Most New York voters say it’s time for the state’s 213 legislators to be considered full-time, with their current $79,500 base salary unchanged and outside earnings prohibited, according to new poll released Monday.
The Siena poll shows the overwhelming majority of voters, 89%, think corruption is a serious problem in Albany. Two-thirds say it’s a serious problem among legislators from their own area.
Several government reform advocates back curbing legislators’ outside income as one way of addressing corruption and conflicts of interest. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed limiting it to 15% of state pay, similar to the limit on Congress.
According to a report from the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations obtained first by The New York Times, the Department of Health and Human Services had custody of six children who were later found in a human trafficking ring in Marion, Ohio, as well as 13 in other locations. Officials reportedly failed to do due diligence when securing guardians for unaccompanied minors during their immigration proceedings.
The nation’s banks stopped more than $11 billion in fraudulent transactions in 2014, according to ABA’s 2015 Deposit Account Fraud Survey Report released today. Fraud against bank deposit accounts cost the industry $1.9 billion in total losses, an increase from $1.7 billion in 2012.
“Banks’ sophisticated prevention systems and customer vigilance successfully stopped 85 percent of fraud attempts in 2014,” said Doug Johnson, ABA SVP for payments and cybersecurity. “We saw an increase in fraud losses in 2014 most likely due to the number of large-scale retailer data breaches, which resulted in a significant increase in attempted debit card fraud.”
A man featured on the reality television show “Wicked Tuna” has pleaded guilty to federal charges in Vermont he received government benefits while he was fishing on the show.
Fifty-year-old Paul Hebert, of Gloucester, Massachusetts, appeared Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Burlington where he pleaded guilty to charges of Social Security and Medicaid fraud.
With tax season upon us, the U.S. Department of the Treasury is warning taxpayers to be on high alert for a frightening fraud scam.
People pretending to be International Revenue Service (IRS) agents are making ruthless, aggressive calls, telling people they owe back taxes and threatening them if they don’t pay up immediately.
“I am going to proceed you to the sheriff’s officer. And within the next hour they will be at your doorstep to handcuff you and put you behind bars,” a fraudulent caller told ABC News.
The U.S. Treasury Deputy Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA),Timothy Camus has received reports of nearly 900,000 fake calls since October 2013. Roughly 5,000 victims have paid over $26.5 million as a result of the scam.
Central Marin Police are investigating a series of credit card fraud cases where the victims’ card information appears to have been obtained at a San Anselmo gas station.
The police authority has received reports from 50 victims that their credit or debit card information had been accessed and funds pulled from their accounts. Detectives determined that the common link among the cases was that all the cards had been used at the Gas and Shop at 750 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. It is more than likely that physical skimming devices were used to obtain the card information, police said. Detectives checked all the pumps at the station and ensured that the devices were no longer in place.
A former Houston Police officer was convicted Friday of supplying Zetas cartel-affiliated drug traffickers with body armor, firearms and classified information as part of a pipeline that ran through Houston and into other parts of the United States.
A would-be hotel developer pleaded guilty Tuesday to wire fraud, admitting his role in a failed plan to build hotels and a convention center near O’Hare Airport by fraudulently raising more than $158 million from Chinese investors who were expecting to get visas under a controversial federal program that aims to create jobs.
