Best Place to Commit Fraud: Europe

Don't read into this article that I'm anti-Europe. Trust me I'm not. My wife is European and my parents are also. But it's ironic that the European Union is all up in arms about Google's search engine possibly violating the European privacy rules (see article), when these same rules allow for the increase perpetration of fraud or at a minimum slow investigations of it down to a halt.

I investigate fraud every day - it's literally my job - both here in the United States and in Europe. So I know a thing or two about this topic. But I wanted address an issue which no one seems to recognize or at least not willing to acknowledge.

Here's a war story. We were conducting an investigation in Germany. One the best sources of information for a case is the hard drive from the laptop of the suspected perpetrator. So we create forensic images of the hard drive in order to (1) preserve it and (2) easily analyze it in a read-only manner. Well in this case we wanted to image the hard drive of the suspect - normal procedure in the US. In fact, here we can usually do it with out telling the person what or why we are doing it. Not the case in Germany. After taking a 2 hour train ride in from Switzerland to conduct the image, I had to wait another 2 hours until the suspects 3 lawyers showed up. After that it was finally agreed that I could start the imaging. But the fun doesn't stop there! As part of our imaging process, we verify that the image was made correctly. When I got to that point in the procedure, the lawyers ears perked up - "there's no way you are doing that, you might see something of a personal nature". What!! All I'm going to do is verify the MD5 hash is correct and I can read the files on the drive. No. Out of the question. Then the perp pulls out a document from his back pocket that basically says nobody can look at the contents of his hard drive with out his union rep and lawyer present and then nothing marked "private" or "personal" can be looked at by any party.

Now, think about it. You want to commit fraud in Europe, plaster or hide all your bad stuff in a folder or email that says "private" or "personal". Also, make sure you put your grandmother's recipes at the bottom of every email! That way you get away with it and your friends get to eat good.