The investigation started out as investigating loan sharking by the mafia and then it began to expand as the prosecutors used computer and telephone intercepts to uncover the illegal activity evidence around the Treasury bonds.  These fake securities were worth approximately a third more of the national debt in the United States.  In January they were taken were from a trust company in Switzerland.  All six trillion dollars work of fake Treasury bonds were in three big trunks.

The fake Treasury bonds were going to be used to attempt to defraud many banks in Switzerland.  Experts from the United States lent their expertise to identify them as fake Treasury bonds.  The prosecutor from Potenza stated that an international operating network in several countries was behind the fake Treasury bonds.  On a website from the Italian daily Corriere della Sera they cited sources from the prosecutor’s office that the network was thought to be interested in getting plutonium.

Using videos from the police, they showed pictures of the trunks with Federal Reserve System, Treaty of Versailles stamped in big letters that were gold on the sides of the trunks.  The video also showed bond certificates that were marked Chicago, Illinois, Federal Reserve Bank plus.

The men who were arrested are being accused of credit card forgery, loan sharking, and counterfeiting bonds.  They were operating in the regions of Italy of Piedmont, Basilicata, Lombardy, and Lazio.

Microsoft replied with a message of their own on Monday saying that the “Microsoft Store India is currently unavailable.”  Microsoft is working to get the site back up as fast as they can. The customers who have used the store recently have been sent guidance on the issues along with suggestions for immediate actions according to a spokesperson for Microsoft.

This same group also said they were responsible for a hacking attack on a law firm’s website in Virginia for a United States Marine who was convicted in an attack in Haditha, Iraq in 2005 of twenty-four unarmed civilians.  These attacks happened after the group Anonymous published a recording of a phone call between Scotland Yard and the FBI early on Wednesday morning.

On Friday, the Justice Ministry in Greece took down their site after a video posted by activists who claimed to be Cypriot and Greek members of the group Anonymous was display for a couple of hours. In a message on the website of the police department of Boston the group Anonymous stated that the site had been attacked hacked many months ago.  During this attack hundreds of password was made public to retaliate because of what they considered brutality police used against the demonstrators of Occupy Boston.

Occupy Boston had made camp for a couple of months this past fall in the financial district and after the police had one hundred forty-one demonstrators on October 11th, ten days later the first hacker attack happened.  On December 10th, because of safety and public health concerns the camp was dismantled.

In Salt Lake City, their website was still down on Friday and there are possible criminal charges being considered.  This attack is being blamed on Anonymous being opposed to a bill regarding anti-graffiti paraphernalia that failed in the Senate. If this bill had passed, it would have been illegal to have in your possession any type of instrument, device, or tool that would have been used to use graffiti to vandalize an area.

These types of social network sites are used as a popular portal for identity thieves for befriending un-suspecting members. After befriending them they began to monitor their information to see what personal information they can use to steal your identity.  You need to make sure that your teenager knows to limit the amount of personal information that they list on their profile pages.  They should not put their birth date, where they work if they are working, or their address.  By not putting this information on their profiles will make it hard for identity thieves to get enough information to steal your identity.

Sooner or later your teenager will be heading off to college so you need to make sure that they know how to protect their identity when they are living in the dorm.  They should be aware of the people around them and be careful of what personal information they share with them.  Make sure that there is a bank near the school where they can get a safe deposit box in which to store their birth certificate and social security card plus their immunization records and anything else they do need all the time that has their personal information on it.  You should also remind them to keep their dorm door locked and to keep their computer safe by password protecting it.

Most parents will either give their teenager a credit card to use in case of an emergency or let them get one in their name.  Show them how to review their credit card statement each month and tell them to make sure that they safe card the credit card.  You should also tell them how much damage an identity thief can do if they get hold of their credit card and you should also make sure that you advise them not to lend the card to anyone.

Talk to your teenager about identity theft and the consequences of it so they will know how to protect themselves from becoming a victim.

While we might think of it as identity theft the bank may call it unauthorized withdrawal, account fraud, or true-name fraud.  Whatever you want to call it, your money is still gone. Once you realize that your identity has been stolen you need to report it to your back immediately because if you wait you may find yourself out of luck getting the money back.  Here are the Electronic Funds Transfer Act guidelines as to how banks are resolve any disputes with your debit/ATM cards.

• Your loss will be limited to fifty dollars if you report it within 2 business days.
• Your loss will be limited to five hundred dollars if you report it within sixty days.
• You will probably be out the money and any overdraft fees that have occurred if you report it past sixty days.

When you call your bank about the identity theft they will want to know your name and account number, how much the error is, why you think there is an error, and the date of the error and they will need this information with in ten days in writing.

If your checking account has been active for more than thirty days your bank will do an investigation and get back in touch within ten days.  The bank can take up to forty-five days if they do need more time.  In the meantime the bank will credit the funds back into your checking account while they are doing their investigation.

If your account is less than thirty days old, point-of-sale disputes, or about foreign transactions they can take up to twenty days to apply the temporary credit to your account and up to ninety days to finish the investigation.

After the investigation is finished and the bank does not support your claim they will let you know in writing and take the credits back from your account.

One thing that you should do is make a note of where you found the website.  Many of these fraudulent spam websites are made public through spam emails.  The unsolicited emails will usually contain offers that seem too good to be true but some people cannot help themselves and will click on the link in the email to be taken to the spam website.  To avoid these fraudulent websites be suspicious of the websites that are linked in the email and do not click on the link,

You should make sure that you read the website address carefully to see if it is even close to a legitimate website.  The URL should read https:// and not http:// because the first one is telling you that the website is secure.  You should also check the domain registration of the website that you find suspicious.  Another sign of a possible fraudulent website is one that has a recent domain registration date.

Make sure that you read the website and see if there is a lot of errors or poor grammar because many of the scammers live in other countries and are not fluent in English.  Another thing to look out for is typos on the website because this is a sign that the website was not done professionally.

Take the time to look the website up through Goggle and another major search engine. There is a good possibility that these scam websites will be reported on watchdog websites.  Make sure that before you place any order check to see if there are any other websites offering the same products or services because if they are the only one offering a particular product or service, either it is a scam or it is so new that no one else has had a chance to sell it.

In addition, make sure that in addition to the URL being correct and indicating that the site is secure, look for the little lock icon on the bottom of the webpage.  Taking these precautions will help to prevent you from becoming a victim of a scam website.

If a hacker used software to try to figure out the four number combination most people use, it would take quite a while because there are over ten thousand combinations but by using the fingerprint smudges the hacker can narrow down the combinations to just twenty-five combinations.  The reason is that the smudges narrow down what four numbers were used.

One security expert has come up with a way to make it harder for hackers to get into your smartphone and still your personal information.  Instead of using four numbers for your PIN, use only three unique numbers but use one of them twice.  Although the three smudges are there for the hacker to see, using only three numbers and doubling up on one makes the PIN number fifty percent more secure.  With only three smudges the user has taken away a vital piece of information from the hacker.

Now if the hacker wants to hack into your smartphone, they are going to have thirty-six combinations instead of twenty-five combinations.  The reason that this makes your PIN number more secure is that the time it takes for a hacker to go through twelve more combinations, it should give the person enough time to realize their smartphone is gone.  It will give them time to initiate a remote wipe and not give the hacker any personal information to steal.

If the person has put in place an attempt limit, it is very likely that the hacker will reach that limit before he figures out the combination with three unique numbers and the smartphone will be automatically wiped out before the hacker can unlock it.

But the really easy way to keep a hacker from hacking into your smartphone and stealing your personal information is to clean the screen of your smartphone on a regular basis to take away all your fingerprint smudges leaving the hacker with no smudges to work with.

The Bait and Switch

This is an old scam that is used in different ways but is the most devastating when used as a mortgage scam.  What happens is that a scammer will approach you and offer to help you out of a tight spot which usually means that they will off to buy your home at a reduced price but will leave the house in your name.  They may just offer you a loan with a ridiculously low interest rate.

They will have you sign a set of documents that are very complicated and often are forged bank documents.  It just looks official but is not but when it is all over what you have signed is a “quit claim deed” to your house putting the house in their name but leaving you being responsible for paying the mortgage.  They can sell the house even if you are living there and all you will have left is a payment on a house that you no longer technically own.

The Bailout

This mortgage scam is the most attractive and in this scam the scammers will help you save your home for being foreclosed by buying the house from you for just a little over what the remaining balance of the mortgage is.  You get to stay in the house as a renter and then you will be able to purchase the home for the same low price they paid.  When you fall for this mortgage scam you will usually pay higher rent payments that what the mortgage payment was.  When you cannot afford to make those higher payments, you get evicted, and they will sell the house at market value.  The scammers then will make a very nice profit.

The unemployed that are hunting for a job should be aware of any perspective employer that wants to charge them for specialized training or for a background check because this is just a way to get their hard earned money.  These people that are unemployed may have been out of work for quite a while and really want to find a job.  If they are offered a job, even if it seems too good to be true, they may throw caution to the wind and send the company money in return for a job that promises “a large sum of money” for little work.

These are just pyramid schemes that will not work out as promised and now the scammer/identity thief not only has your money but quite possibly your credit card information along with your name and address.  These three things are just what an identity thief needs to steal your identity.

There have even been scammers that have sent an email to people that have their resumes on various career and job sites telling them they have a job without one interview.  Many times along with this “job offer” comes a request for personal information like your Social Security number so they can complete your paper work before you start to work.  Some times these perspective employers will tell you that they need this information so they can look up your credit report.

The best thing that you should do is if you receive a job offer or request for more personal information is to go online and do some research on the prospective employer to make sure that the job offer or request is legitimate.  Even if the company is legitimate you should be careful about giving out any personal information like your Social Security number or any type of financial information until you have an actual interview and can ask why they need this particular information.  If you are unemployed do not throw caution to the wind and become careless just because you need a job because you could have your identity stolen.

One way to do this is to make sure that you do not carry any more credit cards than is necessary to help reduce the chance of you becoming a victim of identity theft.  You should not carry more than one or two credit cards for emergencies and any extra money that you might need.  This is especially true if you are going to be traveling to a foreign country.  In addition to your credit cards, an identity thief can also get your personal information from your driver’s license.  You should always make sure that it is on your or store it in your hotel safe or room safe.  You should leave your Social Security card locked up at home.

When you are traveling abroad make sure that you always have your passport with you or locked up in the hotel or room safe.  Once an identity thief gets hold of your personal information they can steal your identity and ruin your credit and drain your finances.  Try to use cash or traveler’s checks whenever possible.  This will cut down on the chance of your credit card being illegally scanned.

If you have to use an ATM to withdraw money while on vacation make sure that you inspect the machine for any skimming devices and to see if he has been tampered with.  If you feel that the ATM has been tampered with, report it to the bank and use another machine.

It is also advisable to let your credit card company of the card or cards that you are planning to take with you that you are leaving on vacation because some credit card companies may see your credit card being used in a location far away from where you live and they may just assume that a identity theft has your card and they may just freeze your account making the card invalid and useless.  It will also make it easier to report your cards if they are stolen if they know you are on vacation.