The television show has been in re-runs  since the final episode aired in 2007.  The actor (AKA Mr. Demi Moore)  has always claimed that he is “un-punkable”. The basic premise of Punk’d is that an unwitting celebrity is filmed during a staged prank, solely for the entertainment of viewers.

Here’s what happened. Ashton Kutcher has 6.4 million followers on Twitter. A relatively “friendly” hacker compromised the account while Kutcher was attending  a TED speakers conference in Long Beach, California.

According to the Internet Security Firm Sophos, the uninvited visitor’s hijacked message was sent out to Kutcher’s 6.4  million followers. The message stated:

"Ashton, you've been Punk'd. This account is not secure. Dude, where's my SSL?"

Security analysts like those at the security firm Sophos, believe that the hacker exploited the account’s lack of SSL encryption.

A Sophos analyst went on to say:

“The insecure Twitter and Facebook accounts of some celebrities offer a very tempting target for cybercriminals who may wish to spread their dangerous or spammy links to millions of followers. We should just be grateful that on this occasion the hack appears to have taken place to promote better awareness of the need for better security, rather than with more malicious intent.”

Relatively unsophisticated tricks like these can easily steal or “sidejack” the credentials of anyone using an unsecured WiFi network (Starbucks anyone?)

This should get Hollywood’s attention. I smell the winning recipe for a new fall TV show in the making. Surely reality television has room for another crowd pleaser.

Lets call the new hit series…… Hack’d!

In this case, a judge decided to do more than follow the letter of the law regarding sentencing guidelines. In Louisiana, the court flexed some judicial muscle and threw an entire bookshelf  at a defendant.

According to a report retrieved recently from All Headline News:

“Baton Rouge, LA,  – A man who led an identity theft and bribery scheme was sentenced to more than three centuries in prison on Wednesday.

A federal judge decided that Robert Thompson, also known as John Lawson, should serve 309 years for leading a conspiracy to use confidential financial information of over 60 individuals, businesses, churches and financial institutions to steal money and goods.

The sentence is believed to be the longest handed down to a white collar defendant in the history of the Middle District of Louisiana.

Prosecutors say the scheme began in June 2006 and included an attempt to steal $20 million from one victim. Thompson bribed a prison guard while he was an inmate at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center with $10,000 in return for cell phones he used for his crimes.

Thompson was indicted in 2008 along with 10 other people for identity theft. He pleaded guilty a year later to charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud, bank fraud, computer fraud, access device fraud, aggravated identity theft, money laundering, and obstruction of justice.

The 43-year old from Zachary, LA, reportedly collapsed during his sentencing. He recovered in time to hear the sentence from Chief U.S. District Court Judge Ralph Tyson.”

This low life’s repeated attempts to defraud a long list of victims only goes to prove the well known maxim that “crime doesn’t pay”.  In this case perhaps for only a brief moment, crime DID pay.

The problem is that eventually we have to pay it all back.

According to a report originating from Denver’s NBC-TV news affiliate KUSA, one of the most prolific financial criminals in U.S. history is about to be sentenced to a maximum of up to 36 years in prison.

The person awaiting sentencing is 38 year old Shonya Young. Ms. Young was part of an identity theft ring that was busted after stealing the purse of the wife of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

According to reports, Young is the person who actually  drained Mrs. Bernanke’s checking account after her purse was swiped from a Washington D.C. area Starbucks.

To lessen the chances that you could become the next victim, consider leaving the following items in a secure place and not in your purse, wallet or backpack:

- Checkbook
- Unused credit/debit cards
- Social Security card
- Passport

Three kinds of awareness are helpful here. The first is an awareness of your possessions including personal items like laptops, backpacks, wallets and purses.

Second, be aware of your physical surroundings involving transactional privacy while using smartphones, ATM’s  and WI-FI hotspots.

The third is financial reporting awareness, which comes from closely monitoring your credit card and banking statements to look for irregularities on at least a monthly basis.

There is no substitute for awareness coupled with action in order to detect, deflect and destroy the efforts of  identity thieves who are still out there lurking in the wings.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Sheriff Baca traveled to Washington, DC to testify before a Senate panel on the matter.  At issue is whether the Real ID act, passed in 2005 should be revised to allow individual states more flexibility in order to comply with federal deadlines.

The Times reported:

“Baca, who leads the largest sheriff’s department in the nation — with more than 18,000 officers and staff — said he hoped to express the  “critical need” for national ID standards from a local law enforcement perspective… He noted that local law enforcement personnel are typically the first to experience suspicious activities and respond to any terrorist event and that local law enforcement routinely deals with counterfeit identification, often impossible to detect.”

Sheriff Baca supports a revision of the current REAL ID Act, which essentially creates a national identification card for US citizens and puts those without one under greater scrutiny and suspicion.

One of the challenges is that the cost of implementation could run as high as $11 billion over five years according to the National Conference of State Legislators.

Both Baca and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have expressed support for a revision called PASS ID, which she claims would eliminate the need for states to spend money on untested technologies while including consumer privacy protection assurances.

Sheriff Baca testified that PASS ID is more realistic than REAL ID and he backed Napolitano’s core belief that these revisions to REAL ID are critical to improving identification security.

In a post 9/11 world, realism and improvement should be non-negotiable.

One startling fact emerged from their look into fraud, identity theft and organized crime. According to the experts, which included representatives from Mozilla, McAfee and Microsoft, 2008 saw more internet-based crime than the preceding five years combined! 

The WEF considers itself “the foremost global community of business, political, intellectual and other leaders of society who are committed to improving the state of the world.”

They go on to describe themselves as “an independent, not for profit organization that brings these leaders together to work on projects that improve people’s lives.”

The Davos attendees concluded that due to the organized criminal creation of large scale cyber-attacks, these incidents have moved beyond the mere nuisance of teenage hackers bored with nothing else to do, to a modern “organized criminality” that has grown well beyond garden variety vandalism.

The Forum estimates that internet crime alone, packs a whopping $1 trillion dollar price tag. With no clear consensus on how to attack the problem, the panel suggested solutions ranging from the creation of a nearly “totalitarian” worldwide governing body similar to the World Health Organization, to a diluted form of self-policing.

Perhaps an international outbreak of “willful blindness” has led us to this point. Hopefully the international criminal pleasure cruise that world economies are on,  is headed for some immediate course correction.

It has been too long since my last post. The past month has been a whirlwind for me as a result of my vacation to China.

As anyone who travels regularly will tell you, keeping tabs on your identity is a both a necessary evil and a blessing beyond belief when traveling abroad. Venturing off to China during the Olympics is certainly a test of all the safeguards that are supposed to be in place to make sure that you are really the real you when you travel.

Passing through customs, immigration and the tightest security I have ever witnessed gave me both a sense of awe and gratitude. Chinese security officials had their hands full and the world witnessed one of the most spectacular displays of pomp, ceremony and athletic achievement ever organized.

At the same time, security was at an all time high for good reason. The eyes of the world were fixed on Beijing and our hosts wanted the occasion to shine. I think we all agree …..it did.

The 12 hour flight from the West Coast gave me a chance to catch up on some of the latest and greatest scams we are facing here at home. One that caught my eye in particular was the number of credit card skimming cases which the Secret Service is investigating around the country.

In my seminars, I magically produce and vanish a card “reader” which could be called a “skimming device” if it fell into the wrong hands. The problem is that we are so used to seeing them, that we don’t even think about sliding our credit and debit cards into a device at an ATM, bank or retail location.

The challenge is that these high tech and deceptive skimmers don’t prevent the machine we are accessing from working and can be painted to match the color of any legitimate machine. According to USA Today, there are major investigations going on right now in California, Delaware, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Washington.

In Washington state alone, the number of recent victims could total as high as 250 people with losses totaling $500,000. The combined total of the cases totals between $1 million to $3.5 million stolen from victims.

The obvious first step for self protection is awareness and a keen eye for anything that may look suspicious. Thieves quite often place a small camera on or near the pump or ATM which records pin numbers as you key them in.

Diligent, constant awareness of irregularities and unauthorized activity on your accounts is your personal responsibility. The good news for American consumers is that reporting fraudulent or suspicious activity generally stops or reverses damage done with credit cards and most debit cards bearing the Mastercard or Visa logos. Irregularities must be reported in a “timely fashion” which generally means 60 days or less from discovery of the event.

Yes, old fashioned skimming is alive and well and being dispensed at an ATM or gas pump near you.

Here is a new one for the record books. It is potentially lethal and is commonly referred to as …”swatting”.

This week the nation mourns the tragic loss  of L.A.P.D. SWAT Officer Randal Simmons and the shooting of his partner and fellow Officer James Veenstra, who is making a gradual recovery from his gunshot wounds.

Attended by nearly 10,000 people, the funeral was the largest in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department. 

Inexplicably and in a separate incident this month, a 19 year old prankster who lives 1200 miles away from Los Angeles, reportedly managed to fool a 911 operator in L.A. into taking a false report that was labeled “an emergency”.

These “swat” calls dupe authorities into believing that an emergency situation is occurring at a specific location and police are obliged to dispatch a SWAT team to an unsuspecting home or business. Imagine the confusion, danger and foolish waste of resources this can cause.

Responders are fooled by the prankster’s ability to either tap into the local police database to  generate a call, or to hide their true identity and location with “masking” software.

These prank 911 calls are have piqued the attention of lawmakers who are busy preparing new legislation to fight the crime.

Prosecutors have charged the 19 year old Washington state resident with 5 felony counts including computer fraud.

As parents, spouses, investors and hard working contributors to our economy, we not only have the right to protect our “good names”, we have an obligation to do so. Financial self-defense has become a moral imperative in our uncertain economic times.

My own sensitivity to the subject of financial self-defense is a result of my personal identity theft ordeal a few years ago. At that point in my life I lived a relatively carefree existence with negligible awareness of the dangers that lurked on the horizon of my financial future.

Pretending to be me, an imposter abruptly ended my slumber. The dream morphed into a nightmare.

The imperative to defend myself became mandatory. It was now a matter of survival and I was determined to stay afloat financially.

Here are a few characteristics of those who are willing to take on the challenge of suiting up for the game of identity self-protection. I call these brave souls, Identity Warriors.

• They recognize their own vulnerability
• They create defensive momentum, avoiding analysis paralysis
• The seek informed sources of insight like www.ftc.gov
• They construct a personal plan to Detect Deter and Defend
• They are consistent and vigilant
• They routinely inspect what they expect on their credit reports

As Nelson Mandela reminds us: ” With freedom comes responsibility”.

On Super Tuesday while waiting to cast my ballot at the polling place, it occurred to me. We are are an easily confused people.

As my fellow voters and I stood in line to cast our vote, the buzz in the room revolved around how complicated the entire Presidential primary process seemed to be.

It seems that every time I speak to groups on the subject of protecting themselves, I get the same predictable “dog in the headlights” stare.

You know the look. It’s the look that indicates either total disbelief or utter confusion. Inevitably, someone will approach me after a seminar and tell me another tale about how confusing the entire identity fraud landscape is. Partially true.

The good news is that while not foolproof, the process is manageable and doable with a modicum of distress. There are many companies which have surfaced in this emerging market for identity protection solutions. A few are quite good, the rest just want your hard earned cash.

Don’t reach for your wallet yet. There are many smart strategies that you can easily accomplish on your own. Here are 5 quick tips you can implement today for free:

• Never,  use the red flag on your mailbox. It simply alerts thieves that your outgoing mail is unprotected and ready for pickup.
• Use a locked mailbox unless you want to  leave your personal information unprotected from thieves and vandals. This is an easy way to deter opportunists.
• Attempt to redirect your own mail to a “new” address at the post office without showing ID. You would be amazed if you knew how often fraudsters attempt this!
• Consider using initials only on your return address labels. This helps keep your gender and marital status private from prying eyes.
• Opt Out of credit card and insurance solicitations for 5 years or permanently…your choice. This is accomplished by dialing 1 888 5Opt Out or 1 888 567-8688. This is a secure and automated phone system that will ask for personal information including your Social Security number. It will virtually eliminate these unwanted offers in short order.

Stay tuned for more ways to protect your privacy and save a few trees in the process.

In the “Are you kidding me?” department…. Score a big win for alert citizens and lunching police officers.

According to a published report in World Magazine this week, check fraud and the sick- sad perpetrators who commit the crime have reached another all time low. Read on.

New York resident James O’Hare has been charged with check fraud, resulting from his attempt to cash someone else’s $355 Social Security check at a local Pay-O-Matic.

It seems that despite the fact that O’Hare’s roomate Virgilio Cintron had just died from natural causes, O’Hare is accused of dressing up the corpse and wheeling it down Ninth Avenue in an office chair. He and an accomplice were hoping to convince the unsuspecting cashier that his roommate was still alert and alive.

Understandably and fortunately, the macabre scene drew a crowd, including an on-duty police detective who just happened to be lunching next door.

Sadly, there are many bizarre tales of what Certified Crime Prevention Specialist John Williams recently referred to as “death scammers”.

Williams’ advice for the protection of your loved one’s assets is simple:

• Never publish the deceased person’s full birth-date or address in an obituary

•  Promptly notify the Social Security Administration of the death at (800) 772-1213

• Mail copies of the death certificate to all 3 credit bureaus

Modern families must be vigilant about protecting the good name of both the living and the dead.