‘Tis the Season for Burning Down Your House

Earlier this year, a Connecticut court upheld an arson conviction for Randal Licari.  The fire, which destroyed Licari’s home and resulted in a large insurance payment, occurred during the holiday season and appeared to involve a Christmas tree.  Initially, fire investigators could not determine the cause of the fire but stated it seemed ‘‘to be accidental in nature and more probably than not caused by the Christmas tree.’’  It turns out that Licari’s Christmas tree was freshly purchased and well hydrated and therefore could not have accidentally caught fire.  Further investigation revealed that he had placed Duraflame logs under the Christmas tree and lit them.  Licari did not have a fireplace in his home.

This case is a reminder that although Christmas trees can start fires (the National Fire Protection Association estimates about 210 Christmas tree fires per year), the moisture content of a Christmas tree plays a significant role in how hazardous it can be.  A DRY tree burns very quickly and will become fully engulfed in flames within 30 seconds.   However, a properly hydrated tree will not burn.  The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conducted several tests and attempted to light a well hydrated tree with a match, electric current attached to an entire matchbook, and an open flame applied with a blow torch (see the test results here with video).  The needles burned a bit while the open flame was applied but they self-extinguished quickly.  So, this holiday season, if you choose to have a real Christmas tree in your home, remember to keep it well hydrated!  And don’t light Duraflame logs directly underneath it.

More Medicare Fraud

Following up on my last post, I wanted to share this recent CBS 60 Minutes article and video on Medicare fraud in south Florida.  It’s a tremendous example of how easy it is to steal money from the government.  Private insurance companies with a profit motive have more incentive to stop this type of fraud.  Unfortunately, the government has not had the motivation to seriously address this problem.  Dennis Jay at the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud has a great post on this topic here and a follow up post on how Democrats are getting more aggressive on fraud.

One of the commenters to Dennis’ follow up post makes a great point about private carriers who write Auto, Liability, or Workers’ Compensation insurance.  These insurers (full disclosure:  I work for one of them) pay medical claims every day and are subject to the same scams.  But they don’t have access to the same resources and, while there have been improvements in information sharing among these carriers, information sharing is lacking between them, the private healthcare payers, and government medical programs.  Groups like the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) are targeting this issue and I forsee this being an area of focus in the coming months for insurance investigators.

Fugitives on Facebook

Almost on cue, following my last post about using social networking sites as an investigative tool… I ran across this article about a fugitive hiding from US authorities in Mexico who (somewhat foolishly) updated his status and location on his Facebook page.  While it is more and more common for investigators to search social network sites for information, what is most interesting to me about this example is that the first searches turned up nothing.

 

“Investigators initially could find no trace of him on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and they were unable to pin down his exact location in Mexico.”

But the actions of a persistent investigator turned up new information later in the investigation.  I recently posted a question on LinkedIn about the use of monitoring tools in investigations to address this very issue.

“But several months later, Secret Service agent Seth Reeg checked Facebook again — and up popped Maxi Sopo. His photo showed him wearing a black jacket decorated with a white lion as he stood in front of a party backdrop featuring logos of BMW and Courvoisier cognac.”

The other neat thing about this investigation is that although the fugitive’s profile was private – and therefore all the details were not visible to outsiders – the investigator was able to obtain the information by researching the fugitive’s “friends” on Facebook.

“Although Sopo’s profile was set to private, his list of friends was not, and Scoville started combing through it. He was surprised to see that one friend listed an affiliation with the Justice Department and sent him a message requesting a phone call.

‘We figured this was a person we could probably trust to keep our inquiry discreet,’ Scoville said.

The former official told Scoville he had met Sopo in Cancun’s nightclubs a few times, but did not really know him and had no idea he was a fugitive. The official learned where Sopo was living and passed that information back to Scoville, who provided it to Mexican authorities. They arrested Sopo last month.”

The Fraud Excuse

Two insurance companies in Florida are in liquidation due to their insolvent financial condition.  Among the reasons for their downfall quoted in a recent article about their situation, “…roughly $4 million in losses due to being the target of ‘several fraud rings’ preying on personal injury protection coverage in its commercial auto line.”

Information Integration Program

The Wall Street Journal published an encouraging article about the integration of various intelligence networks in the federal government agencies.  When there are captive silos of information that cannot be shared easily across organizations, the capacity for effective analytics is severely hampered.  It’s shocking to read that today’s intelligence analysts can search only 5% of available information.  This solution proposes to give them access to 95%, accounting for security clearance.  An ambitious effort for sure.

PIN heads

A recent article in the Hartford Courant indicated that two dozen bank customers lost money after falling victim to a phishing attack where scammers sent email and text messages asking them for pin numbers associated with their debit cards.  The article suggests that the timing of the scam coincides with an announcement from a financial processing company that it’s data had been compromised.  It seems as if we’re not making much headway on the education of consumers about not responding to such obvious scams.

Wiki-telligence, eh?

The Vancouver Sun reports that the RCMP is launching a wiki designed to keep law enforcement authorities up-to-date on gang activity in Canada.  Readers might recall that the US government intelligence community created Intellipedia back in 2006, which is used to share intelligence across government agencies.  A “vertical” wiki called Diplopedia is also used by the US Department of State.

In September 2008, it was learned that the FBI has created it’s own wiki – Bureaupedia – to record knowledge of retiring agents, presumably in an attempt to thwart “brain drain.”  The bureau has been criticized for creating a separate platform instead of utilizing the existing Intellipedia platform, which they already access. 

Wiki technology is a boon for intelligence services.  Sharing up-to-date intel is difficult, but the collaborative nature of wiki’s is a great – and often inexpensive – solution.  I wish more agencies in law enforcement and private sector investigations would take note.