The next time you get your phone bill, check the total amount due. If it’s a little higher than usual, you may have fallen prey to an identity theft scam known as “cramming,” in which unauthorized fees are charged to a customer’s land line or cell phone account. The crammer gets away with it because the fees are usually too small to notice.
Those small charges can add up: Cramming costs Americans as much as $2 million a year, according to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
Crammers ply their trade through third-party billing. Carriers, including AT&T and Verizon Communications, allow users to charge third-party services to their phone bills, and they receive more than $1 billion a year to do so by third-party providers.
Scammers steal a telephone customer’s personal information, and then tell the carrier that they’ve provided a billable service to the victim. After giving the carrier the victim’s information, the charge is authorized. While the service may be nonexistent, the fraudulent charges are very real.
It’s not just individuals who need to be wary. Businesses are also popular targets for crammers, because their monthly bills are so complicated and the average office is too hectic an environment for every bill to receive close scrutiny.
“With today’s economy, where employees are often doing the job of two or more people, bills are not audited as closely as they may have been in the past,” according to Michael Bremmer, CEO of Telecomquotes.com. He notes that crammers often add fraudulent charges to a single business under multiple names and in varying amounts, thereby obscuring their identities and making it harder for auditors to detect.
Businesses and individuals alike can take actions to protect themselves from cramming. Susan Grant, director of consumer protection for the watchdog group Consumer Federation of America, recommends avoiding free trial offers, whose buy-now-pay-later structure is not always disclosed.
“The way that these offers are structured is that after the trial period is over, the charges begin,” she says. Grant also recommends that consumers simply take the time to closely examine their bills every month in order to detect third-party charges that they don’t recognize.
Of course, the most effective way to guard against cramming is to make sure it doesn’t happen in the first place. Customers can instruct their carriers to block all third-party charges on both cell phone and land line accounts, but even those who have found unauthorized charges on their bills can still take action.
“Contact both the third party company — as they provide their customer-service number on the invoice — and the local phone company which allowed the charges to be applied,” says Steve Reifel, president of business consulting firm Cost Containment Solutions. “Issue a formal complaint with the carrier, as they will remove from the invoice and block that company from issuing any further charges.”
Telephone customers who want to go further than their own carriers can also contact their elected representatives and tell them to pass legislation to end the practice of third-party billing. Contact information for all 540 members of the 112th Congress can be found at the "Contact Elected Officials" page of the USA.gov website.
News Highlights - Week of 10 - 14 October 2011
Last week the Philippines accepted a total of US$1.3 billion in a buyback of EUR- and US$-denominated bonds. In line with the buyback exercise, the government raised US$50 million through the reopening of its bonds maturing on 23 October 2034 with a coupon of 6.375%. The Bureau of the Treasury also launched its second retail treasury bond offering of the year. On the corporate front, Banco De Oro Unibank Inc. issued PHP6.5 billion worth of unsecured subordinated notes that qualify as Tier 2 capital. Finally, in response to the weakening global economy the Philippine government unveiled a PHP72.1 billion fiscal stimulus package to boost the country's growth through the first half of 2012.
*In the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Ministry of Railways sold CNY10 billion worth of 5-year bonds and CNY10 billion worth of 20-year bonds. These bonds qualify for the 50% reduction in the tax on interest income as recently announced by the National Development Reform Council. The Export-Import Bank of Korea issued KRW170 billion worth of 1-year zero-coupon bonds and Shinhan Bank issued KRW100 billion of 2-year bonds. In Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur Kepong sold MYR300 million worth of 5-year Islamic bonds, while TRIplc issued MYR240 million worth of medium-term notes in several tranches that were guaranteed by Danajamin Nasional.
*Bank Indonesia's Board of Governors cut the benchmark rate by 25 basis points to 6.50% in its meeting on 11 October. The Bank of Korea's Monetary Policy Committee decided to maintain its 7-day repurchase rate at 3.25% in its meeting on 13 October. The Monetary Authority of Singapore announced that it will continue with a policy of modest and gradual appreciation of the Singapore dollar, but will reduce the slope of the policy band to the prevailing level of the nominal effective exchange rate.
*Inflation in the PRC fell in September to 6.1% year-on-year (y-o-y) from 6.2% in August. Growth in the PRC's producer price index also eased to 6.5% y-o-y from 7.3% in August.
*Singapore's economy expanded 5.9% y-o-y in 3Q11, according to advance estimates released last week by the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Meanwhile, Malaysia's industrial production index rose 3.0% y-o-y in August following a revised 0.5% y-o-y decline in July. Also, manufacturing sales posted 10.8% y-o-y growth in August compared with revised 9.5% growth in July.
*The PRC posted a trade surplus of US$14.5 billion in September, the smallest since May, due to weakening demand from developed economies. Export growth fell to 17.1% y-o-y in September from 24.5% in August. In the Philippines, exports fell 15.1% y-o-y to US$4.1 billion in August, the steepest decline since September 2009.
*The M3 money supply in the Philippines grew 9.4% y-o-y to PHP4.3 trillion in August. Liquidity was fueled by the expansion of net foreign assets at a pace of 21.7% y-o-y on sustained inflows from overseas Filipino remittances and portfolio and direct investments.
*Government bond yields fell for all tenors in Indonesia and for most tenors in the PRC, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam. The yield spread between the 2-year and 10-year maturities narrowed for most emerging East Asian markets while it widened for Hong Kong, China; Malaysia, and Thailand.
The U.S. State Department on Thursday said it could not confirm that former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been captured and wounded in both legs.
Muammer Gaddafi "We've seen the media reports but can't confirm them," State Department spokeswoman Beth Gosselin told Reuters. Reuters reported that the deposed Libyan leader had been captured and wounded in both legs, citing National Transitional Council official Abdel Majid. "He's captured. He's wounded in both legs... He's been taken away by ambulance," the senior NTC military official told Reuters by telephone.
Gaddafi was captured and wounded near his hometown of Sirte at dawn on Thursday as he tried to flee in a convoy which NATO warplanes attacked, Majid said. The senior NTC military official told Reuters by telephone that the head of Gaddafi's armed forces Abu Bakr Younus Jabr had been killed during the capture of the Libyan ex-leader.
Muammer Gaddafi "We've seen the media reports but can't confirm them," State Department spokeswoman Beth Gosselin told Reuters. Reuters reported that the deposed Libyan leader had been captured and wounded in both legs, citing National Transitional Council official Abdel Majid. "He's captured. He's wounded in both legs... He's been taken away by ambulance," the senior NTC military official told Reuters by telephone.
Gaddafi was captured and wounded near his hometown of Sirte at dawn on Thursday as he tried to flee in a convoy which NATO warplanes attacked, Majid said. The senior NTC military official told Reuters by telephone that the head of Gaddafi's armed forces Abu Bakr Younus Jabr had been killed during the capture of the Libyan ex-leader.
Debt Champions
In the past (Q4) quarter, AAPL increased its cash, short and long-term investments from $76.2 billion to $81.6 billion (which, however, skeptics will point out was only half the cash growth rate from Q2 to Q3). In 2011 alone, the company that Steve Jobs built generated $22 billion in total cash. Ironically, that is precisely how much the company's market cap is lower by in the after hours session. If AAPL is unsure what to do with all that cash, which would make it the world's biggest hedge fund, it could hire all the stock experts on Twitter, and become the best funded trading operation in the world, which would naturally be buying its own stock all day long (and, if it were to hire a few JPM/BofA/MS traders, buy CDS on itself). Alas, for the CDS plan to work, it would need to issue some debt: the company is still completely debt free.
Everyone has heard of the Big Mac [7]Index, the Misery Index [8], even
the Shoe Thrower [9]Index. But the Book Cooking Index? This latest
addition to the compendium of oddly named yet extremely fascinating
"indices" is based around the statistical irregularity known as
Benford's law, according to which within sets of numbers that span
orders of magnitude, the distribution of first digits is strikingly
regular: numbers beginning in 1 occur about 30% of the time, those
beginning in 2 about 18% of the time, falling to roughly 5% of the
time for the number 9. Specifically, as noted by the keenly observant
Jialan Wang of Washington University in St. Louis, "there are more
numbers in the universe that begin with the digit 1 than 2, or 3, or
4, or 5, or 6, or 7, or 8, or 9. And more numbers that begin with 2
than 3, or 4, and so on. This relationship holds for the lengths of
rivers, the populations of cities, molecular weights of chemicals, and
any number of other categories." The most curious application of this
law resides in the field of corporate fraud, "because deviations from
the law can indicate that a company's books have been manipulated."
Here is where things get interesting for fraudulent corporate America:
the inquisitive Wang "downloaded quarterly accounting data for all
firms in Compustat, the most widely-used dataset in corporate finance
that contains data on over 20,000 firms from SEC filings" and "used a
standard set of 43 variables that comprise the basic components of
corporate balance sheets and income statements." Her results were, in
a word, startling.
Summary:
International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) provide the basis
for financial reporting to the capital markets in an increasing number
of countries around the world. Over 100 countries either use or are
adopting IFRS. Those companies already on IFRS have their own
challenges as the pace of standard- setting from the International
Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has been intense in recent years
with a constant flow of changes for companies to keep up with.
One of the major challenges of any reporting framework is how best to
implement it in the context of a specific company or industry. IFRS is
a principles based framework and short on industry guidance. PwC looks
at how IFRS is applied in practice by oil and gas companies. This
publication identifies the issues that are unique to the oil and gas
companies industry and includes a number of real life examples to
demonstrate how companies are responding to the various accounting
challenges along the value chain.
Of course, it is not just IFRS that are constantly evolving but also
the operational issues faced by oil and gas companies with the heavy
demand for capital and risks faced by the industry driving more
cooperative working relationships.
We look at some of main developments in this context with a selection
of reporting topics that are of most practical relevance to oil and
gas companies' activities. The new standards on joint arrangements,
consolidated financial statements and disclosure of interests in other
entities will be of particular interest to companies in the oil and
gas sector.
The debate about specific guidance for exploration, evaluation,
development and production of oil and gas continues. This publication
does not describe all IFRSs applicable to oil and gas entities but
focuses on those areas that are of most interest to companies in the
sector.
The ever-changing landscape means that management should conduct
further research and seek specific advice before acting on any of the
more complex matters raised. PwC has a deep level of insight into and
commitment to helping companies in the sector report effectively. For
more information or assistance, please do not hesitate to contact your
local office or one of our specialist oil and gas partners
