If you are a CIO or business owner, then you should be able to take the following tips and apply them to your company, and they will help protect you from the many different forms of cybercrime.

Communicate frequently with your bank. If the fraud you’re dealing with is wire transfers, often times talking with your bank about security measures can keep everyone informed of the risks as well as warning signs to watch for. Jorge Rey, director of the Information Security & Compliance, says “the first thing you want to do is understand what your liability is as a business owner. If something happens who is responsible for what? That way you know how to manage your liability.”

Install and maintain/update anti-virus and/or other security software on your network. As with any crime prevention, if a criminal truly wants something, they will figure out a way to take it. The main thing you want to avoid is being an easy target. Security software these days is so good that it would take an extremely talented and dedicated hacker an exhaustingly long time to penetrate the defenses of a well-deployed security solution. Obviously the needs for a small company are going to be vastly different from a large corporation, so please speak with a security expert immediately to help spell out your needs.

While many people will say “I’ve never needed security software,” it is akin to leaving your front door open at night. While many people will never notice, and wouldn’t care even if they did, if the wrong person does notice that particular security vulnerability, often times it will invite unwanted trouble.

Given how relatively inexpensive many security options are, and how easy they are to implement on top of pre-existing network infrastructure, it really makes no sense to leave any vulnerabilities at all.

The report states that 1 out of every 300 emails that circulated the web in 2011 had elements of phishing in it, and they were almost all focused on spreading financial fraud.

The report, called The Year in Phishing: January 2012, says “Compared with the total numbers of phishing attacks recorded in 2010, phishing numbers have increased considerably through the past year.  The cumulative number of phishing attacks recorded through 2011 was 279,580-a 37 percent increase from 2010.”

RSA, which is one arm of EMC, also says that they expect phishing attacks to become even more commonplace in 2012. This report agrees with FBI reports in December that state that they have seen a rise in the amount of email accounts were compromised by cybercriminals to facilitate wire transfer fraud, and that criminals are using many variations of legitimate email accounts in order to trick banks into authorizing wire transfers.

A joint effort by the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center called the Internet Crime Complaint Center, issued an alert on January 20, in which they stated “the FBI has observed a trend in which cybercriminals are compromising the email accounts of U.S. individuals and businesses and using variations of legitimate email addresses associated with the victim accounts to request and authorize overseas transactions. The wire transfers are being sent to the bank accounts of individuals typically located domestically or in Australia and the funds are being sent directly to Malaysia. Investigations indicate that some of the money mules in the U.S. and Australia are victims of a romance scam and are asked to further transfer the funds to Malaysia. As of December 2011, the attempted fraud amounts total approximately $23 million; the actual victim losses are approximately $6 million.”

The public sector, while most definitely the biggest target of their phishing attacks, is not the only victim. Small and medium enterprises are also victims, mostly because they don’t tend to have dedicated IT teams, and are therefore more vulnerable to such attacks. Jorge Rey, director of the Information Security & Compliance agrees, saying “In the past six months, I’ve had several clients call me and tell me that it occurred. We also consult with banks and hear about it. It’s not something that is happening to our clients on a daily basis, but on a larger scale I would have to believe it happens on a daily basis.”

Rey states that, in his experience, phishing activity against small businesses has cost owners as much as $400,000.

The main problem comes from stolen Social Security numbers that, after a person dies, are made public.

Rex Decker, a tax expert in Sylvania Township, says that he personally came across this problem when he tried to file his taxes last year, a year after his wife had died. He goes on to say “somebody had stolen her ID right before she died and when I tried to file a joint return, it wouldn’t let me electronically file my return. I got flagged by the system.”

According to the IRS, the arrests for identity theft are just one small part of their crackdown on compliance and fraud this season.

They’ve also placed a high emphasis on detecting fraud in the use of the Earned Income Tax Credit, and reporting of foreign financial assets, which usually means money stored in non-US banks.

With the large amount of fraud related to the Earned Income Tax Credit, tax filers must now fill out a five page document, called the form 8867, in order to receive the credit. The Earned Income Tax Credit was put in place as a credit for low-to-moderate income workers. If you do not use the form 8867, and claim the Earned Income Tax Credit anyway, you can be fined up to $500 for falsely claiming to be eligible.

Fran Gordon, a tax expert in Northwood, says “the fraud is there. I like to see people get it who deserve it, but I don’t want to see anyone take advantage of me for that.”

Mr. Decker agrees, saying “it’s probably one of the most common fraudulent areas on a tax return. Some tax preparers don’t pay much attention to it and just claim it. Some make up numbers for it and just give it to a client. But now at $500 per incident, that’s pretty steep.”

With 58 arrests already performed this tax season, it goes without saying that the IRS crackdown is successful, but it remains to be seen how many arrests will be made as tax season picks up in speed this coming month.

Most studies and reports to come out recently have painted a doom-and-gloom picture of cybercrime as an extremely serious threat to society. One new study to come out paints a different picture, in that cybercops are a lot better at discovering data breaches on their own, and then informing the companies being victimized, which usually had no idea their financial and other data were being stolen.

A report published by a Chicago-based cybersecurity company, the Trustwave 2012 Global Security Report, states “The good news for organizations is that the effectiveness of law enforcement to detect breaches increased almost five-fold in 2011.”

For the year 2010, of the 3,000 organizations that reported a breach, the percentage of cybercrime victims that were notified by law enforcement was a mere 7%. For 2011, that number had jumped to 33%.

Such a large increase is mainly due to an increased focus, with the US Secret Service, Interpol, Australian Federal Police, and the UK’s Serious Organized Crime Agency devoting far more resources to solving the problem.

The senior vice president of Trustwave Spiderlabs, Nicholas J. Percoco, states “Law enforcement groups are just a lot more focused now on cybercrime than they were before. We know that they really started stepping up their efforts in 2010, seizing more criminal systems, making more arrests, finding more victims – and doing a lot more victim notification.”

The normal procedure is an agent will invade a botnet server, or other known criminal computer networks, and discover stolen data, which gets reported back to the victim company.

In what many experts are coining a “golden age for espionage,” it makes a large difference to see that there are more experts than ever dedicated to protection against criminals. As society makes the shift into making everything digital, it is more important than ever to have valid safeguards in place.

It was brought to their attention when multiple residents contacted them about their insurance coverage switching during open enrollment last year without any consent.

One victim in particular, David White, who was diagnosed with leukemia 14 years ago, wants to do whatever necessary to get the word out to the hundreds of vulnerable people out there.

When asked about it, he said “It was switched again after the 7th of December. Now in my wife’s case she suffers from a multitude of things.” He goes on to mention that he and his wife are very pleased with the current plan they have through Health Net, but that as early as last month, they were receiving emails thanking them for changing to United Healthcare’s AARP Medicare Complete Plus plan.

That caused red flags to go up in David’s brain. He mentions “first of all something we didn’t elect and secondly it was somebody else playing games with our name.”

Since they had never signed up for a change of plans, David began calling Health Net, United Healthcare, and the fraud unit of Medicare. He says that it is now all back on track, but he worries that other people will not be so vigilant, and may get caught unawares with the switch. He mentions that unless they were watching for it, most people wouldn’t notice the change until “all of sudden they have an emergency and they go to the emergency room and they have no idea who they are insured with. When you’re talking senior citizens and people that are subject to easy prey, this is really an insult.”

Upon hearing about the fraudulent activity, Matt Burns, spokesman for United Healthcare, provided this statement:

Immediately upon being alerted to this third party agent’s conduct, we notified the appropriate authorities, investigated the matter and then terminated the agent. Such conduct is not acceptable. As importantly, all affected beneficiaries will be re-enrolled in the plan of their choice with no interruption in their medical coverage and we apologize for any inconvenience that may have occurred. Any Medicare beneficiary who suspects they may have been switched without their permission should call 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227) and report their concerns.

He says that the problem was also referred to the Fraud Unit of the Arizona Department of Insurance.

In addition to the $4.95 million, the Commission ordered Terry Samuels to pay a $90,000 administrative penalty for “fraudulently offering and selling unregistered membership interests in limited liability companies that were in the house-flipping business.” The investment money that Samuels promised was going to real-estate purchases was actually being used for other purposes.

According to the Commission’s report, Samuels and the affiliated companies, 3-CG, LLC, and Choice Property Group, LLC, were not registered to sell or offer securities in Arizona, but were selling unregistered investments to over 50 investors. In addition, they were promising an annual return rate of 15%.

Samuels reportedly had told many of the investors that they were able to roll their IRA funds over in order to purchase the unregistered LLC membership interests he was selling. The money that Samuels promised investors was going to purchase real estate was actually being used for other purposes by Samuels and his companies, while at the same time borrowing money from lenders to use in purchasing the properties.

Samuels also told the individual investors that upon purchasing securities, would own an interest in the company, with a secured interest in real property. Rather, the lenders he was borrowing funds from held the primary lien position on all of the properties. When the properties weren’t able to sell, the lenders were forced to foreclose, and the individual investors were left without any collateral.

Samuels admitted to all of the Commission’s findings.

When questions were first raised, Olympus hired a panel of lawyers to look at the role of the 2 audit firms, who had fraudulently signed off on numerous company accounts for 13 years. The panel found that internal auditors were at fault, 5 of who alone were responsible for an 8.4 billion yen loss.

The report says “The masterminds of this case were hiding the illegal acts by artfully manipulating experts’ opinions.”

The panel reported that neither Olympus’ current auditor, Ernst & Young ShinNihon, nor the auditor used until 2009, KPMG AZSA, were found to be guilty of any wrongdoing.

Nikkei business daily reports that the Olympus Corporation is expected to file a damages lawsuit against the 5 internal auditors soon.

Olympus has already filed suits against 19 executives, including its president, for over 3.5 billion yen as compensation for the accounting fraud, which has cut their stock price almost in half.

Adding more lawsuits against internal auditors could add to the already amazing Japanese corporate governance, since Olympus is being run by many of the executives and auditors it’s currently suing.

According to a recent report, all of the executives that are currently being sued will quit at an emergency shareholders meeting, pre-emptively scheduled for March or April.

Japan’s Financial Services Agency is looking into the auditors’ roles, to determine whether or not Olympus should be allowed to remain on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Olympus has admitted that, beginning in the 1990s when Japanese markets fells and the yen strengthened, they engaged in “improper accounting tricks” to minimize investment losses. The whole scandal came to light when Olympus fired its CEO Michael Woodford in October, and he put the whole situation to light.

Police had been receiving reports of copper and other metal thefts in the area when they saw Michael Patrick Pargy jumping a fence at a brand new Fulton Ranch housing development on Arizona Ave south of Ocotillo Road.

Police wanted to know what Largy was doing there at 1AM, and while talking to him, they found not only burglary tools and stolen property including copper wiring, but also drug paraphernalia. Largy’s girlfriend was parked in a car on the corner of Arizona Ave and Ocotillo Road. According to police, she also had metal fittings and drug paraphernalia.

Detectives have not been able to link the cases yet, but they strongly believe that Largy and possibly his girlfriend are responsible for at least one other burglary in that same housing development.

Investigators say that Largy and his girlfriend, Cynthia Georgia Kavuma, were most likely planning to scrap the copper fittings later that night.

Due to the recent rising cost of metals, especially copper, metal theft has been an increasingly large problem lately, costing Arizonans millions of dollars a year. It has gotten so bad as to require a special task force be created, and specific legislation pushed through.

One of the specific measures taken recently is that as of Jan. 1, all scrap metal trading businesses in Arizona are required to enter each and every transaction into the AZDPS LeadsOnline system.

Largy was booked on multiple charges, including trafficking stolen property and burglary, into Maricopa County Jail. Kavuma was released, but further investigation is pending.

In a series of events lauded as “bizarre,” this is the latest turn in a case that has been ongoing since 2006. This guilty plea was a part of a deal Purvis made with state prosecutors. At the time Purvis changed his plea, he was just about to go to trial on fraud charges.

Ponzi schemes are investment scams where in essence, new investors’ money is going directly to pay old investors. One of the larger schemes Purvis is charged with is stealing money from hundreds of victims around the country, who thought they were donating to a Christian non-profit called Nakami Chi Group Ministries International.

Purvis and his partner, Gregg Wolfe, had promised investors annual returns of 24% on their investments, and that their money would go towards supporting Christian causes worldwide. Instead, Purvis is reported to have used the money for jewelry, cars, trips to Vegas, gambling debts, personal investments, and a down payment on an $800k home.

Part of the lie Purvis and Wolfe told was that Nakami Chi was worth $170 billion due to recent gold acquisitions, and that they controlled gold mines, telecom firms, banks, Australian developments, and a Phoenix technology company.

As a result of their schemes, Purvis, Wolfe, and their wives were all ordered to pay $11 million to investors.

In response to the guilty plea, Dave Beatson, president of Murihiku River Prospecting Ltd, said “Justice and honesty always prevail. I’m sorry for all of those people who won’t get their money back, but at the end of the day, (Purvis) is sitting in an 8×10 cell, and he’ll have a lot of time to think about what he’s done.”

According to sources, Swedo filed phony claims for windsheild repairs, using over 200 policyholders real names and information. Victims are scattered throughout Pinal, Pima, Yavapai, Maricopa, and Cochise counties.

Swedo was sentenced on Wednesday by a Maricopa County Superios Court judge after he pleaded guilty to fraudulent schemes for the fake claims. He had also committed identity theft by using a fake name to set up a false business used during the scam.

In addition to the 5 years in prison, Swedo has been ordered to pay a $5,000 fine, and restitution fees totalling $83,356.

According to the Arizona Department of Insurance, between November 2010 and April 2011, Swedo submitted over 200 phony claims for windshield replacements to insurance companies using the name Duane Cipolla, working for Cipolla Auto Glass. The business used a post-office box in Mesa, and was operated out of Payson. Swedo is reported to have been working with other suspects as well, but no one else has been charged in this case.

Swedo had previously been released from prison in 2008, after serving a sentence for armed robbery and aggravated assault in Maricopa County.