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Riding the State Unemployment Fraud ‘Wave’:
When a reliable method of scamming money out of people, companies or governments becomes widely known, underground forums and chat networks tend to light up with activity as more fraudsters pile on to claim their share. And that’s exactly what appears to be going on right now as multiple U.S. states struggle to combat a tsunami of phony Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) claims. Meanwhile, a number of U.S. states are possibly making it easier for crooks by leaking their citizens’ personal data from the very websites the unemployment scammers are using to file bogus claims.
Last week, the U.S. Secret Service warned of “massive fraud” against state unemployment insurance programs, noting that false filings from a well-organized Nigerian crime ring could end up costing the states and federal government hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
Since then, various online crime forums and Telegram chat channels focused on financial fraud have been littered with posts from people selling tutorials on how to siphon unemployment insurance funds from different states.
[...] Although, at the rate people in these channels are “flexing” — bragging about their fraudulent earnings with screenshots of recent multiple unemployment insurance payment deposits being made daily — it appears some states aren’t doing a whole lot of fraud-flagging.
A federal fraud investigator who’s helping to trace the source of these crimes and who spoke with KrebsOnSecurity on condition of anonymity said many states have few controls in place to spot patterns in fraudulent filings, such as multiple payments going to the same bank accounts, or filings made for different people from the same Internet address.
In too many cases, he said, the deposits are going into accounts where the beneficiary name does not match the name on the bank account. Worse still, the source said, many states have dramatically pared back the amount of information required to successfully request an unemployment filing.
“The ones we’re seeing worst hit are the states that aren’t aren’t asking where you worked,” the investigator said. “It used to be they’d have a whole list of questions about your previous employer, and you had to show you were trying to find work. But now because of the pandemic, there’s no such requirement. They’ve eliminated any controls they had at all, and now they’re just shoveling money out the door based on Social Security number, name, and a few other details that aren’t hard to find.”
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday June 09 2020, @10:40AM (24 children)
Fantastic... you've solved human error.
And it seems you know better than TransCanada about how their own technology has improved. If only you had known... you could have helped them improve their "Pipeline Risk Assessment and Environmental Consequence Analysis" document. Doesn't do much about the roughly five-fold increase in leaks though.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 09 2020, @02:07PM (23 children)
It's been solved for a long time.
Oh really? "Five-fold increase in leaks" sounds exactly like not taking account of technology improvement.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday June 09 2020, @03:14PM (22 children)
Poooor khallow....
Keystone XL leaks half as much because of improved technology, BUT... thats when pumping more usual product for such pipelines, and dilbit causes roughly an order of magnitude more leaks over normal oil (because it requires higher pressure, is more abrasive, acidic, requires higher temperatures etc). I didn't fire up a calculator, but that sounds like "merely" a five fold increase in leaks to me.
And lets God-of-the-gaps this, and assume TransCanada forgot to take into account their wizbang new fault monitoring systems in their submission to tell the EPA how great their new pipeline would be (and that's quite wishful thinking by the way). There's just no way it would make enough of a difference to stop this pipeline from being very significantly worse than existing pipelines pumping less "exotic" product.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 09 2020, @03:44PM (21 children)
Now, if you only had evidence to back those assertions up. I find it interesting how you just accept as truth someone's ax-grinding. The EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers both had access to that information as well. And they decided differently. That's despite an administration extremely hostile to pipeline construction.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday June 10 2020, @11:31AM (20 children)
Assertions? I just looked at the references in that paper, and the paper itself.
Keystone has had TWO ~400,000 gallon leaks since 2017. OK, that's not massive... only ~35 of the largest tanker trucks all going over and leaking every drop at once, so it doesn't scratch leaks from ocean-bourne tankers, oil platforms etc... and provided it's not in YOUR catchment or aquifer who cares right? And that whistleblower talking about companies routinely ignoring slow leaks for months or years, and how they fake much of the cleanup of large leaks? He's just an attention seeker. The academic is a know-nothing activist. The imaginary khallow fluid-dynamics-mastery pipeline management system will prevent significant leaks happening in future, and the khallow manual of pipeline management will prevent pipeline-jockeys from doing anything destructively stupid ever again. These aren't the droids you're looking for... move along. Got it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 10 2020, @07:02PM (19 children)
Exactly.
Indeed.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday June 11 2020, @04:51AM (18 children)
I guess you enjoy decline... so why am I surprised you'd extend that to your environment and not just your economy and society? It seems pipeline failures per mile have at least doubled [hindawi.com] since the 90's, so that should please you.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 11 2020, @12:58PM (17 children)
To the contrary, this sort of thing is progress. Think of how much more leaks there would be shipping this by rail and road.
Sounds like reporting thresholds declined.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday June 11 2020, @10:46PM (16 children)
That would be why Canada is moving away from pipelines in favour of rail (ie. refusing pipeline approval, thereby forcing oil companies onto their rail networks) even though it's less economically efficient. They're also trialing shipping bitumen in bricks, which would make rail transport safer again.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Friday June 12 2020, @01:27PM (15 children)
And more polluting and dangerous! The obstruction of progress requires some sacrifice (here [wikipedia.org] and here [apnews.com] for examples).
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday June 12 2020, @07:52PM (14 children)
Canadas Liberals(!) had implemented US-style deregulation of their rail industry, and a disaster due to the resulting lax safetly had been predicted [ctvnews.ca]. After the inevitable accidents Canadas rail regulation regime has been reinstated and tightened. Government safety inspections are again mandated, replacement of old tank cars by safer rolling stock has been mandated (which is probably why that "bitumen puck/brick" technology is being trialed) etc... Still... oil is a problematic dirty technology, and the sooner its largely superceded for transportation power the better.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 12 2020, @10:58PM (13 children)
I have no doubt that echoes the beliefs of the people who killed dozens of people by preventing more oil pipeline infrastructure from being built out of Alberta. Rail systems have inherent disadvantages compared to pipelines that don't go away just because the regulations change slightly.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Saturday June 13 2020, @12:28PM (12 children)
If Canada can force the remaining Koch brother to fund rail infrastructure upgrades while US rail infrastructure degrades then good on them. The fact that it's less environmentally damaging is not an inconsequential consideration either I'm sure.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 13 2020, @02:50PM (11 children)
"IF".
I take it you missed the part where pipelines were less environmentally damaging? The pathology of your arguments sometimes are quite interesting.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Saturday June 13 2020, @08:05PM (10 children)
Rail has consistently spilled less oil per ton mile than pipelines [fas.org].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 13 2020, @09:25PM (9 children)
in your linked report? That comes from the section comparing rail transport of oil, the subject of the report, with pipelines.
Even with these new goalposts, you're struggling!
(Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday June 14 2020, @12:53AM (8 children)
If I'm Buba Koch it's cheaper and safer for my schedule, my wallet, my plant and my minions... It doesn't matter that its not safer for the rest of the population, their water supplies, salmon, canola, maple syrup, moose etc... Of course YOU don't care, but it's always a pleasure to drive home the fact that to others (in this case the Canadians) that seems to matter.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 14 2020, @03:18AM (7 children)
Are we to do nothing because there are Buba Kochs in the world? You need a better reason than that.
Not safer than what? We've already established with your own link that pipelines were safer than rails, for example, despite your insistence to the contrary.
And now the appeal to apathy. You must have the better argument because you decided I don't care!
I think if there's anything you, Pav should take from this thread, is that you have a lot of unexamined assumptions that shouldn't stay that way. Better luck next time.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday June 14 2020, @02:52PM (6 children)
If you measure safety by the number of incidents, sure, you can say pipelines win. If you measure it by the actual volume of oil spilled into the aquifers, river catchments etc... (ie. what most of society is actually worried about) then rail is safer. It's not hard to understand.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:54AM (5 children)
What I think is particularly dishonest about this whole thing is that both systems are pretty safe. You aren't speaking of much in the way of leakage or loss of life either way. At that point, the system with the better economics should win.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday June 18 2020, @09:41PM (4 children)
I showed you how even documents from big oil can't get past how pipelines leak a larger volume of oil (even though they spin them as "safer" because there are fewer actual incidents). Hardly anyone dies of catastrophic smoking accidents either (other than perhaps around something flammable), but plenty had their lives shortened through cancer. Some smokers think it's worth it, and obviously you think degraded water and environment is worth it. Good on you.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 19 2020, @12:35AM (3 children)
Exactly because "there are fewer actual incidents". You are only looking at part of the problem. What you're completely missing is that rate of incidents times volume of incidents is still very small. This is typical Luddite thinking where one obsesses on the worst parameter possible and then argues from that flimsy basis that the thing shouldn't be done.
I would be right too. Not using pipelines also degrades water and environment (and not just through the direct effects - introducing inefficiencies into society does that too). There is nothing we could do, even killing all humans on Earth, that wouldn't degrade water and environment somewhere to some degree at some point in time. We have to get beyond the cherry picking of harm. For example, you've already accepted, by arguing for rail over pipelines that water and environment is not infinitely important.
It's time to consider these other things that are important too.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday June 19 2020, @04:23AM (2 children)
I'm a "luddite" for wanting to move away from always-leaking and higher-volume-during-major-incidents pipelines eh? You've probably wanted to throw THAT word off yourself to someone else for a while I'm sure. ;)
As for inefficiencies, at the moment spilling less oil into the environment costs more. You'd prefer to save the money. Luddite me not so much.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 19 2020, @12:24PM (1 child)
Absolutely yes! You looked for the bare minimum to disqualify pipelines and looked no further. Standard Luddite behavior.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday June 19 2020, @11:05PM
Even with tech improvements a)pipelines get worse because of having to pump caustic abrasive diluted dilbit, and b) rail is already better, but has further room to be safer /w eg. bitumen in brick form.
I guess those that pointed out low nicotine + cigarette filters just made people inhale more deeply, and caused even more 3rd party exposure to carcinogens "luddites" too.