Free Republic

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A fund-raiser for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats who was charged last month with defrauding Citigroup Inc is being sued by HSBC for deceiving it into lending him $100 million. The lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court in early September accused private equity firm head Hassan Nemazee, 59, of engaging in an elaborate scheme to make HSBC Bank USA believe that its loan was secured by collateral in the form of U.S. Treasury Notes when it was not.

Congressional candidate Chris Lee acknowledged Friday that he was fired from Ingram Micro years ago because he "made a mistake." Sources familiar with the mistake say he hacked into a company computer for personal gain. Lee was a young salesman with Ingram Micro, a computer products distributor that in 1989 was known as Ingram Micro D and operated from offices on Elmwood Avenue. Lee, according to his co-workers at the time, somehow obtained a company credit manager's password. Then, with that password, he raised the credit limits for some of his customers and the customers of other sales people, the...

(from Laptop Security blog)Even the most carefully laid plans can go awry. Federal prosecutors charged a Southern Californian woman this week with aggravated identity theft after she used a genealogy website to locate people who had recently died and to take over their credit cards. Tracy June Kirkland was using Rootsweb.com to find the names, Social Security numbers and birth dates of people who had died. She would then call credit card companies randomly to see if "she" had an account, if "she" did, she would request a mailing address change and, in some cases, would add her own name...

AKRON, Ohio _ Futurists promised us wireless telephones. Now we have them. They promised us itty-bitty boxes that store thousands of songs. We have those, too. So whatever came of the idea of going up to an automated teller machine, having it check your fingerprint and drawing out some cash? The answer is that you can, if you live in Chile or Saudi Arabia. But the folks who make ATMs, such as Green-based Diebold Inc., say the idea just isn't working out in the United States. Fingerprints, retinal scanners, iris readers and palm geometry readers all fall into the category...

Mar. 15 - Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the country and it's hard to find someone who hasn't been a victim. But some accuse a government agency of actually helping thieves gain access to personal information. Even in this age of technology, we still rely on regular mail to send and receive sensitive information. Yet some Bay Area consumers say the post office isn't providing strict enough protection for their mail. They say the current 'change of address' system itself needs changing. Kathleen Shecter, Redwood Shores: "We have really tiny mailboxes so the junk mail fills them...

ARIS, May 29 — Italian and German investigators have disclosed fresh information suggesting that hints of an attack involving aircraft and the United States were more widespread among European law enforcement agencies before Sept. 11 than previously suspected.The disclosures come after weeks in which the Bush administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which announced a shake-up today, have come under sharp criticism that they did not pay sufficient heed to signs of Al Qaeda plots in the United States that may have alerted them to the Sept. 11 attacks.A Central Intelligence Agency spokesman said today that before Sept....