[Pak Daily Times] In one of the biggest ever bank heists, a global cyber crime ring stole $45 million from two Middle Eastern banks by hacking into credit card processing firms and withdrawing money from ATMs in 27 countries, US prosecutors said on Thursday.
The US Justice Department accused eight men of allegedly forming the New York-based cell of the organization, and said seven of them have been tossed in the slammer Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit! . The eighth, allegedly a leader of the cell, was reported to have been murdered in the Dominican Republic on April 27.
The ringleaders are believed to be outside the United States but prosecutors declined to give details, citing the ongoing investigation. What's clear is the sheer scope and speed of the crimes: in one of the attacks, in just over 10 hours, $40 million was raided from ATMs in 24 countries involving 36,000 transactions.
"In the place of guns and masks, this cyber crime organization used laptops and the Internet," US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta Lynch said at a news conference. "Moving as swiftly as data over the Internet, the organization worked its way from the computer systems of international corporations to the streets of New York City."
The case demonstrates the major threat that cyber crime poses to banks around the world. It also shows how increasingly international and sophisticated criminal gangs have become, particularly those using the Internet.
Prosecutors highlighted the "surgical precision" of these hackers, the global nature of their organization, and the speed and coordination with which they executed operations in 27 countries.
According to the complaint, the gang broke into the computers of two credit card processors, one in India in December 2012 and the other in the United States this February. The companies were not identified.
The hackers increased the available balance and withdrawal limits on prepaid MasterCard debit cards issued by Bank of Muscat of Oman, and National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah PSC (RAKBANK) of the United Arab Emirates, according to the complaint. They then distributed counterfeit debit cards to "cashers" around the world, enabling them to siphon millions of dollars from ATMs in a matter of hours.
In New York, for example, members of the cell fanned out into the city on the afternoon of Feb. 19, armed with cards bearing a single Bank of Muscat account number. Ten hours later, they had completed 2,904 withdrawals for $2.4 million in all, the final transaction coming around 1:26 a.m., prosecutors said.
Casher crews in other countries were busy doing the same, pulling some $40 million from Bank of Muscat to add to the $5 million they stole from RAKBANK in December, according to the indictment. In total, cashers made some 40,500 withdrawals in 27 countries during the two coordinated incidents. Prosecutors said the method of attack was known as "Unlimited Operations" in the cyber underworld.
Representatives for the two banks could not be reached for comment outside of regular business hours. In a statement, Mastercard said it had cooperated with law enforcement in the investigation and stressed that its systems were not involved or compromised in the attacks.
In late February, Bank Muscat disclosed that it would take an impairment charge of up to 15 million rials ($39 million) because it had been defrauded overseas by 12 prepaid debit cards used for travel. That charge was equal to more than half of the 25 million rials profit it posted in its first quarter ended March 31. Cyber experts said they believe the operation likely required the work of several hundred people, at least several of whom were highly skilled hackers capable of devising ways to penetrate well-protected financial systems.
"Hackers only need to find one vulnerability to cause millions of dollars of damage," said Mark Rasch, a former federal cyber crimes prosecutor, based in Bethesda, Maryland. The group may have targeted Middle Eastern banks because they tend to allow customers to put much larger sums on cards and do not monitor them as closely as banks in other regions, said Shane Shook, global vice president of consulting for the security firm Cylance Inc.
"It's a target-rich environment in terms of soft electronic security," said Shook, an Arabic speaker who has spent more than a decade investigating cyber crimes.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/11/2013 00:00 ||
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You Reckon the bank will fold, and the good depositors will take the loss?
Neither do I.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/11/2013 16:22 Comments ||
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[An Nahar] An Iranian man condemned to the gallows for murdering a policeman was pardoned by the victim's family and his life saved only moments after he was hanged, the Mehr news agency reported on Thursday.
Relatives "cried out their pardon after the murderer had already been hanging for a few seconds" the agency said, publishing a photo of people grab the man and holding him until they could remove the noose from around his neck.
The aborted execution took place in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
Under Iranian law, the family of a victim is entitled to pardon a criminal and save him from execution. In such cases, a murderer must pay blood money currently set at $36,000 (27,480 euros) and serve a prison sentence.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/11/2013 00:00 ||
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So Iran doesn't use the humane neck-breaking noose knot for their hangings, but rather does theirs the slow, cruel strangling way? It figures. Good fortune for this poor fellow though.
#2
Striking a balance between risk and return. He sure did twitch well for a few seconds, and we still get the 36K. Now all the guys call him Red, for the nifty scar.
[BREITBART] Remember the hippo dancing in Disney's Fantasia and how cute it was? Don't believe it for a second; as guide Paul Templer relates to the UK Guardian, hippos can be monstrously violent and even swallow you up. Templer knows because it happened to him.
Templer had been leading people on tours of the Zambezi River near Victoria Falls for years. Traveling in kayaks with three apprentice guides named Mike, Ben and Evans, Templer suddenly saw Evans thrown out of his kayak from the gigantic hippo rising underneath it. While he shouted for the other guides to get the clients to safety, Templer paddled furiously to rescue Evans.
As he reached his hand out to Evans, he was swallowed from the waist up by the hippo and dragged underwater. The bull hippo punctured and bit Templer in 40 places as it hurled him into the air and then caught him and chewed again. Underwater again and holding his breath as long as he could, Templer was suddenly spit out. Mike rescued him, but his left arm was crushed, and the hippo's tusks had ripped open his back so badly that his lung was visible.
A medical team nearby saved him but Evans was never found. Templer lost his left arm from the attack, but still led another expedition down the Zambezi two years later. He swore he saw the same hippo, screamed, then watched the hippo dive under the water and disappear.
Not quite Disney.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/11/2013 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] A 22-year-old Austrian had the shock of his life when he received a tax bill for more than 29 million euros ($38 million), a newspaper reported Wednesday.
Agadir B. told the Heute daily he got the bill after filing his tax return for 2008, when he earned around 600 euros a month as a trainee, with the demand that he paid one percent -- 290,420.13 euros -- immediately.
"I completely flipped out," he said. "My mum nearly had a nervous breakdown."
His mother even phoned the tax office to query the bill and was told: "You don't have a discussion at the checkout at Billa (a supermarket chain), you just pay," he said.
However, a lie repeated often enough remains a lie... a second letter later came through from the tax office, declaring the first one void and apologizing for the "technical error," the paper said.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/11/2013 00:00 ||
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It's a new idea in revenue raising. The mark citizen pays upfront 1 time based on his highest average income figured out 30 years then lives a fruitful life. Sort of a reverse balloon payment.
A tremor measuring 3.5 on Richter scale jolted port city of Bandar Lengeh in IranÂ’s southern province of Hormozgan on Wednesday evening.
The tremorÂ’s epicenter was at 26.64 degrees latitude and 54.67 degrees longitude and in depth of 27 kilometers underground, (IRNA) news agency reported citing a report of the seismography center affiliated to Tehran University Geophysics Institute.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/11/2013 00:00 ||
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Posted by: Frank G ||
05/11/2013 13:44 Comments ||
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3.5? Is that a typo? There are probably dozens of 3.5's a day around the world, and they're barely noticeable. Musta been a really slow news day in the islamic paradise.
#6
When Allah speaks, People LISTEN, the problem is Allah speaks and they hear WRONG, he says "Forgive" and they hear "KILL", happens all the time.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/11/2013 16:27 Comments ||
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When your building techniques are not much advanced since the Muslim conquest, and even then building inspectors are bribed not to notice broken rules, little earthquakes can be quite noticeable.
[An Nahar] Human Rights Watch ... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world... on Friday urged the Central African Republic's new government to reign in its rebel forces, accusing them of "horrific abuses" such as pillage, summary executions, rape, and torture.
The rights watchdog said that after the Seleka rebel coalition seized power on March 24 in a bloody coup, its bully boyz "went on a looting spree, killing civilians, raping women, and settling scores with members of the Central African Armed Forces."
Some 5,000 fighters took part in the battle for Bangui, the rights group said and many of the post-coup killings happened "in broad daylight."
The rebel coalition, which ousted President Francois Bozize after a peace deal fell apart, is made up of four rebel groups which have been operating in the northern part of the country since 2003.
The rights group had previously reported that in this region in 2007, Bozize's armed forces engaged in grave abuses such as summary executions, unlawful killings, house burnings, and using child soldiers.
"If the Seleka coalition, as it claims, wants to undo the wrongs of the previous government, it should immediately end its horrific abuses," said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
"The government should show it is committed to the rule of law by investigating and prosecuting attacks by Seleka troops against civilians."
The HRW report follows a 10-day investigation in Bangui in late April.
According to the group, the new transition government accused members of the ousted Bozize regime or "fake Seleka" of carrying out the abuses, and insisted it had control over its troops.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/11/2013 00:00 ||
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Probably file this under Central AFRICA rather than Central AMERICA. Locale fixed.
Though I remember something of the sort in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas, which Carter ignored much like Obama is ignoring Syria.
[An Nahar] King of the Arabians, Sheikh of the Burning Sands Abdullah ... Fifth out of 37 sons of King Abdulaziz to ascend to the throne. He is, after his half-brothers Bandar and Musa'id, the third eldest of the living sons of Abdul Aziz ibn Saud. Abdullah's mother is from the Rashid clan, longtime rivals of the Saud. He has 6 sons and 15 daughters and about $20 billion. His youngest son is just seven years old... has dismissed and retired air force chief General Mohammed al-Ayesh by royal decree, the official SPA news agency reported on Friday, without elaborating on why.
The monarch named General Fayadh bin Hamed al-Rowaili to succeed him, the agency added.
In April, the deputy defense minister, Prince Khaled bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, a member of the royal family who played a key role in the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait, was also dismissed by royal decree.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/11/2013 00:00 ||
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without elaborating why
The important part of this story is not written. At least not yet.
[Pak Daily Times] The corpse count from last month's collapse of a garment factory complex in Bangladesh rose past 1,000 Friday as piles of bodies were found in the ruins of a stairwell where victims had sought shelter.
Brigadier General Siddiqul Alam Sikder, the army officer overseeing the operation on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka, told AFP that the corpse count now stands at 1,035 after dozens more remains were discovered overnight.
Alam said that many of the bodies were now little more than skeletons, 17 days on from the implosion of the nine-storey Rana Plaza compound in Savar.
And the stench from under the rubble suggested that many more bodies are still to be located, he said.
"We have found a huge number of bodies in the stairwell and under the staircases. When the building started to collapse, workers thought they would be safe under the staircases," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/11/2013 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Cuban leader Compañero Raul Castro ...Fidel's little brother... 's daughter, a sexologist and supporter of gay rights, has urged Cubans to join a traditional "conga" dance against homophobia taking place in Havana on Saturday. Give those words a roll on your tongue. Say what you will about the Castro brothers, they didn't spend their productive years obsessed with sex. The world might be a better place if they had, but they didn't.
"We are the heirs of a strongly patriarchal Spanish culture, very homophobic and very discriminating," said Mariela Castro, whose father succeeded her uncle and revolutionary leader Fidel Castro as the island's president in 2006. "It is incumbent upon us to cut all ties with everything that happened before we were born."
"It's time these prejudices were eliminated," she said in comments published in state newspaper Granma. "In the name of the Revolution, stand homophobes against a wall and shoot them!"
The dance, to the beat of drums and trumpets, is part of a national "day against homophobia" -- actually 10 days worth of events that started Wednesday and runs through May 18. When is it my turn to bore you with the gooey details of my sex life?
Posted by: Fred ||
05/11/2013 00:00 ||
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This adds new meaning to the term "Pink Police State."
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/11/2013 10:45 Comments ||
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Is it odd that the press is paying attention to the pronouncements of a mere powerless offspring of the current head guy? It's not as if she's a powerful member of the government or heir apparent or anything, as far as I am aware...
[An Nahar] A lawyer for the notorious Venezuelan bully boy Carlos the Jackal is in Caracas seeking President Nicolas Maduro's backing in an appeal against his client's conviction starting Monday in Gay Paree.
Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, was found guilty in La Belle France two years ago of a series of bombings that killed 11 people and maimed around 150 others between 1982-1983.
His lawyer, Frenchwoman Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, who is also his wife, is in the Venezuelan capital to try and garner support from Maduro and other senior government officials, Ramirez's brother Vladimir told Agence La Belle France Presse by telephone.
Coutant-Peyre is there "to see if we can contact the foreign ministry, the presidency and state officials," before the legal case commences, the renowned hitman's brother said. The case is expected to last until the end of June.
Coutant-Peyre intends to complain to the Venezuelan authorities that her husband has received no support from his native country's consular officials in La Belle France.
Could it be they're embarrassed? Or perhaps they just do't care -- it was a long time ago and halfway round the world, and anyway Chavez is dead.
Carlos was sentenced in December 2011 to life in jail, with a minimum of 18 years before parole, for four deadly attacks which prosecutors said were part of a private war he had waged against La Belle France to free two comrades.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/11/2013 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] The head of Mexico's consumer protection agency has avoided the ax despite a scandal over his daughter's attempt to get a restaurant shut down for denying her the table she wanted.
After a probe ordered by President Enrique Pena Nieto, the government announced Thursday that four officials from the Profeco agency would be temporarily suspended over the incident, but that there was no cause to punish its chief, Humberto Benitez.
The anti-corruption public function ministry also opened disciplinary proceedings against civil servants who ordered and participated in the inspection of Maximo Bistrot on April 26.
Benitez said he had never considered stepping down over the incident, denying that he ordered the inspection and insisting that he tried to stop it when he learned his daughter was involved.
"I have offered a public apology," said Benitez, a veteran of Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). "I take responsibility as a father."
Good for him.
Inspectors showed up at the restaurant in Mexico City's trendy Roma district after Benitez's daughter complained about being refused her table of choice.
The brouhaha quickly spread through social media after it was first reported by Reforma newspaper, with Twitter users dubbing the daughter #LadyProfeco and demanding her father's resignation.
The incident was denounced as another example of the sense of entitlement of the rich and powerful in a country with one of biggest income gaps in the world, with almost half the population living in poverty.
Benitez said his agency did not shut down the restaurant in the end and that it only put up signs for alleged irregularities related to the reservations system. He said the owners decided of their own accord to temporarily close it.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/11/2013 00:00 ||
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Table #14 please, or your income tax returns will be immediately audited.
Human influence on the Earth's atmosphere touched what climate scientists called a dire milestone Friday as concentrations of heat-trapping carbon dioxide nudged up to a level unseen in about 3 million to 5 million years -- long before modern humans. Gee, I wonder if they had a climate back then?
A monitoring station in Hawaii recorded carbon dioxide concentrations of 400 parts per million Friday, dramatically up from the 316 parts per million recorded when the station made its first measurements in 1958. The monitor, high atop the Mauna Loa volcano, offers the longest-running record of atmospheric carbon dioxide measured directly from the air.
"[The] increase is not a surprise to scientists," said Pieter Tans, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "The evidence is conclusive that the strong growth of global [carbon dioxide] emissions from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is driving the acceleration."
Climate scientist Joanna Haigh of Imperial College London said the particular figure reached Friday -- 400 parts per million -- holds no particular significance except as a milestone. So there is some truth in this article!
"It gives us the chance to mark the ongoing increase in [carbon dioxide] concentration and talk about why it's a problem for the climate."
Scientists have firmly linked rising atmospheric carbon dioxide to higher global temperatures, which have increased nearly a degree Fahrenheit, on average, since 1950. I wish they could agree on how much the climate has warmed since when. It'd make their stories so much more ... credible.
Air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice cores show that, in the past 800,000 years, airborne concentrations remained lower than 400 parts per million. And scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and elsewhere have estimated that about 3 million to 5 million years have passed since so much carbon dioxide wafted in the Earth's atmosphere. The temperature during that period, known as the Pliocene Epoch, was 5 to 7 degrees warmer than today, with seas tens of feet higher. So why isn't it 5-7 degrees warmed with the seas tens of feet higher NOW? Can your models explain that?
Airborne concentrations of carbon dioxide vary by season and location on Earth. But the measurements from the Mauna Loa monitor, which is run by Scripps, are considered the gold standard. Concentrations there are plotted on the iconic Keeling Curve, named after scientist Charles David Keeling, who initiated the measurements in 1958. At that time, the carbon dioxide level was 316 parts per million. Plotted on a curve? What is this, sixth-grade science? Why does it need to be plotted on a curve? Is that how they get the "hockey stick" curve? Actually, I suspect the writers have no idea what they are writing about, except of course, CO2 = BAD.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/11/2013 11:21 ||
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At some point CO2 blocks all the wavelengths it's going to block, and more CO2 does nothing - except make plants grow better.
Posted by: Titus Ulans4144 ||
05/11/2013 11:34 Comments ||
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Memo to scientifically ignorant media, HUMANS exhale CO2, as does every living mammal, reptile and amphibian. PLANTS like CO2 and convert it to oxygen and nutrients for you vegans to eat.
Just goes to show you what being stoned all the way through high school and college does for our journalist/door stop/rock.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
05/11/2013 11:48 Comments ||
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danggit, that's the third time this morning I've bonked my head.
Wait a second....I'm supposed to sell the farm and family because of the read-out of a station located on a volcano? Which way is the wind blowing today?
#4
...because of the read-out of a station located on a volcano?
Wonder what the sulfur emissions were that day...
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/11/2013 13:04 Comments ||
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Speaking of sulfur dioxide emissions...Mt. Agustine, a relatively small volcano in Cook Inlet in Alaska emits SO2. When it is steaming, it emits 500 tons a day. When it is erupting, it emitted 6500 tons a day. Where was the EPA then?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/11/2013 13:38 Comments ||
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Not to mention that during the Jurassic CO2 was 20% higher than now. All life sure didn't die out, that's for sure!
#11
Our neighbor runs his greenhouse at ~1,000 PPM CO2. Has a nifty little generator and everything. On the weekends, he and his wife will work in there all day with seemingly no issues.
He has nice looking flowers and a great crop of vegetables in there, too.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
05/11/2013 15:58 Comments ||
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PLEASE somebody change CO@ to CO2 in the headline!
I gotta remember to look at the headline, too, in "Preview"!
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/11/2013 16:01 Comments ||
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OK Mr Climate Expert Guy I have one question, Exactly what temperature should it be?
#14
Richard, I don't think the scientists are saying that the CO2 is toxic - it would have to be 20-30 times to even make people feel drowsy. Their claim is that this will immediately cause the temperature to skyrocket, all the ice to melt, the seas to inundate Denver, etc. etc. etc. So we should all give them more money to do studies. And completely eviscerating the economy to prevent this.
What they can't seem to explain is why global temperatures haven't actually risen in the last 10 years.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
05/11/2013 18:08 Comments ||
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All you Bastard chilrun of Gaia are guilty of breathing, the original sin and copulating like there's ain't no tomorrow, which leads to more breathing and consuming and dancin and finger-snapping, driving SUV and eating too damn much for your own good, not to mention buying guns, killin Bambi and going on VACATION and more breathing.
Bottom line, if most of you fuckers would just kill yourself I'd have more shit and wymens.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Pak Daily Times] In one of the biggest ever bank heists, a global cyber crime ring stole $45 million from two Middle Eastern banks by hacking into credit card processing firms and withdrawing money from ATMs in 27 countries, US prosecutors said on Thursday. 
[An Nahar] An Iranian man condemned to the gallows for murdering a policeman was pardoned by the victim's family and his life saved only moments after he was hanged, the Mehr news agency reported on Thursday.
[BREITBART] Remember the hippo dancing in Disney's Fantasia and how cute it was? Don't believe it for a second; as guide Paul Templer relates to the UK Guardian, hippos can be monstrously violent and even swallow you up. Templer knows because it happened to him.
[An Nahar] A 22-year-old Austrian had the shock of his life when he received a tax bill for more than 29 million euros ($38 million), a newspaper reported Wednesday.
A tremor measuring 3.5 on Richter scale jolted port city of Bandar Lengeh in IranÂ’s southern province of Hormozgan on Wednesday evening.
[An Nahar] 
[Pak Daily Times] The 
[An Nahar] A lawyer for the notorious Venezuelan
Human influence on the Earth's atmosphere touched what climate scientists called a dire milestone Friday as concentrations of heat-trapping carbon dioxide nudged up to a level unseen in about 3 million to 5 million years -- long before modern humans.
