HOW CORPORATE AMERICA ENABLES SCAMS, SPAM AND CYBER-CRIME

Love has pitched his mansion in

The place of excrement;

For nothing can be sole or whole

That has not been rent.

- William Butler Yeats -

Your ubiquitous (O)CT(O)PUS is no prude, but I get annoyed when breast and penis enlargement spam invades my e-mail box. Why spam when spammers know nothing about me, least of all my gender, proclivities, or species?

Neither this nor that, I am not a transgender, cross-dressing cephalopod in need of both. I have no interest in privileging one appendage over another and no innate need to preen or primp myself in gaudiness to facilitate naughtiness. In this or that, it seems, human beings are more akin to birds.

Perhaps followers of this forum have noticed: Spam is no longer delivered via e-mail but posted in the comment threads of popular blogs. The logic is simple: Why spam a single reader when you can reach a wider audience; for instance, a forum followed by hundreds or thousands of readers; and spammers have learned to customize their message with charm and inventiveness.

Recently, for instance, I posted this article, A Preoccupation with Rubber Ducks. Last week, one enterprising spammer raised the ante duck for duck and left this comment beneath my post:

While most birds are phallus-free, ducks are oddly endowed - up to 8 inches. Using high-speed video they found that ducks could go from zero to happy in less than half a second … That endowment should give the males an advantage during forced mating but these [editorial note: I eliminated the embedded url address that originally appeared here] free males aren't out of the woods yet … Why Yale decided to study duck penises in the first place I will never know.

The embedded url address links you to an online pharmacy that trades in generic versions of Viagra™, Cialis™, and Levitra™, among other prescription medications. Online pharmacies are illegal in the United States for good reasons.

Generic drugs manufactured offshore violate patents and trademarks, and consumers should be especially wary when purchasing drugs of dubious origin and quality. Furthermore, consumers should never self-administer any prescription drug, especially antibiotics and cardio-vascular drugs, without medical supervision.

Curiously, GeoTrust and McAfee have certified this obviously illegal enterprise as a secure e-commerce site. Furthermore, the horny duck accepts payment from American Express, Diners Club, Visa, MasterCard, and Western Union. American corporations, it seems, employ a double standard. They will litigate any infringements of their own rights yet sell anything to anyone for any purpose with impunity. These days, to make a buck is the most sublime of all virtues ... trumping laws, ethics, even hypocrisy. (O)CT(O)PUS intends to name them and shame them until they clean up their act.

AMERICAN EXPRESS TRAVELERS' CHEQUES: DON’T LAUNDER MONEY WITHOUT THEM

Our good friend Libby just posted an article, Laundering Drug Money, about the latest private equity scandal involving Texas billionaire Allen Stanford. These days, news of scandals flow from the spigot faster than tap water, and my interest is not a rehash. You can read more about this latest scandal here, here, and here.

Now, it seems, Sir Allen is suspected of laundering money for the notorious Gulf cartel. But my question is this:  Why just Sir Allen? Why not American Express? Or Bank of America? And every bank that sells travelers checks?

You see, your crafty Ocotpus has long known about the symbiosis between banking and money laundering, and the worst offender by far is American Express (Amex). This relationship between banking and money laundering is based on a concept known as "float." Here is how it works:

You buy American Express Travelers Cheques weeks in advance of a planned trip, and your trip lasts a few more weeks. Amex makes front-loaded income in the form of commissions from the sale of travelers' checks, but makes far more income on the delay between the time you purchased those checks and the time you spent them.

This delay between purchase and redemption is called "float" ... and Amex uses this "float" money to make more money. Float money is interest-free to Amex and other sellers of these instruments, but Amex can charge high interest rates to all sorts of borrowers for the use of float money. The longer the float, the more money Amex and others can make, and money-laundering has the longest, and most profitable, float of all.

What does every good drug or crime lord know about American Express Travelers Cheques? They are safe and can be redeemed anywhere in the world … just like the advertisement says.

The relationship between travelers’ checks and money laundering is one of Wall Street’s dirtiest, best kept secrets. Now you know.

Knock, knock. Someone at my door. Ooops! Gotta go …