They say history repeats itself… but how many times? Last year, Florida Rep. Sansom got busted for allegedly abusing his AmEx Gold Card to the tune of $170k. Then there’s former House Speaker Marco Rubio and state senator Dean Cannon who allegedly participated in similar schemes using their business credit cards. This year, similar scandals have also been exposed. There’s Florida state GOP Chairman Jim Greer, who resigned in February amid his own financial fiasco which involved alleged credit card abuse. There’s so much alleged fraud, it’s hard to keep track who’s who. However, my favorite of the bunch is Melanie Phister…

At the age of 25, Melanie Phister was just a young junior staffer for the Florida GOP when they gave her a credit card. Allegedly, there were $1.25 million in charges on this card during the two years which followed; things like high end jewelry, a $40k London hotel stay, and even charter jets. Phister’s job supposedly involved work for Rep. Sansom (who was already indicted for his alleged credit card fraud) so I guess the pieces are coming together.

In case you were wondering what cards were involved… from what I can gather it sounds like they were American Express. With that type of high roller spending, I hope AmEx at least offered them an invite for the Centurion

Alleged debit card fraudster Florin Necula was confronted with some incriminating evidence which was tough to swallow, but he found a way… by literally swallowing it!

The alleged events actually occurred back in January, but they’re just coming to light now, thanks to a recently unsealed search warrant affidavit.

New York City resident Florin Necula and his accomplices are accused of running a card skimming operation involving local ATMs. Allegedly, they rigged the ATMs with credit card readers; when a customer inserted their card, the numbers would be recorded. Necula was apprehended by Secret Service and awaiting integration at their district office. In view was evidence which Necula reportedly had on him at the time of arrest; a USB jump drive. According to court documents, he “grabbed” the jump drive and swallowed it!

After four days, the “evidence” had still not passed through his digestive tract, so doctors at a local hospital “removed the flash drive because they were concerned that Necula would be injured” if they didn’t. It’s unclear whether or not the contents of the drive are still intact since the drive was extracted from the suspect.

But I don’t know what’s dumber… the suspect swallowing the drive or that his defense attorney reportedly said “they didn’t have a right to take it from him” and might file a claim to suppress the evidence.

As some of you may have heard, earlier this year American Express filed suit against Courtney Love, alleging that she has an unpaid credit card balance of over $350,000 (with that amount I’m guessing she must have a Centurion card).

Now, Courtney has turned around and filed a counter-suit against them… she blames AmEx for the problem! Reportedly her attorney, Keith Fink, told TMZ that American Express issued her (and her business entity) a staggering 104 credit cards! They seem to imply that AmEx was negligent in issuing her so many credit cards that supposedly she didn’t ask for or want. She also claims all the charges were fraudulent and not made by her, and therefore she’s not responsible for them.

What do you think? Is Courtney Love just a victim of identity theft or is there more to it than that?

(p.s. Courtney – if you’re looking for an Amex Centurion alternative, check out the Visa Black Card!)

For the average American, it is often difficult to accumulate sizable credit card rewards in a timely manner. Spending enough to get a free airline ticket may take you a couple years. However if you’re a business and you funnel your purchases through a card, we all know how easy it is to rake up big rewards. The government is the biggest “business” out there, so who’s getting those credit card rewards? Or even if a credit card is not being used, who’s being awarded the frequent flyer miles on those purchases?

Is A Recent CNN Article Evidence of Fraud?
CNN recently ran an article titled World Is Small For Mileage Millionaires. It’s an article about – you guessed it – those whom rake up millions in frequent flyer miles and how they do so. While reading it, this is what really caught my eye…

For Charles Witt, the biggest perk of having accumulated millions of miles is being taken care of while globetrotting, he said. He also likes being able to splurge on travel for himself and his friends.

Witt, 41, who is a U.S. government employee in Washington and travels all over the world on business, gave himself a trip on the Concorde as a birthday present in 1994. He spent 240,000 miles for a special promotion that let him fly first class on a regular plane from Washington to London and return on the supersonic jet.

First of all, so I don’t get sued, I want to be very clear that the above information by itself does NOT mean there’s any fraudulent activity taking place. Obviously much more information would need to be gathered to make that determination.

Here’s My Concern
This is a government employee. The article says he “travels all over the world on business.” Reportedly, he’s accumulated millions of miles. If (and again, that’s an if) those miles are indeed earned through his work-related travel for the government, then why on earth does he “splurge on travel for himself and his friends” with the miles earned?

I mean, let’s be logical here. Whichever party is ultimately paying for the travel should also be the one reaping the rewards. If an employee travels frequently for their government job (and that’s being paid for by the government) then shouldn’t those miles go towards future work-related travel? To me, this doesn’t sound like work-related travel…

This Christmas, he’s planning a first-class trip with his girlfriend to Taipei, Taiwan, purchased with his miles. They’ll spend New Year’s in Tokyo, Japan.

If this first-class New Years extravaganza for him and his girlfriend is being purchased with miles earned through his job, then that is just plain wrong. It may not be illegal (I have no idea what the government’s official policy regarding such is) but I think most would agree it is morally wrong to say the least.

I hope you and your family had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I also hope your Black Friday wasn’t too hectic (if you participated). Compared to last year, in my opinion the deals this year really sucked, so I didn’t bother getting up before the crack of dawn to go wait in line. However I did make it out to the mall during the afternoon to take a gander and as expected, the sales were not impressive to say the least. I didn’t buy a single thing.

Black Friday: The Online Version
Meanwhile, many others were skipping the stores for another reason… they were doing black Friday online. In fact, since the beginning of the month there has reportedly been a 23% increase in online purchases (according to ReD payment processing). They also claim the increase in fraudulent online activity (or at least, attempted activity) will be 38% greater than last year. And of course virtually all of that involves debit and credit card fraud.

What To Do If You’re a Victim
Fortunately – at least in the United States – if someone uses your account to make fraudulent purchase, you probably won’t be responsible. Why do I say probably and not definitely?

For Credit Cards
Well, when it come to credit cards… you are definitely protected – under federal law, the maximum liability you have is $50. However, pretty much every bank and financial institution has chosen to make that $0 liability… so you really have nothing to worry about when it comes to your credit cards.

For Debit Cards
But debit cards are another story… you are most likely protected, but not always. Your maximum liability increases to $500 with debit cards. Usually banks will not hold you liable for any amount, but they have been known to hold customers liable for the maximum amount permitted by law… it’s extremely rare, but it does happen. PIN-based fraudulent transactions on your debit card are known to be harder to fight. However the biggest danger I feel is with the checking account your debit card is linked to. If a crook spends your money, your balance will drop (at least temporarily) until you detect the fraud. If you have outstanding checks, that may cause them to bounce.

(Credit or debit, we have a card fraud forum to help victims)

The Safest Option?
The truth is you will probably not be held liable for debit card fraud if you detect it within a reasonable amount of time, so I wouldn’t worry about that. But as mentioned, the temporary drop in your checking account balance can pose a problem, especially if you use checks to pay your rent or mortgage. For that reason, I feel it’s safest to stick with credit cards.

The restaurant chain of Dave & Busters is one of the companies which was reportedly hacked.

Right now on the US version of the CNN homepage, the main story is about a suspect who allegedly has set the all-time record for the number of credit card numbers stolen – more than 130,000,000! Furthermore, the previous record was also allegedly set by him; stealing 40,000,000 account numbers.

Who is this suspect? Well his name is Albert Gonzalez, a 28 year-old from Miami. Fortunately, he’s already in jail awaiting trial for various hacking charges. However this latest charge lays out the numbers for the estimated number of accounts that were compromised in a different series of attacks. Gonzalez, along with his Russian cohorts, reportedly hacked the computers of major corporate retailers to get this information. Officials from the Justice Department said they have no idea exactly what the losses have been from these attacks.

On Credit Card Forum there have been quite a few posts lately about employees abusing their company credit cards (including government credit card abuse). ABC News recently broke a story about a major credit card scam out of New York City for a prostitution ring that operated under the name Davis Investments. For liability reasons, we cannot list the companies and individuals mentioned in the video, but you can watch it yourself to see:

So not only do they have their outrageous perks and million dollar bonuses, but they even have corporate credit cards to pay for any indulgence… even prostitutes!

What do you think should be done about this?

Do you know who Norm Coleman is? Even if you aren’t a resident of Minnesota, you should recognize the name from heated (and on-going) recount there between him and Al Franken.  Well now Coleman has a whole new problem to deal with; he is being accused of leaking credit card information from over 50,000 of his campaign donors. Basically, the Coleman camp is being accused of storing this credit card info recklessly, in a place on its site that was not secure and easy to find.  If they were a business rather than a political campaign, it is alleged the fashion they stored this data would be illegal. However since they are a polical organization, it doesn’t appear there are any laws on the books that they can be charged with breaking. Of course we don’t know all sides of the story yet, and who (if anyone), did something wrong. But what we do know is thousands of Coleman’s donors have been told to cancel their credit cards.

A massive scam is sweeping major cities across the country, where crooks solicit credit card numbers from unsuspecting people through text messages. Here’s how to avoid this scam, but first, you need to learn how it works:

You receive a text message or phone call that claims the following: your credit card information has jeopardized and in order to re-active your card, you must enter your account number. While it sounds like common sense to not fall for this lie, the message can sound convincing when they reference your specific financial institution. Recently in Kalamazoo, Michigan these fake messages were sent out to cell phone customers in the area. The message claimed it was from Kalamazoo County State Bank – a real bank in the area. Of course not everyone that received this message randomly would be a customer of this bank, but still a small percentage would be. Many these customers figured that the message must be real, because it indeed was their bank. Kalamazoo County Sheriff reported that at least two people fell for this, and money was withdrawn out of their accounts from an ATM in Ireland this past weekend.

Here’s how to protect yourself from credit card phishing over the phone and text message:

1. Never give out ANY personal or account information out to an incoming caller. No financial institution will ever ask for account information over text message.
2. If you feel the caller/sender may be real, then hang up the call, and contact the bank on your own. Call the number on the back of your debit card or credit card and ask them if the message is real. If it is real, handle the matter on that same call that you initiated  – do NOT handle it over an incoming call – there is no way to know who is really on the other line calling you.
3. Report these credit card phishing scams immediately to your financial institution (by calling the number on the back of your card) as well as law enforcement.

Apply these simple common sense steps whenever you receive communication from your bank, it will drastically lower the odds you will ever fall victim to this scam.

In this economy, many are struggling to pay for basics like food on the table and a roof over their head, let alone elective cosmetic procedures. But the sour economy did not stop a 44 year old Florida woman, Julianne Johnson, from getting the boobs she always wanted – she allegedly turned to credit card fraud to try and solve that problem!

Authorities allege she stole a credit card to pay for a weekend makeover; spa treatments, new boobs, and a luxury hotel room to recover from surgery. Apparently, she first attempted to write bad checks to try and pay for her surgery. When that didn’t work she turned to opening new credit cards using a man’s identity.

Johnson was arrested Valentines Day (how romantic) and is currently being held on a 105k bond in a Florida County jail. Repossessing a stolen car is one thing, but how do you repossess stolen boobs?!