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President Obama Establishes Interagency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force

November 18, 2009 By Paul (Founder, WorkAtHomeTruth) Leave a Comment

11/17/2009 Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force

WASHINGTON—Attorney General Eric Holder, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan, and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairwoman Mary Schapiro today announced that President Barack Obama has established by Executive Order an interagency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force to strengthen efforts to combat financial crime. The Department of Justice will lead the task force and the Department of Treasury, HUD, and the SEC will serve on the steering committee. The task force’s leadership, along with representatives from a broad range of federal agencies, regulatory authorities and inspectors general, will work with state and local partners to investigate and prosecute significant financial crimes, ensure just and effective punishment for those who perpetrate financial crimes, address discrimination in the lending and financial markets and recover proceeds for victims.

The task force, which replaces the Corporate Fraud Task Force established in 2002, will build upon efforts already underway to combat mortgage, securities and corporate fraud by increasing coordination and fully utilizing the resources and expertise of the government’s law enforcement and regulatory apparatus. The attorney general will convene the first meeting of the Task Force in the next 30 days.

“This task force’s mission is not just to hold accountable those who helped bring about the last financial meltdown, but to prevent another meltdown from happening,” Attorney General Eric Holder said. “We will be relentless in our investigation of corporate and financial wrongdoing, and will not hesitate to bring charges, where appropriate, for criminal misconduct on the part of businesses and business executives.”

“Through the Financial Fraud Task Force, we are making clear that the Obama Administration is going to act aggressively and proactively in a coordinated effort to combat financial fraud,” said Treasury Secretary Geithner. “It’s not enough to prosecute fraud only after it’s become widespread. We can’t wait for problems to peak before we respond. We’re seeking comprehensive financial reform to create a more stable, safer financial system and stepping up our enforcement strategy. Doing so will help to stop emerging trends in financial fraud before they’re able to cause extensive, system-wide damage to our economy.”

“To give American families the protection and peace-of-mind they need, it’s clear the federal response must be as interconnected and multi-dimensional as the challenges we face,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. “No one agency is going to be able to stop financial fraud. This Task force will build upon many of the inter-agency collaborations already underway to protect consumers and restore confidence.”

“Many financial frauds are complicated puzzles that require painstaking efforts to piece together. By formally coordinating our efforts, we will be better able to identify the pieces, assemble the puzzle and put an end to the fraud,” said SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro.

The task force is composed of senior-level officials from the following departments, agencies and offices:

  • the Department of Justice;
  • the Department of the Treasury;
  • the Department of Commerce;
  • the Department of Labor;
  • the Department of Housing and Urban Development;
  • the Department of Education;
  • the Department of Homeland Security;
  • the Securities and Exchange Commission;
  • the Commodity Futures Trading Commission;
  • the Federal Trade Commission;
  • the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation;
  • the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System;
  • the Federal Housing Finance Agency;
  • the Office of Thrift Supervision;
  • the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency;
  • the Small Business Administration;
  • the Federal Bureau of Investigation;
  • the Social Security Administration;
  • the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigations;
  • the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network;
  • the United States Postal Inspection Service;
  • the United States Secret Service;
  • the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement;
  • relevant Offices of Inspectors General and related Federal entities, including without limitation the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board and the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program; and
  • such other executive branch departments, agencies, or offices as the President may, from time to time, designate or that the Attorney General may invite.

In addition, the attorney general will invite representatives of the National Association of Attorneys General, the National District Attorneys Association and other state, local, tribal, and territorial representatives to participate in the task force through its Enforcement Committee.

Filed Under: FBI Releases Tagged With: , , , ,

Dennis Yu vs. Jeremy Shoemaker – the saga continues

November 18, 2009 By Paul (Founder, WorkAtHomeTruth) 26 Comments

Michael Webster, a commercial litigation attorney specializing in franchise and distributorship law has written a post about the recent lengthy post at ShoeMoney.com called “Dennis Yu – Rise and Fall Of a Con Man in the Affiliate Industry”.

Michael’s post, called What Is the Con Here, brings up a lot of interesting points that I missed that suggests the possibility of misdirection (my interpretation of Michael’s post) going on in order to take focus off of the message and onto the messenger.

Perhaps I’m guilty of doing the same as well, but it’s hard to not get upset when confronted with someone who has victimized the very type of people I try to help everyday – and who has profited handsomely from it.

But again – perhaps as Michael and Dennis Yu have suggested this only serves to take the focus off of the message. Yes, certainly the messenger needs to be penalized, make amends, etc., but for the sake of this post that’s not the point.

Dennis Yu’s follow up to all of this called “This is why you don’t gossip on the internet” is also interesting and worth a read and I agree that when you come across attacks on a messenger that you need to “examine their motives and then check the facts to see if things add up”.

I certainly don’t feel like I have all the facts in this situation and I don’t think it will be an easy matter to get them either.

Some might consider the rest of this post a distraction from the message and back onto the messenger. However, I think it’s important as in this case as it may help people see the message as more pertinent and NOT allow it to get shoved under the table.

However, Dennis Yu does potentially clarify a couple things that I wondered about. I say “potentially” because at this point there’s no way to check the facts.

1. Dennis Yu states, “We did some consulting for the FTC– a nice surprise, as they promised not to sue.”

I had wondered why he was so willing to basically post a “signed confession to prove the prosecutor’s case” as Lynndel Edginton observed in the original post called BlitzLocal CEO explains how to trick people.

Of course the dilemna for Dennis is if he testified or consulted for the FTC in a specific ongoing investigation then he can’t say what the case was until charges have been filed.  Once he can talk about those cases, things could get very interesting again.

2. He also states, “I’m owing up to all the spam (or call it by whatever name you want) that I’ve done in the past.  The TechCrunch article was part of that– and there are more articles coming.”

Why is this interesting? Because if it’s true that there are more articles coming and they get published in major outlets with the same sort of prominence as TechCrunch then it puts Shoemaker’s claim that “the jig is up” for Dennis Yu in serious doubt.

The bottom line is:

  1. We don’t have all the facts and there will be serious facts that we possibly can’t have for legitimate reasons for a while.
  2. We need to be on our guard for potential misdirection whether it comes from a hidden negative option offer or an attack on a messenger who is easy to hate.

Note: PLEASE keep in mind that I am only saying those two “bottom line” items are possible. I am NOT saying they are true. There simply isn’t enough evidence to know one  way or another.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , ,

Scammers using my name?

November 17, 2009 By Paul (Founder, WorkAtHomeTruth) 3 Comments

I just got a very disturbing unsubscribe message that stated:

“Please don’t send me anymore emails.  Why?  I just learned that Paul is involved in a scam  business that is cheating those of us who have trusted and believed in him. Too bad.  I’m disappointed.”

Obviously this isn’t true and obviously it’s alarming.

It appears that one of the email addresses used in the scam was Mystery.shopper@sify.com although there may be others. Emails from http://mail.sify.com/ - which is an Indian email provider seem to be commonly used in these scams as you can see here:

Scams Using Sify.com Email Addresses

Scams Using Sify.com Email Addresses

In fact one commenter in this discussion stated:

“A complaint to abuse at sifycorp.com bounced today with something “Over
quota”… After abuse at sify.com seems not to accept complaints via
Gmail since months. They did before, and ever so often I even received
feedback that they terminated accounts of Nigerian spammers.”

It appears I’m in good company though, because the SAME sort of thing happened at the great site WhyDoWork as discussed here:

Beware of Data Entry Scammers Pretending to Work Here

Matt from WhyDoWork cautioned, “As we are probably the largest legitimate work at home job search engine on the web, it can be easy to believe the posting. I’m glad five people came forward to let us know of the scam. I’m hoping no one got taken in by it.”

If you are aware of any scammers or scam that is using my name or the WorkAtHomeTruth site name please let me know about it here.

Thank you.

Filed Under: Scams
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