ExpandMyWealth.com

Blackjack is the only casino game that can be consistently won by players if they know the proper techniques.  If you know how to count cards then you can bet higher amounts when you have the advantage over the casino. 

The principle behind counting cards in blackjack is that a deck of cards with a high proportion of high cards (10-valued cards and Aces) to low cards (2-valued thru 6-valued) is btter for the player, while the reverse (a deck with a high proportion of low cards to high cards) is better for the dealer. There are many reasons for this: blackjacks become more common (and they offer a higher payout than other winning hands), the dealer is more likely to bust on a stiff hand, double-downs are more successful, and insurance becomes profitable.

Card Counting recently became infamous after the release of the movie, 21, which was about the MIT Blackjack team which took the Las Vegas casinos for millions of dollars during the 80s and 90s.

Counting cards is much more difficult than it seems, you have to keep track of all the cards coming out of a six deck shoe, watch the dealer and other player’s hands, decide how much to bet, under a ton of distractions.

However, now a new Apple iPhone application called HiLo makes card counting easy.  Nevada gaming authorities have warned casinos to watch for blackjack players using an iPhone application to count cards.

In a memorandum that the Nevada Gaming Control Board circulated to casinos starting Feb. 5, board member Randall Sayre sounded the alarm about Blackjack Card Counter, an iPhone application that sells for $1.99 on Apple Inc.’s App Store.

“This program can be utilized on either the Apple iPhone or the Apple iPod Touch portable music player,” Sayre said in the memo (download PDF). “Once this program is installed on the phone through the iTunes Web site, it can make counting cards easy.”

Although card counting — attempting to keep track of the number of face cards, aces and 10s in the multideck Blackjack shoe — is not illegal in Nevada, using a device that aids in counting is against the law.

Card counting is a strategy that tries to track the ratio of high-value cards to low-value cards. A high ratio supposedly benefits the player, while the reverse gives the advantage to the dealer.

According to Sayre, Nevada gaming authorities were tipped to the iPhone application by colleagues in California, who in turn had been told by a tribal casino in the northern part of the state that it had found customers using the program.

Among the application’s features that Sayre called out is its “Stealth Mode,” which shuts off the iPhone screen — making the phone appear to be turned off. However, the user can still continue to track cards by pressing the screen at the spots where the keys would normally show.

“Just as a reminder, use of this type of program or possession of a device with this type of program on it — with the intent to use it — in a licensed gaming establishment, is a violation of NRS 465.075,” said Sayre. Counting cards with a device is a felony under Nevada law and is punishable by prison terms of between one and six years, or a fine of no more than $10,000, for the first offense.

Blackjack Card Counter is not the only such software on the App Store. The rival “Card Counter,” billed as a card-counting practice program, sells for $2.99. Card Counter is more popular than Blackjack Card Counter; the former is currently No. 30 on the App Store’s list of best-selling games.

Don’t you hate getting calls with blocked Caller ID?

I do! 

However now there is a brand new service which unmasks blocked calls so you will always know who is calling you!  This service is called TrapCall and it’s the worlds first cell phone service to unmask blocked calls.

TrapCall.com was officially launched today and I wanted to let you be the first to know about it!

TrapCall is incredibly simple to use and setup. No messy software downloads or installs required, and it works on all cell phones with most providers. You just key a few numbers into your cell phone and TrapCall’s ready. So, if you’ve got fingers your good to go! (For those of you without fingers, just ask a buddy to help out!)

Along with Caller ID unmasking, TrapCall also has advanced premium features, like incoming call recording (another first!), voicemail transcriptions, selective number blocking (we play them a disconnected number notice!), Caller ID Name, and more!

Did we also mention that TrapCall is FREE?

To get started using TrapCall, just visit: TrapCall.com.

Wired.com broke the news about the TrapCall launch last night! You can read the article at: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/02/trapcall.html.

I just tried it out and it works great!

What is does is when someone calls you with a blocked number first forwards the number to be unblocked to an 800 number and then forwards the call back to you with the number exposed.  At this point you can send them to voice mail if you don’t want to answer the call.

It was very easy to disable the feature as well, it varies per carrier. Just look on your trapcall account on how to disable it if you don’t want to use it.

The latest Gift Card scam involves people going to grocery stores, pharmacies, and other retail outlets, finding the Gift Card section, peeling the packaging aside and writing down the card number, the security code, and expiration date to use once they find out that card has been activated.   Here we will explain how this scam works.

Gift Cards work in a manner similar to regular Credit Cards.   These gift Credit Cards have a 16-digit card number, an expiration date, and a 3-digit security code (CVN).  The balance of the card is maintained by the credit card company’s authorization system and referenced by the card number which is printed on the card and stored on the magnetic strip.

Therefore you can make purchases using these Gift Cards either by swiping the card’s magnetic strip through a checkout machine or by providing the card number, expiration date, and security code directly to a retailer either on online or over the phone. 

Since there is no name associated with a gift card they could be used by anyone with the card number, expiration date, and security code.  There is no way of validating a Gift Card transaction against a person’s name or identity.

Now imagine that a scam artist walks into your local grocery store, grabs a stack of gift cards off the rack, and then one-by-one peels the packaging aside to reveal the gift card number, expiration date, and security code.  He writes this information down and leaves with a list containing info on over 30 Gift Cards.

Most gift cards are worthless and contain no value until they are sold.  Some Gift Cards require activation which involves scratching off an activation code from the back of the Gift Card and calling a 1-800 number to activate the card using this code.

Since this code needs to be scratched off it is relatively protected from people getting the number before the card is purchased. 

However, this scam artist can simply wait a few days after writing down the card information and then go to a website like GiftCards.com and use their Gift Card Balance Checker to see if the card has been activated yet.

Once they see that this card has an active balance.  They are able to use the card to make online or over the phone purchases using this card information.  They will also be able to know the balance on the card and are able to return to this site to check the balance in the future.

Since most gift cards aren’t given to the recipients until their birthday or Christmas, the scam artist will have plenty of time to use these cards.  Most gift cards are not used until at least 30 days after they are purchased.  This gives the scam artist a large window of opportunity to spend the money before the recipient. 

There is no name associated with the gift card so the credit card companies cannot treat this type of theft in the same manner as they would treat regular Credit Card theft.  The receipient usually is not the same person as the one who purchased the card so there is no way of associating an identity to the card and the receipient (since they didn’t purchase this card) is also less likely to complain about their balance disappearing.

To protect yourself from this kind of theft, you may want to purchase your card from a customer service person, where they do not have the gift cards viewable to the public and  always keep track of your gift card balances.

A new Credit Card Processing loophole has recently surfaced which has allowed some people to use Gift Cards to get Free Gas.  This trick only works at a few Gas Stations and will no longer work once the Gas Stations and the Credit Card companies correct this loophole.

With rising and falling Gas Prices, getting Free Gas can really help out in reducing your expenses.  So basically what you need to do is purchase one of those Gift Credit Cards from your local supermarket or drug store.

It will either need to be a Visa, Mastercard, or American Express Gift Card which can be used at a Gas Station just like a Credit Card.  Try to find the Gift Card with the smallest cash value possible.  I know that American Express and Visa both have a $5 Gift Card and that will work perfect for this trick.

Take your $5 Gift Credit Card (or higher amount) and spend all but $2 of the balance so that only $2 is left available on the card.  Go to your local Gas Station and use the Gift Card to pay at the pump. 

Start pumping your Gas.  See if the Gas stops pumping at $2 or continues to add gas to your car until your tank is full. 

With some Gas Stations their Credit Card authorization system only checks to see if the Credit Card is valid, it does not check the available credit left on the card.  Therefore, the pump will allow you to fill your tank and will not realize that the funds are not available until it finalizes your transaction with the total purchase amount.

By this time your gas has already been pumped into your vehicle.  Since these Gift Credit Cards are not associated with any particular name the Credit Card company will not be able to charge you any additional funds over available Credit Limit.

I am sure there are tons of people who would like to be able to receive anonymous electronic cash payments online.  There is always lots of money to be made in selling items which fall within the gray area which is merchandise considered to be “semi-legal” or only legal in certain areas. 

Some examples of gray area merchandise might be generic Viagra from China, marijuana seeds from Amsterdam, steroids from Mexico, swithblades from Italy, or knock-0ff Rolex watches from Thailand.  These items are available for sale overseas, but are considered illegal in the United States.

In order to sell these items online you either need to be located outside the United States or have a system to make it appear as though you are offshore or overseas.  There are two ways that a person selling these items can be traced (1) through tracing the shipment of the item to the customer and (2) through the payment processing system that the seller is using. 

It’s fairly easy for people to prevent the shipment of the goods from being traced.  Namely using the return address of a person overseas, mailing the packages from different mailing centers, and not including anything with the package that can be traced back to the sender.  However, concealing the payment processing system to prevent it from being traced is much more difficult.

Most people would attempt to set up an anonymous electronic cash payment system, simply by setting up a paypal account using an assumed name.  However, paypal has different ways of identifying the owner of their accounts and they will often put heavy restrictions or holds on people’s accounts who have not confirmed their identity and have either linked a credit card or a checking account to their paypal account.

The paypal system requires that a user with a merchant account provide the following (a) their personal information such as name, address, and phone number, (b) a verified email address, (c) your computer’s IP address, (d) a confirmed telephone number, or (e) a confirmed bank account or credit card linked to the account. 

Anyone can create fake personal information, it’s also fairly easy to sign up for a free email account on hotmail, yahoo, or gmail.  You can easily block your IP address by using a proxy server service such as FreeProxyServer.net or from a site like PublicProxyServers.com where you can chose from a list of hundreds of proxy servers located in various countries from around the world.  Anyone can pick up an anonymous prepaid cellphone at their local pharmacy or grocery store.  Paypal relies on the bank account or credit card as the main way of verifying their customer’s identity.  They rely on the bank or credit card company to verify this information and trust that they have done so properly.  What a big mistake!

For those of you who currently have a paypal account you know how this identity procedure works.   You provide paypal with your bank account or credit card number and they make two small deposits into your account.  These deposits of a couple cents appear on your billing statement.  You enter the deposit amounts into paypal and they now have verified that you are the owner of the account.

How to solve this anonymously?

A bank account can be opened online fairly easily.  Some banks require only a scan of your driver’s license to open an account with them.  Do a little photoshop magic and you are done.  The next step is the credit card, how do you get a credit card that will verify a false identity?

Easy! It won’t cost you more than $25! American Express, Visa, and Mastercard now sell anonymous gift cards available at your local supermarket.  These gift cards are totally neutral and can be associated with any name.  These gift credit cards can be used to verify your identity on paypal.

Once you have a paypal account set up, you can receive payments and then transfer the balance of your payments into your anonymous bank account or onto your anonymous credit card.  Some gift cards do not allow you to add additional funds to be sure to read the fine print associated with the gift cards.

You could take things a step further and actually setup an anonymous offshore account, however these bank accounts are not without heavy fees and high minimum balances.  It would also be possible to setup a regular bank account offshore or overseas.

If paypal doesn’t work for you then you might want to consider one of the following similar payment processing companies. 

1) Authorize.net
2) Billpoint
3) E-Gold
4) NetPay

At this point whoever you send money to using the payment service will have no way of tracking the payment back to you.

Do beware that Paypal and others will ask questions about large transactions. I recently sold some teak furniture for close to $3000.00 and a Paypal security representative sent me an email asking me to confirm the transaction and explain what it was.  I responded to them and then never heard from them again.

This system is fairly easy and straightforward, it shows that sending anonymous payments and receiving them can be done if the proper groundwork is setup in advance.

The Basics

Money Laundering, is essentially the act of making money that comes from one Source A (illegal) look like it comes from another Source B (legitimate).  It is essentially disquising the origins of money obtained through illegal activities so that it looks like it came from legal sources. This way the money cannot connect them to illegal activities and law enforcement cannot seize it.

The Process

The basic money laundering process can be done in three simple steps:

1) Placement - first you need to place the money into a legitimate financial institution, this is often in the form of small cash bank deposits. Since banks are required to report high-value transactions.

2) Layering - this step involves sending the money through various financial transactions to change its form and make it difficult to follow. This could be through bank-to-bank transfers, wire transfers, deposits and withdrawals, changing the currency, or purchasing high valued items such as precious metals, diamonds, or real estate.

3) Integration - this step involves the money re-entering the economy in a legitimate form of a legal transaction. This could be purchasing goods or services that actually do not exist or in the form of a ficticious loan to yourself from a third-party or to a third-party from yourself - which will never actually be repaid since it is really fake.

Different Methods

Structuring Deposits - also known as smurfing, this method involves breaking up large amounts of money into small deposits. In the United States this ammount must be below $10,000 or the bank will be required to report the deposit to the government and the IRS. With this method the money is deposited into one or more banks by multiple people (known as smurfs) or by a single person over an extended period of time.

Overseas Banks - it is also useful to launder money through various “offshore accounts” in countries which have bank secrecy laws or anonymous banking. A complex scheme can involve hundreds of bank transfers to and from offshore banks. Major offshore banking centers include the Bahamas, Bahrain, the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Antilles, Panama, and Singapore.

Placement: A series of separate deposits to a bank in Israel. On one trip, 12 deposits are made in a single day.

Layering: Before U.S. or Israeli authorities had a chance to notice the suddenly huge balance in the account, they had the Israeli bank wire transfer everything to Panama, where bank secrecy laws are in effect. From that account, Antar could make anonymous transfers to various offshore accounts.

Integration: They then slowly wired the money from those accounts to the legitimate Crazy Eddie’s Electronics bank account, where the money got mixed in with legitimate dollars and documented as revenue.

Shell Companies - are fake companies that exist for no other reason than to launder money. They take in dirty money as “payment” for supposed goods or services but actually provide no goods or services. They simply create the appearance of legitimate transactions through fake invoices and balance sheets.

Placement: They deposit cash from U.S. drug sales in Panama bank accounts.

Layering: They then transfer the money from Panama to more than 100 bank accounts in 68 banks in nine countries in Europe, always in transactions under $10,000 to avoid suspicion. The bank accounts were in made-up names and names of different people. They then set up shell companies in Europe in order to document the money as legitimate income.

Integration: The plan was to send the money to Colombia, where they would use it to fund numerous legitimate businesses.

There are major parking problems in many parts of California. With too many cars inside of a limited area it can take hours to find a park space. There are many private parking lots out there that charge as high as $20 an hour. Some of these lots are gated and require you to pay before you are able to leave the parking lot while others simply have a parking attendant that walks around and charges people for parking. Many times these parking attendants won’t see the person parking their car and will leave a bill for them under their windshield. Some of them have egos and will even write pricey tickets to cars that they feel are breaking their rules or did not pay prior to parking.

The State of California allows private parking companies to ticket cars which were parked on their property. However, most people don’t realize that they are not obligated to pay these parking tickets. Unpaid parking tickets received in a private parking lot will never go against your drivers license or your vehicle’s registration. If you look carefully at the fine print on this ticket it will say that its not a state issued ticket and that it won’t go against your license or registration. They make this print really small so people won’t read it and pay the ticket out of fear that they will be penalized by the DMV.

They have very little recourse to force you to pay these tickets. However, they can either tow or boot your car if you attempt to park in their private lots again.

For several months I would park in this one parking lot next to the mall that was between two banks, a Wells Fargo and a Citibank. There were always parking attendants in this lot that attempted to charge you $6 for parking in this lot. They were required to provide 30 minutes of free parking to anyone using either bank. I have accounts at both banks and sometimes when I go into these banks I will come out and there will be a $65 ticket on my car stating that I did not pre-pay for parking. I will dispute this with the attendant, but they will not cancel the ticket. So I parked there anyway and over time I accumulated over 20 parking tickets which I did not pay.

One day I returned to my car to find that the right front wheel had been immobilized by a Denver Boot.

The Denver Boot was invented by a Colorado musician as a means to immobilize the vehicles of people who failed to pay their parking tickets. The idea is that instead of towing the vehicle, which requires time, space and expense, booting can force someone to pay quickly and easily.

I walked around to the back of my car and examined the bright orange parking boot. I noticed that a large orange plate was covering the lug nuts to prevent the car owner from simply removing the wheel and tire, putting on a spare, and then driving away. A short prong pressed against the tire holding the boot in place. The clamp had a padlock encased in a quarter inch of hardened steel and was positioned inside the wheelwell so it would be hard to reach with heavy tools.

I knew that the boot could easily be cut off using either an angle grinder or a propane torch, but I did not have either of tools on hand. I also knew that liquid nitrogen could be used to freeze the metal making it easy to break or thermite could be used to burn the metal into liquid. However, I did not have either of these available.

I found that removing the boot without any tools was quite simple. I noticed that the prongs holding the boot in place was attached to the tire. So I let the air out of the tire and was able to slide the prongs off the tire, partially exposing the hubcab. At this point I could have removed half of the lug nuts, but that would not do me much good because I would still not be able to remove the rest of the lugs and remove the wheel. I tried pulling the boot off the wheel completely, but it would not come off. So I got behind the wheel of the car and drove it backwards a few inches, the bottom of the boot hit the street and the torque of the wheel against the boot popped the boot of the wheel completely.

I was free and I drove away laughing with the boot in my car and later pitched the boot into a dumpster knowing that I got the last laugh. I won’t park there anymore because next time they will resort to towing my car now that they know I can defeat their parking boots. However if I see anyone else booted in this parking lot I will share this secret with them.