I am continually amazed at the creativity of cheaters. A few examples in the news recently:
- Restaurant offering receipts with menu items relabeled as office supplies
- Generate disruptions to get out of a zoom meeting
- Fake Covid test results
I mentioned these for the laughter value and more importantly for the educational value.
The stories are amusing. If you work in the finance area or are leading an organization, having an awareness of these schemes might help you recognize one if presented to you.
Your entertainment and anti-fraud training for the day:
3/12/21 – WTRF – Expense It: Restaurant Named Menu Items After Office Supplies – A restaurant in Toronto has relabeled their menu items as office supplies. Order a Fortune Burger with side of Parm Fries so it shows up on your receipt as a basic steel stapler and CPU wireless mouse.
You don’t have a legitimate reason to turn in lunch on your expense report or claim it as a tax deduction, you can get a receipt that shows office supplies.
Of course it’s not going to work for more than two or three times a year. After all, how many office staplers do you need in a year?
Oh, hey, next iteration for these folks would be to change names in the menu every other month.
Incredible creativity. Fraudulent, but creative.
3/15/21 – The Verge – Zoom Escaper That You Sabotage Your Own Meetings with Audio Problems, Crying Babies, and More – Getting tired of all those Zoom meetings? Want a way to bail out on a particularly boring or useless meeting? One creative fellow has a solution for you.
The Zoom Escaper. Route your call through their site and then load their software. You can then click a button to add distracting sound effects at variable volume levels.
Options include:
- Echo
- Bad connection
- Upset baby
- Man weeping
- Wind
- Dogs
- Construction
- Urination
Video in the article provides a demo. Sounds like the wind, dogs, and construction would only work if you are outside. I can’t imagine how the urination or man weeping would actually work to skip out of a meeting.
An upset baby? You would obviously need to have a baby at home for that to work. Aha, those of us with very young grandchildren have a workable option! I’m watching my grandbaby today and she needs attention and I’m the only one home and gotta’ take care of her and I’ll check back later, bye!
Best approach would be to use the echo echo echo in in in your your efforts efforts efforts. The echo option has variable amount of echo and also has a slider for variable reverberation.
The massive static of a bad connection would work well.
Ah, the incredible creativity of some folks.
2/1/21 – CNBC – Criminals are selling fake Covid test results as they look to profit from travel restrictions – Need proof you are free of Covid infection before you travel? No testing appointments available before you leave or the turnaround between testing and travel is too long to actually get results?
No problem.
Crooks are willing to sell you a negative test result, presumably showing whatever date you wish. Going price in England is about $130. One group was selling results inside CdG airport in Paris with prices running from $180-$360. Other groups busted in Spain and Netherlands were selling results online.
With the large volume of test providers, who could possibly recognize every format from every hospital and clinic around the world?