence” on large-scale identity fraud factories producing dodgy documents to order.
There have been no significant arrests to date.
The ACC said the popularity of wi-fi would make it easier to steal personal data, while high-speed broadband would make tracking criminal activity more difficult.
And Australians were still falling for the old Nigerian scams, with many individuals and companies being tricked out of “hundreds of millions of dollars each year” by paying upfront fees or providing their banking details for promised windfalls they never receive.
Fraudsters have also moved into chat rooms, dating and auction websites, social and business networking sites and internet gaming, the ACC said.
Fisher Capital Management Scam Prevention News: Chester-based GB Group’s software praised for fraud prevention
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2011/03/31/chester-based-gb-group-s-software-praised-for-fraud-prevention-92534-28435807/
by Neil Hodgson, Liverpool Daily Post
Mar 31 2011
SOFTWARE designed by Chester-based data management specialist GB Group has achieved a six-fold return on investment for a financial industries client.
LaSer UK, in Solihull, is jointly owned by French retail and investment bank BNP Paribas and retailer Galeries Lafayette and provides a range of credit and loyalty services.
It manages more than four million customers on behalf of more than 200 organisations and used GB’s URU programme to verify customer identities during the recruitment process.
After a successful trial LaSer has adopted URU at all three of its business areas – Creation Consumer Finance, Creation Financial Services and Sygma Bank UK – and Ian Frith, its fraud and underwriting manager, said: “For every pound spent with GB Group we’ve saved six through fraud prevention.”
He said URU is “a truly innovative verification tool, unlike anything else we viewed in the market, which also provided customers with a slick and simple sign-up experience.”
Read More http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2011/03/31/chester-based-gb-group-s-software-praised-for-fraud-prevention-92534-28435807/#ixzz1JOGIp0Ac
SOFTWARE designed by Chester-based data management specialist GB Group has achieved a six-fold return on investment for a financial industries client.
LaSer UK, in Solihull, is jointly owned by French retail and investment bank BNP Paribas and retailer Galeries Lafayette and provides a range of credit and loyalty services.
It manages more than four million customers on behalf of more than 200 organisations and used GB’s URU programme to verify customer identities during the recruitment process.
After a successful trial LaSer has adopted URU at all three of its business areas – Creation Consumer Finance, Creation Financial Services and Sygma Bank UK – and Ian Frith, its fraud and underwriting manager, said: “For every pound spent with GB Group we’ve saved six through fraud prevention.”
He said URU is “a truly innovative verification tool, unlike anything else we viewed in the market, which also provided customers with a slick and simple sign-up experience.”
Read More http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2011/03/31/chester-based-gb-group-s-software-praised-for-fraud-prevention-92534-28435807/#ixzz1JOGIp0Ac
Fisher Capital Management Scam Prevention News: Shutdown-Averting Budget Deal Is Not Very Serious In Terms Of Deficit Reduction
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/12/budget-deal-deficit-reduction-not-serious_n_848194.html
First Posted: 04/12/11 04:27 PM ET Updated: 04/12/11 04:45 PM ET
Last week’s near shutdown of the government occurred because we were supposedly having an intensely “serious” discussion about reducing the federal deficit. But when you look at both the components of the deal that were agreed to, as well as some of the matters that were on the table, it’s hard to take these claims of seriousness very seriously.
As you already know, a lot of the eleventh hour debate concerned Planned Parenthood — an issue that related more to pure partisan antipathy than to a serious attempt to save taxpayers money. That’s not it, though. There’s a slew of things in the deal, or in the discussion of it, that just have nothing to do with cutting the deficit. In fact, there’s a fair amount of things that would actually add to the deficit.
Below are eight prime examples, including a note on whether they made it into the final agreement or not.
1. Budget Gimmicks Galore!
The $38 billion in cuts is already being reported as the largest single deficit reduction measure in history. But as the Associated Press reports today, both sides of the negotiating table indulged in a slew of budget tricks to arrive at that top line figure:
STATUS: These tricks are part of how the deal’s top-line figure was achieved.
2. Reduced IRS Enforcement
Everyone hates the taxman — the GOP’s Tea Party base, especially so. But in cutting a proposed increase in the budget for Internal Revenue Service enforcement, Republicans who pushed for the reduction were essentially calling for a straight up loss in revenue:
I thought everyone wanted to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse. Tax scofflaws are apparently not part of that equation. And the people who are primarily cheated by tax evaders are, of course, everyone who pays their fare share.
STATUS: The current agreement froze funding for the IRS.
3. No “Free Choice” in Obamacare
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has been doing a lot of unheralded work in taking the good faith opposition to the president’s Affordable Care Act and crafting some compromise measures that might preserve the bill and enhance its standing with the GOP. One such provision is his Free Choice Voucher, which he described as a “foothold for choice and competition and a safety valve for Americans whose employers are already forcing them to bear more and more of their family’s health insurance costs.”
As part of the appropriations deal, the vouchers were unceremoniously killed off. As Matt Yglesias notes: “We don’t really know who killed it, but it doesn’t have any meaningful budgetary impact so it’s not like this was a concession made in order to reach some target cut figure.”
This move has nothing at all to do with budgetary concerns, it’s just straight up hate for the Affordable Care Act. Ron Wyden has more here.
STATUS: Killed off.
4. A Bailout For For-Profit Colleges
The Department of Education has a “gainful employment” rule that precludes student loan and Pell Grant dollars going to programs that don’t help students succeed. But a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House, acting as lackeys for the for-profit college industry, pushed for a rider that would prevent those accountability rules from going in to place, allowing profits (and loan defaults) to continue. HuffPost’s Chris Kirkham explains:
And a crucial drain on government revenues.
STATUS: Good news: “The final deal will not include a measure that would have prevented the Obama administration from cracking down on certain schools,” Kirkham reports.
5. Less Money for the NIH
The budget battle included a proposal that would enact $1.6 billion of proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health, which performs vital health research. As Choire Sicha points out: “It turns out that when legislators actually know what the NIH does, they want to give it more money, not less.” What’s more, the federal investment in the NIH offers a staggeringly high rate of return:
STATUS: In the final agreement, the $1.6 billion figure was reduced to $260 million.
6. Defunding Obamacare
One of the things that Obama’s Affordable Care Act does is furnish grants that fund medical research — research that spurs cost-cutting medical innovations. Let’s consider one example,via Rick Ungar at Forbes:
As the article goes on to relate, a South Carolina vascular surgeon named Steven Cull came up with an idea: “A valve that would close off the blood flow through the tube except for when the patient is undergoing the dialysis treatment,” as Ungar describes it.
The potential upside? “Should the valve work, it would effectively end the complications that are costing the Medicare program $15 billion a year,” he writes. Go read the whole thing to get the full story of how Cull had to battle his way around Tea Party hero Jim DeMint, the junior Sen. from S.C., to finally secure funding under the Affordable Care Act.
The bottom line is that defunding the implementation of these sorts of grant programs keeps deficits unnecessarily high.
STATUS: As part of the agreement, GOP legislators will be allowed to hold a separate vote on defunding the Affordable Care Act.
7. Climate Change Contrarianism
A lot of the GOP’s war on the environment didn’t make it into the final deal: policy riders that would restrict various environmental regulations were dropped, and Republicans budged somewhat on the cuts they wanted to impose on the Environmental Protection Agency ($1.6 billion, down from $3 billion). But they continue to deny the existence of climate change, and cuts reflecting that belief made it into the bill. Per The Hill:
STATUS: These climate research funding reductions are part of the agreed-to deal.
8. Cuts To Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention Programs
As a part of the final deal, HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, and STD prevention takes a $1.1 billion hit. That’s too bad because, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention writes, this has long been shown to have a high rate of return for the investment:
STATUS: Cut in the negotiated deal.
The list could go on to include $78 million cut from research on health costs, quality and outcomes or $9 million taken from the Department of Energy Inspector General’s office. The Energy Innovation Fund, Energy Efficiency Grants, and Green Jobs Innovation Fund are also being slashed. None of these moves exactly scream, “This has potential to pay off handsomely for taxpayers or contribute mightily to deficit reduction.”
But these sorts of measures — ones that fail to impact the overall budget picture or, worse, threaten to spur deficit increases — seem be hardwired into the deal, not bugs. All this was supposed to be part of a serious discussion to reduce the national debt? Could have fooled me!
Ryan Grim, Corbin Hiar, and Nick Wing contributed to this report.
Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips totv@huffingtonpost.com — learn more about our media monitoring project here.
First Posted: 04/12/11 04:27 PM ET Updated: 04/12/11 04:45 PM ET
Last week’s near shutdown of the government occurred because we were supposedly having an intensely “serious” discussion about reducing the federal deficit. But when you look at both the components of the deal that were agreed to, as well as some of the matters that were on the table, it’s hard to take these claims of seriousness very seriously.
As you already know, a lot of the eleventh hour debate concerned Planned Parenthood — an issue that related more to pure partisan antipathy than to a serious attempt to save taxpayers money. That’s not it, though. There’s a slew of things in the deal, or in the discussion of it, that just have nothing to do with cutting the deficit. In fact, there’s a fair amount of things that would actually add to the deficit.
Below are eight prime examples, including a note on whether they made it into the final agreement or not.
1. Budget Gimmicks Galore!
The $38 billion in cuts is already being reported as the largest single deficit reduction measure in history. But as the Associated Press reports today, both sides of the negotiating table indulged in a slew of budget tricks to arrive at that top line figure:
The details of the agreement reached late Friday night just ahead of a deadline for a partial government shutdown reveal a lot of one-time savings and cuts that officially “score” as cuts to pay for spending elsewhere, but often have little to no actual impact on the deficit.As a result of the legerdemain, Obama was able to reverse many of the cuts passed by House Republicans in February when the chamber approved a bill slashing this year’s budget by more than $60 billion. In doing so, the White House protected favorites like the Head Start early learning program, while maintaining the maximum Pell grant of $5,550 and funding for Obama’s “Race to the Top” initiative that provides grants to better-performing schools.
Instead, the cuts that actually will make it into law are far tamer, including cuts to earmarks, unspent census money, leftover federal construction funding, and $2.5 billion from the most recent renewal of highway programs that can’t be spent because of restrictions set by other legislation. Another $3.5 billion comes from unused spending authority from a program providing health care to children of lower-income families.
[...]ADVERTISEMENT
About $10 billion of the cuts comes from targeting appropriations accounts previously used by lawmakers for so-called earmarks, those pet projects like highways, water projects, community development grants and new equipment for police and fire departments. Republicans had already engineered a ban on earmarks when taking back the House this year.
Republicans also claimed $5 billion in savings by capping payments from a fund awarding compensation to crime victims. Under an arcane bookkeeping rule — used for years by appropriators — placing a cap on spending from the Justice Department crime victims fund allows lawmakers to claim the entire contents of the fund as budget savings. The savings are awarded year after year.
STATUS: These tricks are part of how the deal’s top-line figure was achieved.
2. Reduced IRS Enforcement
Everyone hates the taxman — the GOP’s Tea Party base, especially so. But in cutting a proposed increase in the budget for Internal Revenue Service enforcement, Republicans who pushed for the reduction were essentially calling for a straight up loss in revenue:
On March 1, House Republicans voted to cut $600 million from the budget of the Internal Revenue Service for the remainder of 2011, and they want even deeper cuts in 2012. Perhaps that doesn’t surprise you: Republicans don’t like spending — at least when they’re not in power — and they don’t like taxes. Why would they fund the IRS?Well, as the Associated Press reported, “every dollar the Internal Revenue Service spends for audits, liens and seizing property from tax cheats brings in more than $10, a rate of return so good the Obama administration wants to boost the agency’s budget.” It’s an easy way to reduce the deficit: You don’t have to cut heating oil for the poor or Pell grants for students. You just have to make people pay what they owe.
I thought everyone wanted to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse. Tax scofflaws are apparently not part of that equation. And the people who are primarily cheated by tax evaders are, of course, everyone who pays their fare share.
STATUS: The current agreement froze funding for the IRS.
3. No “Free Choice” in Obamacare
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has been doing a lot of unheralded work in taking the good faith opposition to the president’s Affordable Care Act and crafting some compromise measures that might preserve the bill and enhance its standing with the GOP. One such provision is his Free Choice Voucher, which he described as a “foothold for choice and competition and a safety valve for Americans whose employers are already forcing them to bear more and more of their family’s health insurance costs.”
As part of the appropriations deal, the vouchers were unceremoniously killed off. As Matt Yglesias notes: “We don’t really know who killed it, but it doesn’t have any meaningful budgetary impact so it’s not like this was a concession made in order to reach some target cut figure.”
This move has nothing at all to do with budgetary concerns, it’s just straight up hate for the Affordable Care Act. Ron Wyden has more here.
STATUS: Killed off.
4. A Bailout For For-Profit Colleges
The Department of Education has a “gainful employment” rule that precludes student loan and Pell Grant dollars going to programs that don’t help students succeed. But a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House, acting as lackeys for the for-profit college industry, pushed for a rider that would prevent those accountability rules from going in to place, allowing profits (and loan defaults) to continue. HuffPost’s Chris Kirkham explains:
Gainful employment rules would apply to career-focused programs at both for-profit and non-profit colleges, but the for-profit college industry has mounted an unprecedented lobbying campaign against the regulations. As drafted, the rules would track students after they leave college and evaluate them in two ways: whether they are paying down the principal on their student loans and whether they have attained an income that allows them to manage debts.Far from sweeping, a draft version of the regulations would allow degree programs for-profit colleges and other vocational schools to remain fully eligible for federal aid money even if less than half of their students are repaying the principal on their loans. Some could remain eligible even if only a third of students are in repayment. Programs that fail to meet certain requirements could lose access to federal student loan and grant money — crucial revenues for the for-profit sector.
And a crucial drain on government revenues.
STATUS: Good news: “The final deal will not include a measure that would have prevented the Obama administration from cracking down on certain schools,” Kirkham reports.
5. Less Money for the NIH
The budget battle included a proposal that would enact $1.6 billion of proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health, which performs vital health research. As Choire Sicha points out: “It turns out that when legislators actually know what the NIH does, they want to give it more money, not less.” What’s more, the federal investment in the NIH offers a staggeringly high rate of return:
The federal government, mainly through the NIH, funds about 36 percent of all biomedical research in the United States. Nonprofit organizations fund about 7 percent, and private industry funds about 57 percent.[...]
The economy-wide rate of return on publicly funded research [is] on the order of 25 to 40 percent a year. This finding agrees with estimates of the rate of return of privately funded research and development. By way of comparison, the average before-tax profits of nonfinancial corporations in the United States ranged from 8.5 percent to 14.3 percent in the most recent ten years for which data are available (1988 to 1997), and corporations often use an expected rate of return of 15 percent as the minimum for considering investments.
STATUS: In the final agreement, the $1.6 billion figure was reduced to $260 million.
6. Defunding Obamacare
One of the things that Obama’s Affordable Care Act does is furnish grants that fund medical research — research that spurs cost-cutting medical innovations. Let’s consider one example,via Rick Ungar at Forbes:
For 50 years now, dialysis patients have had a plastic stent inserted under the skin as part of the process required to ‘hook them up’ to the dialysis machine. Once the little tube is in place, blood flows through the stent 24/7 – even though the average kidney patient experiences dialysis roughly ten hours a week.This little tube is the source of some very big problems. Because the blood flows constantly through the alien device, patients experience all sorts of trouble including clot formations, gangrene, finger ulcers and circulation impairment.
As a result, the typical kidney patient is forced to undergo 10 to 12 operations over their lifetime in response to these complications. In fact, over 1 million of these procedures are performed each and every year.
And who do you think pays for this?
We do. You see, dialysis is one of the very few conditions that Medicare pays for regardless of your age. As a result, every patient in America who requires the procedure is entitled to payment from the government up to a maximum of $75,000 a year with $15,000 of that money typically spent on the surgeries to deal with the complications resulting from that little tube.
As the article goes on to relate, a South Carolina vascular surgeon named Steven Cull came up with an idea: “A valve that would close off the blood flow through the tube except for when the patient is undergoing the dialysis treatment,” as Ungar describes it.
The potential upside? “Should the valve work, it would effectively end the complications that are costing the Medicare program $15 billion a year,” he writes. Go read the whole thing to get the full story of how Cull had to battle his way around Tea Party hero Jim DeMint, the junior Sen. from S.C., to finally secure funding under the Affordable Care Act.
The bottom line is that defunding the implementation of these sorts of grant programs keeps deficits unnecessarily high.
STATUS: As part of the agreement, GOP legislators will be allowed to hold a separate vote on defunding the Affordable Care Act.
7. Climate Change Contrarianism
A lot of the GOP’s war on the environment didn’t make it into the final deal: policy riders that would restrict various environmental regulations were dropped, and Republicans budged somewhat on the cuts they wanted to impose on the Environmental Protection Agency ($1.6 billion, down from $3 billion). But they continue to deny the existence of climate change, and cuts reflecting that belief made it into the bill. Per The Hill:
The bill cuts funding for climate change-related programs by $49 million when compared to enacted fiscal 2010 levels. This includes blocking funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s [NOAA] climate service and eliminating President Obama’s energy and climate change adviser, or “climate czar.” Carol Browner, who previously held the position, has left the White House.The upshot? Over the long run, this could cost the government a lot of money. As Christine W. McEntee warned before the budget deal, these cuts “will limit access to a wide array of scientific data and information about climate, extreme weather events and seasonal forecasting, including the ability to leverage international knowledge and research, all of which could help inform mitigation and adaptation strategies worldwide.” Here are a few of the items potentially affected by the budget deal:
[...]
- Without satellite data provided by NOAA, precipitation rate predictions in the southern U.S. could be off by as much as 50 percent. For the February 6, 2010 storm that paralyzed DC and the Mid-Atlantic coast (“Snowmaggedon”), the snow would have been under-forecast by at least 10 inches.
Economic vitality, national security, public health and environmental sustainability all depend on making the best use of science in formulating public policy, including climate science. If political pressure squelches scientific research, climate change will not magically disappear, but the objective knowledge needed to inform good decisions will.
- Polar satellites provide weather forecasting for the $700 billion maritime commerce sector and provide a value of hundreds of millions of dollars for the fishing industry. The satellites save some $200 million per year for the aviation industry in volcanic ash forecasting alone and provide drought forecasts worth $6-8 billion to farming, transportation, tourism and energy sectors.
STATUS: These climate research funding reductions are part of the agreed-to deal.
8. Cuts To Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention Programs
As a part of the final deal, HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, and STD prevention takes a $1.1 billion hit. That’s too bad because, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention writes, this has long been shown to have a high rate of return for the investment:
Three CDC studies show how federally-funded efforts to prevent sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) have dramatically reduced STDs and their associated health costs.The first study provided evidence that funding for STD and HIV prevention has a discernable impact on new cases of STDs. The authors found that greater amounts of federal STD and HIV prevention funding in a given year are associated with reductions in reported gonorrhea rates at the state level in following years. Results suggest that each dollar of prevention funding (per capita) is associated with a later decrease in gonorrhea of up to 20 percent. Because gonorrhea is a marker for risky sexual behavior, the findings are likely generalizable to other STDs, including HIV.
The second study examined the impact of federally-funded STD prevention efforts over the past 33 years, estimating that approximately 32 million cases of gonorrhea were avoided from 1971 to 2003 as a result of prevention efforts. The study demonstrated that STD prevention programs paid for themselves. Savings realized by preventing gonorrhea exceeded the STD prevention program expenditures by more than $3.7 billion during the 33-year period. If other benefits were considered (such as the prevention of other STDs), the estimated effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of STD prevention in the United States would be even greater.
In the third study, researchers estimated that reductions in new cases of gonorrhea and syphilis from 1990 to 2003 saved $5.0 billion in direct medical costs. This estimate was based on reported cases of the two diseases in the United States, coupled with published estimates of direct medical costs per STD case. Authors calculated that the total direct medical cost of gonorrhea and syphilis was $3.8 billion over the 14-year period, compared to $8.9 billion if STD rates had remained at their 1990 levels. Because gonorrhea and syphilis infection are known to increase the risk of HIV transmission, a significant portion ($3.9 billion) of the total savings ($5.0 billion) reflected HIV infections that were averted due to reduced gonorrhea and syphilis rates.
STATUS: Cut in the negotiated deal.
The list could go on to include $78 million cut from research on health costs, quality and outcomes or $9 million taken from the Department of Energy Inspector General’s office. The Energy Innovation Fund, Energy Efficiency Grants, and Green Jobs Innovation Fund are also being slashed. None of these moves exactly scream, “This has potential to pay off handsomely for taxpayers or contribute mightily to deficit reduction.”
But these sorts of measures — ones that fail to impact the overall budget picture or, worse, threaten to spur deficit increases — seem be hardwired into the deal, not bugs. All this was supposed to be part of a serious discussion to reduce the national debt? Could have fooled me!
Ryan Grim, Corbin Hiar, and Nick Wing contributed to this report.
Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips totv@huffingtonpost.com — learn more about our media monitoring project here.
Fisher Capital Management Scam Reviews: 2G scam: ED invokes tough money laundering Act against Raja
The Enforcement Directorate will call former telecom minister A Raja for interrogation some time next week.
NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate has initiated proceedings under the stringent Prevention of Money Laundering Act against former telecom minister A Raja and will call him for interrogation some time next week.
ED intends to begin the process of attaching properties found to be linked to proceeds of payoffs allegedly linked to the allocation of 2G spectrum licences in 2008 when Raja was minister, official sources said.
ED intends to begin the process of attaching properties found to be linked to proceeds of payoffs allegedly linked to the allocation of 2G spectrum licences in 2008 when Raja was minister, official sources said.
Fisher Capital Management Scam Reviews: Android Hits 350K Daily Activations, But Overspending Looms Over Google
It was a tale of mixed news for search and smartphones giant Google Inc. (GOOG) with yesterday’s earnings report. The company reported its Q1 2011 calendar quarter earnings [press release] and while there’s cause for optimism, investors seemed to almost unanimously feel that the bad outweighed the good.
I. The Good News — Great Growth
The good news was that Google continues to beat analyst earnings expectations. It recorded first quarter revenue of $8.58B USD, well above the average analyst prediction. That represents a terrific 27 percent year-to-year growth.
Video ads on YouTube appear to be at last increasing revenue and paid ad-clicks over all recorded a nice 18 percent raise.
And in the conference call on the earnings, Google’s Jeff Huber reported that the company’s smart phone OS, Android, continues on its prodigious growth pace. The OS is now recording 350K activations per day. Not long ago it was a big deal when Android hit 100K activations per day (May 2010) and 200K activations a day (September 2010).
To top off the good news, Android users now have 3 billion apps installed on their smart phones, a testament to the success of Google’s Android Marketplace, which today has over 200,000 apps.
II. The Bad News — Leadership Concerns, Rampant Spending
But the “bad” news, as far as investors were concerned, was Google’s elevated spending pace. One big spending spot was the workforce. Google went on a spending spree, growing its workforce 28 percent.
And Google also gave all its employees a raise last year.
This year, it says it will hire 6,000 more employees (it hired 2,000 in Q1 2011) and raise pay, on average, another 10 percent.
The company also spent a lot of money giving its various departments more funding. It also picked up its pace of acquisitions, something that’s expected to continue as the company tries to fortify its social networking, music, and mobile businesses.
Investors are also concerned about new CEO Larry Page,who assumed the post on April 4. While lauded as a visionary who likely will slash bureaucracy, some wonder if he will offer the same quality of communication that 10-year veteran Eric Schmidt — someone viewed as more of a businessman — offered.
III. Investor Reaction
The company’s investors were off put that Mr. Page only came on the earnings call for a few minutes and failed to deliver a detailed roadmap of his plans for the company. In an interviewwith Reuters, Jim Tierney, chief investment officer of asset manager WP Stewart, an investment house that holds a significant number of Google shares, states, “My sincere hope is that over time he (Page) enunciates the strategy much more clearly.”
BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis, another major investor expressed more concern about the company’s spending habits than its communication. He remarked, “You got expenses growing faster than revenue and some people were caught by surprise by the willingness of the company to spend. But Larry Page has signaled pretty clearly that he is going to be driving up expenses. If the expenses are targeted and result in future revenue streams, then good for Larry. If not, that results in an undisciplined spending approach.”
Google Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette tried to quell spending complaints assuring investors that his company was still taking a very “disciplined” approach and that every spending proposal would be “scrubbed and scrutinized.”
Investors seemed unconvinced, though and share prices dipped over 5 percent during the day’s trading.
I. The Good News — Great Growth
The good news was that Google continues to beat analyst earnings expectations. It recorded first quarter revenue of $8.58B USD, well above the average analyst prediction. That represents a terrific 27 percent year-to-year growth.
Video ads on YouTube appear to be at last increasing revenue and paid ad-clicks over all recorded a nice 18 percent raise.
And in the conference call on the earnings, Google’s Jeff Huber reported that the company’s smart phone OS, Android, continues on its prodigious growth pace. The OS is now recording 350K activations per day. Not long ago it was a big deal when Android hit 100K activations per day (May 2010) and 200K activations a day (September 2010).
To top off the good news, Android users now have 3 billion apps installed on their smart phones, a testament to the success of Google’s Android Marketplace, which today has over 200,000 apps.
II. The Bad News — Leadership Concerns, Rampant Spending
But the “bad” news, as far as investors were concerned, was Google’s elevated spending pace. One big spending spot was the workforce. Google went on a spending spree, growing its workforce 28 percent.
And Google also gave all its employees a raise last year.
This year, it says it will hire 6,000 more employees (it hired 2,000 in Q1 2011) and raise pay, on average, another 10 percent.
The company also spent a lot of money giving its various departments more funding. It also picked up its pace of acquisitions, something that’s expected to continue as the company tries to fortify its social networking, music, and mobile businesses.
Investors are also concerned about new CEO Larry Page,who assumed the post on April 4. While lauded as a visionary who likely will slash bureaucracy, some wonder if he will offer the same quality of communication that 10-year veteran Eric Schmidt — someone viewed as more of a businessman — offered.
III. Investor Reaction
The company’s investors were off put that Mr. Page only came on the earnings call for a few minutes and failed to deliver a detailed roadmap of his plans for the company. In an interviewwith Reuters, Jim Tierney, chief investment officer of asset manager WP Stewart, an investment house that holds a significant number of Google shares, states, “My sincere hope is that over time he (Page) enunciates the strategy much more clearly.”
BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis, another major investor expressed more concern about the company’s spending habits than its communication. He remarked, “You got expenses growing faster than revenue and some people were caught by surprise by the willingness of the company to spend. But Larry Page has signaled pretty clearly that he is going to be driving up expenses. If the expenses are targeted and result in future revenue streams, then good for Larry. If not, that results in an undisciplined spending approach.”
Google Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette tried to quell spending complaints assuring investors that his company was still taking a very “disciplined” approach and that every spending proposal would be “scrubbed and scrutinized.”
Investors seemed unconvinced, though and share prices dipped over 5 percent during the day’s trading.
Fisher Capital Management Scam Reviews: Online Crime’s New Frontiers
http://kxoradio.com/news/latest/985-online-crimes-new-frontiers.html
| Written by NAPSI | |
| Sunday, 17 April 2011 07:47 | |
| Las Vegas, Nevada (NAPSI) – More than ever, Americans are using new gadgets for entertainment, to communicate with friends and family and to perform their jobs. Thanks to technological advances, streaming movies, downloading music and e-mailing can be done with the tap of a finger. Two of the most popular technology trends over the last couple of years are the ever-increasing use of mobile devices, like smartphones and tablet computers, and social networks. Together, the improvements have allowed people to broadcast information and interact with their friends and family, anywhere and anytime. Unfortunately, while new devices and new ways of connecting have made getting online much easier, they’re also providing cybercriminals with new, creepy ways of targeting victims. As more people use their “smart” devices to access the Internet and stay up-to-date with their social networks, online thieves have more opportunities to steal personal information, which can then be used or traded for their financial gain. Norton by Symantec, the makers of Norton Internet Security, recently released its 16thInternet Security Threat Report. Among the top findings, the report revealed that mobile devices and social networks are among the hot new targets for crooks looking to make a quick buck. One of the latest scams involves cybercriminals taking popular smartphone applications (or “apps”) and creating “poisoned” versions. The versions may look like the originals but after unsuspecting users have downloaded them, a number of things can happen—potentially damaging or dangerous software may be installed onto your phone, unnecessary personal information may be requested or the application (and the cybercriminals controlling it) may be able to see and even control all your mobile phone activity. “Many people aren’t even aware that these kinds of mobile threats exist,” said Adam Palmer, Norton’s Lead Cybersecurity Adviser. “Taking precautions can be as simple as using a mobile security application and sticking to legitimate app marketplaces.” On social networks, once a cybercriminal has access to someone’s account, he or she can post links to other websites on the victim’s profile. These links will show up on the news feeds of the victim’s family and friends and lead them to infected sites with viruses and other nasty items. The popularity of using shortened links also works in the scammer’s favor, since people aren’t able to easily tell if the link connects to a “bad” site. According to the Symantec report, of the total number of dangerous links found on social networking sites, 66 percent of them were hiding in shortened links. Whether you are on a mobile phone, social network or just surfing the Web at home, it’s important to remember that cybercrooks are constantly stepping up both the complexity of their attacks and the ways they target victims. Here are some tips you can follow to protect yourself: • Use security software on your computer and your mobile phone. • Be cautious when clicking on links in e-mails, instant messages and social networking sites—even when coming from trusted sources, like friends and family. • Limit the amount of personal information you make publicly available on the Internet (especially via social networks), as it may be collected by cybercriminals and used to scam you. For daily updates on cybercrime and what you can do to protect yourself, visitwww.NortonCybercrimeIndex.com.
|
Abonnieren
Posts (Atom)