Identity Resolution Daily

[Post from Infoglide] Big Oil and Big Data

“In ‘Mining the Tar Sands of Big Data’, Matthew Driscoll and Roger Ehrenberg draw an apt parallel between the earth’s vast oil reserves and big data: until recently it wasn’t economically and technically feasible to mine these resources efficiently. In both cases, that’s changing.”

Hattiesburg American: Scammers get away with $60 billion

“It’s obvious that Medicare’s and Medicaid’s default button is set to ‘pay the claim’ instead of seeking more complete verification that the patient needed the benefit or actually received it. There is no other way people could rip off the agencies for so much money - like the three brothers from Miami suspected of fraud for $119 million worth of billing for HIV drugs before reportedly fleeing to Cuba.”

KSAZ: Inside the Arizona Counter-Terrorism Center

“‘Terrorism is a threat to Arizona as much or more than many states because of our size, and critical industries we have here.’ Roughly 200 people work there, including FBI agents, Homeland Security agents, and police officers from different departments around Arizona. They analyze tips and track down leads, anything having to do with potential terrorist activity.”

O’Reilly Radar: Will data be too cheap to meter?

“When I explain to people why the Big Data movement is important — why it’s a real change instead of a fad — I point to price as the fundamental difference between the old and new worlds. Until a few years ago, the state of the art for doing meaningful analysis of multi-gigabyte data sets was the data warehouse. These custom systems were very capable, but could easily cost millions of dollars. Today I can hire a hundred machine Hadoop cluster from Amazon for just $10 an hour, and process thousands of gigabytes a day.”

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By the Infoglide Software team

Financial Fraud Law: SEC Brings Expert Network Insider Trading Charges

“The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged that six expert network consultants and employees illegally tipped hedge funds and other investors to generate nearly $6 million in illicit gains… The SEC alleged that four technology company employees, while moonlighting as consultants or ‘experts’ to Primary Global Research LLC (’PGR’) without the knowledge of their employers, abused their access to inside information about such technology companies as AMD, Apple, Dell, Flextronics, and Marvell. The consultants received hundreds of thousands of dollars in purported consulting fees from PGR for sharing the inside information with PGR employees and clients, according to the SEC.”

ksnt.com: Fraud Insurance Claims on Vehicles

“Clark said people have come up with clever ways to file fraud claims by staging accidents where everyone in the accident is part of it and they try to get some sort of disability payment.”

SFGate: Medicare fraud has its own most-wanted list

“Topping the list are Miami brothers Carlos, Luis and Jose Benitez. Owners of a string of medical clinics, they allegedly scammed Medicare out of $119 million by billing for costly HIV drugs that patients never received or did not need. Authorities say they bought hotels, helicopters and boats before fleeing to Cuba.”

Business Day: Employee fraud ‘is on the rise’ with executives leading the way

“Companies worldwide have seen an increase in fraud due to ineffective internal controls, according to a report issued by Deloitte yesterday… a significant percentage of companies (51%) recognised they did not have sufficient numbers of trained staff to provide effective assurance on fraud risk in their organisations, with smaller businesses finding themselves even more constrained.”

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By the Infoglide Software Team

Proactive Investors UK: Westminster Group secures distribution rights for ID fraud detection software in UK and Middle East

Westminster Group PLC (LON:WSG) said it has secured distribution rights in the UK and the Middle East for the identity fraud detection software of Texas-based Infoglide Software. The commercial details of the deal were not disclosed. Westminster expects the product to be popular with national security agencies across the Middle East in particular. Infoglide’s identity resolution technology searches, matches and links entities across multiple, disparate data sources using over 50 algorithms.”

WSJ: Confidentiality Cloaks Medicare Abuse

“Dr. Wayne, a 50-year-old osteopath, denies abusing the system and hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing by authorities. He says his regimen ‘does wonders’ if used correctly. He adds that he gave physical therapy to ‘patients who needed it, with appropriate diagnoses, and I should get paid for it.’ Medicare administrators apparently felt otherwise. In 2009 he says he was placed on heightened scrutiny and eventually sold his business. But not until he had received more than $2.6 million from Medicare between 2007 and 2009, according to the person familiar with the matter.”

GigaOm: Mining the Tar Sands of Big Data

“Unlike oil reserves, data is an abundant resource on our wired planet. Though much of it is noise, at scale and with the right mining algorithms, this data can yield information that can predict traffic jams, entertainment trends, even flu outbreaks. These are hints of the promise of big data, which will mature in the coming decade, driven by advances in three principal areas: sensor networks, cloud computing, and machine learning.”

Criminal Justice Online: West Haven Woman Admits Role in Mortgage Fraud Scheme

“Specifically, on October 1, 2009, MARTINEAU purchased a residence at 211 Lloyd Street in New Haven after working with others to obtain an FHA-insured loan to buy the house at the fraudulently inflated price of $160,000. The loan package for this transaction included false information about the MARTINEAU’s employment, assets and liabilities, and MARTINEAU’s intention to occupy the property as her principal residence. The loan application also was supported by false documentation, including earning statements and fraudulent bank records.”

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By the Infoglide Software Team

CNN: Lottery officials: Rightful winners of ‘03 jackpot getting paid

“The buyer redeemed the ticket later at the outlet in Burlington and wasn’t told that he won a free ticket, investigators determined, according to the CBC. That ticket went on to win a $12.5 million jackpot. It was claimed by Kathleen Chung, sister and daughter of men who worked at the outlet.”

O’Reilly Radar: Will data warehousing survive the advent of big data?

“The current hype around ‘big data‘ has caused some analysts and vendors to declare the death of data warehousing, and in some cases, the demise even of the relational database. A prerequisite to discussing these claims is to understand and clearly define the term ‘big data.’ However, it’s a fairly nebulous concept.”

Healthlaw Insights: Whistleblower Suits are Rewarding and So is Fraud Recovery

“In addition, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force has been extended to seven cities. Using advanced data analysis techniques to identify high billing levels in healthcare fraud hot spots, the interagency teams can target emerging or migrating schemes along with chronic fraud by criminals masquerading as healthcare providers or suppliers.”

ClaimsJournal.com: Florida Businessman Charged with Workers’ Compensation Fraud

“Florida CFO Jeff Atwater announced the arrest of David Rodriguez-Socarras, who officials allege used a ’shell’ company and fictitious name in order to cash nearly $3 million in payroll checks through a money service business to avoid workers’ compensation premiums and payroll taxes.”

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By the Infoglide Software Team

The Economist: Data, data everywhere

“By 2013 the amount of traffic flowing over the internet annually will reach 667 exabytes, according to Cisco, a maker of communications gear. And the quantity of data continues to grow faster than the ability of the network to carry it all.”

Financial Fraud Law: Fed’s 2010 Health Care Fraud Recovery: $4 Billion

“The federal government pointed to the expansion of Medicare Fraud Strike Force teams as one reason for the increased recovery. In FY 2010, the total number of cities with strike force prosecution teams was increased to seven, all of which have teams of investigators and prosecutors dedicated to fighting fraud.  The strike force teams use advanced data analysis techniques to identify high-billing levels in health care fraud hot spots so that interagency teams can target emerging or migrating schemes along with chronic fraud by criminals masquerading as health care providers or suppliers.”

Gartner: 10 Critical Myths and Realities of Master Data Management

“MDM is the latest attempt to solve the old problem of inconsistent versions of important data at the centre of an organization,” said Andrew White, research vice president at Gartner. “As with any new initiative, there is a lot of hype and confusion, and with hype and confusion comes misunderstanding. Executive sponsors of MDM and MDM program managers must avoid several common mistakes that have been known to derail MDM initiatives in the past.”

TechWorld: Cloud Computing: How big is big data? IDC’s answer

“The report notes that by 2020, much of this data will be held in cloud environments or will be “touched by cloud,” which means data that transits through a cloud service or is temporarily held in a cloud application. The report estimates that perhaps 15% of all data will be held in the cloud, and that around one-third will live in or pass through the cloud.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Financial Services Has a Growing Problem: Internal Fraud

“The Aite Group recently authored a report entitled ‘Internal Fraud: The Devil Within.’ After surveying 35 fraud and product executives at financial institutions across the U.S. and Canada, they concluded that internal fraud is a severe and growing problem that often goes undetected and almost always flies under the radar of public scrutiny.”

Bloor: There’s identity resolution and then there’s identity resolution

“The second type of identity resolution is similar but different. The classic example is in police work. Here you want to know that some particular criminal has fifteen different aliases, say. Moreover, under each of those identities he or she will have multiple contacts and you may want to do social network analysis against those contacts to see who else might have criminal tendencies.”

Chicago Sun Times: Police sensing crime before it happens

“In October, the Chicago Police Department’s new crime-forecasting unit was analyzing 911 calls for service and produced an intelligence report predicting a shooting would happen soon on a particular block on the South Side. Three minutes later, it did, police officials say. That got police Supt. Jody Weis thinking. He wondered if the department could produce intelligence reports even quicker. Next time, officers might have an hour’s notice before a shooting — instead of just a few minutes.”

KERO23:Ten People Indicted In Wide-Ranging Real Estate Scam

“The indictment alleges that, from approximately January 2004 to September 2007, the defendants perpetrated a scheme to defraud mortgage lenders by submitting fraudulent loan applications with material misrepresentations, including misrepresentations concerning the borrower’s income, assets, employment status, and intent to use the home as the borrower’s primary residence… The scheme involved more than $20 million in losses to lenders.”

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By the Infoglide Software Team

South Florida Business Journal: State Farm sues doctors, who fight back

“A contentious battle is heating up once again between State Farm Insurance Co. and a group of doctors that the insurer alleges have been involved in a multimillion-dollar insurance fraud scheme, according to a lawsuit. The suit claims the doctors submitted fraudulent claims based on ‘medically unnecessary diagnostic procedures’ used on those in car accidents.”

The National: Time for health care to move to the next level

“A Booz & Company study recently quantified some of the projected benefits from a proposed e-health initiative in Australia: by 2020, the programme could eliminate up to 10,000 deaths caused by medication mistakes, along with up to 310,000 unnecessary hospital admissions, 2 million unnecessary outpatient visits, and 7 million laboratory tests.”

[PDF] Inside the Midmarket: A 2011 Perspective

“In 2009, midsize businesses (53%) were mainly consumed with reducing costs and increasing efficiencies. The progress and momentum gained from these efforts continue to yield critical benefits and advantages for midsize businesses. Because of this momentum, they are now in a position to turn their attention to more forward-looking aspects of their business. This is demonstrated by the significant increase in focus on customers (+20 pts), innovation (+7 pts), and revenue growth (+5 pts).”

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[Post from Infoglide] Entity Identity Management

“What is entity identity management? It simply means that an ER system can store and maintain a record of identity information that persists over time.  Entity identity management is essential for an ER engine to operate in identity resolution or identity capture mode and for it to maintain persistent entity identifiers.”

InformationWeek: 4 Companies Getting Real Results From Cloud Computing

“Why are they moving to the cloud? Rarely because it’s considered cheaper. In some cases, the cloud represents a faster, more flexible way to get a new system up and running. Oftentimes, it’s the ease of integration afforded by the cloud servers, using standard Web service practices, that lets a company launch a new mobile application faster or run a business process that cuts across many partners more efficiently.”

MindHealthBiz: Consumer ID

“A little over a year ago, Rand Corporation said that the Unique Patient Identifier would cost $11 billion, and pay off nationwide in reducing these sorts of medical errors, and in simplifying the nationwide effectiveness of the Electronic Health Record (EHR), which in turn can introduce a high level of efficiency, and a way to enforce patient privacy.”

pi newswire: US Sues NYC for Medicaid Fraud

“Enrollment in Personal Care Service requires approval from a qualified health care professional. This approval is missing in the cases of a ’substantial percentage’ of the 17,500 individuals who have received 24-hour care since 2000, claims the lawsuit. The lawsuit lists several examples of patients allegedly not properly assigned to the Personal Care Service. A 65-year-old woman was deemed to only need limited care, being of sound mind and body. Instead, she was provided with 24-hour care on the federal government’s bill.”

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By the Infoglide Team

BND.com: Insurance fraud investigators begin probe into workers’ comp claims at Menard

“A total of 389 guards and other workers have filed more than 500 claims, including about 290 still pending. About 230 of these claimed injury for the underlying cause of ‘repetitive trauma,’ including carpal tunnel syndrome, an injury of the wrist. The prison employs about 760 workers, of which 567 are guards. ‘The Department of Insurance is investigating recent questions raised in connection with workers’ compensation claims filed against the state of Illinois at the Menard Correctional Center,’ department spokesman Louis Pukelis said Tuesday in a written statement.”

HSToday: Fusion Centers: Tough Tightrope 

“As states and localities have put up fusion centers designed precisely to overcome this, however, they’ve had to face a different challenge: ensuring not only the quantity but the quality of information they collect and report. In candid conversations with Homeland Security Today, leading privacy advocates, scholars and state law enforcement and federal officials addressed some of the key facets of this challenge, as well as steps that can be taken to ensure that fusion centers live up to their full potential as a counterterrorism tool.”

StarNewsOnline: North Carolina collects big from Medicaid fraudsters

“North Carolina’s Medicaid fraud investigators pulled in millions last year through dozens of cases of fraud and patient abuse, the state’s attorney general’s office reported Monday. The office’s Medicaid Investigations Unit prosecuted 22 criminal convictions and 18 civil settlements, recovering $53.5 million, during the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to a press release from N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper.”

ReadWriteWeb: What Cloud Computing Means For Small Businesses

“Needless to say, it’s a huge deal. Gartner recently put cloud computing at the top of its list of top strategic technologies for 2011 and it’s far from the only expert extolling the glory of the Web-hosted software and infrastructure. For small businesses, the significance of this primarily comes down to cost. In many cases, using cloud-based infrastructure is cheaper than running and maintaining one’s own physical servers.”

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[Post from Infoglide] You Can’t Handle the Truth

“We have a new Congress and a new House majority leader as of this week’s swearing in ceremony. The current House majority party (R) plans to pass a bill to repeal the ‘Obamacare’ bill passed during the last session by the former House majority party (D).  Both parties make ‘fact based’ arguments about why killing or keeping the bill will reduce the deficit, yet both can’t be right. This isn’t a political blog, and I’m not going to take a side on this issue. What struck me is how often we use ‘facts’ to bolster our argument, with ‘facts’ defined as any real data that can be massaged or misinterpreted to suggest that our desired outcome appears to be the best one.”

The Washington Post: The Navigator: Does Secure Flight program mean more money for the airlines?

“When she arrived at the screening area, her husband’s incorrect name had already been checked against a list of potential security threats and had passed. Once passengers receive their boarding passes, the Secure Flight process is already complete, according to the TSA.”

LinkedIn: Data Quality of Gender / Sex Codes and the Impacts on Identity Data Matching

“Identity matching requires matching practitioners to decide which collection of fields best allows the correct matching of one record with another. The choice can be made from fields such as name, date of birth, address details, sex / gender, and even unique identifier values (when they exist). The use of sex / gender in that process might be seen in a slightly different light.”

nj.com: Bill would allow people to buy New Jersey Lottery tickets electronically

“Under the bill, the commission would establish procedures for the payment of winning tickets holders, which may include crediting amounts won to a player’s account or direct deposit into a player’s account at a financial institution… The commission would also be directed to ensure that the program includes security measures to protect against fraud, prevent wagering by underage persons and protect the personal and financial information of players.”

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