Why is it so hard to learn?
When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, the US government went all out to aid the helpless victims. Amidst the protracted efforts of politicians to take political advantage of the situation, vast amounts of money were shipped to the affected areas and people. The Red Cross gave a $2000 debit card to most anyone with a plausible story of disruption, and a total of $265 billion was approved for the relief effort. Expediency was deemed more important than care in the distribution of funds. Well, surprise,surprise, widespread evedence of fraud was discovered, and now more than a thousand investigations are underway to sort out the mess. A recent article about fraud in France indicates that skillful fraud artists are not confined to the US. But lest you think that governments are the only ones capable of making big time mistakes, take a look at what some that Captains of Industry have made.
Origins: In September 2005, the Agence France Presse (AFP) news agency distributed a series of photographs showing Hurricane Katrina evacuee Latesha Vinnett and her daughter, Mychal Boykins, at the Reliant Center in Houston, Texas. Ms. Vinnett had just received one of the many $2000 debit cards issued to Katrina evacuees by the Red Cross, which she happily displayed for the camera — providing a full view of the debit card's number and expiration date. The photos were carried by a number of news outlets (such as Yahoo! News) or published as an accompaniment to news articles about Hurricane Katrina, thereby broadcasting a supposedly valid debit card number to millions of viewers.
A number of Internet-distributed rumors and spoofs have chided the participants (i.e., the cardholder, the photographer, AFP's photo editors) for all failing to realize they should have obscured at least a few numbers on the displayed card, and have posited wild spending sprees by hundreds of identity thieves that drove the debit card's balance to zero mere minutes after the photos were published. Although events may not have transpired in quite that spectacularly rapid a fashion, apparently the card number displayed was indeed used by fraudsters: