The President Elect is a Victim Too!

Bank of America N.A.

The scourge of the banking and financial services industry is employees who share customer information with unauthorized third parties or worse, who operate illegal sideline businesses selling private and confidential customer data.

Recipients of this stolen data include disreputable attorneys, journalists, private investigators and of course scam artists, including identity thieves.

This is not a new problem.  In fact, over the decades, employees at some of America's biggest banks have been identified selling confidential customer information to persons who have absolutely no lawful purpose in acquiring it.

Data Breach Victim

A bank with a long history of employees abusing the privacy and personal data safety of customers is Bank of America.  Even the president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, allegedly fell victim in the early 90's to executives at Bank of America (formerly National Westminister Bank USA) sharing specific details relating to his then troubled loan accounts with unauthorized third parties.

National Westminster Bank USA

National Westminster Bank USA was acquired by Fleet Financial in 1996 and in 2004, became part of what is today Bank of America.

Fleet Branch 

Some of the most egregious examples of bad behavior by employees at Bank of America over the past two decades included senior executives supporting (or at the very least turning a blind eye to) the use of identity fraud as a business tool to expedite debt collection operations.

In fact, loan officers and attorneys employed at the banks Managed Asset Divisions (also known as Corporate Services) located in Hartford, Connecticut, and Providence, Rhode Island, were allegedly  observed using the services of identity fraudsters to speed-up debt collection operations using a social engineering technique known as "pretexting."

Specific information sought often included customer data from competitor banks,  payroll records from employers and even on occasion taxpayer data from government agencies.

To be fair, the identity fraudsters did purport to be licensed investigators and debt collectors.  But surprisingly, no one at Bank of America ever bothered to check the validity of their credentials.

Meanwhile,  the same fraudsters were also stealing Bank of America customer data and selling it on to practically anyone willing to pay for it.

Norwalk Savings Society

They even managed to infiltrate a branch of the Norwalk Savings Society (acquired by Summit Bancorp in 1999 and later incorporated into Bank of America in 2004) located in Norwalk, Connecticut to facilitate a sophisticated checking account scam targeting both consumers and small businesses located in the Northeast.

This necessitated bank employees retrieving and covertly forwarding on to the identity fraudsters sensitive overnight data received from the Federal Reserve every morning.

In return, the bank's employees allegedly received various forms of compensation which included candy and flowers when a 'scammed victim' showed up at the branch asking some awkward questions or worse causing a scene.

For those victims (which included Bank of America customers)  who did manage to identify and report this widespread unlawful conduct to the authorities, the retribution was often swift at the hands of both the corrupt bank employees and contractors.

The punishment meted out often included harassing phone calls day and night, repeated threats of physical violence, blackmail and intimidation along with the victim's personal credit being hijacked and systematically trashed over an extended period.

Bank of America Regulator

But perhaps most surprising of all, was the fact that local and state law enforcement authorities were allegedly kept off the case by highly protective bank regulators.

Allegedly this included the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) who reportedly cited 'federal preemption' laws when intentionally shielding corrupt Bank of America's employees and contractors from possible prosecution by local jurisdictions.

To paraphrase two OCC officials who spoke 'on the record' in 1998 and 2010, "the function of the Comptroller's Office is to ensure the safety and security of the banks it supervises and not necessarily the interests of the American public."

How deeply troubling is that?

Cybercrime Is A Plague That Is Not Likely To Be Eradicated Anytime Soon

The head of the National Security Administration (NSA) and U.S. Cyber Command Admiral Michael Rogers spoke at a conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal this week were he urged business leaders to work with the government in fighting the “scourge of cybercrime.”

He further went on to say that the number of hackers out there is “so large and diverse” that it is difficult for the government to identify the perpetrators.

Adm. Rogers also said that roughly two-thirds of hackers are criminals looking to make money by stealing (consumer) information from private databases, and the remaining third are state-sponsored hackers seeking to steal business and government secrets for a variety of illicit purposes.

Clearly, the NSA  now believe that open cooperation between the business community and the government is essential in order to combat cybercrime.

But while reaching out to the business community in the spirit of cooperation makes sense,  the reality is, that very few companies (and especially those in the consumer data and tech industry) are likely to openly partner with the NSA for fear of raising concerns over the safety and integrity of their products and services in the minds of the general public, both at home and abroad.

In fact, based on our research both large and small businesses that have been the subject of cyber attacks in the past are more reluctant to report identified hacks and data breaches to the government in the future, let alone work with them on countermeasures.

Clearly, cybercrime is a plague that is not likely to be eradicated anytime soon.

Stay safe!



 

Using Big Data to Find Undocumented Immigrants

President-elect Trump

The deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants here in the United States appears to be a priority for President-elect Trump.

Critics, however, point out that the cost alone will be a prohibitive factor in tracking down millions of immigrants, many of whom have continued to remain in the United States after their Visa's expired or who managed to cross the border undetected.

While it is true that the government will have to hire thousands of new federal immigration agents to carry out the deportations, identifying and locating undocumented persons may not be as difficult or costly as one might think.

In fact "big data" could play a key role in both identifying and locating undocumented immigrants through the use of highly sophisticated computer programs capable of performing multiple in-depth background checks on every man, woman, and child living in America today, with the sole purpose of determining who should, and who should not be here.

Using a process of elimination, supercomputers would be capable of identifying and determining the status of all US  residents by accessing both public record and non-public record data held on them. This includes birth and naturalization certificates, drivers license records, education, employment, credit history, property ownership along with many other data points.

Consequently, if someone is unlawfully working in America today (even paying taxes) using a fake or stolen Social Security number, they would almost certainly be identified. Further, if someone rents a home and has opened up accounts with local utility companies under a false name or stolen identity, they too would be identified.

In fact, anyone whose data (or lack of data) falls into the category of suspicious is likely to find themselves the subject of scrutiny or even possibly a criminal investigation.

Of course, while supercomputers can search and locate information on people, it still requires a living person to analyze the data and physically locate them.  That can be expensive!