Standard Oil committed many sins on the way to infamy, and Teddy Roosevelt’s s&*t list, but a big one was “vertical integration.” Rockefeller’s people owned oil refineries, and trucks that delivered gasoline, and the gas stations that sold it, and so on. It owned businesses up and down the supply [Keep reading]
For many years, the end of every scammer’s story — the sweatheart scam, the fake eBay product, the lottery “winnings” — went something like this: “Just wire me the money through Western Union.” Western Union is now paying a price for being so popular with criminals — $586 million. And [Keep reading]
Wait, someone has my salary information? Essentually, my actual pay stubs? What I earn, what I pay for health care,what my taxes are? And they sell that data? To debt collectors? And…it’s Equifax? You mean, THAT Equifax? That was the collective voice of the Internet this weekend when Redditors discovered [Keep reading]
Garbage in, garbage out. America’s only real tool for keeping guns out of the hands of convicted felons and domestic abusers is hopelessly flawed, as I’ve written before. It’s time we woke up to this. It’s easier — much easier — to lie and get a gun in America than [Keep reading]
NOTE: I’m doing an ongoing series of stories on elder scams, a “tsunami” of crimes hitting the most vulnerable Americans, according to the FBI’s Debbie Deem. Recently, I wrote about the tragic story of a California teacher found murdered in Jamaica. I also wrote about Deem for CNBC.com recently (Click [Keep reading]
We’ve come a long way since Mark Zuckerberg famously said that it was “crazy” to think fake news on Facebook influenced the 2016 election. How far? Not long ago, Facebook said it had identified only a few thousands suspicious accounts on its service that might have been linked to Russia. [Keep reading]
The most important thing about today’s Russia probe news is this: Former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos tested out every defense you’ve been hearing from those involved in the campaign: It’s a nothing….it happened before he was part of the campaign…it was just chatter. And none of those defenses [Keep reading]
He is a master of the simplest “hack” of all — impersonation. In recent months, he has pretended to be White House officials like Jared Kushner and Reince Preibus or even Eric Trump. And it worked. He fooled plenty of people who should have known better, including Anthony Scaramucci, former Utah [Keep reading]
While you were busy worrying about health insurance premiums and perhaps Donald Trump’s latest Tweet, the U.S. Senate spat in the face of American consumers this week. In a 50-50 vote that required Vice President Mike Pence to break the tie, the Senate voted to nullify a pro-consumer rule that [Keep reading]
NOTE: I’m doing an ongoing series of stories on elder scams, a “tsunami” of crimes hitting the most vulnerable Americans, according to the FBI’s Debbie Deem. Recently, I wrote about the tragic story of a California teacher found murdered in Jamaica. I also wrote about Deem for CNBC.com recently (Click [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan