An elderly couple is charged $900,000 for $60,000 worth of home improvements. The woman is so traumatized by the experience that she suffers a fatal heart attack. Her Alzheimer-afflicted husband ends up institutionalized. The shady contractor is finally sentenced to 114 months in jail. Also, debit card fraud can be simple or sophisticated, but the resulting damage is equally harmful. Rare police surveillance footage highlights the dangers.
Countries: CA
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Identity Theft/Lottery and Prize Fraud
Collection agencies begin calling “Ann Marie” demanding the repayment of thousands of dollars. A woman assuming Ann Marie’s identity, with only social insurance and driver’s license numbers, had opened a bank account and stolen thousands of dollars from Ann Marie’s credit cards and line-of-credit accounts. Also, an 83-year-old woman loses most of her belongings to heartless fraudsters, by financing promises of lottery winnings.
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Employment Scam and Adoption Fraud
A woman takes a $4,800 cheque from a fraudster and pays him $3,500. She anticipates making a tidy profit, but the cheque bounces and she loses her $3,500. A college student trying to earn some extra cash ends up working for nothing when he is paid with a fraudulent cheque. Also, an adoption agency takes fees from several couples, without enough children for all of them, and also lies about the children’s backgrounds.
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Pump and Dump and Used Car Fraud
Repeat fraudster Harris Dempsey “Butch” Ballow skips bail for his first $10 million pump and dump stock fraud, and while he’s on the lam, manages to set up another $3 million scam. Also, a couple selling a car get a call from a buyer in Nigeria, who sends them a cashier’s cheque for more than the asking price, asking them to cash it and send back the remaining cash. They do so, but lose the money they advanced when the cheque is later declared a fake.
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Fraud Squad TV – DVD Set
Fraud is a multi-billion dollar industry for which we all end up paying the price. Hosted by Tom Hnatiw, this groundbreaking show consolidates the efforts of law enforcement, corporations and the public, with immediate information on detection, prevention and policing of all types of fraud. Learn about and protect yourself from scams such as identity theft, fake charities, mortgage and title frauds and more!
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The Moving Fraud and Nigerian 419 Scam
A teacher hired a mover to take her belongings from New Haven, Connecticut to Radford, Virginia. On moving day, the movers loaded their truck, locked it and then presented the victim with a bill for $4,745 – more than double the original quote. Also, a doctor recounts how he was taken by the popular form of the age-old advance loan fraud. Fortunately, the culprit was caught in an international sting operation.
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Daniel Gottesman: Quantum Cryptography
Sensitive information can be valuable to others – from personal credit card numbers to state and military secrets. Throughout history, sophisticated codes have been developed in an attempt to keep important data from prying eyes. Now, new technologies are emerging based on the surprising laws of quantum physics that govern the atomic scale. These powerful techniques threaten to crack some secret codes in widespread use today and, at the same time, offer new quantum cryptographic protocols which could one day profoundly alter the way we safeguard critical information.
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John Grant: Mission To Mars
An expected 90-day robotic odyssey on Mars has stretched into a two year scientific marathon. Dr. Grant, a geologist with the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, helped pick the landing sites and works on the day-to-day operations of the Spirit and Opportunity Rovers. He shares the latest photos, explains what Martian mysteries have been uncovered and offers a look at how scientists plan to push the limits of future robots in space.
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The John Ellis/Robert Orr: The Large Hadron Collider
International researchers at the Large Hadron Collider have embarked on one of science’s greatest adventures. With its very high energy, the particle collider will explore the mysteries surrounding the smallest particles of matter. It may also pierce secrets that the universe has hidden since the early stages of the Big Bang, such as the nature of dark matter and the origin of matter itself. It is the largest scientific experiment ever attempted and the complex international efforts to bring it to life, including Canada’s involvement, are part of this presentation.
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Edward Kolb: The Quantum and The Cosmos
Long before the emergence of planets, stars, or galaxies, the universe consisted of an exploding quantum soup of “elementary” particles. Encoded in this formless, shapeless soup were the seeds of cosmic structure, which over billions of years grew into the complex universe we observe today. Prof. Kolb reveals how the connection between the “inner space” of the quantum and the “outer space” of the cosmos may hold the key to the nature of the dark matter holding our galaxy together and the mysterious dark energy pulling it apart.