SnoopRite
Police arrested Juan M. Perez of Elizabeth, N.J., on charges of theft and receiving stolen property. His alleged crime remains under investigation.
Perez allegedly stole the VeriFone terminal in May and it took police six months to track him down, during which time they watched his moves online. Perez allegedly hooked up the terminal to a computer and a phone line to load the money on to cards.
VeriFone provided the police with a phone number on one occasion, but when police tracked down the address, Perez had already gone. VeriFone also provided an Internet IP address, which police tracked to a basement apartment in Elizabeth and made the arrest. VeriFone shut down the rogue terminal in October, after which Perez destroyed it.
The Star-Ledger reported that the crime may also have been an inside job because the terminal relied on a secret store code to conduct the transactions. Perez is being held in jail in lieu of bail.
Gone Phishin'
A recent Gmail break-in could provide some valuable lessons to bankers worried about the latest phishing scams.
MSNBC.com reported on Nov. 22 that a hacker recently built a blog that harvested the Gmail addresses of people who visited the site while logged into Google Inc.'s free e-mail service.
The blog automatically e-mailed visitors at their Google accounts with a header that read: "Kinda Important Message." The message said they were receiving the note because they had visited the site. The exploit sparked a lot of chatter in the blogosphere and prompted this reaction from Google, as reported by TechCrunch.com on Nov. 20:
"We quickly fixed the issue in the Google Apps Script API that could have allowed for e-mails to be sent to Gmail users without their permission if they visited a specially designed website while signed into their account. We immediately removed the site that demonstrated this issue, and disabled the functionality soon after. We encourage responsible disclosure of potential application security issues to security@google.com."
Family Jeweler
His alleged crimes touched the rich and famous, stretched across the globe and involved bankruptcy fraud and wire fraud.
Fourth-generation jeweler Ralph O. Esmerian allegedly used as collateral a portion of the $217 million in loans he had obtained from Merrill Lynch Mortgage Capital to buy and finance his business, the famed jewelry company Fred Leighton, The New York Times reported on Nov. 22.
Fred Leighton has decked out numerous red-carpet denizens, including Nicole Kidman and Sarah Jessica Parker. Esmerian is charged with hiding the sale of jewels, including a 13-carat Burma ruby, designated as collateral for part of the Merrill Lynch loans. The ruby was estimated to be worth nearly $3 million.
Prosecutors said tens of millions of dollars of collateral, including other gems, brooches and trinkets, like a gilt album commissioned by Marie Antoinette, have simply vanished. If convicted, Esmerian could face 30 years in prison. He was charged in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
