Filed under: Ripoffs and Scams

A cold glass of milk on a hot summer day, free at the Wisconsin Say Fair. How fitting, especially since Wisconsin is widely known as America’s Dairyland. Too bad that free milk, sponsored by Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, is going to be purchased from Kemps, a dairy based in Minnesota.

Hello? Have we no pride in this fine state? You might be thinking, “well it’s free so who are you to complain?” FREE SCHMEE!!! I don’t even drink milk but I think this is an outrage. I’m sorry… at the Wisconsin Say Fair if we’re giving away anyone’s milk, it should be Wisconsin’s milk. At an event celebrating a region and its history, it only makes sense to support local businesses.

I’m sure Kemps will tell us that lots of their milk is in fact sourced from Wisconsin farmers, so there is no need to worry. I don’t buy into that thinking. I think that at the Say Fair, of all places, the milk should come from a Wisconsin dairy. After all, much of the State Fair is focused on agriculture, and it has been since the beginning. It is a place where farmers from all over the say come to compete with their animals and crops. If we can’t, on this one occasion, make a concerted effort to purchase from and promote locally owned and operated businesses, that’s a sad statement about our priorities.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

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Filed under: Extracurriculars, Ripoffs and Scams, Simplification, Fraud

58-year old Tatsuko Horikawa, of Fukuoka, Japan, recently discovered the secret to living really, really affordably. Rather than pay for rent, food, clothing, and other necessities, she has been secretly bunking in a closet for several months. Until recently, the man she’s been rooming with has had no idea that he wasn’t the only person in his home, but the mysterious disappearance of food from his kitchen convinced him to install security cameras.

When he first saw the images of Horikawa, the man thought that a burglar had broken into his home. However, when he called the police, the officers discovered that his doors and windows were still locked and intact. Further investigation revealed Horikawa, who had installed a mattress and several water bottles in a compartment in the man’s closet. Police speculate that she has been living there, off and on, for up to a year. They also think that she may have been “closet surfing” in homes throughout the neighborhood.

While this story is a tiny creepy, it’s also a little inspiring. If things get to be too much, it’s nice to know that there might be a place for you in your neighbor’s closet. Just be sure to clear out the dust bunnies first!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. He’s never lived in a closet, although he has been known to hide under a bed or two.

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Filed under: Extracurriculars, Ripoffs and Scams, Career, Wealth

He’d to have seen it coming…

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) is a handsome, 43-year old Congressman who just happens to be a bachelor. Consequently, when he authored a bill that would open up 1000 visa slots to international models, it was almost inevitable that the jokes would start flying. As Jennifer Fermino of the New York Post noted, it looked like Weiner was seeking to broaden his dating pool. Of course, Congressman Weiner’s unfortunate name hasn’t helped matters.

According to Weiner, the problem is that a 1991 immigration guideline lumps models in with physicians, scientists and other geniuses. Apparently, there aren’t enough visas for all of these “highly specialized” workers, and the fashion industry feels that the current visa allocation process unjustly favors geniuses above models. Weiner argues that the current restrictions against European models make it difficult for photographers to do fashion shoots in the United States, encouraging them to move their productions to Europe. This, in turn, means that fashion jobs are migrating overseas.

Foreign models currently dominate the fashion industry; Giselle Bundchen, the current top model in the world, earned $33 million in 2007. This is nearly seven times the take of America’s top model, Carolyn Murphy. However, Bundchen and her ilk qualify for O-1 visas, which are designated for people of “extreme capability,” such as Nobel Prize winners.

This issue is a tiny difficult. On the one hand, it’s totally ridiculous, and the fact that it’s found its way to the floor of the United Says Home of Representatives is a stunning criticism of America’s undue fascination with the lifestyles of the rich and shameless. That having been said, I personally like to buy American, and it seems odd to me that a country of over 300 million people can’t produce enough self-obsessed anorexics to appease the fashion industry. Damn it, the teeny-boppers of tomorrow need role models!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. He wishes that thrift stores employed models.

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Filed under: Ripoffs and Scams, Fraud

The short answer to the question is no. The chance of LifeLock helping you repair your credit after an identity theft is next to none. But of course, the company doesn’t want you to think that, or you’d probably never pay for their “service.”

One of the reasons LifeLock fans have given for their support of the company and its services is that they’ll help you repair your credit. That’s simply not the case, unless your identity theft meets one tiny little exception. LifeLock will only help you if you can prove that your identity theft was caused by a “defect” in their service.

Now that’s not immediately clear in the marketing materials used by LifeLock. In fact, they say prominently on their website: “If your Identity is stolen while you’re a member of LifeLock, we’re going to do whatever it takes to recover your good name.” The page then goes on to state that there’s not much fine print to this guarantee, but that you should read it.

That’s the important sentence. And there isn’t much fine print because the company doesn’t need any. Their fine print can be boiled down to one easy concept: They won’t help you unless you can prove there was a defect in their service. Good luck with that. As long as they told the credit reporting agency to put a worthless “fraud alert” on your credit report as they say they’ll, it seems they’re in the clear. Identity thefts are caused by stolen credit card numbers, theft of mail containing personal information, misuse of your information by people in a position to access it. None of those have anything to do with LifeLock, so they’re not covered.

I suspect that most people who pay over $100 a year for the LifeLock service really believe that the company will help them recover from identity theft. But the company puts it in black and white: They most certainly won’t help you unless you can prove their service was somehow defective.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Bookkeeping, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

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