whose synergy communications?
i dont know but lets send them parts!

Alright! Put them in jail. They deserve that! There is no easy way in life!

$23 Million and they thought what Cisco is not going to wonder who the 21 fake companies are?

So they get 20 years in jail and have to pay up to $500,000. Seems like they will pocket $22.5 million in the end.

Did they publish an how-to tutorial?

Fraud is very big business. In fact, it's pretty much ubiquitous. Most fraudsters are never caught. When they are caught, they are seldomly prosecuted. When they are prosecuted, they serve relatively little jail time. It's the whole risk-vs-reward issue. You can rob banks or sell drugs and risk harsh jail terms at maximum security, pound-you-in-the-ass prison, or you can commit fraud and maybe serve a few months at a minimum-security detention center (not that I'm advocating crime, I just wanted to share some of the stuff I learned from my graduate coursework in fraud investigation and forensic accounting).

Tech news? On my THG? What happened to the balloon boy and the rocket launcher guy?

lol spaming cisco is asking for death. wounder how many geeks they have that are good with networks hmm.... tracking should be peice of cake

@ kelfen: the majority of Cisco personnel are less equipped than say a CS major whose taken 2+ networking/info classes from a top school. i've seen it quite a few times

English please?

In order of sentences quoted: True, False, False, False, False. Not a good average.

I guess reading isn't one of your strengths...

SCAM not SPAM.

My first thoughts were: wow! 3 gov't agencies working together in this case. How did they figure out the crime? Shhh! Trade secret. Wonder where they got the phrase "Crime does not pay"? Criminals do pay. Those who did crimes and got away, are not considered criminals, technically.

These news were on Tom's Guide, not Tom's Hardware.

Daymn! Sucks to be them Hell I bet Cisco is setting up some better regualtions on how there stuff works. Now if i can come up with a cleaver plan to scam ppl...

40 years in jail + $750K fine if they get convicted on all the accounts.

They scammed about 20+ million dollars.

$20M ÷ 40 years in jail.

They would still get around $500K from the scam for each year they spend in jail.

If they are sent to a federal prison, because they used mail to commit fraud, it would mean they will share their prison life with terrorists, more scammers and other types of federal criminals.

Still.

Does it beat having to do any actual work for 40 years to get all that money??

It's a tough question!

Considering how easy it is to get replacements from Cisco, I'm not supprised someone found a way to do this. I just hope it doesn't make it harder for me to get replacements in the future!

I studied fraud examination and forensic accounting at the graduate level under a PhD who is one of only a couple of people in New Mexico who consults at an expert witness in fraud examination, and has co-authored books and case studies in conjunction with experts from the FBI. He classes were very hands on, and he frequently had guests who were private fraud examiners for corporations, as well as members of the IRS, FBI, state and local law enforcement as well as the guys who created New Mexico's Fraud Investigation Division of State Taxation and Revenue.

I could spend many pages recounting the cases that we studied, but, in the interest of brevity let me just say this. In Albuquerque, we have around 1000 officers in the Albuquerque Police Department. Most of those are street cops. There are hundreds of detectives, most assigned to robbery, homicide, gang taskforce, auto theft, etc. For ALL white collar crime (including ID theft, fraud, embezzelment, etc.), there are exactly FIVE detectives. That's it... 5! They get hundreds (sometimes thousands) of cases a week. Most of those will never be looked at.

This scenario was echoed by those in law enforcement at the state and federal levels, as well as by the private fraud investigators. Most of the time, when an employee is caught committing some sort of fraud, they are simply terminated. But they won't tell anyone that calls for a reference why they were terminated, they will simply say that they won't hire them again (liability issues and such). Another reason is that, if a company is the victim of a fraud that costs them millions of dollars, the damage to their reputation far exceeds their losses through fraud. A perfect example is this this discussion. Go back and look at how many people are making comments critical of Cisco. Now imagine you're an executive at Cisco. Would you really want to have a discussion about this with prospective clients?

So, lamorpa, next time you decide to call someone out, you really should have some facts to back up what you're saying.

jellico, I salute you!

Actually, per the RICO act, they must forfeit all ill-gotten gains. Good to see you got thumbs-up for your dumbshit post, though.

"So, what are you in for?" "Mail fraud. How bout you?" "Drugs and murder. Want to be my girlfriend?"

You are assuming they got this money and just threw it in a bank account. If they were smart enough, they would have bought gold and diamonds and physically hid it. Granted, 20 years is a long time to wait to go back and get it. But if I were ballsy and smart enough to steal 20+ million, I'd realize that I'm not going to leave the money in an easy to find bank account.

Then Cisco will sue them for the rest.

oh our leagal system is fucking bull shit , antoehr article talksa bout a person taht ripped off countless , Individuals , and he only get 1-1.5 years for robbing MULTIPLE people , yet these two rob a single big corp and get 20 ? how fucked is that ?

"If" they were smart enough.. most likely most or all of their assets were seized to pay back Cisco, however.

Who knows though, an accomplice is still at large.. perhaps he is converting their money into gold/diamonds/pink teddy bears right now.

maybe i'm a little slower than the rest of you but ... the crime here is ... reselling parts? parts they got for free under their SMARTnet contracts?

so i guess they just had to lie about a "part" being broken well enough for Cisco to ship them a replacement?

then at some point someone at Cisco started noticing some insurance algorithm related to SMARTnet profits and mean time between failure figures looked a little wonky and they started auditing ...

well i'd say there's a little bit of genius in Mario and Jennifer's business plan ... except for the getting caught part, of course.

if they could have stopped before they hit the $20 million mark i wonder if Cisco wouldve even noticed (in time)?

food for thought.

Well, we are all assuming it's the right figure.... but I guess only the culprits know the actual s. Cisco may have blamed them for all it's unaccounted for dough , for all you know the amount may be ten times the actual s declared....... and that would end up effecting a lot of cisco stock holders.........
Well, as far as seizing all the assets goes...... we've been there..... done it all and seen it a zillion times..... none of them have more then a VW beetle in their names...... if the court accepts that they have nothing more then the cars to their names on paper, which the courts have to accept since it's on paper, even Cisco can't sue them for damages, Bankruptcy is a big thing, in fact the culprits will end up suing Cisco is they even think of filing for damages after the two have been sentenced....
Yup the best part about the law is, that, it is made for the convenience of the criminal..... try being the straight guy and get stuck with the legal system, and you'll know how helpless you actually are.....