Identity Resolution Daily

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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[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 Douglas Wood, Infoglide Senior Vice President

On the heels of the very successful Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) conference last month comes an industry event which represents investigators of financial crimes and fraud.  The International Association of Financial Crimes Investigators (IAFCI) meets in Washington, DC next week with an agenda that is chock full of sessions involving discussions of best practices for solving and preventing financial crimes.

With an audience looking to share thoughts on insider trading detection, mortgage fraud, organized crime ring detection, anti-money laundering and insurance claims fraud, the conference is sure to be buzzing!

One thing for certain is that there is no one “right” answer to prevention and investigation.  As I pointed out in a previous post here, it is clear that predictive analytics technologies have been a valuable tool for organizations to “catch” fraudsters based upon their behaviors.   With more and more organizations adopting identity resolution technology, however, those “best practices” are becoming even better.

Identity resolution technology goes at the heart of who’s who… and who’s working with whom… by “gliding” across an organization’s data (internal and/or third party) and searching for those tiny pieces of forensic data attributes that are the golden nuggets of financial crime investigation.  Identity resolution helps investigators understand the identity matches and non-obvious relationships between individuals across enterprise data – despite input errors or deliberate attempts to deceive.

In combating financial crimes, identity resolution technology has become the next big ‘thing’, as it provides answers to the following types of questions:

• Does someone in an incident database resemble someone in another database… and who else is connected to them?
• Is the witness in an insurance claim suspiciously similar to someone in the SIU data?
• Do credit card applicants share subtle attributes that would point to bust-out fraud?
• Does the loan applicant have a non-obvious relationship with an employee?  Or a known fraudster?
• How is the stock trader connected (by degrees of separation) to an insider?
• Is an applicant somehow connected to a Denied Person?

Infoglide Software Corporation, the leader in identity resolution engine technology, will be attending IAFCI next week and we would encourage you to drop by our booth and say hello. Otherwise, drop a note to sales@infoglide.com and I will have someone reach out to you directly to explain how this all works.

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By Douglas Wood, Infoglide Senior VP

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) held its annual conference and exhibition in Washington, DC this week.  Through the keynote address and the plethora of wonderful speakers, one message became loud and clear - fraudsters are becoming more and more creative in finding ways to circumvent your policies.

We heard stories of insider trading, bust-out fraud, mortgage fraud, insurance claims fraud and organized retail crime.  Despite the diligence and hard work by the certified fraud examiners, too many of these stories ended up with a common theme - the crooks got away with an awful lot of booty before getting caught.

Predictive analytics and behavioral analytics have provided organizations with a great weapon in combating fraud.  Establishing norms and ranking activities against those norms can have a dramatic effect on reducing losses to fraud and crime.  What has been missing, however, is the wide-scale adoption of a tool that allows fraud examiners to “automatically connect the dots” between the bits and pieces of forensic information they have.  Identity Resolution is that tool… and it has been the talk of the conference here.

The powerful federated similarity search capabilities of identity resolution help investigators understand the hidden relationships between individuals across enterprise data (Applicants, SARs, Incidents, Employees, Claimants, Witnesses, etc).  Let’s face it, the fraudsters are typically not stupid.  They know how to get around the systems by engaging their family and friends to form a profitable fraud ring.  Identity Resolution gives companies the power to search into ALL their data with  a view to understanding “who’s who” and “who’s working with whom” - despite deliberate attempts to deceive.

We believe this technology is becoming absolutely critical for corporations to predict and examine fraudulent activity, and that mainstream adoption is happening right now.

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If you’re involved in fraud detection, then you’re probably aware of ACFE, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. With over 50,000 members, it’s the largest single fraud anti-fraud organization in the world. ACFE is also the publisher of FRAUD magazine.

Starting Sunday, July 25 and continuing through Wednesday, July 28, the 21st Annual ACFE Fraud Conference & Exhibition will be held at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. If you’re attending, please come by and meet us at Infoglide Software Booth 329!

The conference is geared to address the challenges faced by anti-fraud professionals, featuring top-level educational sessions and providing a great forum for participants to network with colleagues. Join us in Washington, D.C. and experience for yourself why this is the most important event for anti-fraud professionals.

If you would like to schedule some time to meet with Infoglide representatives, please contact us at sales@infoglide.com.

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[Post from Infoglide] Exposing Fraudulent Networks in Healthcare

“More than half of the $98 million in ‘improper payments’ by the federal government in 2009 were made through Medicare and Medicaid. A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine points out that ’since 1990, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has designated Medicare as a high-risk federal program because its vast size and complexity make it vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse.’”

CapitalSoup.com: CFO Alex Sink Announces Joint Investigation Arrests In Mortgage Fraud Crackdown

“Investigators discovered that Alan Weitz, vice president of Bal Bay Properties, and his son Brandon Weitz, working for the same company, recruited ’straw buyers’ who were offered $3,000 each to allow their names to be used on mortgage loan applications to purchase homes with the understanding that the properties would be quit-claimed over to an actual buyer.”

KXAN.com: Homeland Security praises new fusion center

“The Fusion Center, seeded with Homeland Security money, collaborates the effort and information of local, state and federal authorities. Austin’s Fusion Center is yet to be fully operational, but last February it played a critical role in the rescues at the Echelon Building.”

News 6: 94 individuals charged in the largest Medicare fraud case in history

“The defendants participated in schemes to submit claims to Medicare for treatments that were unnecessary and in many times never provided. The defendants include doctors, health care company owners, executives and others, which collectively defrauded Medicare for approximately $251 million.”

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