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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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January 2004 Topics
Asterisk-free, Goldbrick,
Million Dollar Bill and Wardriving
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This article is in the
January/February 2004 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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Asterisk-free
In retail marketing, asterisk-free is a strategy that avoids deceptive
signs and advertising copy.
 It promotes clear and simple offerings with no
important points, disclaimers, exclusions or extra charges hidden in fine
print or light gray text that make readers more skeptical and reluctant to
buy. In official sports records, an asterisk (*) next to a team name can
be an embarrassment. The asterisk may indicate the team has forfeited
tournament participation, ranking or national media coverage because of
infractions like academic fraud or improper payments to athletes. Sports
teams strive to keep their programs clean and their records asterisk-free.
Kim T. Gordon, “Words to the Wise,”
http://www.entrepreneur.com/Magazines/
Copy_of_MA_SegArticle/0,4453,311063,00.html, October 2003.
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Goldbrick
Anything that appears to be valuable on the surface but is not
genuine. In western mining communities in the 19th century, con
men coated a stone, iron bar or lead brick with a thin layer of gold to
make it appear to be solid gold. It was not hard to persuade a greedy,
gullible investor to buy a goldbrick at a seemingly “give-away” price.
 The
game worked so well so often that goldbrick became a synonym for swindle.
One victim paid $3,700 for a goldbrick in 1887, when the official U.S.
price of gold was $20.67 per troy ounce. In similar phrases, “goldbrick
speculation” refers to buying real estate with the intention of making a
quick profit. A “goldbrick share” is a stock or security that appears to
be of high quality and worth, although the company that issued it is
actually worth very little.
Webb Garrison, 455 Fascinating Word Origins, Galahad Books, New York,
2000, page 169.
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Million Dollar Bill
No real bill exists. It is not an official United States currency note
manufactured by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) and it is not
redeemable by the Department of the Treasury.
In the spring of 1982, the BEP learned that several companies were selling
phony million dollar certificates.
The Secret Service subsequently advised that these novelty certificates
did not violate any United States law. After 20 years of inflation,
Internet sites are now selling billion dollar bills.
The largest
denomination ever printed was $100,000. The portrait of President Woodrow
Wilson was featured on the $100,000 Series 1934 Gold Certificate. It was
printed for only 2 months.
The notes were used for
official transactions between Federal Reserve Banks and were not
circulated among the general public. During World War II, the Bureau of
Engraving and Printing stopped production of denominations of $500,
$1,000, $5,000 and $10,000. Their main purpose was for bank transfer
payments. With the arrival of more secure electronic transfer
technologies, they were no longer needed. The Federal Reserve Board
stopped distributing those denominations in 1969. The present
denominations of U.S. currency in production are $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50
and $100.
“FAQs: Currency Denominations,” United States Department of the
Treasury,http://www.ustreas.gov/
education/faq/currency/denominations.html, November 2002.
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Wardriving
(LAN-jacking, Warbussing, WiLDing, WAPS)
Wardriving is the act of locating and possibly exploiting connections to
wireless local area networks (LANs) while driving around a city or
elsewhere. Wardriving started in 2001. A Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) network
uses a common radio frequency and has a range of 1,000 feet beyond the
walls of a house or business. From a parking spot, an outsider can intrude
into the network to obtain a free Internet connection or gain access to
e-mail, private downloads and company records without leaving a trace.
In
Minneapolis, an outsider alerted Best Buy that customer credit card
information was easily accessed as the sales terminals transmitted data on
their store’s wireless network. Drive-by hackers, high school students and
computer security geeks make a sport out of wardriving to demonstrate the
ease with which wireless LANs can be compromised. During a one week
contest in 2003, two participants discovered 8,844 wireless networks
in Phoenix, Arizona and 71% of those networks had no encryption to deter
hacking. The Internet has 41,000 Web pages full of detailed wardriving
techniques, countermeasures, and maps of the discovered networks for
anyone to access. A car is used most often for transportation. If a bus is
used in a metropolitan area, they call it warbussing.
 A wardriver needs a
laptop computer or PDA, a net “stumbling utility” program, a Wi-Fi PC card
adapter, and an antenna (or a “cantenna” made from coffee cans). An
optional GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver can precisely identify
the car’s location when a network is discovered.
Wardriving is also known
by acronyms like WiLDing (Wireless LAN Driving) and WAPS (Wireless Access
Point Sniffing or surfing). Part of the name is based on the 1983
movie “War Games,” about a teenager finding
access to military networks by “wardialing” random telephone numbers. The
Wireless Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption standard is one safeguard
from wardriving.
Jimmy Magahern, “Geeks Gone Wild!: Wardriving Hackers Take the Revenge
of the Nerds to the Street,” New Times, Phoenix, Arizona, August 14 – 20,
2003, pages 19 – 26.
Cartoon:
Garry Trudeau, "Doonesbury," Universal Press Syndicate, July 21, 2002. Image: http://www.wuermtalwireless.net/
sicherheit.html, October 25, 2003.
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Larry C. Adams, CFE, CPA, CIA, CISA,
is an audit consultant in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the author of 80
articles and 2 books about fraud including Fraud In Other Words. His Web site is
www.larry-adams.com. His e-mail address:
fraudwritr@aol.com.
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ã
Copyright 2003 Larry C. Adams.
All rights reserved.
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