Nigerians Scam Citibank

As if we didn't need any more reasons to be worried about the people running our banks, it seems that the geniuses at Citibank just fell for a Nigerian scam (run by real Nigerians!) for $27 million posing as representatives of the Bank of Ethiopia. The bank refunded the money to the Ethiopians, which probably wasn't a big deal since they are sitting on billions of dollars of taxpayer bailout money.

From the Times:

Swindles in which someone overseas seeks access to a person’s bank account are so well known that most potential victims can spot them in seconds.

But one man found success by tweaking the formula, prosecutors say: Rather than trying to dupe an account holder into giving up information, he duped the bank. And instead of swindling a person, he tried to rob a country — of $27 million.

To carry out the elaborate scheme, prosecutors in New York said on Friday, the man, identified as Paul Gabriel Amos, 37, a Nigerian citizen who lived in Singapore, worked with others to create official-looking documents that instructed Citibank to wire the money in two dozen transactions to accounts that Mr. Amos and the others controlled around the world.

The money came from a Citibank account in New York held by the National Bank of Ethiopia, that country’s central bank. Prosecutors said the conspirators, contacted by Citibank to verify the transactions, posed as Ethiopian bank officials and approved the transfers.

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Prosecutors said the scheme began in September, when Citibank received a package with documents purportedly signed by officials of the Ethiopian bank instructing Citibank to accept instructions by fax. There was also a list of officials who could be called to confirm such requests. The signatures of the officials appeared to match those in Citibank’s records and were accepted by Citibank, the complaint says.

In October, Citibank received two dozen faxed requests for money to be wired, and it transferred $27 million to accounts controlled by the conspirators in Japan, South Korea, Australia, China, Cyprus and the United States, the complaint says.

Citibank called the officials whose names and numbers it had been given to verify the transactions, prosecutors said. The numbers turned out to be for cellphones in Nigeria, South Africa and Britain used by the conspirators.

Citibank, in its investigation, later determined the package of documents had come via courier from Lagos, Nigeria, rather than from the offices of the National Bank of Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa.

Citibank has credited back the lost funds to the National Bank of Ethiopia, said one person who was briefed about the situation.

Organic Farms Got Phony Fertilizer

Organic farmers in California, including some of the largest producers in the country, have been unwittingly using a synthetic fertilizer for up to seven years. The product, made by California Liquid Fertilizer, was cheap, effective and certified organic. It captured a third of California's organic farming market by 2006.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture had been notified of the problem in 2004, but didn't order the company to remove its product from the market until January 2007. It didn't notify the company's clients until a year and a half later.

Another major producer of liquid fertilizer pulled its product from the organic market in November 2007 after regulators initiated an investigation.

The organic produce market has grown from small farmers to a multi-billion dollar megabusiness, but regulation hasn't kept pace. State regulators only initiate inspections after receiving a complaint. Most of the regulation falls on the industry certification groups, but they often rely on company-provided information to determine if products meet federal standards.

From the Sacramento Bee:

For up to seven years, California Liquid Fertilizer sold what seemed to be an organic farmer's dream, brewed from fish and chicken feathers.

The company's fertilizer was effective, inexpensive and approved by organic regulators. By 2006, it held as much as a third of the market in California.

But a state investigation caught the Salinas-area company spiking its product with ammonium sulfate, a synthetic fertilizer banned from organic farms.

As a result, some of California's 2006 harvest of organic fruits, nuts and vegetables – including crops from giants like Earthbound Farm – wasn't really organic.

According to documents obtained by The Bee through a Public Records Act request, California Department of Food and Agriculture officials were notified of the problem in June 2004 but didn't complete their investigation and order the company to remove its product from the organic market until January 2007.

State officials knew some of California's largest organic farms had been using the fertilizer, the documents show, but they kept their findings confidential until nearly a year and a half after it was removed from the market. No farms lost their organic certification.

The rest of the story (a very interesting read) is here.

Killer Peanuts

I take a month away from the blog and peanuts threaten to rise up and kill all our children.

Since the peanut uprising began, at least 575 people in 43 states have been sickened by salmonella-tainted PB. At least 8 have died.

The Times reports today that peanut agents have apparently infiltrated the government and had the Agricultural Department send out tainted peanut butter to schools across the country as part of the free-lunch program (moral: there is a free lunch, but it will kill you).

This interesting tidbit was buried deep in the story:

Despite ongoing reports of illnesses linked to the company, the Agriculture department only Thursday suspended Peanut Corp. from participating in government contract programs, for at least a year. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also removed Stewart Parnell, president of the company, from USDA's Peanut Standards Board.

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The Food and Drug Administration learned only weeks ago that the Peanut Corp. of America had received a series of private tests dating back to 2007 showing salmonella in their products from the Georgia plant, but later shipped the items after obtaining negative test results.

Something I should have been worried about

So, after months of public worrying on this blog, I find myself on a 10-hour journey through three airports, several time zones, and an immigration checkpoint bringing my daughter, Cinderella, to Mexico to spend Xmas with my wife's family (she will join us later, after attending an ill-timed conference).

Here's what I worry about (in no particular order):

* The unlikely event of a water landing

* The airline losing my rolling suitcase that they forced me to gate-check

* The possibility that I am angering the one true g-d by celebrating a holiday outside my religion

Here's what actually happened:

* Cinderella got a stomach bug and puked all over me for 10 straight hours. Poor kid. She's a trooper though. Not sure how she's going to feel when I explain that she won't be allowed to eat all that candy in her stocking for another day...

FDA Says Mercury Is a Vegetable

Okay, maybe not a vegetable, but the FDA is reportedly considering rescinding a previous warning to pregnant and nursing women and children because of the danger of consuming mercury. Previously the FDA and EPA had warned baby-mamas and kids against eating more than 12 ounces of fish, and to avoid swordfish, shark, tilefish and king mackerel altogether.

Officials at the EPA are not happy, as are white-coated environmentalists. Richard Wiles, the executive director of the Environmental Working Group, said "It's a commentary on how low FDA has sunk as an agency. It was once a fierce protector of America's health, and now it's nothing more than a patsy for polluters."

Chuck E Cheese Melee

A recent report vindicates my avoidance of Chuck E Cheese. My main reasons have been that I worry about restaurants that trumpet their associations with rodents, and that they are brainwashing Sesame Street-watching munchkins with their ads on PBS. Plus, I also hear that the food sucks and the place is a rip-off.

As if all that weren't enough, the Wall Street Journal reports that the police are being called in to break up more fights at some Chuck E Cheese locations than at nearby biker bars. In some areas, the restaurants have been forced to stop serving alcohol and start staffing the place with armed guards after incidents like an 80-person melee in Flint Michigan earlier this year.

Now, the only way you were going to drag me into one of these places was with the promise of beer, so that's another strike against them. However, Rebeldad seems to disagree.

Among other incidents in the article:

In Brookfield, Wis., no restaurant has triggered more calls to the police department since last year than Chuck E. Cheese's.

Officers have been called to break up 12 fights, some of them physical, at the child-oriented pizza parlor since January 2007. The biggest melee broke out in April, when an uninvited adult disrupted a child's birthday party. Seven officers arrived and found as many as 40 people knocking over chairs and yelling in front of the restaurant's music stage, where a robotic singing chicken and the chain's namesake mouse perform.

Toys will kill you

According to a new report by the Michigan-based Ecology Center, 1 out of every three toys they examined (out of 1,500) tested positive for "medium" to "high" levels of lead, cadmium, arsenic, PVC and other harmful chemicals.

The full report can be found here.

No more raw pork for Cinderella

Actually we're cutting out all pork products. Why, well how about this news story from ABC news:

It's Not a Tumor, It's a Brain Worm: Doctor Surprised to Find a Worm Living Inside a Woman's Brain.

Late last summer, Rosemary Alvarez of Phoenix thought she had a brain tumor. But on the operating table her doctor discovered something even more unsightly -- a parasitic worm eating her brain.

"We've got a lot more of cases of this in the United States now," said Raymond Kuhn, professor of biology and an expert on parasites at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. "Upwards of 20 percent of neurology offices in California have seen it."

The pork tapeworm has plagued people for thousands of years. The parasite, known as cysticercosis, lives in pork tissue, and is likely the reason why Jewish and Muslim dietary laws ban pork.

Damn, but I love bacon. But we should never forget what Khan did to Chekov.

Kids sure do eat a lot of sugar!

I went to Cinderella's Pre-K class for the morning. I was there to read a story (The Guest by George Marshall) and try not to cause too much trouble.

Now I'm a firm believer that life needs some sugar to counter all the bitterness in the world, but I have to say that the quantity of the sweet stuff being consumed by the future leaders of America was just a bit out of hand.

At breakfast (free for all), the choices include Frosted Flakes and French toast with corn syrup (would it be that hard to get real maple syrup here in New England?). Luckily, I send Cinderella off to pick out a book while I'm picking out her breakfast, but do we really need to be handing out Frosted Flakes? They also have stacks of chocolate milk that they hand out at lunchtime.

At snack time, all the kids eat something packed from home. Cinderella gets raisins, a whole wheat roll with butter or jam, a stick of string cheese, or some fresh fruit. I also pack her some milk to drink. One or two of the other kids had something along those lines. All the rest had fruit rollups, Rice Krispy Treats, cookies (!), and juice (otherwise known as liquid sugar).

I wasn't able to stick around for lunch or the afternoon snack, but I figure it was more along the same lines.

By my estimate, the little munchkins must have ingested about 2 cups of sugar and/or corn sweetener apiece.

And then we worry about why they're all bouncing off the walls?

Just saying...

Scary Chinese Fortune Cookie

Not that they want anyone to get really worried, but the FDA has just ordered that all shipments of food products (for both humans and pets) must be tested first for melamine.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the FDA acted after 60 or so tests of Chinese candy and crackers tested positive for the additive, which has sickened tens of thousands of Chinese children, and caused at least four deaths.

Melamine is a particularly nasty chemical substance that has many industrial uses, but is toxic to humans, especially infants and children. Food suppliers have been illegally using it as a cheap filler.

The New York Times reports that in addition to the previously reported White Rabbit candy, consumers are being urged to worry about breaded shrimp, dietary supplements, and protein powders and shakes.

Consumer advocates are pleased that their worrying is being heard, but urges the testing to expand to cover egg and fish products, foods that have recently been found to contain the harmful additive.