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World Money Laundering Report: Digest
WMLR Digest
4 September 2003
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WMLR Digest is a service of World Money Laundering Report - part of The Anti
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Below are just some of the stories from World Money Laundering Report:
Online in the past week
Visit www.wmlro.com for the full story and six weeks' free trial
*** Surprising population figures in the USA
US Census data provides indicator as to KYC problems and potential crime
trends.
*** USA: FTC report on impersonation
The Federal Trade Commission has issued a report on so-called "Identity
Theft." Aside from the fact that, in most cases, identity was not stolen but
assumed, the stats are disturbing and, guess what, it's going to lead to a
compliance headache. Do you know where your details are?
*** A new spam trick with hidden dangers
It's a new and potentially disruptive spam trick. Not quite a denial of
service attack but definitely one to watch for. It may be a test for another
virus explosion.
*** Miami's big break
Miami authorities have made one of their biggest busts for several years and
in doing so have provided justification for their "joined up" approach to
the drugs trade.
*** Terrorist Hunter Hunted
A USD 10 million reward for information leading to locating bin Laden turned
out to be a sham.
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*** Profit sharing: for regulators
Insurance Department receives $9 million dollars in asset forfeiture to pay
policyholder claims of liquidated estates of the Summit National Life
Insurance Company and EBL
*** M & S & More Money
& More is to lead Marks and Spencer from M&S Financial Services to M&S
Money. As the retailer has pulled itself out of the mire of several years of
dowdy clothing, dull shops and dire sales, it is revamping its credit card
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*** Strange find in car ads
An enthusiast's website for selling Rolls-Royce and Bentley has thrown up a
fascinating vehicle with a strange provenance.
*** US policeman charged with money laundering
A Florida policeman has been charged with money laundering.
============
Read these stories and more at
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World Money Laundering Report
Volume 5 of World Money Laundering Report will commence on 25th September
2003.
>From Volume 5, the number of issues increases from ten per volume to twelve.
The issues will be delivered monthly on the last Thursday of each month.
Even though the number of issues has increased, the price of an individual
subscription has reduced from GBP350 per annum to GBP280.
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*** World Money Laundering Report: Online has reported on the case of
internet names that have been registered to exploit misspellings in the
names of, amongst other things, banks with the result that the user is taken
to a pornography site. One case we discovered was wwwbank.com (where "bank"
is the name of the bank concerned) - so that when someone typed www.bank but
missed out the dot, the user was taken to a very explicit site. The bank
concerned is one of the world's most globally recognised bank - but
surprisingly, we could not find anywhere in its labyrinthine web presence to
report abuse and had to do so via our local compliance contacts.
This week, 53 year old John Zuccarini was arrested this week in Florida.
Amongst the names he allegedly produced were slight misspellings of Disney,
Britney and other child friendly subjects, taking innocent users to sites
where pop-up, pop-out, pop-on-exit and a host of other traps and tricks made
it next to impossible for most users to escape from the network of images
and offers. Zuccarini was apparently living in a motel for several months.
Zuccarini is no stranger to this scam: last year he was prosecuted by the
Federal Trade Commission for the same thing where the misspelled names were
for The Back Street Boys, Victoria's Secret and the Wall Street Journal. The
FTC says that he has lost 53 state and federal cases relating to the
practice and about 200 domain names have been shut down - he has been "at
it" since 1999. But this time, it's different. Under the so called "Amber
Alert" law, it is an offence to try to mislead children and to trick them
into visiting pornography sites. And that is precisely what he is alleged to
have done.
But don't think that all similar names are frauds. Try www.citybank.com.
But just for the record, the one we reported to the bank three months ago
was still working, with pornography on the front page, this morning. That
website detects the country from which the visitor arrives, which suggests
that it monitors IP addresses. Firewalls at the ready, lads.
According to PestPatrol.Com, the website is a part of NoCreditCard.Net which
installs ACXInstall, which runs premium rate diallers -and which seems to be
capable of running from any website (read the spam story in this week's
WMLR:O to find out why this is scary). NoCreditCard.Net and the porn site
concerned (the name of which we do not think we should give) are run by
Electronic Group Interactive, SL. According to Network Solutions, the domain
we are concerned with is run by Electronic Group Interactive, World Trade
Center, Moll de BARCELONA, Edificio Norte 4 Planta BARCELONA 08039, Spain.
The domain name containing the name of the bank is registered as if to an
owner in Brazil.
This is how it works: www[bankname].com is hosted as a single page on a
webserver. Visitors entering that page are automatically re-directed to the
pornography site with a "referrers' ID" so that the referrer is paid for
introductions.
But, and here is the good but - the server that hosts the re-direction page
is in the USA. And within ten minutes we had found it. Federal enforcement
agents on this list: write to the editor and we will tell you where it is.
And if the bank has woken up yet, we'll tell you, too. Let's face it,
there's a reasonable chance that at least one of the people in this tale is
a customer.
*** Heads down in New York. Again. Spitzer's got big banks in his sights for
allegedly failing to maintain proper compliance systems "`The mutual funds
are in deep trouble with respect to this,'' Spitzer said. ``Certain
companies and individuals have been given the opportunity to manipulate the
system.'' Flak jackets are on order for Bank of America, Bank One, Janus
Capital Grou and others following a decision involving Canary Capital
Partners, a New Jersey "hedge fund" - which has agreed to pay USD40 million
in fines and compensation under Spitzer's eagle gaze. But his investigation
turned up what he sees as market abuse with the facility for fund managers
to book trades after the market closed, and other problems. Spitzer has
found e-mails that say that at least one of the banks knew that compliance
breaches were taking place but that they were over-ridden as the profits
were potentially "10-20 million dollars."
Those readers at the Securities Industry AML Officers' conference in New
York last week, where WMLR's editor and AML strategist Nigel
Morris-Cotterill discussed "No One Will Ever Know might like to revisit
their notes.
**** QWEST Communications does not know what figures to put in its balance
sheet, it admitted this week. Entirely clueless might be a better
description of management and auditors performance over the company's 2002
figures. Already under the microscope of the Securities and Investment
Commission, the group - which has already "restated" some accounts, had
another go at the accounts for 2000, 2001 and 2002. And although it thinks
it is more or less right for the earlier years, the company says that it
might have to correct them further - and the 2002 figures, are not certain
either. Oren Shaffer, QWEST's CFO and vice chairman told a press conference
"our disciplined approach to the business has us on track to meet our 2003
financial objectives." However, the accounts show that revenues continue to
fall and a second quarter loss was posted.
*** What constitutes suspicion? When the EU monopoly busters visit the four
major cross-Channel ferry operators in an investigation into alleged price
fixing, should bankers react? That's one for you to ponder.
*** US Treasury seeks to dominate South East Asia Counter-Terrorism
thinking.
According to Bloomberg, US Secretary John Snow is to offer to provide
experts to help "Asian" (which in US speak means South East Asia) countries
money laundering and terrorist financing. The trouble is that the region
already has experts: it has suffered terrorism for much longer than the USA
has regarded it as an issue. What Snow means is that the US will send people
to countries with instructions to get them to pass laws according to a US
defined norm. As it has done with AML laws and countries have found
themselves between the FATF and the USA, in the case of the Philippines with
potentially disastrous consequences. Malaysia has recently created The South
East Asia Centre for Counter-Terrorism. It will examine the problems from a
regional and developing world perspective. If the USA wants to play fair, it
should provide no-strings attached funding to that organisation. But it
won't. The USA is already playing politics over that group. Snow's "Regional
Trade and Financial Security
*** Daily Times of Nigeria reports that Union Bank has been ordered to
freeze nine accounts belonging to Emmanuel Onwude Odinigwe and associates in
an alleged USD181.6million financial crime involving a Brazilian citizen,
Nelson Sakaguchi, a director of Banco Noereste of Brazil. According to the
paper, the following bank accounts are listed as to be frozen (so you might
like to check if you have had transactions with any of these accounts:
Emmanuel Nwude, No 2121059188 at Abagana branch; EM Petroleum, No
2121102520, Abagana branch, Lamour Spring Water Limited, No.212110814,
Abagana branch; Lamour Spring Water Limited (Remittance) No 1871222947 at
Ogui Road, Enugu, Enugu State.
Others include Lamour Spring Water Ltd, No 851439309 at Bright Street,
Onitsha; Emmanuel O. Nwude, No 0941010008125 at Victoria Island, Lagos;
Emmanuel O. Nwude, No 0941010008142 at Victoria Island, Lagos; and Emmanuel
O. No 0072320001 at Victoria Island, Lagos. After all, not noticing such was
basically the reason 15 London banks were named by the FSA as failing to
meet standards in relation to Abacha money. We wouldn't want that to happen
again, would we?
*** USD600 million pyramid scheme = 14 years in jail. That's roughly one
year in jail for each of the 15 years year that Reed Slatkin ran the scheme,
defrauding some 800 investors. He pleaded guilty in April 2002 to mail fraud
(five counts), wire fraud (three counts) money laundering (six counts) and
conspiracy to obstruct justice (one count). The charges, clearly
representative rather than the full number of possible charges. The scam was
simple: he produced solicited funds from well known people and they mostly
made "profits." For everyone else, he produced fictitious statements of
account showing sales and purchases of investments, demonstrating that their
accounts were making profits. But he did not purchase the investments.
Instead the money went to demonstrate the supposed profits. Until it all
folded in as these things always do.
*** Klez Returns: VIRUS WARNING
As we were putting this issue to bed, what should happen but the return of
the KLEZ Worm virus. One copy early today was dismissed as isolated but a
second one has arrived. It arrived to an address which has been harvested
from a Malaysian government website and to which spam is regularly
addressed. BE WARNED: the message is a re-write of the one that says that
there is an attachment that pretends to be the virus in order to clean the
virus. It's not true. It is the virus. The full text of the message we
received is below: there will be variations on the theme. Take care.
"Klez.E is the most common world-wide spreading worm.It's very dangerous by
corrupting your files.
Because of its very smart stealth and anti-anti-virus technic,most common AV
software can't detect or clean it.
We developed this free immunity tool to defeat the malicious virus.
You only need to run this tool once,and then Klez will never come into your
PC.
NOTE: Because this tool acts as a fake Klez to fool the real worm,some AV
monitor maybe cry when you run it.
If so,Ignore the warning,and select 'continue'."
The virus, incidentally, is a later version of Klez and is not Klez E,
showing how long this particular devious trick has been around.
------------------------------
*** Event
Anti-Money Laundering Professionals Forum
Thursday, 18 September 2003 3 p.m. - 5 P.M.
London EC2
Details: www.wmlro.com/amlpf01.htm
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Editor Nigel Morris-Cotterill
WMLR Digest ISSN1473-3390
World Money Laundering Report (electronic) ISSN 1473-3439
World Money Laundering Report (print) ISSN 1473-3455
Email - [email protected]
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