Thursday, July 24, 2008

Scammers Not Welcome

I just wanted to make sure everyone understood the purpose of this blog. The purpose is to learn how to detect scams and prevent them. The information provided is not to be used in any way/shape/form that may get you in trouble.

Coinstar Scam



Ok so the idea basically hit me a while back. I went to the Coinstar at CVS to cash in some change. The machine gave me a receipt to take to the cashier and I got my money.

I was thinking...since the coinstar machines don't directly communicate with the cashiers registers, it would be easy to falsify an coinstar receipt for however much money you want.

There's really only a couple real obstacles:

1. The paper has to be similar to the coinstar receipt

2. The date and time printed on the fraudulent receipt must be the same day your cashing it in, and just a couple minutes after using the machine

3. The bar code used for the coinstar machines must be decoded then re coded for X amount.

Of course you can only go to each store once in order to not get caught, and keep the withdrawals withing reasonable range $50 - $200.

I do not condone ANYONE doing what I just mentioned as it is ILLEGAL and you will most definitely go to jail. I am just putting my ideas out here so someone can better secure the system.


Please discuss ...

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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

New Stuff

I just picked up a blackberry so I will be able to respond to any questions/comments everyone has in a timely manner. Feel free to leave some feedback as to what kind of stuff you'd like to see!
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The Beginning

Welcome to my blog. A little background about myself first. I am a retired private investigator and have worked for many companies in identifying and preventing fraud. My experience has led me to basically become addicted to finding flaws and exploits in the system that we live in.

Basically what this blog is going to be about is all the scams in the USA. There's so many scams out there that people aren't aware of and need to protect themselves from. I'm not talking about stupid Craiglist scams, or work from home scams. I'm talking about scams that could generate HUGE income if the knowledge is in the wrong hands. I am going to daily update every exploit that certain companies and corporations have so that they can better protect themselves. A lot of the information I'm going to post COULD be used for illegal purposes but it's intended rather as a way to learn to prevent it from happening.

Examples that I will be discussing over the lifetime of this blog.

-Check Kiting
-Fraud Currency
-ATM Hacks
-Etc...

I don't want to spoil all the fun so your going to have to check back for updates. If you have any questions on how to scam someone or someplace let me know and I will post the information with my best research and knowledge.