Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Holiday shopping is prime time for professional criminals who, as Visa’s Head of Fraud warns, “Scammers Do This for a Living,” and even seasoned consumers can be caught off guard. I am focusing on five specific fooling methods that target cautious holiday shoppers and explaining how they work in practice. Each one shows how easily…
A clerical mistake worth roughly 5 million dollars set off a chain of events that prosecutors say morphed into a sprawling COVID relief scam, complete with shell companies, forged documents, and luxury spending. What began as a government overpayment meant to help small businesses survive the pandemic instead became a case study in how quickly…
Online scammers are refining their tricks to look exactly like the services you rely on, from travel sites to government agencies and dating apps, and a single click can quietly put your savings at risk. By understanding the specific tactics behind these 14 common schemes, you can spot the red flags before money or personal…
Federal regulators are racing to understand how rapidly advancing artificial intelligence could supercharge bank fraud, after OpenAI’s own systems highlighted new ways criminals might weaponize large language models against the financial system. The emerging picture is not a single catastrophic flaw but a web of vulnerabilities, from synthetic identities to automated social engineering, that could…
A $102 million food stamp fraud case has jolted Washington into confronting how a program built as a lifeline for low-income families can be twisted into a criminal cash machine. I see the fallout already reshaping the debate over how to modernize the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program without choking off access for the people who…
Food aid that is supposed to keep low income families fed is quietly bleeding away through a wave of electronic theft that federal officials now say may be costing as much as $12 billion a year. Instead of hacking government databases, scammers are targeting the weakest point in the system, the plastic cards and payment terminals…
U.S. immigration authorities are quietly moving to outsource some of the most sensitive parts of enforcement to private bounty hunters, with plans to spend up to $180 million on contractors who will track, surveil, and report on immigrants inside the country. Instead of relying solely on federal officers, the government is preparing to pay cash…
Dollar General is facing a fresh wave of scrutiny after regulators ordered the discount chain to pay $1.8 million in penalties for systematic pricing violations that state officials describe as price gouging. The case highlights how small discrepancies at the register can quietly drain tight household budgets, especially in communities that rely on dollar stores…
Federal prosecutors say a small group of technologists and entrepreneurs turned the world’s hottest artificial intelligence hardware into contraband, routing high‑end Nvidia processors out of the United States and into China in defiance of export controls. The four defendants now face a sweeping criminal case that tests how far Washington is prepared to go to…
Federal authorities say they have dismantled one of the largest crypto fraud operations in history, seizing roughly $15 billion in bitcoin tied to a sprawling “pig butchering” scheme. The case, centered on alleged scam compounds in Cambodia and a powerful regional business empire, marks a turning point in how the United States is willing to…