December26
Number Eight: Phishing
While people fishing for private details from unsuspecting internet users goes back to bulletin boards of the late 1980’s, Phishing came into it’s own post 9/11 when users of payment system E-gold were asked to take part in a ’security check’.
This was the first recorded time a major payment system had been hit the internet and open the flood gates for other mass phishing attempts including:
Vishing: Using telephones to secure credit card details etc. from businesses and individuals.
Spear Phishing: Target a specific individual for attack.
Site Spoofing: Setting up an identical copy of a popular site hoping that users won’t be able to spot the different.
IRL Phishing: Creating fake hardware designed to look like the real deal. E.g. fake ATMs.
Every time a paticular style of attack gets too well known, the con artists create new ways of tricking people into freely giving up credit card details, passwords, personal information etc.
Tomorrow: Illegal Downloads
Posted in History, Internet, Top Ten Scams of the Decade | 1 Comment »
December3
“Andy Warhol looks a screm
Hang him on my wall
Andy Warhol, silver screen
Can’t tell them apart at all.”
- David Bowie
It takes balls to be a swindler.
But sometimes even I am impressed by the braziness of some con artists.
Victor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower. Gregor McGregor sold a country that doesn’t exist. George C Parker sold the Brooklyn Bridge twice a week for ten years.
You can add to that list a pair of Utah con artists who sold paintings by a dead man of a man who does not exist.
The couple sold six Andy Warhol paintings for $100,000 to their victim who ponied up a $25,000 deposit.
Problem is, the paintings were dated 1996 and Warhol died in 1987.
Not only that, the portraits were of Matthew Baldwin, the sixth Baldwin brother. There are only five Baldwins (thank god).
A man received a big surprise when he learned the six Andy Warhol paintings he purchased for $100,000 were fake.
They also tried to sell the man a lithograph of a pink cat that was actually a picture cut out of the newspaper!
I’m never one to blame the victim. We’ve all done stupid things in our lives. But the pay over $25,000 deposit for an artist you obviously know nothing about seems extraordinary stupid. Lindsay Lohen stupid. Sara Palin stupid.
The victim is now forced to eat only this
Posted in ABC Radio, History, News, Quotes | 2 Comments »
October7
In 1920s, the famous con man Victor Lustig built a money printing machine that could create perfect duplicates of any currency. No bank could tell them apart. The reason? The money was real, it was the box that was fake. And since Lustig sold his boxes for $10,000 each, he made a packet.
Jump to Melbourne in 2009 and the same scam has just been pulled on three businessmen.
Two men, aged 23 and 25, have been arrested for a scam in which they claimed that they had created a chemical that could duplicate cash. They sold this fake concoction to three unsuspecting Victorian businessmen.
The scammers took a single note, put it between two pieces of black paper and poured a ’special liquid’ over the top. (really a mixture of hairspray, baby powder and bleach.)
A short time later and the notes had apparently duplicated themselves.
The three victims gave a total $160,000 to the con artists to be ‘duplicated’ before the two alleged swindlers were caught.
Interestingly, police have said that, while the business men were conspiring to make fake cash, they had not broken Australian law because they did not succeed!
What do you think of the victims?
Criminals? Idiots? Victims?
Posted in History, News | 3 Comments »