The threat of medical identity theft came to light yesterday with the FBI’s announcement it had busted an organized crime gang that stole the identities of doctors and thousands of Medicare patients in order to operate phony clinics that bilked Medicare and insurance companies of more than $165 million in fraudulent billing.

Authorities have charged 73 people, including members of an alleged Armenian-American organized crime organization, with multiple healthcare fraud crimes. The FBI has arrested 52 of these suspects for executing what it says is the largest Medicare fraud case the DOJ has prosecuted to date. The defendants operated close to 120 fake clinics in 25 states and were indicted by authorities in California, Georgia, New Mexico, New York, and Ohio…

Beyond screwed up.  Other news sources:

http://www.medicaldaily.com/news/20101019/2729/country%E2%80%99s-largest-medicare-scam-uncovered.htm

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9IRK2H00.htm

http://business.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978601381

Luis Mijangos, 31, was charged with extortion after he allegedly infected more than 100 computers with a virus disguised as a popular song download, which allowed him to take over the personal computers…look[ed] for sexually explicit photos that he then used to blackmail his victims into handing over homemade sex tapes. [news.com.au]

Idiotic.  I mean, what the pro’s provide–and essentially for free–is not enough for this guy?  I’ve seen BDSM-shoe-fetishists that are more normal than this guy.

On the data security front, there’s not much that data security products could have done for you.  Hopefully antivirus software like Symantec would have picked up on the hacker’s malware, but probably not.  Encryption software like file encryption would have perhaps helped, but the keylogger the hacker used would have easily bypassed it by collecting the password.

The only solution is to not be like Paris Hilton in the first half of the 2000′s.  Or, maybe the solution is to be like Paris Hilton and milk the exposure.

Penn State is sending out letters to about 15,800 people whose Social Security numbers may have been discovered by hackers, the university said in a statement Wednesday.

Officials found that a computer in the Outreach Market Research and Data office was communicating with a bot controller, a type of malicious software that allows someone to gain complete control of the affected computer.

At one time, the computer contained a database of Social Security numbers. In 2005, Penn State officials removed the database when they stopped using Social Security numbers. However, an archived copy remained undetected on the computer’s cache. [ my empahsis]

This is one of the reasons why when encrypting a machine, disk encryption is recommended over something like file encryption.  You just don’t know what you’re going to miss.  Of course, neither would have helped in this case, since the breach point was the installation of malware.

A Florida woman wanted bigger breasts and thinner arms so badly authorities say she was willing to break the law to get them…faces a credit card fraud charge after the U.S. Postal Service says she and an accomplice committed fraud so she could have more than $9,000 of cosmetic surgery. [azcentral.com]

The ID theft victim was a college applicant, whose application did not make it to the specified college.

In the past, incoming freshman and transfer students have received a rather typical welcome book from the College of Letters and Science’s “On the Same Page” program, but this year the students will be asked for more.

The students will be asked to voluntarily submit a DNA sample. The cotton swabs will come with two bar code labels. One label will be put on the DNA sample and the other is kept for the students own records.

Students will be able to access the information from a secure website.  Well, the actual quote is “a secure online database where students will be able to retrieve their results by using their bar code” but isn’t that the same thing?

There are legitimate reasons(?) for the DNA sample collection:

Once the DNA sample is sent in and tested, it will show the student’s ability to tolerate alcohol, absorb folic acid and metabolize lactose.

I’m sure it’s meant for good…but there are security concerns here.  I mean, a breach of the results won’t be life-altering.  What about the DNA sample?  Has it been destroyed since testing?  Is it stored somewhere, and if so, how secure is it?  What are the chances that a kid on work-study won’t steal it as part of a fraternity initiation prank?

A TSA worker in Miami was arrested for aggravated battery after police say he attacked a colleague who’d made fun of his small genitalia after he walked through one of the new high-tech security scanners during a recent training session.

Oh, noes…*sigh*  You just know that this is just the beginning.  Soon enough, a “best of” compilation is going to be made, uploaded to the internet, and some guy’s going to be made the scapegoat, and the government will continue to use the scanners.

Meanwhile, the accomplice is setting up what is probably a camera.  As you can see from the below video, it has been painted to match the grey portion of the ATM.  Ingenious!  They’re leaving nothing to chance.

But, cameras can be used for good or evil, no?  I mean, it was used to catch the guys.

“Authorities say 30-year-old Conrad Zdzierak would rob the banks in a high-quality mask, then take it off as he drove to his next robbery target…His mistake? He never disguised his car.”

Reminds me of a Mission: Impossible episode where a guy who “practically invented the mask” is able to get in and out of a prison cell to frame Jim, God rest his soul.

If you haven’t experienced the crash, chances are you’re not using Windows XP SP3 with VirusScan 8.7, the newest version.

The snafu was blamed on rapid turnover: the pressure to release virus signatures as fast as possible meant shortcuts in QA, which would have picked up on the problem.

No surprise that they found something. A lot of somethings. This time the sensitive documents were from a Tommy Bahamas chain restaurant in Scottsdale. They pulled names and Social Security numbers of all their employees and copies of payroll and traveler’s checks.

Basically, the story is going to be the same anywhere: old photocopiers don’t exist anymore, most are modern digital ones, and every single one of those have a hard drive, just like a computer.