Identity Resolution Daily

[Post from Infoglide] Preventable Nightmares?

“Every father’s nightmare happened in North Carolina this week. A young woman apparently left a bar voluntarily with a man she met there, and she was subsequently found murdered. The apparent murderer arrested in Niagara Falls had a criminal record that included sexual abuse and was on probation in North Carolina. Could this tragedy have been prevented?”

mydesert.com: Palm Desert store the good guys in lottery fraud investigation

“In the sting, investigators presented lottery retailers with winning lottery tickets for large dollar amounts and tested whether the retailer would properly inform them of their winnings. The Jensen’s on Cook Street was the only retailer who informed the undercover agent of his winnings.”

Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Airline passengers to face new security rules

“American spokesman Billy Sanez said that for tickets purchased before Sept. 15 for travel dates Nov. 1 and later, the Secure Flight data was requested but not required. The airline’s reservation system now requires the data for travel after Nov. 1. ‘Now, you won’t be able to get a ticket if you don’t give us that information,’ Sanez said. He said it must be provided no matter where the ticket is purchased: online, through a travel agency or at the airport.”

DOJ: Lowell Couple Pleads Guilty in Under-the-Table Payroll Scheme

“The defendants concealed the true size of their payroll from the IRS, and from their workers compensation insurer, in order to reduce their employer payroll taxes (FICA) and their workers compensation insurance payments. They did this by paying their employees in cash each week and hiding any record of the payments. Even though they retained a payroll service, they routinely told the service that C&A had no work and therefore no employees. Relying on this misrepresentation, the payroll service filed over 20 quarterly payroll tax returns on behalf of C&A that reported no payroll.”

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By Mike Shultz, Infoglide Software CEO

Every father’s nightmare happened in North Carolina this week. A young woman apparently left a bar voluntarily with a man she met there, and she was subsequently found murdered. The apparent murderer arrested in Niagara Falls had a criminal record that included sexual abuse and was on probation in North Carolina. Could this tragedy have been prevented?

We’ve written recently about the availability of vast data resources, including surface web, dark web, and social media sources. Surface web sources include all the information readily available to search engines. Dark web sources are those available over the internet that require password or other special access, such as local, state, and federal government databases. And of course, an incredible amount of detailed information is contributed on social networking sites by individuals about themselves, families, friends, and colleagues.

It’s feasible to reduce the likelihood of crimes like the one above using available data and technology. Given a few attributes about the murderer, identity resolution could have “similarity searched” the man’s identity against a multitude of online sources and provided a picture of his history and associations. The technology exists to enable people to know who they’re dealing with, no matter the social or business context. Maybe it’s time to use it.

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By Mike Betron, Infoglide Director of Marketing

For decades, researchers in the social sciences have used “unobtrusive measures” as defined originally in a 1966 book by Webb, Campbell, Schwartz, and Sechrest. The idea is to collect and analyze data without disturbing the subjects of the study. For example, instead of surveying subjects to find out how many candy bars they eat each day, the subjects’ garbage is searched and the number of candy wrappers is tallied.

Social science researchers are driven to unobtrusive measures when they encounter or anticipate either intentional or unintentional bias in their subjects’ responses. For example, in the study above, one may be inclined to understate the number of candy bars consumed (either intentionally or unintentionally) to improve personal perception.  In the case of fraud, bad actors have an even stronger motivation to purposely bias any information because they don’t want to get caught.

Data analysis using unobtrusive measures can be extremely effective for discovering fraud and risk because bad actors often provide different versions of identifying data to avoid detection. For example, suppose you’re responsible for the placement of foster children in safe homes. A key requirement is to avoid placing a child in a home where a registered sex offender lives. However, what if no sex offender has the same official address as the foster home candidate but one does in fact live in the foster home or has a relationship with the foster home owner. How can identity resolution be used to alert you to that fact?

By using sophisticated algorithms to measure and score similarity between data fields, non-obvious relationship analytics (NORAn) helps users discover relationships between people that would otherwise go undetected. In our foster home example, NORAn could be applied to uncover the fact that a resident of the candidate foster home shares a sequential phone number with another person who shares the same address as a registered sex offender. The information highlighted in red shows the at least partial matches (all information is fictitious).

When we see these results, it’s not hard to speculate that Sally may be Jane’s mother or daughter and that John is a boyfriend who is living with her. If Sally and John visit Jane, there could be significant risk to any foster child living with Jane. Although we can’t determine that there is a relationship here with 100% certainty, the statistical probability of a potential link to a known sex offender is high enough to warrant further investigation.

Another area of social services where this might be relevant would be when a social worker is making a home visit and needs to check the home to make sure that no one with a record of violent crime lives at the house. What if a violent offender has listed his official address as his mother’s house but spends about half his time at his girlfriend’s house? A social worker who is conducting a home visit at the girlfriend’s house would want to know that.

Fortunately a major pizza delivery company sells their data, and that it turns out to be pretty accurate because if people want their pizza delivered they have to give the right address. By tapping into this data as well as other internally or externally available data, identity resolution technology will uncover the fact that the violent offender uses that address periodically as his residence.

Many health and human services organizations utilize data matching technology with varied levels of sophistication but, as evidenced by these examples, data matching alone is not enough. Social workers have to have the ability to understand and be made aware of non-obvious relationships as well.

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[Post from Infoglide] The Human Element in Identity Resolution

We’ve written quite a few posts here on the subject of identity resolution’s application to a broad range of problems that include terrorism, insurance fraud, crime, lottery fraud, sexual predators, workers comp employer fraud, and retail returns fraud. What we haven’t discussed very much is the relationship between the technology and the human beings that employ it.

Boston Globe: Woman to be sentenced in asbestos case

“Deleon ‘cheated the system’ in two ways to enrich herself, according to the government’s case. Under her ownership, Environmental Compliance Training issued false asbestos removal training certificates and lied about it to the state. She also evaded payroll taxes and workers’ compensation insurance premiums by paying hundreds of employees of Methuen Abatement Staffing under the table. The company had a gross unreported payroll of $4.6 million from 2002 to 2006, according to a government document introduced at the trial.”

New Mexico Independent: Homeland security ‘fusion centers’ are working, but concerns abound

“The federal assessment of the nation’s fusion centers — which borrows heavily from earlier reports by such internal watchdogs as the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and General Accountability Office (GAO) — lists a few privacy, transparency and oversight concerns about the fusion centers.

Wall Street Journal: Tips for TSA to Make Flying Safer, Easier

“Some experts suggest that the TSA cut back on the air marshal program, which puts law-enforcement agents on some flights, and shift spending to more effective security measures. Experts also want to see major changes in the current Registered Traveler program to further speed up security procedures for frequent travelers and focus resources on travelers who haven’t undergone background checks. They also want to see more variation to today’s predictable screening so bad guys don’t know exactly how to circumvent security.”

Gartner: Can “single view” of master data be achieved without an MDM technology?

[Andrew White] “Certainly users have been trying to achieve ’single view’ for many years, before the phrase master data management was coined.  The problem of trying to maintain a semantically consistent definition of master data across the business has been a long standing desire for most firms.  It is because business (and to a great extend, IT also) has grown to be so complex, that since 2000 many firms have begun to look to specific tools to help.”

WorkersCompensation.com: Chenango Man Charged As Fraud In Fish Story

“Investigators from NYSIF’s Division of Confidential Investigations said Mr. Panus was receiving workers’ compensation payments for a work-related back injury that occurred in 1988. The investigation, conducted in cooperation with the New York State Insurance Department Frauds Bureau and the Office of the Workers’ Compensation Fraud Inspector General, found that Mr. Panus was allegedly self-employed as the owner of Ponderosa Fish Farm while receiving benefits totaling $66,100.”

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By Robert Barker, Infoglide Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer

We’ve written quite a few posts here on the subject of identity resolution’s application to a broad range of problems that include terrorism, insurance fraud, crime, lottery fraud, sexual predators, workers comp employer fraud, and retail returns fraud. What we haven’t discussed very much is the relationship between the technology and the human beings that employ it.

We software marketers are sometimes tempted to make it sound as though our products solve problems automatically. The truth is that identity resolution software performs tasks that humans could do, but it does them at a level of speed and precision that significantly enhances the results accomplished through those tasks. In order for the software to achieve excellent results, however, human judgment is required both in implementing the software and in applying the results.

The specifics of a particular problem differ markedly, and every solution is different. A person of interest in airline passenger screening has very different characteristics from a person of interest in workers compensation fraud, for example. Solutions differ even within a single problem domain, e.g. Nordstrom and Walmart have very different philosophies for merchandise returns.

In simpler data quality applications, default configurations can address many problems, but in identity resolution, a little tuning by experts greatly increases the solution’s value.  A domain expert may not understand the technology, but they understand their problem, industry, application, and company. And because of their depth of understanding of their domain, they can tell great results from good results in a heartbeat.

For maximum benefit, human domain experts work with technology experts to tune the software during implementation to apply similar “judgment” as the experts themselves would use to resolve multiple identities, uncover hidden relationships, and minimize false positives and false negatives. Technology’s critical role is to automate the process of sifting through the data to find likely matches and non-obvious relationships and to prioritize the cases that require human intervention so that finite human resources can focus on the most important things first.

While it’s critical to have software that can produce results right “off the shelf,” it is the domain expertise coupled with the technology expertise that creates a solution that is perfectly matched to the needs of a particular industry, application, and company.

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By the Infoglide Team

Benefit Fraud: Where are the deterrent sentences for benefit fraud?

“A repeat offender pedophile is on incapacity benefit [workers comp]. Why, one wonders. He seems to be well enough to assault 13 year old girls but not well enough to work.”

ebiz: While Business Intelligence Needs to Move from Passive to Active

“So, the difference is that you’re looking at information that tells you where you made mistakes, and perhaps how to avoid them in the future. Or, that you’re looking at information that tells you you’re about to make a mistake, perhaps in the context of historical information, and takes corrective action immediately without human intervention. Which seems more productive to you?”

Portland Press Herald: Hit-and-run thieves strike Maine stores

“Loss-prevention specialists say eBay, Craig’s List and other online auction and free advertising sites have fueled the increase in retail crime because they provide a new and anonymous way for shoplifters to resell stolen goods. ‘The best thing to happen to shoplifting is the Internet,’ said Strong.”

North Country Gazette: Self-Employed Plumber Nabbed For Scam

“While receiving benefits, Hogdin attested in signed statements that he had not returned to any form of work.  An investigation carried out by the New York State Insurance Fund’s Division of Confidential Investigations revealed that Hogdin, in fact, was self-employed repairing small engine machinery.”

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January 30th, 2009

[Post from Infoglide] Will Workers Comp Employer Fraud Keep Rising?

“In our collections of links about identity resolution, we often include stories about employees who defraud workers compensation agencies. Most of the time it concerns someone who’s claimed a disability in order to get payments and is then working another job that proves they are healthy.  Another twist is covering up the fact that a relative drawing workers comp benefits has died in order to continue receiving payments.”

Insurance & Financial Advisor: Pennsylvania man among seven charged in multi-million dollar workers’ comp fraud

“In a pair of recent indictments, the defendants are accused of lying on insurance applications and failing to remit insurance premiums to the insurance companies, instead keeping the money for themselves, according to theNew Jersey Attorney General’s Office. The defendants are also accused of laundering money so the scheme would go undetected. As a result, many people were allegedly left without workers compensation insurance.”

Business Intelligence News: Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms 2009

“Recently, Gartner published its report called Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms 2009. This report is Gartner’s opinion about the market of BI and their main vendors.”

Network World: MySpace faces fresh controversy over sex offender issue

“Pallorium maintains a database of more than 600,000 sex offenders culled from state registries around the country. Rambam said he took a random sample of 40,000 names from that database and then searched more than 2 million MySpace member pages for matches. An initial search using first and last names, approximate age and city and state of residence as keywords yielded over 12,400 matches, Rambam claimed.”

Daily Insurer: New Yorker Nabbed in Workers’ Comp Scheme

“According to Solomon Jones, an investigator with the Insurance Department’s Frauds Bureau, Cossio submitted signed statements to the Insurance Fund falsely claiming he was unable to work after injuring his back while employed as a laborer. Jones said investigators found that Cossio was working as a porter and maintenance attendant while collecting the benefits.”

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By the Infoglide Team

NOTE: We will start posting again after Thanksgiving. Happy Turkey Day!

datanomic: Are we nearly there yet?

“In the 1990s, Customer Relationship Management promised, amongst other things, to provide us with a single view of customers, but the ideal fragmented into a number of different disciplines, largely dictated by technology vendors.  Instead of a single customer view, most organisations have multiple, often inconsistent views of their customers and prospects delivered through an assortment of Sales Force Automation, Analytical CRM and Campaign Management systems each propagating their own database.”

Scamtypes: 5 Types Of Social Networking Scam - #1 The Fake Identity

“Setting up a new profile on the major social networking sites is an incredibly simple thing to do. For criminals this presents a tremendous opportunity as it allows them to affiliate themselves with just about any identity, whether that is a real person or not. For some, a fake identity may just be a means of having fun online, however warped that intention may be. For others, far more sinister motives guide them, from arranging risky meetings to making abusable connections and many other shady reasons.”

Conde Nast Daily Traveler: Bush Officials Claim a Kinder, Gentler Airport Security

“And sometime in January, you will start giving your birth date, home address, and full legal name when you make an airline reservation–all part of a ’secure flight’ initiative that will reduce the number of innocent people who are falsely flagged as potential terrorists because their names resemble those of actual bad guys.”

The Bunker Blog: Macy’s Loss Prevention Agent Arrested For Assisting Shoplifters

“One of the alleged shoplifters was the sister of the loss prevention agent. The 24 year old LP agent had been working for Macy’s since February, and his manager suspected something was going on, so a surveillance was conducted on the LP agent by the manager.”

Evolution of Security: Why?

“More than 23 million passengers were screened at our checkpoints last year during the holiday season, and many of those passengers travel infrequently. Those are the travelers we’d most like to reach. Passenger feedback has shown us that people are more willing to comply with security procedures if they understand the ‘why’ behind the measure.”

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By the Infoglide Team

Windsor Star: OLG coughs up cash

“The insider policy is to guard against fraud, such as a retailer who tells a customer a ticket is not a winner and then tries to claim the prize. In the spring of 2007, a provincial ombudsman issued a scathing report on the OLG and said Ontario store owners and their families had collected tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent claims.”

MarketWatch: Worldwide thefts cost retailers US $104 billion annually - Survey

“This year’s survey, the most complete analysis of global shrink ever conducted, reports key findings on retail shrinkage and crime in 36 countries and on five continents, based on data from a confidential survey of 920 large retailers with combined sales of U.S. $814 billion and 115,612 operating retail outlets…’This sum represents a tax imposed on honest people by retail criminals of $229.73 per household or $71.12 for every single person in the 36 countries surveyed,’ said Professor Bamfield, Director of the Centre for Retail Research.”

Jackson Citizen Patriot: Kids learn online dangers

“Internet predators lurk on networking Web sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, or in chat rooms, looking for young victims. ‘Everybody you meet online is an Internet stranger,’ Malik Williams, an Internet-safety presenter from the Michigan Cyber Safety Initiative, told more than 50 fifth-graders Tuesday at Concord Elementary School. ‘That’s why it’s important to keep yourself safe.’”

Bucyrus TelegraphForum: Bucyrus experiences rash of break-ins

“‘There is a new trend in what we call e-fencing. Thieves are selling their stolen items on the Internet versus just selling them outright. They can get up to 70 percent or more of the value if they sell on the Internet versus selling them on the streets, where they only get about 30 percent of the value,’ Teets said.”

SFGate: Ex-S.F. firefighter’s workers’ comp problem

“Indeed, if Hijjawi were trying to hide her fitness quest, she wasn’t doing a very good job. Our own Google search turned up records showing her running in marathons in Lake Tahoe, Los Angeles, Honolulu and elsewhere. From 2001 to 2006, according to records on the Web site Athlinks, Hijjawi ran in no fewer than a dozen marathons. And her biography on another site shows she was taking on even bigger challenges, including the Canada 2005 Ultraman super triathlon competition - in which competitors swim 6.2 miles, ride a bike for 170 miles and run 52 miles, twice the distance of a marathon. Completing it took her more than 33 hours.”

Bunker Blog: Update On Cops Involved In Major Shoplifting Ring

“Kevin Burchell and Clifford Barber, both police officers, worked with two others, one of them an employee at the Walmart the items were taken from; to get up to $200,000.00 worth of merchandise out of the store and onto an eBay site. According to the latest report, Barber was the mastermind behind the scheme, and sold the items on eBay and to friends and acquaintances.”

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By the Infoglide Team

Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.                                                  – W. Clement Stone

We recently shared a link to an article describing how trucking companies in California illegally mislabeled their drivers as “independent contractors” in order to keep from paying workers’ compensation insurance. The law clearly defines the drivers as “employees” since the companies own the trucks and define everything the drivers do.

Because identity resolution software is often used to detect fraudulent behavior, we continually hear of instances like this one where people try to cut corners or take unfair advantage or flat out cheat other people and companies in ways that often involve obscuring identity information. People try to game software systems and cheat in areas like workers’ compensation, online commerce, lotteries, retail, airlines, insurance, social networking, and others. (You can read more on our web site and in previous blog posts here.)

Almost all of us know the right way and the wrong way to do things. Sadly, we sometimes choose to ignore that inner voice when it benefits us, even though it may harm someone else. OK, so we can’t fix the world with a blog post, but it’s hard not to speculate what the world might be like if we all tried to do the right thing all the time.

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