The perpetuator (presumably a male) wanted to transfer funds out a Paypal account and convert them back into US dollars. All the victim needed to do was check his Paypal account and when the money arrived and send a significantly lower amount back via Western Union.

Jennifer Perry from E-victims blamed Paypal's dispute resolution procedure system calling it a "very crude automated system."

"Paypal's guarantee doesn't really live up to expectations," Perry explained. "The public feel it [Paypal] is a gold-plated service like M&S or a credit card, but it isn't."

We've pointed out many times in the past that the various Torrent tracker sites out there that the entertainment industry is suing are not particularly different than Google.

If Google is equally as effective as various torrent trackers in finding unauthorized content, why aren't the entertainment industry giants suing Google for the same thing?

The "losses" from camcorded movies are minimal, though it didn't stop the MPAA from totally making up numbers that were clearly bogus.

They claimed that anti-camcording laws in the US had wiped out piracy in the US. Two months later when they were pushing for such laws in the US, suddenly New York represented 40% of all camcorded movies.

So, it's rather interesting to see that a guy who was caught camcording movies in Maryland was just sentenced to 21 months in prison under a 2005 law.

A 15-year-old high school student in New York State has been charged with three felonies after he allegedly accessed personnel records on his school's poorly configured computer network and then notified his principal of the security weakness.

Since news of the charges were reported late last week, hackers have criticized administrators for turning the student into a scapegoat for the school board's shoddy computer security.

"I was told the phone was in good condition, but there were scratches all over it, a big chip out of the side and it was a different phone. I paid for a Samsung F700 and got a Samsung F700V," Mr Read said.

Mr Read, 42, a mechanic from Herne Bay, Kent, posted his feedback, saying: "Item was scratched, chipped and not the model advertised on Mr Jones's eBay account."

Soon after the email exchange, Mr Read received a pre-court letter from Mr Jones, demanding that he agree the comments were unreasonable.

The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act establishes within the executive branch the position of intellectual property enforcement coordinator, who will be appointed by the president.

The law also steepens penalties for intellectual-property infringement, and increases resources for the Department of Justice to coordinate for federal and state efforts against counterfeiting and piracy.

Kernell, 20, was charged Wednesday with one felony count of accessing a protected computer for allegedly breaking into the private Yahoo e-mail account of Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate.

The other incident allegedly occurred around 2000, when Kernell was in the seventh grade. Kernell and an accomplice guessed the password to a server used to store teaching materials at the school and were able to log on to the system, McDaniels said.

The summary? Almost every move the RIAA has made in its legal campaign has backfired.

All that's done is turn many more people against the RIAA, while continuing to educate them that file sharing exists. In fact, many more people engage in file sharing now than five years ago when the campaign started.

About the only "success" of the strategy is that it's turned into something of a cash generator for the RIAA, by frightening people, with strong legal language around flimsy evidence, into paying "presettlements" to avoid being sued. It's like a protection racket from organized crime. Oh yeah, it's worth noting that the musicians don't actually see any of that money.

Detective work by an Australian online poker player has uncovered a $US10 million cheating scandal at two major poker websites and triggered a $US75 million legal claim.

Josem plotted the win rate of several thousand players against the suspicious accounts and found the cheats won money at a rate that was 100 times faster than a good player could reasonably win.

The findings led to an investigation by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, which licenses several hundred online casinos and poker rooms. It found Absolute Poker attempted to cover up the cheating by deleting gaming logs and records and fined it $US500,000.

The lawyers, who asked that their names not be published, said they were concerned "Consumers will think this is a legal product...when in fact it is totally illegal."

Wait wait wait wait: what? These unnamed lawyers are on a press-call with the media, as spokespeople for their company, and they "asked that their names not be published?"