Identity Theft Follow-up

Here’s how things went after I was con­tacted by the com­pany attend­ing CES in Las Vegas ear­lier this month regard­ing some­one using a link to a post of mine in TechVibes tried to scam some free equipment:

I left a mes­sage with the Van­cou­ver police, and they con­tacted me the next day. I gave them the infor­ma­tion I had about the Mark Drucker char­ac­ter in Vegas, and as instructed, I called Equifax and put a 6-year watch on my credit card accounts. Frankly, I’m fine with this. I’d always like to know when a credit card account is being opened (even if I do it), and a phone call con­fir­ma­tion is not that much of an incon­ve­nience. In fact, Dear Credit Card Com­pa­nies, wouldn’t it be seen as an advan­tage that you take some pains to make sure that the credit card appli­ca­tions you are get­ting are legit? Come to think of it, isn’t bad credit on mort­gages what started the whole down­ward spi­ral in the US econ­omy last year?

At any rate, as far as I knew, that would be the end of my brush with a fraud­ster. Silly me, I should have known that it wasn’t just one booth at CES that this guy would try to scam (although I don’t believe he pro­vided my link this time, but sim­ply the Time Mag­a­zine story). This morn­ing I got an email from another ven­dor, who has com­mented below. Here’s an excerpt:

Hello David,
The arti­cle you wrote on ID Thief saved me and the com­pany I work for a pile of money!  Recently, I was an exhibitor at the CES show in Las Vegas.  A man named “Mark Drucker” from TIME Mag­a­zine approached me at my booth and asked if he could write an arti­cle on my prod­ucts and that he would like sam­ples.  He offered me an inter­view on an arti­cle he was going to write.  I thought, great!  This will give my prod­uct line huge expo­sure and PR!  I sent out all of my sam­ples this past Fri­day and began fol­low­ing up with my show leads.  I have been com­mu­ni­cat­ing with “Mark” over the phone and e-mail.

I felt a lit­tle bit wary about this “Mark Drucker” char­ac­ter because when I con­tacted TIME Mag­a­zine, they said there is no one by that name employed with the com­pany! I decided to Google his name.  My jaw dropped to the ground after read­ing your article/blog on Stop ID Thief.  I was able to con­tact UPS and have my sam­ples sent back to me before they were deliv­ered to “Mark Drucker.”

You saved me and I’m blessed to have read your arti­cle just in the nick of time.  It’s unfor­tu­nate that peo­ple like this are going around scam­ming peo­ple like me and you.  I want to thank you for post­ing your blog/article.  You have been a huge help and you have saved the com­pany I work for a lot of money and time.  I will be con­tact­ing GES (com­pany respon­si­ble for orga­niz­ing CES SHOW), the F.B.I. in Las Vegas in regards to this “Mark Drucker” phony, and TIME Mag­a­zine.  I might not get far, but it’s worth a try right?

He then included the guys local address and phone num­ber, which matched the one I had got­ten from the other com­pany. I’ve con­tacted the Van­cou­ver police and left a mes­sage that I’ve got some more infor­ma­tion on the this guy’s activities.

So I guess this is an exam­ple of a blog help­ing to fight back. I’m glad that it worked out, and it also shows that scam­mers may have a harder time get­ting away with their ruses, although it does depend on the infor­ma­tion about the scam get­ting out in time. Still, it gives me a lit­tle hope that a blog can actu­ally help in a sit­u­a­tion like this. And if the gen­tle­man from Vegas is in fact read­ing this, he should now know that more than one ven­dor is on to him.

We Heard Him Here in Vancouver, First

Pam’s dis­cov­ery, the Roby Lakatos Ensem­ble, who we heard with Matt and Mak­taaq at the Chan Cen­tre last year, is per­form­ing in Carnegie Hall in New York City this com­ing week.

From This Week on 96.3 FM WQXR:

The Roby Lakatos Ensemble

The Roby Lakatos Ensem­ble — Photo by Lakatos vzw

Gypsy vio­lin­ist Roby Lakatos is not only a scorch­ing vir­tu­oso, but a musi­cian of extra­or­di­nary styl­is­tic ver­sa­til­ity. He’s a gypsy vio­lin­ist, a clas­si­cal vir­tu­oso, a jazz impro­viser, a com­poser and arranger, and a 19^th-century throw­back all at once. Click here to see how he per­forms Brahms’s Hun­gar­ian Dance No. 5. Carnegie Hall presents Roby Lakatos and Friends as part of three fes­ti­val series in Stern Audi­to­rium this Tues­day, and the Roby Lakatos Ensem­ble is in con­cert at the State The­ater in New Jer­sey this Thurs­day. But before you see him there, hear him on WQXR. Roby and his ensem­ble join Elliott For­rest for live per­for­mances in our stu­dio on Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 26^th at 4:30 P.M.

Those con­cert­go­ers in New York and New Jer­sey are in for a treat. Lakatos really is a stun­ning per­former, and his ensemble’s Cim­balom player may have been the clos­est thing I’ve ever seen to a human mov­ing at super­hu­man speed. He was lit­er­ally a blur. It was also a rev­e­la­tion to hear the music that Brahms and Liszt based their Hun­gar­ian Rhap­sodies on, real, alive and per­formed with the same pas­sion and agility that those com­posers who heard were so thrilled by. Not only did the music that Lakatos plays have a huge influ­ence on the devel­op­ment of music in the Roman­tic era, but it’s just plain fun and never boring.

My par­ents heard some Gyspy ensem­bles when they were vaca­tion­ing in Hun­gary years ago and were also blown away. It’s remark­able how this music has sur­vived all of these cen­turies intact.

Stop, ID Thief!

File under P for Pain-in-the-Ass. It looks like I’m yet another vic­tim of iden­tity theft. Here are the details:

A cou­ple of days ago, I was con­tacted by a Pub­lic Rela­tions rep­re­sen­ta­tive, work­ing on behalf of a US com­pany who man­u­fac­tures high-end Home The­atre Remote Controls. While they were show­ing their prod­ucts at the Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show (CES) in Las Vegas ear­lier this month, a man approached their booth claim­ing to be a reporter for Time Mag­a­zine.  He asked for some sam­ple units to review and pro­vided cre­den­tials.  Accord­ing to the sales­per­son who I talked to today at the com­pany, the guy  ‘looked the part’.  He said he was ‘Mark Drucker’, pro­vided them with a Las Vegas address, and a link to a post­ing I did for the Bar­Camp­BankBC event last Sep­tem­ber for TechVibes when they asked for “a link to a recent story or a scan of a recent clip from Time.”

The PR Rep. con­tacted Rob Lewis at TechVibes, who imme­di­ately got him in touch with me (Thanks again, Rob!), and that’s how I found out about this inci­dent. I con­firmed with the PR per­son that I wasn’t the guy at their booth, and they got in touch with the com­pany, who for­warded a thread of emails they had with the guy, who had fol­lowed up with them, pro­vid­ing the link to my TechVibes post. They also gave me a phone num­ber to the head of Mar­ket­ing at the com­pany (who met this guy), which I then called.

I’m bet­ting that this guy didn’t fig­ure on the ven­dor doing much of a check on him and gave the link to my arti­cle because I was one of the Druck­ers who came up high on Google (A new peril for hav­ing good SEO!).  If you search for ‘David Drucker’, after my blogs, the Techvibes arti­cle is the third hit, and I’m most of the links on the first page . The fact that I was in Canada was prob­a­bly a nice-to-have for his scam.

As for the dif­fer­ent first name, when asked, the guy said that he some­times wrote under the name ‘David’.  He left his name on piece of paper with the com­pany. Accord­ing to their Head of Mar­ket­ing, he did a quick search on Google and found a Mark and Jill Drucker in Las Vegas at the address he gave them.  Lucky for me, I got wind of this pretty quickly, and their Head of Mar­ket­ing is extremely knowl­edge­able about this sort of thing, even hav­ing writ­ten an arti­cle him­self on iden­tity theft.  I did a Google search as well, and quickly found the same infor­ma­tion for Mark and Jill Drucker at that address. I even saw what the house looked like, and accord­ing to lasvegas.blockshopper.com I  know the value of the place and square footage.

I called the Las Vegas Police. While they took the time to lis­ten, they explained that they couldn’t file a police report for an Iden­tity Theft crime over the phone, with­out the vic­tim report­ing it to them in per­son with ID (makes sense). In the US, it is pos­si­ble to file a ‘Cour­tesy Police Report’ in a dif­fer­ent state, and have it sent to the state where the crime took place. While I don’t know if Canada has an arrange­ment to do this, I’ve con­tacted the Van­cou­ver Police, and am expect­ing a call back later today for them to gather the details. Hope­fully they will for­ward it on to the LVPD Fraud Detail.  Also, with the Police Report in hand, I can con­tact Equifax, Exper­ian and Tran­sUnion, as well as my credit card issuers to put a ‘watch’ on all of my credit cards, and to make sure that if this guy tries to open a new credit card account in my name, he won’t be able to do so. This blog post is another way of fight­ing back, as well as the Twit­ter link that went out when I pub­lished it.

Let’s hope that this guy doesn’t try this again.

2.5 Million People are Worth a Picture

I hope the world still wants them back.

The Final Hours of the Disaster and The Second Great Emancipator

I’ve been com­plain­ing that lately it’s taken me a long time to write these entries, and I’m not sure why. Per­haps I’m try­ing to cram too much into them, or I’m fuss­ing too much with the word­ing or details, or per­haps I’m get­ting dis­tracted more often (by Twit­ter, Face­book, or per­haps some task I should actu­ally be doing). In any case, I think that I’ll work on this until I don’t want to any more, and then just hit the Pub­lish but­ton, whether it’s a pol­ished epis­tle or not. Call it blog­ging Ker­ouac Style.

First, impres­sions of this spe­cial week in the con­text of his­tory: So much of the past cou­ple of days and com­ing hours is a reminder of how our life changed, how it took a dif­fer­ent turn mainly because of a change in gov­ern­ment. Some friends and fam­ily were sur­prised that we did it: “You’re leav­ing because some guy got elected? What does that have to do with you?” I think that per­haps those who were skep­ti­cal that any admin­is­tra­tion in Wash­ing­ton D.C. could have any direct influ­ence on the way their lives went may now be recon­sid­er­ing that assump­tion. The wrong peo­ple at the top, and you can poten­tially lose every­thing. While I’m not sure that the par­tic­u­lar peo­ple who ques­tioned our emi­gra­tion from the United States actu­ally lost their homes or sav­ings, I’ll bet that they have shaken their heads in the won­der of just how much dam­age a few key peo­ple — Pres­i­dent, Vice Pres­i­dent, Attor­ney Gen­eral, Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury— can actu­ally do.

Back to the images on the TV and the com­men­ta­tors on the radio and Inter­net: It seems as though now, the US is at last let­ting out it’s col­lec­tive breath. With the peo­ple around the Mall in Wash­ing­ton (and also the throngs of peo­ple con­gre­gat­ing by the rail­road tracks between Philadel­phia and Wash­ing­ton D.C. ear­lier in the week), I think I see some­thing more than fan wor­ship, or even, as some cor­re­spon­dents seem to be char­ac­ter­iz­ing it, pride mainly on behalf of the black com­mu­nity. There is an irony that US Pres­i­dent Elect Barack Obama took the same train route to the White House as Abra­ham Lin­coln did, and it’s not the irony that you might think I mean (that it’s because he is black). No, it’s because Lin­coln was called The Great Eman­ci­pa­tor’, for his act of sign­ing the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion, which freed the slaves and ush­ered in the War between the States. Obama’s tremen­dous pop­u­lar­ity is also because he is act­ing essen­tially as The Sec­ond Great Eman­ci­pa­tor. He’s not free­ing the slaves; he’s free­ing the Amer­i­can cit­i­zenry from eight years of sub­ju­ga­tion.  There have been the begin­nings of reck­on­ings, includ­ing this page, which attempts to tally the score of all the wrong Bush and his hench­men have car­ried out or let hap­pen on his watch. And also the spokesman for the out­rage that Bush has pro­voked, Keith Olber­mann, who almost suc­ceeds in com­press­ing the eight years of Bush into 8 min­utes (it really is more like 9), and ends up sound­ing curi­ously like the 1989 Billy Joel song, We Didn’t Start the Fire, which lists his­tor­i­cal events in the same rapid-fire style. The effect for the past 8 years, is more nau­se­at­ing then enlight­en­ing, but here it is:

With all of these reminders of how bad things got, I’m all the more con­vinced that this is not the time for us to return to the US. Our move to Canada was not an extended vaca­tion from the US, no mat­ter how much Pres­i­dent Obama renounces and attempts to reverse the deci­sions and screw-ups of the past eight years. For one thing, as I’ve told some, it would be a bad time to be look­ing for work in the US, no mat­ter where we moved. Rats don’t jump on to sink­ing ships. The econ­omy here in BC, while not immune to the global down­turn, is prob­a­bly about as good as it gets in the world these days. Sec­ondly, we pre­fer our life here, for rea­sons I’ve often laid out in this blog. We like the energy and vital­ity of a young city that is grow­ing, rather than Boston, which was actu­ally decreas­ing in pop­u­la­tion. (I haven’t checked if this is still the case). We have new friends, new places to explore, Pam is embark­ing on a new career in Immi­gra­tion Con­sult­ing, and I’m hop­ing that my new posi­tion (which I admit I’ve not writ­ten about much, partly because it still hasn’t paid me a cent) will finally result in our get­ting some money com­ing in. There have been other improve­ments that I know I’d miss if I returned to liv­ing in the US:  a cou­ple of weeks ago I got my first colonoscopy, which is some­thing that men are encour­aged to have when you get to my age. My doc­tor was thor­ough, the pro­ce­dure was as quick and pain­less as pos­si­ble, and the most expen­sive part of the whole event was park­ing at the UBC Hos­pi­tal park­ing lot. ($9). Uni­ver­sal Health Care, the new holy grail of speeches and dis­cus­sions by pun­dits is a real thing here, and it works pretty well by me. I also don’t have to hold my tongue in my sup­port of same-sex mar­riage, or my antipa­thy toward reli­gion as I would be forced to do in the States.

In the final reck­on­ing, the dread­ful train wreck (as chron­i­cled above) that was the Bush Era may have been the force that pro­pelled us here to Van­cou­ver, but in the end, what has us stay­ing is a bet­ter life no mat­ter how much the US crawls back to the coun­try it once was, at least in our life­times. We are still stay­ing put, and I’ll be happy to write that here, on Face­book, in the LA Times (as I did the last time some­one asked me to write about it), or any­where else. The ques­tion is often posed almost jok­ingly (as if the ques­tioner knew that the answer would be no even before I said or wrote it).

Oh, one last part­ing image of schaden­freude for Bush and Cheney: I just learned that Dick Cheney pulled a mus­cle in his back mov­ing boxes out of Blair House, the Vice President’s res­i­dence, and will have to appear at the Inau­gu­ra­tion and other final pub­lic appear­ances glow­er­ing in a wheel­chair, like Old Man Pot­ter of It’s a Won­der­ful Life, (which I wrote about a cou­ple of weeks ago), hated and feared. Life imi­tates Art.