Thanks to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. A great information site. This link allows you to check websites that DO or DO NOT allow individuals to opt of these data mining sites.
Sites that no not allow opt out and sites that have some mechanism of opting out. I was successful in opting out of http://www.address.com. One down thousands to go.
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IRS looks for people owed refund checksTruck firms struggle to reverse sharp rise in cargo thefts
Insurers working with others to manage risks associated with thefts
Truck cargo thefts, which cost the U.S. shipping industry tens of billions of dollars a year, have increased significantly in the past year, risk managers and insurers say.
Shippers, trucking companies, insurers and law enforcement officials are collaborating more and adopting a range of risk management tactics to combat organized syndicates of thieves and their black market vendors.
In 2008, U.S. truck cargo thefts, defined as full truckloads stolen, increased 13% from 2007, according to FreightWatch International (USA) Inc., an Austin, Texas-based logistics security agency that tracks freight thefts.
Law enforcement and industry officials estimate that truck cargo thefts cost the U.S. shipping industry $15 billion to $30 billion a year, although many analysts say that range understates the losses.FreightWatch and insurers are quick to urge caution in reading the numbers, because no entity compiled statistics on truck cargo thefts prior to 2006. Even now, industry observers say they are not sure the figures capture all theft; some shippers and trucking companies are reluctant to report thefts out of concern for their reputation and insurance costs.
But insurers and risk managers agree truck cargo theft is a significant problem that has been growing more acute in recent years.
“Over-the-road thefts have been on fairly significant increase,” said Brandon Stroud, vp-loss prevention for North Kingstown, R.I.-based Falvey Cargo Underwriting Ltd.
The vast majority of cargo thefts come from stealing unattended trucks. Some criminal gangs station themselves at truck stops waiting for a trucker to leave his truck unattended; others monitor manufacturing plants and distribution centers for new shipments and follow a departing trailer until the driver stops and leaves the truck, experts say. Once they have stolen the truck, the trailer or the cargo, the thieves typically move the cargo to another vehicle or unload it into a warehouse.
While pharmaceutical thefts were just more than 7% of truckloads stolen in 2008 (see chart), their number rose sharply and their average value spiked to $1.5 million to dwarf all other categories in value, said Dan Burges, director of consultancy intelligence at FreightWatch.
Geographic hot spots for pharmaceutical thefts last year included Atlanta; Dallas; the Los Angeles area; Memphis, Tenn.; Miami; New York; and the states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia, Mr. Burges said.
Prevention in focus
In recent years, law enforcement task forces and regional industry groups devoted to cargo theft have formed; and insurers, underwriters and shippers have begun to set up internal units focusing solely with cargo theft prevention.
Shawn Driscoll, director of security at Phoenix-based Swift Transportation Co. Inc., heads the trucking company’s team of four ex-police officers devoted to preventing cargo theft.
“These groups doing these thefts…know what they’re doing,” Mr. Driscoll said. “They’re waiting for you to make a mistake, to drop your load, for the driver to leave (or) not put the lock on….If you let your guard down, they’ll get your load. We know that and we take preventative steps.”
Loss control specialists and risk managers say tactics that shippers and transportation companies can use include increasing physical security and surveillance at warehouses and distribution plants as well as screening employees, drivers and transportation partners. Thefts at times involve someone inside the company who relays information about shipment departures and locations, experts say.
Many risk management tactics revolve around the maxim that “cargo at rest is cargo at risk.” Loss control specialists urge a policy prohibiting drivers from dropping off trucks at any unsecured location for any reason.
Barry Tarnef, a loss control specialist at Warren, N.J.-based Chubb Group of Insurance Cos., said more than half of cargo thefts happen between Friday night and Monday morning, so he advises shippers to avoid long-distance deliveries shipped during the weekend. “The reality is that there are very few secure truck parking areas in the U.S. and most people don’t have a driveway to drop the truck,” Mr. Tarnef said.
200-mile danger zone
Loss control specialists also advise that companies instruct departing truck drivers to travel 200 miles or more before stopping for the first time. Most truck cargo thefts occur within 200 miles of origin, Mr. Burges said.
“Some of the cargo thieves have been known to follow loads hoping they’ll stop after a short distance to get dinner and get ready for the long haul,” said Scott Cornell, who heads a special investigative unit on cargo security at Hartford, Conn.-based Travelers Cos. Inc. and sits on the Florida-based National Commercial Vehicle and Cargo Theft Prevention Task Force.
W. Michael McDonald, vp of risk management at Quality Distribution Inc., a Tampa, Fla.-based bulk hauler, said his firm’s thefts decreased dramatically after installing a satellite tracking devices on its trailers.
Mr. Burges said cargo thieves often know how to disable basic vehicle tracking systems. He and others recommend a concealed tracking device planted inside the cargo so even if thieves unload and dump trucks, investigators still may recover the freight.
Thieves “would have to literally go through every box to know where it’s at,” Mr. Driscoll said.
Observers attribute the recent rise in cargo thefts to a variety of factors including the recent economic downturn and ease with which criminals can sell stolen goods in the black market or online. Also, it is considered a nonviolent property crime that often does not generate jail sentences. Using a gun or knife to steal cargo is considered hijacking or armed robbery, and only happens in 3% of freight theft cases, Mr. Burges said.
The 2006 reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act directed the FBI to begin tracking cargo theft as a separate category in its uniform crime reports, and Mr. Cornell said the FBI and local police departments will do so this year.
Compiling accurate statistics is the first step toward stiffening the punishment for nonviolent cargo thefts, Mr. Cornell and other experts say.
Sue Russell provides an insightful look at arson investigations. It is a battle over science and techniques.
http://www.miller-mccune.com/article/arson-convictions-fire-investigations-feel-the-heat-980
Arson Convictions, Fire Investigations Feel the Heat
As decades of flawed and unscientific fire investigation techniques call arson convictions into question, new recipes emerge for a system-wide overhaul.
Discredited traditions and bad science have led many fire investigations to unjustifiably point to arson.
Phoenix attorney Larry Hammond knows just how much is riding on the paperwork on his desk. The chairman of the Arizona Justice Project, he is fighting hard to overturn the conviction of Louis C. Taylor, imprisoned 38 years ago for intentionally setting a catastrophic fire at Tucson’s landmark Pioneer Hotel that ultimately killed 29 people. Ever since Hammond first studied the case in 1999, he’s been convinced that the blaze was not arson.He knows he has a tough road ahead.Taylor, now in his 50s but then a 16-year-old petty thief known to hang around pool halls, claimed he slipped into the hotel that December night to cadge free food and drinks in the ballroom. After the fire broke out, he was spotted nearby with matches in his pocket.
Unfortunately for Taylor, 1970 was the dark ages of fire investigation. Arson investigator Cyrillis W. Holmes Jr. found no tangible evidence of how the fire started, yet he divined from burn patterns and fire debris that at least two fires had been deliberately set about 60 feet apart in the fourth-floor hallways.
Multiple points of origin are a powerful indicator of arson — if they’re real. But old-time fire investigation was a mix of old wives’ tales, myths and oral hand-me-down wisdom with no science behind it. Fire debris was read like tea leaves. And marks on floors and carpets called “pour patterns” were routinely interpreted as points of origin and cited as evidence of an arsonist pouring liquid accelerants like gasoline.
Since then, science has rendered such “arson indicators” obsolete and convictions based upon them questionable.
It is one thing to suspect that fallacious evidence helped convict someone like Taylor, quite another to secure a new trial or exoneration because of “new” scientific evidence. But Larry Hammond isn’t cowed by a tough fight, and buoyed by a “breathtaking” report from renowned independent fire scientist John Lentini, he’s readying a petition to file in state court.
To read the rest of the article click here
Pursuit Magazine publishes our story. To read and comment click here.
Alan Hawes
The Post and Courier
Heather Bailey gave up her son reluctantly then spent 36 years, on and off, looking for him. In late 2007, the search paid off.
Editor’s Note: In an e-mail, Heather Bailey shared a story describing what she did when her son turned 36. Reunited after years of searching for one another, she finally could celebrate her son’s birthday.
One thing I forgot to tell you, and it’s kind of sad and funny at the same time. You asked if I was consumed with searching for my son. Not at all. While I did think about my son every day, I did have a very full life.
However, every year around the time of his birthday, for some reason, I was drawn to look at and read birthday cards and hope that someday I would be able to send one to him.
We were reunited about six weeks before his 36th birthday. In 2007, I was finally able to buy my son a birthday gift and card for the first time. I went to the card store, and something kind of comedic kicked in. I bought all the age-numbered “To My Son” cards I could find: 1-18, 21, 25, 29, 30, and 35. Then I filled in cards for the other years for which I couldn’t find numbered cards. The store clerk was blown away, and I told her not to even ask.
I signed every one (on the 36th card I wrote a little note that we were finally all caught up), sealed them up, and put numbers from 1 to 36 on the envelopes, and put them in a separate box underneath his wrapped gift.
When he received the gift, he called me laughing about it. He said he opened the gift and thought I had sent him two presents. When he opened the second box and found all those envelopes, his wife grabbed her camera and started snapping photos as he arranged them in order and started opening them. He said after he opened a few cards, he realized the camera flash had stopped. That was because his wife was crying and just unable to snap any more photos. They sent me a picture of him at the dining room table with all 36 cards set up in front of him. He told me he will always keep every one of them.
I think my husband and my son’s wife were just as happy as we were about the reunion.
—www.childwelfare.gov: Child Welfare Information Gateway.
—www.LocatorsUnlimited.com: Private investigations.
—www.SouthCarolinaAdoptions.com: Registry, search and support.
—www.SCAdoptionReform.com: Information on proposed legislation reform.
Family Fair participants:
—www.ACCadoptionservices.com: Summerville agency.
—www.adoptionsc.com: Adoption attorney, Spartanburg.
—www.realpagessites.com/glennlister: Adoption attorney in Mount Pleasant.
—www.cwa.org: Christian World Adoption.
BLUFFTON — Linda Cecil will accept most any assignment — producing evidence of adultery for use in court, finding missing persons, video surveillance, premarital investigations, employer fraud. But her favorite kind of case has nothing to do with suspicion and blame and everything to do with longing and love.
Cecil, a private investigator who lives in Bluffton and is licensed in South Carolina and Kentucky, specializes in reuniting adoptees with their birth parents.
An adoptee herself, she knows firsthand what a reunion can mean, and she has become an advocate for legislative reform that makes it easier for birth parents and adopted children to find one another should they choose.
She says there are three types of adoption placement in South Carolina: public (via the Department of Social Services), agency-instigated (for those actively searching for a child domestically or internationally) and private (direct arrangements among or between families).
Adoption laws apply in the state of adoption, not the state of birth,she said, and each state has its own set of laws. There is no federal legal guideline, which makes for a lot of confusion when it comes to reunions, she says.
Adoption records in some states are open and accessible to the public (South Carolina had open records until 1963.). Agencies such as DSS will provide some, but not all, adoption information upon request. (Identifying information is redacted.) Private agencies rarely will release their data. What’s more, she says, states typically do not have records of adoptions facilitated by private groups or arranged among families. Only the original birth certificate is on file with the state.
Cecil has been fighting to get states to keep their records up to date and more accessible (especially medical records), to pass laws that make reunions easier when there is mutual consent and to ensure that birth mothers have an extended waiting period before they are required to terminate their parental rights.
Some adoption officials argue that that window should be small, that months of preparation, counseling and soul-searching before birth should not be compromised by a last-minute, hormone-laden change of heart.
Not all birth parents or adoptees want to find one another, Cecil says. When searches are managed by a private investigator, anyone being sought who doesn’t want a reunion always has the right to refuse contact, she says.
But there are good reasons to facilitate reunions, she says. Instinct and curiosity are legitimate impulses that might drive people back together. And practical concerns regarding medical histories and genetic inheritances also serve as motivators, she says.
Someone with a health condition can better understand the implications and likely outcomes when the family medical history and genetic information are obtained.
Looking for a match
To help people find one another despite the obstacles, Cecil and others have set up adoption registries (most are online now) that enable searchers to list information about themselves in a database with the hope that matches can be made.
It was Cecil’s registry, http://www.southcarolinaadoptions.com, that finally brought together Heather Bailey and her son, Scott.
Bailey is 55 now. She grew up in Aiken and works as a paralegal in Columbia. Her first husband was a “control freak” who didn’t want children, she says. The nightmare began when Bailey got pregnant unexpectedly. She says she felt threatened. She says she was scared.
“I felt I was already dead,” she says. But the child — he must be protected.
After the cesarean section, she was in the hospital for five days, listening to her child’s cries, unable to go to him. A nurse tried to reassure her. “Don’t worry, you’ll have another one,” she had said.
On the fifth day, a social worker arrived.
“What time is your husband coming?” she wanted to know, so that the papers could be signed.
“This is not what I want,” Bailey, recovering from surgery, on pain medication, susceptible to hormonal changes, managed to tell her.
The social worker looked Bailey in the eyes and repeated her question.
She signed the papers reluctantly, she says. She asked for copies of the documents but never received them. Counseling was never offered.
Soon she would divorce and, in 1986, remarry. But she never had another child.
For the next 36 years after giving birth, Bailey thought about her lost child every day, she says. She tried to search for him, but she had only the name of an Aiken lawyer and the Columbia legal guardian, clues not substantial enough to set her on the path of discovery.
She decided to wait until the child turned 18 before she would search in earnest. In 1989, she began to add her information to every registry she could find. She avoided baby showers. She became depressed around the child’s birthday in November.
Reunion
Several years ago, Bailey came across a South Carolina adoption registry online. She plugged in her information and got in touch with the site’s manager, Cecil. The two women became friends, and Bailey, discouraged about her own search, began to help others.
Meanwhile, Scott Rodgers decided he wanted to find his biological mother, so he started researching his origins, discovering clues such as the fact that he was born in a Catholic hospital.
He searched the Web for information. He found Cecil’s Web site. He called.
As Rodgers and Cecil talked, the private investigator entered the information into her database. One name kept popping up. Later, Cecil called her friend.
“You need to sit down,” she said.
“Oh, my God, oh, my God …”
“You’ll never guess who I’ve been talking to for the last hour.”
Bailey learned that her son was in law school, living in Washington state. She learned that his adoptive father had died. She learned that his adoptive mother supported his quest. She learned of Scott’s wife and two stepchildren, of his degrees in economics, chemistry and sociology/anthropology, of the Master of Business Administration he had earned. His adoptive mother, “an amazing and giving woman,” has sent Bailey dozens of photographs taken over the years.
When they spoke to each other for the first time in September 2007, he said, “I know you had other options. Thank you for not pursuing them.”
She said, “I did what I did out of love, because I wanted you very much.”
A few months later, when Bailey took a flight to Seattle for her first visit with her found son, she sat in the bulkhead next to a man from Colombia and two of his daughters. They fell to talking. The man told her that his third daughter was adopted and that she had just found her birth mother in Seattle. The family was flying there for the reunion.
They cried and cried.
Copyright © 1997 – 2008 the Evening Post Publishing Co.
A serial home arsonist, an elected judge who made phony auto injury claims, and dentists who did worthless root canals on children were among the nine swindlers elected to the Insurance Hall of Shame.
The Coalition Against Insurance Fraud’s Hall of Shame reveals the previous year’s largest, most-brazen or dumbest insurance schemes. Insurance fraud is an $80-billion crime annually, and has grown more violent and invasive in recent years. The No-Class of 2008 reflects that trend.
Burning with desire. Kenneth Allen led an arson ring that torched 50 homes and hauled in millions in bogus insurance claims in the Indianapolis and Muncie areas. Allen’s gang usually bought low-priced homes and loaded them with used furniture to inflate the claims. Allen even had a crooked insurance adjuster help inflate claims. Allen received four years.
Judging the judge. Appellate judge Michael Joyce collected $440,000 from auto insurers after lying that a 5 mph bumper bender nearly crippled him. But the Pennsylvania jurist got his pilot license and flew airplanes, was an avid golfer, went roller blading, and tried scuba diving in the Caribbean. Joyce will be sentenced in 2009.
Triathlon tricks. Samuel Aaron Brabson claimed a car crash left him nearly crippled and largely confined to a wheelchair. The Richmond, Va., man made more than $1.2 million in disability claims. But all along, Brabson competed in triathlons and took girlfriends on mountain hikes. He received one year.
Truth decay. Children had teeth pulled and painful root canals done at North Carolina clinics owned by two dentists. At least two kids each had 16 root canals and steel crowns. The dentists bilked Medicaid out of millions. Letitia Ballance and Michael DeRose paid $10 million to settle federal civil charges.
Revenge run amok. Serving 11 years for health-insurance fraud, Dr. Ira Klein plotted to kill those who he thought had sent him away. The Houston physician tried to pay a hitman to have his wife shot, a federal prosecutor run over by a truck, and acid thrown in an FBI agent’s face. The FBI stopped the plot in time.
Babbling crook. Michael Paul Schook told so many people he’d burn down his Suffield, Conn., home for insurance money that it seemed half the town knew. At least three people turned him in after he kept saying how easy the scheme would be to get away with. Schook received seven years.
Sinister seniors. Two elderly women befriended a pair of homeless men in Los Angeles then took out $3 million in life policies, naming themselves as beneficiaries. Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt then had cars run down Paul Vados and Kenneth McDavid in dark alleys. Both women received life.
Non-working comp. Thousands of employees had no workers’ compensation protection when three men helped sell fake policies to small businesses. The scheme stole at least $70 million in premiums. One injured worker couldn’t afford a prosthetic leg. Another lost his home and marriage. A grandmother lost her home and lived in her car. Donald Touchet received 22 years, Robert Standridge 18 years and Robert Jennings 15 years.
Skin deep scheme. Michigan skin doctor Robert Stokes inflated claims while exposing thousands of patients potentially to HIV and hepatitis by reusing sutures, scalpels and syringes without proper cleaning. Stokes also removed minor lesions by lying to scared patients they had cancer. Stokes stole at least $1 million insurance money, and received 10 years in federal prison.
To view the complete 2008 Hall of Shame report, visit www.InsuranceFraud.org.
Source: Coalition Against Insurance Fraud
© 2009 Wells Publishing, Inc
Filed under Home, Professional Investigations
Friday’s News and Observer, January 30, 2009 edition has an article in the Triangle and State section where Ms Boseman introduced a bill banning PI’s from peeping into windows.
North Carolina has a citizen legislature, and Sen. Julia Boseman, a Wilmington Democrat, seems to be putting her personal experience to work with a bill banning private investigators from peeping into windows.
Boseman introduced a bill this week that would make private investigators subject to the peeping tom law, which prohibits secretly looking into a room occupied by another person. The law currently allows exemptions for “private protective services.”
Boseman has been embroiled in a contentious custody dispute with her former partner, Melissa Jarrell, over the custody of a son to whom Jarrell gave birth when the two were together.
In the course of the dispute, Jarrell hired a private investigator who recorded on video when Boseman hired a baby sitter to watch the child, which violated the child custody agreement between the two women, according to WWAY TV in Wilmington.
The investigator, Marc Benson, was later reprimanded by the state board that regulates private investigators for not having the proper license.
ben.niolet@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4521
Wednesday, January 28, 2009 – updated: 6:54 pm EST January 28, 2009
Rep. Kevin Levitas wrote the legislation to protect Georgians, and offers exceptions for parents tracking children, cops tracking criminals, and employers watching their vehicles, but not private investigators.
For the complete story which is interesting and I recommend, click here.
Here’s news story from the Columbia MO Tribune about women investigators. Love this.
Female private eyes sleuth past stereotypes.
ORLANDO, Fla. – A new private-investigation agency here is less like Sam Spade and more like the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Sandy Love and Kelly Hite are sleuthing around Central Florida, challenging the perception of PIs.
“People meet us and think it’s the coolest thing,” said Hite, 49. “People have a concept of what you should look like, but people meet us and think it’s wonderful. We’re just hardworking women.”
Love, 45, has been a private investigator for almost 22 years and in 1995 started her own business, Sandy Love Investigations, when she had trouble finding work because she was a woman and did not have previous military or law-enforcement experience.
Hite owned a medical clinic for 18 years before selling it last January because she was disillusioned with the insurance red tape. She had known Love for about seven years. Central Florida PI was born last spring, with Love in the field and Hite handling administration while working on her two-year licensing internship.
Two other women also are working on their internships at the Windermere, Fla.-based company.
Orlando private investigator Stephen Craig, a regional director with the 600-member Florida Association of Licensed Investigators, said private investigation is a male-dominated field because many private investigators are men with military or law-enforcement training in their past.
He said about a third of licensed investigators are women, who tend to put subjects at ease, not on the defensive.
“I don’t intimidate people,” Love said. “I have a funny, crazy personality. And yes, I carry a gun.”
Love said that in the beginning she didn’t worry about working alone, but now she works with a partner and will quickly back out of an uncomfortable situation.
“I’ve had my share of run-ins with bad people, but if you know how to handle your situation, you’re OK,” Love said. “I kind of go with my gut feeling.”
Once, Love said, she approached someone she wanted to talk with in Apopka, Fla., on a murder case, and he pulled a gun on her because he was dealing drugs.
Hite said one reason she got into the business is to help keep others safe.
As a single woman, she went to dinner with a man she had met online. Though he seemed like a wonderful person, she had Love run a background check and found he had recently been released from prison.
“If I had not had a friend like Sandy, I would have seen this person more times,” Hite said. “It really got me to thinking about women and men that don’t check.”
Love and Hite work cases involving everything from missing people to child custody.
Some of Love’s most challenging, time-consuming cases are homicides, in which she retraces the life of the accused. She gathers information about the subjects, including their prenatal care and childhood injuries, and interviews school and work associates.
“Every day, it’s something different,” Love said.
Copyright © 2009 The Columbia Daily Tribune. All Rights Reserved.
The Columbia Daily Tribune
101 North 4th Street, Columbia, MO 65201
Ann Lane
The Carolina Investigator 