I heard the weirdest ad yesterday evening!

Listening to an NPR podcast. Normally I flip past the ads, but I was in traffic and wasn't able to at the moment, and I heard an ad for ADP business services. ADP used to be just a payroll processing company, but they've expanded their offerings.

The ad started with 'What if a solar flare added an extra hour to the day?' It was an ad promoting their business planning services.

WHAT THE EVER-LOVING EFF ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT?

Seems to me the only way for the earth to gain an extra hour a day would be for it to slow down approximately 1/24th of its rotational speed. And for this magical solar flare to do this instantaneously, the results would be kinda catastrophic, I would think!

Now, the earth's rotational speed IS slowing down, just like the moon IS slowly moving out of its orbit with the earth and will eventually leave entirely and go cruising through space all on its own until it's captured by another orbital body.

But for the earth's rotation to slow by 4%? That would be bad, mmmmkay? At least international and trans-oceanic air travel would be a bit quicker.

A Canadian man get sucked into an ecommerce triangle of fraud

I had never heard of this, apparently it's been going on for some time.

The man, Tim, worked for a First Nations tribe in Alberta as a buyer. It was almost the end of the fiscal year and they needed to spend some money before the year was out, so he and another work partner ordered $2,000 worth of children's playground stuff off of Amazon.

Then things got weird.

Shortly after placing the order, he gets contacted by a woman in Ontario, accusing him of hacking her Walmart card and ordering this gear. Which he had not done.

Then the Royal Canadian Mounted Police get involved and tell him he needs to come down to the station and answer some questions pertaining to an investigation. Which he says he'd be happy to do. He provides printouts of the orders in question, showing HIS credit cards, etc. And then he's threatened with arrest, his wife is harassed by the RCMP, and he is ultimately arrested. Because of the arrest, he loses his job.

The equipment arrives at his house with an additional oddity: a phone number in Mexico.

Here's what happened. An expert in "search engine optimization" in Turkey apparently stole the woman's credit card, or may have bought it from one of the numerous black market exchanges where you can buy such. He placed an ad on Amazon, where Tim bought the gear from him. The Turkey turkey never owned the equipment. He buys the gear from Walmart, using the stolen credit card, has it shipped to Tim. I have no idea where the Mexico phone number came into play, perhaps another layer of money laundering?

And Tim gets charged with a money fraud charge and can't get a job. Apparently in Canada, being charged with a crime - but not having been convicted - is enough to really mess with your employment opportunities.

Tim had a court date, but the Crown prosecution services decided to issue a stay on the case and defer prosecution, saying we're not going to prosecute at this time, but might at a later date. Apparently they have one year to bring the case back to trial, during which Tim is left hanging in limbo. Commentors on the Krebs article said it is likely that the case will be dismissed at the end of the year period, I don't know if this will erase the arrest mark on Tim's record.

Tim did nothing wrong, except getting caught in a fraud scheme. So be very careful buying things on Amazon if it is not 'Shipped by Amazon'.

*sigh*

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/01/canadian-man-stuck-in-triangle-of-e-commerce-fraud/