Hacker’s illegal rugby league website put down by Private Investigator Ken Gamble

TWO hours before the NRL season kicked off, a young hacker was politely told to shut down his illegal website which had been streaming live matches – or face going to jail.
The NRLfixit.com.au website was started last season by a Rozelle youngster just out of high school.
In two days, “Liam” – as he wants to be known – had 6000 members and by the end of last season the number had grown to 12,000. He believed he would have tripled that this year.
Flushed with the success of his site, the young entrepreneur moved from amateur hacker to budding businessman and began looking for sponsors.
But NRL officials were not impressed.
“Organisations pay large sums of money for the rights to televise these matches,” NRL spokesman John Brady said. “And, like any brand, we have to protect ourselves and our clients against piracy.”
The NRL realised someone was streaming their games – but hunting down who, where and how was beyond their expertise. Enter private eye and cyber crime expert Ken Gamble.
What he found amazed him. The site was sourced back to the young hacker, a Wests Tigers supporter, in the heart of Balmain territory. “This was a smart kid with no formal training but an absolute computer genius,” Mr Gamble said.
A team of cyber experts working for Mr Gamble tracked down 20-year-old Liam, living at home with his mum and dad at Rozelle.

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Private Investigator Ken Gamble Interview On ABC Local Radio

This is a transcript from AM. The program is broadcast around Australia at 08:00 on ABC Local Radio.
TONY EASTLEY: An Australian private investigator claims he knows who’s behind the Olympic ticketing scam. The investigator, Ken Gamble, says it’s the work of 49-year-old, Terance Shepherd from South London; who’s believed to have fled to Barbados.
Shepherd has been linked to other scams and defunct companies. Mr Gamble says he’s provided a dossier on the fraudster to British authorities in the past.
Ken Gamble told correspondent Rafael Epstein that Terance Shepherd has spent two decades defrauding people through fake ticketing scams.
KEN GAMBLE: These guy has just been at it for so long it is unbelievable and to see, we knew he was going to do the Olympic scam 12 months ago.
We had an informant that came forward and told us that Terry Shepherd and his group are going to do a massive big scam at the Beijing Olympics.
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: So why wasn’t he able to be stopped?
KEN GAMBLE: Well, we, we, we wrote letters to the police in London. We wrote letters to the, we sent information to the administrators. We sent information to the ticketing bodies. We did ..
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: These are all British authorities?
KEN GAMBLE: British authorities. We did a story with Tonight with Trevor McDonald on ITV. I was actually interviewed on that show about this whole ticket scamming business. And you know, it is the same old story; people just forget and then they get stung again the following year. It has just been a never-ending story.
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: What do you know about him?
KEN GAMBLE: Well basically, he has been in the ticket business for many, many years; probably in excess of 20 years. And he has owned literally hundreds of websites over that time and a large amount of these websites are registered to this fake company over in Phoenix, Arizona – the same one that was just used in the Beijing Olympics.
He is predominantly; he has been bankrupt as far as I am aware. I have got a fairly extensive dossier on him.
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: So he has done this many times before, you think, with the football World Cup and other events?
KEN GAMBLE: Of course he has. What he does is he sets up these websites. He pays Google and these sort of companies lots of money. Literally hundreds of thousands of pounds sometimes and he gets his ranking up to number one and that is how he sells so many tickets.
Now he oversells so he knows damn well that he is not going to be able to deliver those tickets.
RAFAEL EPSTEIN: In the past the NRL in Australia and sporting bodies in Europe, newspapers here, many people have known about what he is doing. How does he keep on operating?
KEN GAMBLE: Well, they you know, they just can’t seem to stop him because he does it – you know he is very shrewd the way he does this. He puts nominees, you know, he has got other people operating these companies. He puts front people up that basically take the fall and he walks away with all the money. So, you know, he has got himself at arms length to a lot of these websites.
TONY EASTLEY: Private investigator Ken Gamble speaking with our Europe correspondent, Rafael Epstein.

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Services Offered By Private Investigator Ken Gamble's IFW

Internet Fraud Watchdog services are comprehensive. Our promise to our clients is around the clock, around the world. Our reach is extensive.

Monthly Maintenance Packages
Internet Fraud Watchdog typically works with clients through a series of tailored monthly maintenance packages. The maintenance packages manage both the client’s budget, the scope of the problem and of course the return on investment. They are designed for maximum impact on the company’s bottom line. We will tailor a package to suit your business.
You can start by lodging a case or contacting us.

Individual Services
The following list outlines broadly the scope of our online services. Many of our services are covert and we can discuss your independent requirements once we have a better feel for your situation.

• 24/7 monitoring of websites forums and blogs
• 24/7 monitoring of new domain registrations
• Monitoring and collection of data from B2B sites
• Image capture
• Identification of IP addresses
• Deep web scanning for identification of individuals
• Penetration testing
• Prevention of DDoS and DoS attacks
• Analysis of networks and servers
• Analysing networks
• Web scraping for keywords abusing trademark, and copyright infringements
• Software to search and analyse meta tag abuse for trademarks and copyright

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How Private Investigator Ken Gamble Investigates Fraud

Around the world Internet fraud is costing companies billions of dollars. In recent years online fraud has been growing dramatically and, with a growing dependence on the Internet, your business could be more exposed than you know.
Increasingly fraudsters use the Internet to steal information, abuse intellectual property rights, sell counterfeit or non-existent products and services, create bad publicity, and damage the credibility of major sporting and entertainment events, all of which has a large impact on customer loyalty and ultimately destroys consumer confidence in brands, products and services.
Despite the fact that companies invest heavily in their brand, their image and their online presence, Internet fraud can cost those organisations not only a large slice of their profits but also their reputation, and capacity to be trusted.
Internet Fraud Watchdog helps organisations fight Internet fraud, around the clock, around the world, utilising sophisticated software together with complex online and offline investigation techniques. For a fraction of the cost of potential losses, our services protect our clients and their companies 24 hours a day.
Welcome to our website. Please look around, join our community or submit your issues here and see how we can make a difference to your organisation.

The diagram below shows the elements that form the cycle of fraud. Remove any of these elements and the cycle is broken.

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Private Investigator Ken Gamble Helps clients from Intellectual Property Theft Scams

Intellectual property rights and abuse of those rights has become a global problem thanks, in part, to the Internet. Information today can be moved around the world in an instant, meaning organisations need to be vigilant in their dealings both offline and online.
Intellectual property (IP) can be misused in a number of ways that range from innocent use of other people’s property without correctly compensating the owner, right through to deliberately using a company’s IP with intent to leverage from its success or undermine its brand integrity.

What is Intellectual Property?
Intellectual property is that which is the property of an inventor or owner, pertaining to ideas, processes and outputs of a product or service. This IP is typically protected under local and international copyright law.

How Intellectual Property Theft Occurs
It has been proven that much intellectual property theft takes place from internal sources. Disgruntled staff and employees leaving the company are the primary source. Increasingly, as production systems become globalised, IP theft is taking place at the point of original production.

Examples of Intellectual Property Theft
The fraudulent use of a company’s brand online to lead the end user to believe they are dealing with a large, reputable company. This also applies to purchasing goods online that use the brand name but are counterfeit.
Sales staff leaving and taking their contact list or worse, selling the list to people who may use it for fraudulent gain.
Streaming or sharing content when there is no permission from the content provider to do so.
Fraudulently using a company’s brand identity and name in a search engine optimisation tool kit. Many search engines already have fail-safes in place that detect and de-prioritise this kind of activity but it can be very hard to detect and is usually long after the damage has been done.

How IFW Protects Your IP
Internet Fraud Watchdog works around the clock, around the world, to tackle theft of intellectual property. IFW has a comprehensive system of identifying, tracking, disrupting, and in some cases eradicating, online fraud, particularly where theft of intellectual property is involved.
If the theft involves selling competitive products online, Internet Fraud Watchdog already has software in place that is recognised by major auction and business to business websites which allows us automatically to demand the removal of such conten

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Private Investigator Ken Gamble Tells About Pay TV Scams

Satellite, cable or other – conditional access providers such as pay TV operators are facing increasing pressure from fraudsters illegally accessing their stream. This page will look at this burgeoning issue, three ways fraudsters operate and how Internet Fraud Watchdog can help.
The Cost of Pay TV Fraud
In 2008, according to Sue Taylor, Senior VP NDS, whilst the pay TV market grew to almost 300 million subscribers across the US, the net cost of pay TV piracy in 2008 topped US$1.7 billion, up from US$1.5 billion in 2007.
The cost is borne not only by the pay TV providers with many local and state jurisdictions missing out on a valuable tax asset, but also by up stream content providers missing out on royalty revenue, hurting an already vulnerable industry.
Ignorance or Organised?
Some activity regarded as fraud is attributed to ignorant users innocently downloading the information. However, there is a large portion of supply that is deliberate and organised, netting the fraudsters generous revenues at little expense to themselves.
IFW is often called on by clients to trace the physical locale of the fraudsters, which can be anywhere on the globe.
How These Fraudsters Operate
There are generally three modes of operations:

• Card Sharing
• Peer to Peer Networks
• Video Streaming

Most pay TV operators are well aware of the issues they are facing with these fraudsters; however some are doing little to control the problem. Internet Fraud Watchdog can help.

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Private Investigator Ken Gamble Speaks In Public Forum

Could you be the next victim of cyber crime? According to the experts, the answer is an emphatic yes.
Two-thirds of internet-using adults have been victim to cyber criminals – some 431 million people worldwide – arecent international study found, and Australians are increasingly targets.
Private investigator Ken Gamble – who co-founded the agency Internet Fraud Watchdog – says the problem in Australia has reached “epidemic” proportions. Gamble is a keynote speaker at a public forum It Won’t Happen to Me: Cyber Crime Myths and Concepts at the University of New South Wales this week .
“We are talking billions of dollars of losses from victims who have been caught up in scams, who have been defrauded in transactions or who have had their credit card details stolen and sold on the black market,” Gamble says.
As well as human impact, the Norton Cyber Crime Report 2011 found cyber crime cost the world economy $109 billion last year.
“It’s very important for everyone to understand the implications of what’s occurring, to be aware that cyber crime is happening all around us, to be secure and protect online information, and to make sure that kids are educated about cyber security,” Gamble says.
Also speaking at the forum: Alana Maurushat, from UNSW’s Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre; Mike Taylor,cyber crime victim and businessman; and Detective Inspector Bruce van der Graaf, from the NSW Police Fraud and Cybercrime Squad.
“This one of the most complex problems we’ve faced in the past 200 years and there is no simple solution,” Maurushat says. “Leading the fight will be the market and technology, which are far more effective at disrupting the cyber criminal’s economic model than the law.”
Experts are critical of Australia’s slow response to the new cyber realities.
“Australian banks are only now starting to upgrade their technologies and authentication methods, something that should have been done years ago,” Maurushat says. “When it comes to scams and frauds there is no national group tasked with coordinating efforts to tackle cyber crime, and that’s a real problem.”

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