SCAMSTERS INC.

Supervisor of handloom department of Vadodara Central Jail was arrested on Saturday for conspiring to siphon off cotton produce worth
Rs 3.44 lakh.

According to police, accused Jagdish Rajpura, resident of Yoginagar Society in Chhani area, allegedly hoarded the cotton supply weighing 1,210 kg. The scam was busted after jail superintendent noticed discrepancies in the original and duplicate credit slips used for availing the cotton supply from National Handloom Development Corporation in Coimbatore.

Rajpura was arrested on the complaint of Punja Solanki, the jail factory manager. Solanki alleged that after the cotton supply arrived in the jail on Saturday, two credit slips were made for auditing. When both original and duplicate slips were sent to the superintendent for signature, 1,980 kg cotton was found missing. The further inquiry led to the expose.

"We've sought Rajpura's two-day remand to find out whether more officials are involved in this scam and the number of times they indulged in this malpractice in the past," said an official from Raopura police station.

Source: TOI/Sandesh

Padma Bhat pulled off quite a scam while pretending to run an old age home in Nagadevanahalli. She took loans from several banks by
pledging fake documents but, her luck has run out and the Chandra Layout police are now searching for her.

Since 2005, she has taken loans to the tune of Rs 20 lakh from Vijaya Bank in Chandra Layout. The crime came to light when bank officials went to seize the property, which the defaulting Padma had pledged with them. But, they realized the documents are fake.

When they filed a complaint with the Chandra Layout police, it came to light that she'd taken loans of Rs 30 lakh from HDFC Bank and Rs 25 lakh from KSFC too. The police figured out that Padma had managed to get loans from several financial institutions by pledging the same documents and the total amount could be around Rs 7 crore.

Source:TOI

Rajagopal, joint director of State Directorate of Economics and Statistics, was arrested by the Jayanagar police in the city, on the allegations of defrauding a number of NGOs to the tune of two crore rupees. The policemen made the arrest, based on a complaint received from Professional Software Consultants, which said it had been defrauded by Rajagopal.

The Jayanagar police informed that Rajagopal had, during the last couple of years, contacted about 200 NGOs. He had informed them that he was handling a project on AIDS, tuberculosis and sex workers, a centrally funded project. He reportedly collected huge sums from them, duly assuring to return the same after receiving the data sought.

He had given tasks to the NGOs and had paid to some of them as promised, after receiving their statements. However, he failed in making later payments and some of the cheques issued by him, were returned unpaid.

The compainant said that the company had been executing the projects handed over to them by Rajagopal, through 58 other NGOs. “Rajagopal had said that he was the state coordinator for the National Service Trust, New Delhi, with its office located in the health department in the city. He assigned works like collecting data about the HIV-affected people, persons suffering from tuberculosis, sex workers etc., and released money after the statements of expenditure were submitted. He later asked the NGOs to conduct a survey on rehabilitation of these patients, which was attended to in August last year. However, he failed to pay up even after statement of expenditure was submitted. When pressure was brought, he absconded,” the petitioner said.

Source: DailiWorld

Do not fall prey to emails that claim they are from the Income Tax Department and ask for your banking details.

IT officials have said that they do not send such emails. Recently, B K Goyal, director of Mieco Pumps and Generators received one such email that read: “Dear Income Tax Department of India customer, after the last annual calculation of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of Rs 820.50. Please submit the tax refund form and allow us three to five business days in order to process it.

"To access the form for your tax refund, please click here." Note, for security reasons, we will record your IP address and date. Thank you, Income Tax Department of India Online Department.” After clicking on the link, the recipient is guided to a website, which asks the user for details like credit card number, ATM number and PIN number. Goyal was smart enough to smell something fishy. Unsuspecting internet users have often fallen prey to such phishing techniques.

A senior IT official told Express that this was a scam and recipients of the e-mail should not divulge personal details on the website.

IT returns can be filed online, and the e-mails being sent by the IT department are about TDS and are routed through the National Informatics Centre.

Beware says govt

In a press release, the goverment has asked people to beware of emails been sent from the following or similar mailing addresses: ihxbkw@ accounts.net or cvhfus@ accounts.net

Source: Express Buzz

The suburban police on Friday arrested a Nigerian national on charges of cheating a resident of Mangadu of Rs 13 lakh after informing
him though an SMS that he had won a prize of five lakh pounds.

In his complaint lodged at the suburban commissionerate on Friday, Sathaiya of Kamatchi Amman Nagar said he got an SMS from World Nokia Draws on August 17 about the windfall.

He replied to the given email id and a man calling himself Dr Hari Kart of World Nokia said he would get the reward through David Wilson. Sathaiya was then asked to deposit Rs 50,000 in an account at a State Bank of India branch in New Delhi.

He was then asked to send the money for customs clearance in nine instalments. In all, he coughed up Rs 13 lakh.

On September 14, a man calling himself David Wilson came to his house, gave him a box with a large bundle of black papers and said Rs 32 lakh was required for a chemical solution from New Delhi to convert the papers into American dollars.

Realising he had been cheated, Sathaiya approached the police. After a probe, a Central Crime Branch team led by assistant commissioner S Jayakumar arrested Olabhaji (30) of Nigeria at Rajakilpakkkam. A laptop, three cell phones, several American dollars, black paper notes and a 2.5-sovereign gold ring were seized from the man who admitted to the crime.

He also had fake identity cards of the British High Commission and a letter saying he should be allowed to move around freely as he was a career diplomat.

Later, at a press conference, suburban police commissioner S R Jangid said: "Most of these scams are from abroad and it is difficult to track the accused, but I urge our people not to fall prey to such people. There are no free lunches in life.''

Source: TOI

The SC/ST Employees' Association here has demanded the suspension of two former divisional controllers of the KSRTC, Mangalore division, for the alleged Rs 54-lakh diesel scam at the Dharmasthala depot.

They have also demanded that the corporation revoke the suspension of the Dharmasthala Depot Manager K K Venugopal and Assistant Storekeeper Achyuta, saying that they were being framed in the scam.

Lolaksha, honorary president of the Association and P B D'Sa, president, People's Union Civil Liberties (PUCL), on Thursday alleged that the KSRTC administrative staff were involved in the recent fraud and they were making the employees scapegoats.

He demanded that the government attach the properties of the two divisional controllers --M N Venkatesh (now in Kolar) and A S R Nawaz (now serving in Hassan) and probe the scam.
Lolaksha noted that the diesel was being supplied to the Dharmasthala depot by tankers and the scam pertained to 24 truck loads of diesel worth Rs 54 lakh. In reality, the lone truck (KA 25-5949), which was transporting fuel to Dharmasthala depot, had not even crossed the Kannur check post, he said.

Giving the dates on which fuel had not reached to the depot, he said as per records, the Dharmasthala depot should have the invoice copies on receipt of the fuel, but the Dharmasthala depot did not have the invoices on those dates.
But at the same time, he alleged, that somebody had prepared false invoices with forged signatures of the Dharmasthala depot manager and sent it to Bangalore for payment.
Lolaksha maintained that the statistical officer S J Shanbagh and other suspended personnel like Geetanjali, assistant finance officer, Haribara, divisional assistant storekeeper, Chidambara, finance manager, Roy Rodrigues, depot inspector, were involved in this huge scam and demanded attaching of their properties also till inquiry was completed.

He said that the argument that Dharmastala depot manager had not given the invoices to the divisional office at Mangalore does not hold water as this practice was not in vogue in six depots under Mangalore KSRTC namely Madikeri, Kundapur, Dharmasthala, Puttur and two depots in Mangalore.

``In case this is taken as a mistake on the part of managers, all six depot managers have to be suspended,'' he said.

Lolaksha pointed out that since June last, there were discrepancies in the totals given by the Indian Oil Corporation and the Dharmasthala depot. Despite this, the Mangalore office was passing the bills - which is cause for suspicion.

He said that the two divisional controllers were severely punishing the bus drivers, conductors for small mistakes and to say that they have overlooked such a big fraud is ridiculous. He also alleged that this scam had taken place in connivance with the higher officials.

Lolaksha pointed out that of the eight invoices given to the depots during the time of supplying fuel by the oil company, four are retained by the depot and the other four are given to the Mangalore office.

The bills are sanctioned and sent to Bangalore for payment only after the proper tally of figures.
He said that this showed that the fraud had occurred at the Mangalore office and not at Dharmasthala depot.

He said that the association was conducting its own inquiry to find out who forged the signatures and once the identity of the accused was established, they would send the documents to the government.

Source: TOI

Blowing the lid off a job scam, UT police netted a 27-year-old management graduate of Karnal district on Thursday for duping 10
people, including MBA girls and engineers, of lakhs of rupees by posing as a senior general manager of Airtel.

SP (crime) Madhur Verma said some of the victims, from Karnal and Delhi, were cheated of Rs 15-20 lakh through a placement centre in Karnal. Accused Arvind Goyal also duped two city-based woman engineers of Rs 10,000 by promising them trainer’s posts in Airtel.

Inspector Sher Singh said Goyal approached the girls through Hero Mindmine, a Sector-34 placement agency, run by Ramanpreet Singh. The latter told police the accused had made the girls go through several interviews. He deposited a cheque and bank draft of Rs 5,000, taken from each girl in his account.

The alleged fraud only came to light when Ramanpreet ran a check on Goyal with Airtel authorities and found that no such person was on their rolls.

Source:TOI

F-Secure today released its Third Quarter 2009 Security Threat Summary. One of the notable trends during the quarter was a shift to leaner and more secure operating systems.

Broadband Internet access continues to increase, but computing resources have not kept pace with software demands. As a result, lighter software and optimized performance have become a focus for the software industry.

The August release of Mac OSX Snow Leopard was already evidence of this trend, and also included antivirus software to protect against trojans. Microsoft's soon to be released Windows operating system is also set to be leaner and more secure than its predecessor, Windows Vista, whose insistent user access control feature actually prompted many users to turn it off completely – a potentially unsafe situation. Google announced that it is developing the forthcoming Google Chrome OS using minimalist design principles since most of the applications running on the new OS will be hosted on the web.

More secure browsing

During the third quarter, Firefox introduced its new private browsing feature, and released Firefox 3.5.3, which introduced a notification feature for outdated versions of Adobe Flash Player in an effort to reduce security vulnerabilities often created when users don't keep this software up to date.

Search engine competition is good for security

On the search engine front, Microsoft and Yahoo! agreed to replace Yahoo!'s search engine with Bing. Microsoft hopes to compete with Google by offering unique features in Bing, such as adult content filtering. Safe search results are now an important feature for consumers. The deaths of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Patrick Swayze were quickly exploited by criminals through search engine optimization attacks, which often pointed people to rogue antivirus products. The H1N1 flu has also been used as an emotional "hook" to lead Internet users to scam sites.

Social media and networks under attack

As Facebook reached 300 million accounts in September, social media and social networks have continued to attract criminal and political interest. Personal networking connections offer trusted authentication, which criminals abuse by compromising user accounts and linking to malicious sites. F-Secure reminds Internet users about the importance of strong passwords, and that Facebook passwords should be different than passwords associated with the e-mails used to log into Facebook.

In August, news emerged that Twitter was used to direct botnets. Twitter accounts are also being used to push rogue AV products.

Politically motivated DDoS attacks

Also in August, a Georgian blogger's Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, Google Blogger and YouTube accounts were jammed by a politically motivated DDoS attack, as reported by Elinor Mills on CNET.

In another coordinated DDoS attack during Malaysia's National Day on August 31st, hackers targeted a Malaysian-based web host and defaced more than 100 websites, including those belonging to Malaysia's national institutes, universities, media and businesses.

Mobile threats make a comeback

In the world of mobile phone security, this quarter witnessed the re-emergence of the SMS worm, Yxe (also known as Sexy View) – this time in the form of Sexy Space, which behaves much like its predecessor. The new variant, Yxe.D, is again Symbian-Signed, but with a certificate from a different company in China than the earlier version.

The old "missed call scam" is also making a comeback. The scam involves a call from an unknown international number, which is immediately dropped when answered. When the curious person calls the number back, she hears a busy tone audio file, when in fact the call is being charged at a premium rate. F-Secure recommends a Google or WhoCallsMe search on unusual numbers before returning unknown calls to avoid nasty surprises in the phone bill.

Source: ciol.com

Want to buy land on the Moon? You think Bangalore's getting too congested? There's even an Indian who would like to sell 2,000 acres
at $4 an acre. He got it cheap, though on an average, lunar land costs $20 an acre. The discovery of water molecules on the Moon seems to have spurred a new interest in this property.

Bizarre? That's the kind of extra-terrestrial chat on the internet about buying land on the Moon, something US-headquartered Lunar Embassy claims it first initiated.

Whether that claim is true or not, the company has been selling and registering property on the Moon for the past 29 years. Its website tells you everything you need to know about the process, including why this venture is not a fraud.

It also claims it's the only company to possess a legal basis and copyright for the sale of lunar and other extra-terrestrial property in the solar system. The organisation claims it has over 3,470,072 members.

So, how did Lunar Embassy get the right to own, sell and register land on the Moon? A declaration of ownership was filed with the United Nations as well as the US and Russian governments 29 years ago by Dennis M Hope of the Lunar Embassy to ensure a legal basis for ownership of properties sold on the moon. No country has contested that claim or declaration.

Though the international Moon Treaty, finalised in 1979 and in force since 1984, forbids private ownership of extra-terrestrial real estate, as of January 1, 2008 only 13 states ratified the agreement and more importantly not a single country has legally contested Lunar Embassy's claims to ownership of Moon land. Thus, anyone who made the first claim before the UN becomes the first owner. Lunar Embassy says it made the first claim and so it is the rightful owner of lunar property.

There's another fact that Lunar Embassy is banking on. Although the Outer Space Treaty, which came into force in 1967 forbids countries from claiming celestial bodies, there apparently is no provision forbidding private individuals from doing so. In 1996, the company set up its website, the MoonShop, "the first Internet website ever to be selling properties on any extraterrestrial body".

Lunar land

Property -- Rate (in $)

Prime View Lunar Properties (1 acre), Deed with name printed -- 22.49

Prime View Lunar Properties (1 acre), Normal Deed -- 19.99

Register Your Name and Property in Lunar Embassy Registry Archive -- 15

Ethereal Net - Dial-Up Access Full Year Price -- 107

Extraterrestrial Domain Names -- 22

Lunar Explorer Virtual Moon Simulation and 1 Acre Lunar Land -- 49.95

Lunar Explorer Virtual Moon Simulation -- 29.95

Source: TOI

The University of Mysore has suspended three employees working in the computer section and unearthed a mark sheet scam of undergraduate students.

The mark sheets were tampered with in many subjects. Speaking to newspersons Vice chancellor V G Talwar said the alleged tampering of marks involved 946 answer papers of 464 students who studied between 2003 and 2009. It came to light following an inquiry and it has been decided to withdraw marks of such students immediately. The three employees involved in the scam were first division clerk Y S Harsha and second clerks N Sudhakar and Maesh, working in the computer section. They were suspended following the decision of university syndicate.

The syndicate has empowered Prof V G Talwar and Registrar (evaluation) H B Ramu to conduct a further inquiry into the scam.

Prof Talwar said the alleged tempering of mark sheets came to light after the head of the computer section, Dr M S Narasimhamurthy, was alerted by Yuvarajas Science College pertaining to marks obtained by one of the students.

Though the results of the examination, conducted in April/May 2009, were announced on July 25, some of them has been withdheld, stating that the results would be announced later, such results were announced in August and were sent to the respective colleges. He said the syndicate decided to keep the three employees under suspension and withdraw degrees of students who managed to get them through illegal means. He said criminal action would be initiated against students who failed to surrender their mark sheets. A circular had been issued informing all the principals of the colleges about the case and the authorities have managed to collect details of all the 464 students.

While some of them were still pursuing their studies in the university, others were employed, he added.

Source: mangalorean.com