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Larry C. Adams, CPA
Phoenix, Arizona USA
Certified Public Accountant
Certified Fraud Examiner
E-mail
fraudwritr@aol.com
Telephone (602) 995-8008
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May
2002 Topics
Baby photography racket, picture pitchers, bedrageri, guala, lundy strip,
micr,
repair strip, script kiddie, packet
monkey, ankle biter, cyber punk, stool pigeon, stooly, and stoolie
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This article is in the May/June 2002 issue
of
The White Paper, the Journal of the Association of Certified
Fraud Examiners.
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Fraud In Other Words:
Professional Jargon and Uncensored Street Slang
By Larry C. Adams, CFE, CPA, CIA, CISA
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Baby Photography Racket (Picture Pitchers)
 Traveling sharpies prey on the
natural instincts of parents and relatives who want photographs of their infants
and growing children. The pitch offers a free sitting and print of a child. Then
the photographer offers a multiple print package which is extremely high priced,
because most customers do not know what competitors charge. Once the parent
makes a large down payment for the order, the photographer skips town and the
money and photos are never seen again. If a photographer won’t give you a copy
of the complete price list and his permanent address at the time of his pitch,
forget the whole thing. Before making any deposit, take an extra day to compare
prices with other photographers.
Robert S. Rosefsky, Fraud, Swindles,
and Rackets: A Red Alert for Today’s Consumers, Follett Publishing Company,
Chicago, Illinois, 1971, pages 282 - 283.
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Bedrageri
The Danish word for deceit, fraud, or
swindle.
Danish-English English-Danish
Dictionary, Hippocrene Books, New York, 1990, pages 125, 372, 373.
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Guala
 An anti-tampering plastic safety
closure used to assure the quality of premium branded spirits and prevent the
sale of counterfeited liquor. Most varieties of these specially designed bottle
caps have a security seal and a one-way shutter valve or a plastic ball inside
the neck to prevent the bottle from being refilled with cheap alcoholic
imitations. Counterfeit liquor is common in India, Pakistan, the Philippines,
and Mexico. Legitimate distillers also are using labels with metallic colors,
embossing, and ornate designs with microprinting to discourage counterfeiting.
http://www.gualaclosures.com/closures.html,
December 28, 2001.
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Lundy Strip (MICR Strip, Repair
Strip)
A Lundy strip is the white adhesive
label that a bank affixes to the bottom of a check to correct errors in the MICR
line. MICR (pronounced my-ker) is the acronym for Magnetic Ink Character
Recognition. It refers to the special numbers and characters on the bottom of
the checks, and the technology to produce and analyze these characters. High
speed reader/sorters scan the documents at 400 miles per hour in the “proof and
transit” departments of a bank. In 1995 in the United States, 95 billion MICR
documents were used including checks, loan books, mortgage books, and deposit
books. When the MICR line is incorrect, the reader/sorter will kick out or
reject the document and explain why. If the line is printed too lightly to read,
or if a number is out of line, or if a field is incorrect, it will tell you so.
If a magnetic reader rejects an item, it is processed through a secondary
optical reader. The rejection rate is 1.7%. A proof and transit person will
prepare a Lundy strip so the machines can properly read the document. Fraud may
be indicated if the error message says the entire line is not printed in
magnetic ink, the placement is incorrect, or the sequence is incorrect. These
items require investigation before any further processing. The Federal Reserve
System will not clear a check without a MICR strip. Forgers often alter the
first two digits of the bank’s routing number, which signify the Federal Reserve
Bank District. To divert a check to far away destination and gain additional
days of float, the number might be altered from District 01 (Boston) to District
12 (San Francisco).
“Proof & Transit Alert!” Banker’s
Hotline, Vol. 8, No. 7, July 1998, http://www.bankersonline.com/articles/
bhv08n07/bhv08n07a7.html,
December 28, 2001.
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Script Kiddie (Packet Monkey,
Ankle Biter, Cyber Punk)
A person who randomly seeks out a
specific weakness over the Internet in order to gain root access to a computer
system without really understanding what it is that he/she is exploiting. A
computer security term for a person who is not technologically sophisticated and
is commonly a bored teenager. A script kiddie is the lowest form of cracker and
does mischief with Java script routines and programs written by others who
discovered a weakness. They cut and paste codes without knowing what the codes
do. A script kiddie scans the entire Internet for another victim that possesses
that vulnerability. A script kiddie was able to attack web sites for the U.S.
Department of Transportation, McDonald’s, Pepsi, and Nike. Packet monkeys
perform distributed-denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks and instruct hundreds of
computers to inundate a target site of a business, such as Yahoo and eBay, with
so many meaningless requests for data that the target site has to close down.
Denis Dion, “Script Kiddies and Packet
Monkeys - The New Generation of Hackers,” SANS Institute (System Administration,
Networking, and Security), January 29, 2001, http://www.sans.org/infosecFAQ/hackers/
monkeys.htm,
December 28, 2001.
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Stool Pigeon (Stooly, Stoolie)
 A prison inmate or a petty criminal
who provides information to law enforcement agencies about his/her associates
and their activities, in return for special privileges or reduced charges, so
the police can catch more of them. A paid decoy. Originally this pigeon hunting
term referred to a captive pigeon that was tied to a stool in front of a net.
Other strings were tied to its wings. The hunter tugged on the strings to make
the wings flap and lure other pigeons into the net. The ensnared passenger
pigeons were later sold at the market.
Jay Robert Nash, Dictionary of Crime,
Criminal Justice, Criminology & Law Enforcement, Paragon House, New York, 1992,
page 371.
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Larry C. Adams, CFE, CPA, CIA,
CISA, is an audit consultant
in Phoenix, Arizona. His latest book is Fraud In Other Words, Second Edition,
1999. He is a member of The White Paper Editorial Review Board. His e-mail
address is fraudwritr@aol.com.
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© Copyright 2001 Larry C. Adams. All rights reserved.
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