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It's Easy To Steal Identities (Of Corporations)
jfruh writes "Two lawyers in Houston were able to exploit business filing systems to seize control of dormant publicly traded corporations — and then profit by pushing their worthless stock. In many states, anyone can change important information about a publicly registered company — including the corporate officers or company contact information — without any confirmation that they have anything to do with the company in the first place. Massachusetts requires a password to do this through the state registry's website, but they'll give you the password if you call and ask for it. Long focused on individual ID theft, state governments are finally beginning to realize that corporate ID theft is a huge problem as well."
Corporate Fraud? Deceptive conduct? Could the lawyers get disbarred?
... wait, what?
As Munchkin said, this is just fraud. Corporations are NOT people, they can't have their ID stolen.
And given the way that the corps have been raping the public lately, I find it hard to be sympathetic.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
An unexpected side-effect of "corporations are people too" ?
A corporation is a "legal entity" (a concept not unlike like a domain name or a handle) created through voluntary consent of the people who established a binding contractual agreement. Different individuals may be subject to different contracts and perform different functions: part-owners, partners, board members, employees of various levels of responsibility and compensation, and of course (usually quite informally) the customers.
Before investing in a company, an investor (or a consultant / broker acting on her behalf, or the institution facilitating the exchange, or an industry publication, etc) can investigate the company and see if it has sufficient policies to ensure secure operations, which would include preventing unauthorized individuals from issuing authoritative communications on behalf of the corporation. If the involved people fail to do this, it is their fault, and they are responsible for their losses.
The involvement of government bureaucrats in this process should not be necessary. Even the supposed benefits that governments provide to corporations (a centralized registry, undue liability limitations, etc) ultimately do more harm to the marketplace than good. The government currently exists as the default arbitrator and enforcer of contracts, but there's no need for this function to be a monopoly. In a sufficiently advanced society, multiple agencies can exist to protect Rights and enforce contracts - just as long as boundaries of their jurisdiction (which need not be geographical) are clearly and openly defined in advance.
Corporate law should be like programming - you have to think about security and implement appropriate restrictions yourself.
(Signed: AlexLibman's sockpuppet.)
All I did was submit a form with various corporate info like who's the owner(s), how much you made ($0) and what you want to do. I signed it and they dissolved it a few months later. They didn't even contact me but when I contacted them they said it was filed and taken care of. Funny how much money we pay into this but yet are offered no security over the filings.
I'm sorry on three counts. A) I read the article; B) I read the author's profile; and C) I lost it and disregarded everything I read when the author described himself a cyber-this and cyber-that and having provided commentary on cyber-whatever.
I'm the CEO of Lifelock and we're putting together a special package for corporations to prevent this kind of thing from happening. Additionally, if you'd like to invest in our company(whose stock will obviously be rising soon because of this great new service) I'd be more than willing to sell you a few shares right now.
If you as an individual have your identity stolen you will still be shit of of luck. No authority will be looking for individuals using your identity. You will have to spend huge amounts of time and effort proving to federal, state and business entities thaqt you are a victim. And once the bad information gets in to large information systems it will never get out. There are not mechanism for fixing these problems and allowing someone to clear their name.
So it's not about corporate person hood. Corporations are important, you are meaningless. You are a disposable commodity, and you are easily replaced.
Until corporations are held fiscally responsible for damaging incorrect information nothing will change. Since corporate interests can buy any legislation they want, nothing will change. They can legally bribe their way out of responsibility. Don't expect change any time soon.
Why is Snark Required?
Identity theft is not really a crime. It's like Music or Movie Piracy. You are just creating a copy of another person's identity. You are not depriving him of his identity. Once the copy of the identity has been made, both of them can use the identity.
The companies were not well protected because they are essentially worthless. Hence the the fact that selling their worthless shares through a boiler room scam was a scam. The real problem part here was the boiler room selling worthless shares not the fact you can pretend to be a worthless defunct company.
I hope you were joking.
Two people cannot use the same identity at the same time. Attempts to, say obtain two valid Driver's Licenses, Passports, and voter registrations simultaneously doesn't work too well. Not to mention the fun around tax time.
The offices of Exxon Corporation has changed. Please remit all payments to: Exxon Corportation PO Box 3764 Walla Walla, WA 99362
"...the scammers took control of the companies and then obtained legitimate CUSIP numbers and stock trading symbols that were then used to push the worthless stock on unsuspecting investors...."
Hi, I have a stock to sell you. It's for a company that may appear to have been founded in 1975, but there is no history, no financial statements, no background, no product, and nothing really to back up what I'm telling you the stock is worth. How many shares would you like? But it has a legitimate stock trading symbol!
Seriously, this is only a tiny step away from selling the Brooklyn Bridge or land in Florida. If someone is so stupid that they would invest their cash in such a company with no research, I'd say they deserve to lose that money. If a hedge fund or something is stupid enough to invest in such a fund, that manager should lose his job at least, and the reputation of the fund should suffer by public announcement of their stupidity.
Really people, what part of 'caveat emptor' is too complicated to understand?
-Styopa
"Hi, state bureaucratic offices? This is Steve Ballmer. After the window Windows 8 debacle, I would like to disband and unfile this little corporation I own."
"Yes, I have controlling rights, just delist it. The company and its products are worthless anyway."
Silence is a state of mime.
I registered an LLC a few weeks ago. After a few days I wanted to change the name of the LLC. All I had to do was agree that I had the legal right to change the business documents by hitting the okay button. No password. No identity check. Just had to hit the okay button.
This theft doesn't surprise me. Its way too easy to do.
The sad thing is that they need not have bothered with the ID theft. They could have touted the stock and profited anyway without getting control over the company, quite legally.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I know some people who changed a companies contact info in order to get their (low numbered) ASN, and net-blocks.. Not even sure who to report something like that to.
This problem is related to "shelf corporations", ones with no activity that are still considered active. It's an abandoned account problem. What's probably necessary is to "lock" corporations that don't show any activity (annual report, tax return) in 18 months. Some countries and states mark corporations as "inactive" when they are, and may need to tighten up on how "inactive" status is ended.
Some US states, notably Nevada, don't require reports of a change in control. Those are especially vulnerable. Often, the "corporate officers" listed for a Nevada company are all an employee of some "Incorporate in Nevada" service that originally filed the paperwork. So there's no way the state of Nevada can validate that change requests come from a legitimate party.
The indictment was filed over 3 years ago and Tampa Bay Times ran the story then. The topic is interesting, but this is an incredibly old story.
Well, I don't quite know if the Supreme Court disagrees with that. They said in Citizens United that corps could exercise political speech, not that they could donate an unlimited amount to campaigns.
So, there's still a limit to sending a check to a campaign, but you can use whatever media you choose to get your message out (whatever that may be).
If you think about it, it's hard to see how it could be otherwise. Because if you want to restrict the ability of Citizens United to sell videotapes about Clinton, then how can you allow The New York Times Company to editorialize about Clinton (or Obama)? Or Village Voice Media?
If it's OK for Village Voice Media (a corp) to print and distribute tabloids in which they state their opinions, how can you restrict Citizens United (also a corp) from doing the same?
Next, if it's OK for Village Voice Media, it's surely OK for NBC (and its opinion subsidiary MSNBC). And so it's not just "media" corporations that can exercise speech, because NBC was owned by GE (now by Comcast).
So, basically, if you outlaw speech by corporations, you've just outlawed speech by anyone who doesn't own a printing press in his own name (as opposed to in concert with others).
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Take your meds, you fruitcake.
He called it fraud, he also expressed his hatred for portraying corporations as people, which given the article equates the two is also fair. See this sentence:
" Long focused on individual ID theft, state governments are finally beginning to realize"
Do you disagree that corporations are NOT people? And thus equating identity fraud of individuals with this fraud is UNreasonable?
Because corporations aren't people and shouldn't have the same rights that people have. It's not hate speech to spell that truth out.
According to the article:
"Wrosch of Oregon said the same is true in his state, acknowledging that the state's business registry can be manipulated or out of date, and shouldn't be the final word on the ownership of a company. "
So how does one prove that you own the business? Tax records? Easily manipulated as well. Bills? I can easily forge all of that. What is the final word that says I own business X? Seems that government bureaucrats are to blame here for making this a huge issue. None of this would be possible if I didn't have to show proof of ownership to anyone via a piece of paper when it's so easy to forge such proof. Lets go back to the good 'ol days where everyone knew who had the damn money and who was the damn owner.
who no longer have clients and are now looking for other lines of work