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Donna Karan Fall/Winter 2002 | Alek Wek

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Meet Cybersecurity’s Genuine Breeding Ground 

Foreign adversaries and cybercriminals are getting more aggressive and advanced, and cyberthreats have become an economic and security threat. However, the cybersecurity workforce shortage is reaching crisis levels. One estimate from Cybersecurity Ventures says the shortage will reach 3.5 million

https://i-hls.com/archives/97693

[lawofsecrecy]

Fed Up Whistleblower Referenced as the 'Snowden' of the Banking Sector

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi published an article last week about a newly surfaced whistleblower who was entwined in the build-up to the 2008 financial crisis with one of the largest players on Wall Street, JPMorgan Chase & Co.  Prior to the crisis, due diligence manager Alayne Fleischmann vocalized serious concerns to her direct superiors in regards to JPMorgan's handling of mortgage-backed securities and was subsequently laid-off in February of 2008, just before the cracks began to surface in the entire banking industry.  Ever since, she has complied with her former employer's confidentiality agreement and remained silent to the public, until now.  From the New York Times:

In 2012, Ms. Fleischmann began working with federal prosecutors in California who were pursuing a criminal inquiry. The bank was also facing a number of civil investigations into its mortgage practices.

Mr. Taibbi writes that the Justice Department used the threat of Ms. Fleischmann’s testimony to extract a $13 billion civil settlement last year. The penalty included $4 billion in relief for struggling homeowners, which Mr. Taibbi calls “an accounting falsehood.” The New York Times reported at the time that “the final $13 billion figure may be as much political theater as a real attempt to right wrongs.”

Here is some of Fleischmann's account of JPMorgan's wrong-doing from the Rolling Stone article:

A few months into her tenure [in 2006], Fleischmann would later testify in a DOJ deposition, the bank hired a new manager for diligence, the group in charge of reviewing and clearing loans. Fleischmann quickly ran into a problem with this manager, technically one of her superiors. She says he told her and other employees to stop sending him e-mails. The department, it seemed, was wary of putting anything in writing when it came to its mortgage deals.

"If you sent him an e-mail, he would actually come out and yell at you," she recalls. "The whole point of having a compliance and diligence group is to have policies that are set out clearly in writing. So to have exactly the opposite of that – that was very worrisome." One former high-ranking federal prosecutor said that if he were taking a criminal case to trial, the information about this e-mail policy would be crucial. "I would begin and end my opening statement with that," he says. "It shows these people knew what they were doing and were trying not to get caught."

In late 2006, not long after the "no e-mail" policy was implemented, Fleischmann and her group were asked to evaluate a packet of home loans from a mortgage originator called GreenPoint that was collectively worth about $900 million. Almost immediately, Fleischmann and some of the diligence managers who worked alongside her began to notice serious problems with this particular package of loans.

But when she and others raised objections to the toxic loans, something odd started happening. The number-crunchers who had been complaining about the loans suddenly began changing their reports. The process she describes is strikingly similar to the way police obtain false confessions: The interrogator verbally abuses the target until he starts producing the desired answers. "What happened," Fleischmann says, "is the head diligence manager started yelling at his team, berating them, making them do reports over and over, keeping them late at night." Then the loans started clearing.

[allaroundhteworld]

Bling, Bling! If you know what I mean ;) EMA Amsterdam

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