GMTV facing fraud investigation
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The Serious Fraud Office reviews evidence in the GMTV phone-in scandal that may lead to criminal proceedings.
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(InfoWorld) - Indiaâs National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) has asked U.K. broadcaster Channel Four Television to provide information from a news documentary that it plans to air Thursday evening about alleged data theft in India. Channel 4's "Dispatches" program will feature the results of a sting operation in which an undercover reporter was offered credit card information for customers of U.K. banks that have outsourced processing work to India. The men offering the information claim to have got it from staff at Indian call centers and business process outsourcing (BPO) operations, according to newspaper reports. Acting through a law firm, Nasscom has asked Channel 4 to provide it with details of the allegations it plans to air, together with evidence and any other supporting documentation, Nasscom said. It asked the broadcaster to cooperate "immediately, fully and wholeheartedlyâ with Indian authorities, to help them prosecute the alleged data thieves in India. As of late Monday in India, Channel 4 had refused to provide the information, according to Nasscom. Several sting operations by newspapers and TV channels have attempted to expose faults in the Indian call center and business process outsourcing (BPO) industries. Last year the U.K. tabloidÂ The Sun reportedÂ that its undercover reporter was sold secret information on 1,000 bank accounts by an employee of a call center in Delhi. Indian police said theyÂ could not make an arrestÂ unless a formal complaint was made by the cell centers companies involved, the banks or their customers. Some of the banks named in the report said their data had not been compromised. Nasscom's president, Kiran Karnik, accused such sting operations of goading people into committing crimes that otherwise might not have been committed. Sting operations like the one by Channel 4 sometimes go beyond uncovering wrongdoing and actually induce crimes that are then recorded and aired, he said in a statement Monday. In this case, one of the alleged criminals has said that the data he offered for sale was fake, according to Karnik. India has had its share of data theft cases, however. Earlier this year, an Indian back-office and customer support operation of the British bank HSBC Bank PLC complained that an employee had stolen confidential data, and used it to defraud 20 of the bank's customers in London to the tune of Â£233,000 ($425,000). The employee has been prosecuted by Indian police. HSBC described the incident as a one-off. Sunil Mehta, vice president of Nasscom, argued that the incidence of data theft and data privacy breaches is lower in India than in the U.K. and the U.S.
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Media & professional: Â· Trust to investigate use of participation TV Â· Thompson promises extra checks on programmes
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An appearance on MTV may offer a clue to how Gary M. Milby spent some of the $19 million that federal regulators contend he ripped off from investors.
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Tens of thousands of people are paying fraudsters to sit their driving test for them, the BBC learns.
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The BBC uncovers a 'hornet's nest of deception' involving some of its biggest programmes.
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BAE Systems says it has found out that it is being investigated by the UK's Serious Fraud Office.
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A high-profile probe and a towing scandal are the latest in the city's struggles against crooked deals.
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Breakfast broadcaster GMTV is fined Â£2m by media regulator Ofcom for failings with its phone-in quizzes.
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The Competition Commission is to investigate BSkyB's purchase last year of a stake in ITV.
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General Motors Corp.  said on Thursday that U.S. securities regulators were reviewing the automaker's accounting for foreign exchange and commodity derivatives and said a similar hedge-related probe into its former finance arm could force it to restate results again.
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Some BBC executives are likely to be suspended while reviews are held into fake phone-ins unearthed by an inquiry.
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Government minister describes television phone-in deception as 'almost daylight robbery'.
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On the morning of Nov. 17, Ben Adams found himself hiding beneath the retractable cover in the back of a Chevy TrailBlazer. The truck was parked in front of a warehouse in Duncanville, Texas. His friend &quot;Sam,&quot; the TrailBlazer&#39;s owner, had just finished a test drive on a 1949 Chevy truck--the same truck Adams was certain had been stolen from him four months earlier.Adams pulled out his mobile phone and dialed 911. &quot;Please help me,&quot; he said. &quot;I&#39;m at a warehouse. There are criminals all around me.&quot;The story of how a mild-mannered software developer from San Antonio, Texas,&#160;ended up running his own undercover sting operation against eBay fraudsters begins with a truck. And if the story has a lesson, it&#39;s the one told on Adams&#39;s blog: Don&#39;t mess with Texas, especially if it involves a truck.The Colbert RapportLast July, Adams sold the 1949 Chevy in an eBay auction. The buyer, who called himself Derrick Colbert, appeared to be from Georgia. And when a transport company employee showed up at Adams&#39;s door with a cashier&#39;s check for US$9,600, Adams let him load up the truck and promised to hand over the title when the check cleared.The next day, he learned from his bank that the check was a fake.Adams immediately contacted no fewer than 15 law enforcement organizations and eBay itself, but he also began some sleuthing of his own.He found that the thief had made an important slip-up. While corresponding about the truck, Colbert had sent Adams an e-mail from a second eBay address, different from the one he used to purchase the truck.Hunting Down the ThiefBy tracking the sales and purchases of Colbert&#39;s second eBay ID and contacting a Colorado dealer who had sold him a junky 1950 Chevy truck, Adams was able to track Colbert down to the South Dallas area. But he still didn&#39;t have his truck.By now, Adams had put together a 10-page packet of information and sent it&#160;to every law enforcement agency he could think of. But police didn&#39;t seem to have much interest in working on the case, and although he had reported Colbert to eBay, that didn&#39;t get him anywhere either.&quot;At this point, I was kind of depressed,&quot; remembered Adams. &quot;Every few weeks, I&#39;d do regular eBay searches for all automobiles made between 1948 and 1952 that were within the Dallas-Fort Worth area... I even searched in Craigslist.&quot;And then on November 13, his luck changed.The Big PaybackColbert had listed the pale blue 1950 Chevy for sale on eBay. Only it wasn&#39;t junky anymore, and it didn&#39;t look like the 1950 Chevy that Colbert had bought from the Colorado dealer a few weeks earlier. It looked just like a repainted version of Adams&#39;s 1949 truck. It had the same windows in back, the same missing gas cap, and the same yellow stain across the passenger side of the front windshield.&quot;It made me sick to my stomach,&quot; Adams said. He called local police, but they were skeptical. So he decided to set up a sting.First step: fake ID. He took a tip from the thieves and bought a prepaid mobile phone in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Then using a friend&#39;s well-established eBay account, he placed a couple of bids on the truck to show that he was an interested buyer. His name became &quot;Sam.&quot;He didn&#39;t want to seem too eager. In fact, he didn&#39;t want to do anything to tip Colbert off. And although he thought he might be putting his life at risk, Adams called Colbert and asked to set up a Saturday morning test drive. To be sure that Adams wouldn&#39;t be recognized, a friend volunteered to play the part of &quot;Sam&quot; during the face-to-face meeting.And that&#39;s how Ben Adams ended up hidden inside a Chevy TrailBlazer on a Saturday morning, calling 911. Patrol cars speeding to the scene met up with Adams and his friend about a half-mile from the warehouse and followed the amateur sleuths back to the truck.&quot;They probably had a two-minute window where they probably could have shut the warehouse door and hit the road,&quot; Adams said.But the thieves didn&#39;t leave, and now Adams has his truck back. And this time he plans to keep it.
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The BBC has suspended several members of staff over a competition-rigging scandal, it said Thursday, as police revealed they  could investigate the controversy.
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GMTV was fined a record two million pounds on Wednesday for failings in the way the breakfast broadcaster ran its phone-in quizzes between 2003 and 2007.
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Should have been watching the Opera Ofcom has fined GMTV Â£2m for failing to check up on its service provider, Opera Telecom, and thus allowing the public to get ripped off by an early winner selection scandal.â¦