Identity Resolution Daily

[Post from Infoglide] Entity Resolution: How to Catch a Dummy

“Sometimes you just have to sit back and marvel at the lengths some people will go to keep from doing the right thing and paying their workers compensation premiums!”

KCBS: 9 Arrested in South Bay Lottery Fraud

“Investigators posing as customers handed clerks decoy winning tickets and asked if they had won. In some instances, the clerks told the investigators that their ticket was not a winner. The suspects then went on to file a claim with the Lottery as if the winning tickets were theirs, said Lottery spokesman Alex Traverso.”

Master Data Management Blog: MDM Vendors

“With companies growing larger and the proper storage and use of data becoming more and more critical, development of master data management solutions and products is increasing at an ever-quickening pace.”

WorkersCompensation.com: “Most Wanted” Check-Casher In Custody

“‘Workers’ comp. fraud is a crime of opportunity that, in some cases, accompanies other criminal activity. It is not to be taken lightly,’ NYSIF Executive Director David P. Wehner said.”

Silicon.com: Who’s looking after your data?

“The survey of IT decision makers at large financial services companies revealed a degree of confusion in the industry over data handling. Eighteen per cent of respondents said they either didn’t check potential customers against criminal lists, or didn’t know whether such checks took place even though existing regulation requires it.”

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By Robert Barker, Infoglide Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer

Sometimes you just have to sit back and marvel at the lengths some people will go to keep from doing the right thing and paying their workers compensation premiums!

In the latest scheme we’ve heard about, California attorney general Jerry Brown has filed a lawsuit against a group who decided to exploit a provision of the CA workers comp law. The provision was designed to preclude companies having to pay WC premiums for corporate directors, so this group was able to convince as many as 200 clients that they could show them how to exploit the loophole by declaring rank-and-file employees to be directors, sometimes of “dummy” corporations, and issue stock to them. This then “allowed” them not to pay WC insurance for these workers by supporting a subsequent claim that they were directors of a corporation and therefore not required to have WC insurance.

While the case was apparently solved by traditional methods, using identity (or entity) resolution technology might have found the miscreants sooner like it’s already finding similar types of employer WC fraud. If you assume the dummy corporations would be required by law to file information that included names, addresses, and other information about the bogus corporate officers, then an entity resolution system with access to the appropriate data sources could have alerted authorities to the suspicious connections between the individuals involved.

I never cease to be amazed by the different tactics people will come up with to defraud. Because they keep discovering new ways to cover up their bad actions, organizations need flexible solutions that adapt to new information. Basing solutions on extensible and configurable entity resolution technology is often the right answer.

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By the Infoglide Team

Background Now: AG Seeks Injunction Against Contractors Asset Protection Association, Inc. (ConAPA) and Eugene Magre

“‘This company falsely promised its clients that if they gave their employees empty titles and worthless shares of stock they could avoid tens of thousands of dollars in workers compensation premiums,’ Attorney General Brown said. ‘But you can’t simply call a security guard a vice president and avoid complying with the law through a sophisticated and fraudulent scheme.’”

DailyTech: New Bills Target Stolen Merchandise Sold Online

“Under the new legislation, the brick and mortar retailers would score a major coup in that they could order eBay.com, Overstock.com, and Amazon.com to remove numerous goods without any proof.  Under the proposed laws, failure by the online retailers to ‘expeditiously investigate’ and remove the items would result in criminal penalties.”

BeyeNetwork: Business Drivers and Master Data

“Is the actual business need for a single version of the data, or just multiple versions, each of which is of higher quality? Drill down into this a little bit and you may need additional information from your business customers. What constitutes a requirement for master data? A situation in which two business processes need to have a fully shared view of the same representation of a data item?”

Web of Data: Report on Data Discovery by Bloor Research

“…there are now a number of products on the market that can discover data relationships that do not fall within the category of either data profiling or data quality. As a result, it is time to consider the importance of data discovery, and its requirements, as a market in its own right.”

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