SCAMSTERS INC.

An activist who exposed a site allotment scam in BDA has been receiving death threats, ever since the man exposed a multi-crore alternative site scam in BDA, which resulted in the shunting out of BDA chief Shankarlinge Gowda, who had been appointed to the post by the then Kumaraswamy administration, during Governor’s rule has been receiving death threats from unidentified persons.

According to sources, B M Shivkumar, president of Akhil Karnataka Kannada Yuva Vedike, is fearing for his life as some brokers have started targeting him for his role in exposing the scam, following which the allotments concerned were cancelled.

The scam arose out of allottees in lesser-known BDA layouts surrendering their sites and getting alternative sites allotted in prime areas like HSR Layout, HAL and the IT corridor. The alternative allotments were obviously done in collusion with BDA officials.

Shivkumar claims he has details of more than 800 alternative sites which were illegally allotted. As a result of the expose, BDA commissioner Shankarlinge Gowda and BDA secretary G C Rajashekar were transferred from their respective posts.
Considered close to MLC M P Nadgouda, Shivkumar has demanded a CBI inquiry in the scam. The state assembly recently passed a resolution calling for an inquiry and report by the BDA commissioner within 90 days.

On Aug 15, around 1 pm, Shivkumar received a call warning him that he would be killed if he didn’t keep quiet. He contacted MLC Nadgouda and also spoke to home minister V S Acharya. The home minister has directed police commissioner Shankar Bidari to look into the case. However, when Shivkumar went to the Kengeri police station, in whose jurisdiction he resides, the staff refused to register his complaint, saying he had already registered a complaint in January this year.
According to BDA officials, a preliminary inquiry shows that 122 alternative sites were allotted fraudulently.

Allotments cancelled

BDA has already cancelled some of the illegal allotments. Among them is site 256/A in HSR Layout, 6th Sector, measuring 50 x 80, which was alternatively allotted to H Krishnappa. He had first purchased site L 203 in the same sector, which was allotted to former minister Amaregowda Bayyapura on June 20, 2005. The site was in a low-lying area and prone to waterlogging, andBayyapura applied for an alternative site, citing this fact.

BDA officials rejected his application on the ground that an alternative site can only be given when the original site is under litigation. Bayyapura later sold his site to Krishnappa on June 7, 2007. But Krishnappa got an alternative site (256/A) just 20 days later.

Other allotments cancelled by BDA are: site 842, located at Hennur-Bellary Road, 1st stage, Vth block; a site at Hosur-Sarjapur Road, sector two, site 898/A located at Indiranagar; site 13/A located at HSR Layout, Vth sector; site 109/A located at HSR Layout, VIth sector; site 1787 located at HSR IInd sector, and site 126 located at HSR Layout, 1st sector. According to sources, the last two sites were sold by forging the relevant documents.

According to sources, some brokers who are ‘regulars’ at the BDA office, as well as those whose allotments were cancelled, are behind the threats being made to Shivkumar.

Report by:
Atul Chaturvedi

The government Tuesday said it has not charged Chinese telecom company Huawei Technologies with employing Chinese workers in India without proper work permits.”Attention of the government has been invited to a report published in a section of the press regarding a purported notice given by the Ministry of Labour and Employment to a firm namely Huawei on the alleged violations of various labour and employment regulations of the country,” a government statement said.

“In this regard it is stated that no such notice has been issued by the Ministry of Labour and Employment,” it added.

Huwaei, which manufactures telecom equipment in China and sells globally, including in India, has a reserach and development centre in Bangalore.

Reports in the media Tuesday said the ministry issued Huawei a notice Monday, accusing it of committing serious legal and financial violations, including tax frauds.

Even before the ministry issued the formal denial, a top company official told IANS his company was investigating the “authenticity” of the letter.

“We have 200 Chinese staff who have come to India on a valid business visa and who leave the country within the prescribed time limit once the discussions are over,” the official said requesting anonymity.

He termed it as “a trick” to create a “scare” in the market so that Huawei loses out on upcoming bids for telecom tenders floated by various service providers.

“We will speak to the Labour Commissioner and tell him that someone probably is misusing the letterhead of the ministry,” the official said.

After the ministry issued the statement, he said he was relieved. “We had never flouted norms and knew things will be fine.”

WHILE many Apple fans got their hands on the long-awaited iPhone yesterday, one person is left feeling the pinch.

After coughing up a hefty $1,600 for the handphone, student Muhammad Hazrul Sani found out he had fallen prey to the latest twist to the Nigerian scam.
Just as con artists ask their unsuspecting victims to transfer 'banking fees' for non-existent, million-dollar inheritances, now they are 'selling' non-existent iPhones.

Hazrul, an 18-year-old Singaporean, was so enamoured by the new iPhone that he sold his PlayStation Portable (PSP) and handphone, borrowed money from his friends, and even lied to his mother to get enough money to pay a Nigerian cheat who had promised him the phone.

The phone never came.

When he saw an advertisement for the iPhone on the online forum hardwarezone.com two months ago, the Ngee Ann Polytechnic nursing student thought he had stumbled on a good deal.
After all, the seller was offering the phone at $350, a steal compared to the $1,600 that other Singaporeans were paying to get the phone from Hong Kong.
As it turned out, the bargain was a ploy.
Once he wired over the money to Ikeya in Nigeria, the seller kept asking for more, saying more money was needed for delivery to Singapore or that the shipment was delayed because the delivery man had an accident.
Hazrul sent more than $1,600 because after each 'delay', the seller promised to give him more freebies, such as another phone and electronic gadgets.

Hazrul said: 'I was so naive. He had given me so many excuses, but the alarm bells did not go off.'
He did not think much of it as he had bought goods on the Internet before.
To get more money, Hazrul lied to his mother, saying that he needed cash for a school project. He also approached his schoolmates with the offer of the second iPhone and gadgets and asked them to chip in for the shipping costs.

It was his mother who stopped him from bleeding more money.
Madam Romnia Ali, 53, a housewife, said: 'When he came back early that day, I just felt that I needed to check his bag. When I saw all the receipts showing that he had wired money to Nigeria, I knew that somebody had cheated him.
'Luckily I found the receipts, if not, I don't know how much more he would have sent over.'
Yet, she did not scold or punish him as she felt that it was a good lesson for him.

She said: 'Next time, he will discuss things with us before doing anything. I also pitied him, because he looked so sad. He had even sold his handphone and computer games for this.'
Hazrul, who gets $6 a day for his allowance, is now left with a meagre $9.73 in his bank account.

The incident affected him so badly he could not focus on studying for his exams. His friends are also pestering him for the iPhone, but he is still waiting for the right time to tell them about the scam.
Hazrul said: 'The cheat made himself sound so pitiful, even telling me how he needed money to feed his baby. Now I will think twice before buying things on the Internet.'

The police confirmed that Hazrul has made a report over the scam.

Apple’s popular MobileMe service, which offers Mac and iPhone users webhosting, a personal email address, file sharing, and online data synchronization between their devices, has been hit with a phishing scam. Users received an email that looked like it came from Apple with the following message:

“We were unable to process your most recent payment. Did you recently change your bank, phone number or credit card?”

The email then prompts the user to click on a link to update their info. The link is actually fake, and leads to a site owned by a Gmail user in Romania. The site steals the personal information of anyone who falls for the ruse and enters it into the phony Apple page.

This is the second time this year that phishers have targeted Apple. In May a similar email was sent to users of the immensely popular iTunes service. Security experts believe that phishers are aiming these attacks at Apple services to take advantage of Apple’s reputation of being more secure than Windows. They are banking on Apple users thinking such attacks could never happen to them and as a result not being wary of such emails. It appears that Apple users are not getting a rather rude wake up call. To scammers, no OS is off limits.

In a first of its kind application of GPS in the country, the BBMP could not only change the way that property is bought and sold in the IT capital, it will also attempt to give credence to genuine properties and help buyers from falling prey to scamsters.

With the number of property disputes in Bengaluru city relatively higher than in other metro cities, the civic agency, in a few months from now, will provide all the information pertaining to the sale of any property in the Byatarayanapura zone with title insurance cover.

The authority has completed the indexing of over 10 lakh properties through satellite imagery and is currently validating the data.

A pilot project to index properties through the Global Positioning System (GPS) for property tax collection has turned into a major tool for the authority.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, BBMP commissioner S. Subramanya explained the project underway in 36 old wards of Byatarayanapura zone.

“Property buyers can now check for litigations, ownership, encumbrance, physical measurement of the building, bylaw violations among others by subscribing to this data by paying a nominal fee,” Mr Subramanya said. “If the applicant finds any fault with the information provided, he can claim title insurance against any loss as the BBMP will go in for group insurance for this scheme.” “It is an attempt to give credence to genuine properties and prevent buyers from being conned by scamsters,” he added.

The BBMP’s revenue department and engineering section is carrying out validation of these properties by measuring their longitude and latitude. Also, during the validation all relevant information and irregularities if any will assessed. Each property will be given an ID number which will locate the property in terms of latitude and longitude. The centrally managed land record will be updated every month.

The project will also give the agency “live” data of public properties and their status.

BBMP is confident of the success of the scheme and plans to apply the same technology for the rest of the city.

Source: The Deccan Chronicle

The latest phishing scam now showing in your inbox is a rather convincing and confusing email seemingly from Google Adwords. This one was telling me that my account was about to be deactivated if I didn't login and "renew" it.

Besides the fact that Google would not send an email with the greeting "Dear Advertiser" (their emails are personalized with your name & account #) they also would not be deactivating your account or require a renewal.

The easiest and quickest way to determine if an email is authentic is to mouse over the link and check the website. If the destination link is not google.com (or the url of whoever is supposed to be sending you the email) then it is fake. Another sure give away is .exe in the link, which means it is an execution file and a virus would download upon clicking. Apparently the goal of this latest email scam is to try and get you to "login" to your Google Adwords account thereby giving the scammers your user name and password.

the best way to determine the validity of any email is to call the company to verify if it was them sending it.

If you by chance fall for this scam and try to log in to your account, IMMEDIATELY log in yourself and change both your user name and password.