Filipino workers in Switzerland hit by money scam

Filipinos in Canton Vaud and surrounding areas in Switzerland are angry over the money they lost through a remittance firm in Geneva.

The Filipino Community in Canton Geneva & Vaud have registered complaints against a local money remittance firm, which, they said, has defrauded overseas Filipino workers since it opened office in Geneva in 2009.

The firm reportedly entices Filipino workers through SMS by offering a higher money exchange rate for their remittances. However, the remittances were never made. The scam continues because many victims are undocumented Filipinos who are reluctant to file complaints with the authorities.

“Many of their clients are undocumented OFWs, and some are also their friends who chose not to make a complaint,” said Raymund-Michael Flores, founder the local Filipino community organization.

In a statement dated August 11, 2010 by “Erica” of Florissant, Geneva, she claimed that she sent 13,500 Swiss Francs last October 22, 2009 through the firm.

Erica said only P20,000 was forwarded to her account 3 months after she sent the money.

“I thought of cancelling my transaction (but) they keep on promising that it will be returned in no time,” said Erica. The group forwarded Erica’s letter to ABS-CBN Europe News Bureau.

The local Filipino community organization claimed that the frim has not only victimized Filipino workers in Switzerland, but also in the Philippines.

Remittances to Bulgaria reach new highs

Remittances from migrant workers are a lifeline to large sections of the Bulgarian economy, particularly the retail trade and the housing market. There has been a noticeable increase in the amount of remittances from Bulgarians working abroad over the last according to a new report.

Remittances from Bulgarians working abroad totaled € 702.5 million for the period June 2009 to June 2010, according to data from the Bulgarian Central Bank.

Studies show that the actual money sent home are about 30-40% higher that the official figures.

According to the World Bank, Bulgaria has one of the highest proportions of its population working abroad of any country in the world. In 2009 approximately one and a half million Bulgarians are based abroad, equal to 15% of the population. The largest Bulgarian communities are based in Spain, Germany, Greece, Italy, Romania and Turkey.

Remittances in the Gulf set to rise after fall-off

Western Union expects the amount of money that foreign workers in the Gulf transfer home to rebound next year after remittances declined in the second quarter of 2010.

Although remittance flows from the region should improve next year they were unlikely to return just yet to the peaks of the economic boom, said Christina Gold, the chief executive and president of Western Union.

Globally, remittances to developing countries are expected to rise by about 6.2 per cent this year before increasing again next year to reach a record high of at least US$350 billion.

“From our perspective, we see this as a challenging region in 2010 but we see opportunities coming into next year and see growth rebounding in the region,” she said.

“We are not seeing the growth we saw and seeing it pretty much steady on to last year’s numbers.”

Widely viewed as a shadow sector to banking, the money transfer industry enables migrant workers to send money to their families, who can pick up the funds either through transfer agents or through the internet.

Remittances from the region declined last year after the global financial crisis prompted a wave of redundancies. Workers in the Gulf’s property sector suffered especially as a drop in construction projects meant there was less demand for low-skilled migrant labour, who account for a large percentage of those who use money transfer services.

With activity remaining largely sluggish in the construction sector, money transfer transactions from foreign breadwinners are expected to finish the year at a similar level to last year. Western Union experienced a moderate decline in transactions in the Gulf states in the second quarter of the year.

Money transfer flows provide a useful gauge of the health of the global economy, with remittances often among the first to be affected once the economic outlook begins to slow.

“In some parts of the world it’s a leading indicator and other parts of the world it’s a lagging indicator,” said Mrs Gold.

Remittance flows from the US to Mexico dropped long before other signs emerged of a deceleration in the US economy, she said.

In contrast, in Dubai the company began to see a decline in transfers about 12 months after economic indicators first showed evidence of the global financial crisis hitting the emirate.

“The more remittances are dependent on customers in a lot of different industries, it tends to be more of a lagging indicator,” she said.

While Russia and the US, in particular, were now showing signs of a pick-up in transfers, evidence from other countries showed they were still struggling to emerge from the financial crisis.

With unemployment running at up to 20 per cent in Spain, remittances from the country had yet to improve, she said.

Until last year, the US payment services company’s business in the Gulf had grown at double-digit levels as the region underwent an economic transformation requiring the employment of a high volume of workers from overseas.

Remittances to Ethiopia reach $780 million over past 10 months

Ethiopia has received around $780 million from remittances from Ethiopians working abroad in the past ten months, the Ethiopian National Bank reported this week.

According to the bank, this year’s earnings from remittances exceed that of last year by about nine per cent. One million Ethiopians are estimated to live outside their country, mostly in the United States and Europe.

The bank said that the amount of remittances Ethiopia is receiving each year is on the rise, especially over the past three years.

“We have enforced a new legislation allowing the Diaspora to have saving accounts in US Dollars, which is encouraging many citizens to do so,” said the bank.

However, according to available information, Ethiopia is receiving fewer remittances than other neighboring countries, such as Kenya and Egypt. In 2007, Kenyans abroad had sent home nearly $1.6 billion, achieving a per capita remittance of 42 dollars.

Ethiopians on the other hand sent home only $359 million, with a per capita remittance of only four dollars, according to a United Nations report for 2009.

New US smartphone payment system rumored

According to a report from Bloomberg, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile - the companies that will soon introduce the smartphone payment system tentatively called “Mercury” - have chosen at least three US cities to test run their new program. Minneapolis, Salt Lake City and Austin, are said to have been chosen according to the report said. The program should begin its initial testing phase around the middle of 2011.

The Mercury program is designed to cut into the profits enjoyed by major credit card providers, the report said. In particular, it targets Visa and MasterCard, the largest credit networks in the world. Together, those two companies alone handled 82 percent of all U.S. card transactions last year, a total of $2.45 trillion.

The system works when a consumer implants an RFID chip with their payment information into their smartphone, allowing them to simply wave their handset in front of a wireless sensor to make a purchase.

You could catch something nasty on your smartphone

Smartphones are increasingly getting infected with different kind of malware and now they are even involved into botnets, according to recent reports.

"Mobile phones are a huge source of vulnerability," Gordon Snow, assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division, recently told the Wall Street Journal. "We are definitely seeing an increase in criminal activity." Snow also told WSJ that the FBI's Cyber Division is working on cases based on tips about malicious apps that can compromise banking or be used for espionage. The FBI does not allow its employees to download apps on FBI-issued smartphones.

Usually vulnerabilities are exploited after we download some application on our phone. Experts note that if we cannot help downloading apps for our mobile devices we should at least treat the practice like safe sex. “You can still engage in it, but you need to be wise and to take precautions in order to avoid complications”.

Sex and "sexy malware" played a part in one of the first alerts of mobile botnets aimed at the Symbian. "Sexy Space" was a variant of another mobile malware called "Sexy View". It was capable of downloading new SMS templates from a remote server in order to send out new SMS spam.

"No malware for a mobile device has been known to do that before," said Rik Ferguson, senior security advisor for Trend Micro. Trend Analysts had "heated internal discussions" about whether Sexy Space qualified as botnet code. It took a little bit of social engineering to get users onto a malicious site where it was unknowingly downloaded. Part of its lure was that the vendor seemed to point to "Playboy." Many users were caught without protection and voila! Sexy mobile malware gives a whole new meaning to phone sex.

Apple manager charged with taking bribes and kickbacks

The Apple manager responsible for global supply has been charged in California with taking kickbacks. Paul Shin Devine has been accused by federal authorities of accepting kickbacks from six Asian companies. In addition to this Devine faces a civil suit filed by Cupertino, the California-based Apple, which accuses him of accepting more than $1 million in payments and bribes over a number of years.

Electronics component suppliers that allegedly paid the kickbacks to gain business from Apple have declined to comment on the allegations.

"I can't comment on anything right now," said Andric Ng, CEO of Singapore's Jin Li Mould Manufacturing, which was one of the companies named in papers filed last week with the US District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose.

China's Kaeder Electronics declined to comment and Paul Kim, an employee of South Korea's Cresyn, said there were no staff in the company's Seoul office able to answer questions regarding the allegations.