“Office Space” Scheme for Real
For those of us into cult movies Office Space ranks near the top. Insiders easily identify themselves with reference to the red Swingline! For all you insiders, do you remember the swindle that the IT gurus were perpetrating on the company? They collected round-down interest beyond the penny and deposited it to their bank account; often referred to as salami slicing
Well, Wired magazine is reporting a new creative twist to this standard scheme.
According to their story:
Michael Largent, of Plumas Lake, California, allegedly exploited a loophole in a common procedure both companies follow when a customer links his brokerage account to a bank account for the first time. To verify that the account number and routing information is correct, the brokerages automatically send small “micro-deposits” of between two cents to one dollar to the account, and ask the customer to verify that they’ve received it.
Largent allegedly used an automated script to open 58,000 online brokerage accounts, linking each of them to a handful of online bank accounts, and accumulating thousands of dollars in micro-deposits.
Largent gets my vote for creative larceny of the year!
Posted: May 28th, 2008 under General.
Tags: banking, brokerage, larceny, movie, office, office space, online, wired magazine
Comment from Matthew Botos
Time May 28, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Creative, but it seems a little lacking on both ends. According to the story, he used the same information and accounts many times over. This seems to be how they finally noticed: multiple accounts with the same name and IP address, which could have been randomized.
Also, every time I’ve gotten one of this link-verification deposits, they’ve been quickly reversed. I’d imagine these banks would recover any outstanding amounts periodically, and monitor how often those accounts were closed in between.