Cyber Crime and Online Shopping Fraud - Assignment Example

Fraud Case Studies Student’s Name Institution of Affiliation Case Study 1: Cyber Crime is a form of fraud that is perpetuated through online platforms. It involves the manipulation of technology for personal gains in unlawful manner. Cybercrime is usually committed by the use of computers through gaining information in unauthorized manner. Some examples of crime that are associated with cybercrime include; computer viruses, identity theft, network intrusion, terrorism, stalking, and even electronic bullying. The trend of cybercrime has been on its rise in the recent past. Some of the important government information is getting into public, companies are losing millions of money, and other acts of terrorism are being committed through the use of computers in the recent past (Brenner, 2010). In this case I am going to discuss of Identity Theft that involves accessing somebody’s personal information and using the same information in accessing different resources of the person without his consent. Several accounts of individuals have been defrauded due to irregular access of information and those fraudsters stealing a lot of money from the accounts without the victims knowing. The fraudsters are usually interested in getting different information that is basic and manipulate it to access other forms of data from which they are able to access the bank accounts and steal the large amount of money. The basic information that is usually used include; individual’s name, date of birth, social security number, and/or credit card numbers. Though the fraudsters can be able to access the information physically, they usually use computers to access this information through the means of hacking and applying for the credit cards that are similar to what the victim has. With the coming of online banking, the hackers even find it easy to steal a lot of money from different victims (Brenner, 2010). An example of this is Naomi who is a hacker and in the process of accessing different people’s information without their authority. She usually targets home computers from which she is able to get different information about their details. She usually uses emailed viruses in obtaining information about retail accounts. However, one day as she was doing this, she obtained information about Patty’s Amazon account. He uses this information in viewing different details about Patty including the transactions that he carries out, the account setting and as well as the credit card details that he uses. Using this information, Naomi has been able to make a new credit card using Patty’s information and her photo, from this he goes around she is able to borrow large sums of money from the bank using the online platform. It was after when Patty had raised complains to his bank that investigations about the possible fraud that was discovered. After this, they were able to trace the activities back to the home computer of Naomi. At this point she was arrested and taken to court. She was fined and jailed for 5 years for the same frauds and some others that were discovered using the information that the law enforcement agencies had got from her personal computer. Reference https://legaldictionary.net/cybercrime/ Susan W. Brenner, (2010). Cybercrime: Criminal Threats from Cyberspace. ABC-CLIO. Case Study 2. Online shopping Fraud This is a type of fraud that takes place in some of the ecommerce platforms. Fraudsters use this platforms to trick victims that they have products that they are dealing with however in the real sense they do not deal with any product. Ones the victims have paid for the said product they disappear and never to be seen. It has been a common trend in the online shopping platforms and several individuals have lost millions of money. However, with the security features that the online platforms are coming up with they have been able to control most of the frauds that being performed by this people. However it’s not only about the delivery of goods and services to the clients that has been a fraud through the online shopping. Delivery of substandard goods has been associated with online shopping. Here victims are given a different description from what is physically delivered to them. They always find that what has been delivered is of poor quality and does not match the money that they had paid back to the goods. Most of them end up becoming frustrated with what they see day in day out. An example is when Mutula a businessman trader from Kenya had ordered two vehicles from Japan. He went to an online platform to make the purchase from one of the platforms that he thought was a Japanese car dealers. So he view the samples that had been placed online and chose the one that he show that had fit him most. In so doing he contacted the web admin and discussed on how he could get the cars in Kenya from Japan. He was asked to make a down payment of $ 20000 and make the rest of the payment later after a complete delivery of the cars to Kenya. Not knowing that the website was fake he made the payment and went back to wait for the delivery of the cars. The delivery period had been estimated to within a month on which the shipping company could contact him upon the cargo arrival. One month down the line, he did not receive any message about the delivery of the cars that he had ordered. He went back to the website and contacted the admin who informed him that there were delays on the way and even gave a number of fake agent of the shipping company. The trick went on it’s upon when his calls to the agent were not being picked he realized that things were not right. The case was reported to law enforcement agencies and investigations were undertaken from which they discovered that the website had been registered in Japan but its operations were being undertaken in Kenya. The users were located and arrested. They were judged in the court of law where they were fined and repaid back all the money that they had taken from different people who they had fraud. They were also prisoned for 5 years for what they had done. References http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/fraud-az-online-shopping-fraud http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/fraud-az-online-shopping-fraud Case Study 3. Fake development projects There has been fake projects undertaken in different countries with people who have intentions of defrauding citizens. The projects are advertised in the in various media platforms and made those who have interests in investment fall into trap. Most of this projects tend to be those prestigious investments in different countries that can be able to bring most of the investors in having an interest on them. Billions of money are robbed those who investors who do not go an extra mile to determine whether a given project is varied or not. Most of those who have fallen victims are those individuals who do not have a lot of money that they can invest in variable investments that are lawful in nature. Therefore, victims are dubbed to invest their money in such projects where at the end the owners of the projects vanish and none is seen at the end making them loose a lot of money. Real estate projects are said to require a lot of capital and the middle and lower income earners cannot easily afford. So when the fraudsters come up with dummy projects, they lie to these class of people that they have a cheap way of undertaking projects in that industry which will be beneficial to them all. The victims are made to contribute a given fixed amount of money offer a given period of time from which they are told that that particular projects will start. However, as the victims are making the contributions to the projects the owners take out the money and when the time comes when the real project should start you find that the real owners are not there and the accounts of the project are empty making the victims lose a lot. An example is the multibillion dollar project that had been started by Mazen Alzoubi in the United States where he had made the middle class and low earners be attracted to investing in his projects that were fake all along. However, at the end the public was robbed and several investors lost a lot of their money due to the nature of the project. From the beginning those that were used to collect money from the public made the project look very prestigious and one that could not be missed in investing in it. At the end they realized that all that long they had been lied to and nothing was varied about the whole project. Many of them lost their money and it was not easy to access the owners. Due to the public cry, the investigating authorities started their investigations which at the end they were able to get some information that led them to arresting some suspects of those that were involved in the whole project. However they denied at the beginning but accepted there mistakes when they were judged at the court of law. They were fined and sentenced for the crime that they had committed. Reference https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/mastermind-multi-million-dollar-real-estate-fraud-pleads-guilty-0 http://www.fraud.org/ Case Study 4. Terrorism Frauds Terrorists are using different methods to achieve their mission. They commonly use those areas that have weaknesses to target the community in what they are undertaking. They have ways of lying to different communities in the world so that they make it easy for them to pursue there mission in different parts of the world. Always terrorists are in constant trial to ensure that they manipulate as many people as they can so that they can support them. They move from one country to the other where they seek to get support from those who can sympathize for them. They try to peddle lies so that they can lead towards having many moving to their side as they know what they carry out is not something that is beneficial to human beings. However, in the recent past terrorist have been using the social media in influencing young people to join their movements. They promise the young people to have a better life ones they join them something that is not true at any point. This has led to many young people being lied to and joining this movements which makes them die at the age before they are able to achieve their dreams. Several institutions have been fraud by terrorist groups. Some terrorist groups physically gain access to the institutions where they threaten to destroy the building if they are not paid some financial gains in return. Due to fear, the managers of this institutions decides to give out the money so that they cone protect the institution. Sometimes terrorists can opt to kidnap workers or people from a given country and demand money for them to free them. Also, some terrorists groups have been involved in hijacking ship transporting cargo to different destinations in the world. In return they demand money for them to release the ship. In the East Africa coastline, the Al-Shabaab group of terror has been hijacking ship that is transporting cargo to different destinations. One of the cargo ship that was hijacked was the one that originated from South Arabia heading to the UK. The terrorists had demanded a huge sum of money for them to release the goods. On top of that they had threatened to kill all those that were on board in the ship. However, in good lack there were naval soldiers that were patrolling in that route in that particular moment. They were able to arrest all the terrorist groups that were being involved in executing the act. The terrorist were arrested and taken to the Kenyan courts where they were tried and found guilty of propagating terrorism activities. However, in the course of undertaking investigations, the authorities discovered that there were individuals who were situated in different countries that were assisting the terrorists to execute their activities. Using the Interpol police, they were able to arrest different individuals in different nations. Due to the operations that were undertaken, the rate of ship hijacking in the East Africa Coast has reduced drastically and made it safe for cargo transportation. References http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/08/world/venezuela-passports-investigation/ https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/testimony/fraudulent-identification-documents-and-the-implications-for-homeland-security Read More