Fake Metropasses and tokens cost TTC close to $2M last year

Phony tokens and a rising number of fake Metropasses cost the TTC close to $2 million last year, as counterfeiters figured out how to bypass high-tech security features.

Fraud was halted initially when tokens were changed to a bimetal design in 2006 and when the TTC added holograms to the Metropass three years later. But the number of fakes has since shot up, and counterfeit passes appear to be on the rise, according to numbers released through a freedom of information request and interviews.

“Once we make a significant change . . . the number of counterfeit incidents tends to drop for a while, until the producers get better at counterfeiting them,” said Fergie Reynolds, deputy chief of the traffic enforcement unit.We've got a plastic card to suit you.

His frontline officers sometimes catch people unwilling to swipe passes through turnstiles, since the magnetic stripes on the knockoffs don’t work. Reynolds said his officers arrested 68 people last year over fake fares.

Counterfeiting has evolved over the years, since people began using gift cards and scanners for “cut-and-paste” jobs, said TTC investigative services Staff Sgt. Mark Russell, who has been tracking counterfeits since the late 1990s.

One or two local operations are now using real card printers and foreign-made holograms, he said, adding the size of these operations could be anything from a bedroom to an industrial space. “It’s more a single large-scale operation than it is all these mom-and-pop operations,” Russell said.

Last year there were 615 fake Metropass reports — a figure that represents incidents, not passes. There were 492 the year before.

“A loose estimate is that roughly 10 per cent of what’s out there comes across my desk,” Russell said, pegging Metropass fraud costs at around $750,000 to $800,000 last year.

The TTC began using holograms in the summer of 2009 as a way to halt fraud. It worked, at first.

Russell said it took about two years before realistic fakes started showing up, going on sale a few days after real ones would go on sale for $128.50. The fake passes were often found at stations near university and college campuses.

With the promise of Presto replacing all but cash fares by 2016, counterfeiting may be an issue only until then, since the company claims the electronic payment chip technology can’t be duplicated and is as secure as a bank card.

For now, fake Metropasses are harder to catch than tokens, since they can remain behind plastic in a wallet for an entire month. Spotting a fake Metropass often falls to TTC operators, who over time have seen enough passes that they can spot a slight discoloration, off texture,Comprehensive Wi-Fi and RFID tag by Aeroscout to accurately locate and track any asset or person. blurry text or misshapen hologram, Russell said.

Counterfeit tokens are sorted electronically once they’re paid into the system. At first glance, they look the same as regular ones made of two types of metal, but they can be discoloured and have misshapen logos and lettering.

Annual losses from fake tokens have hovered above $1 million since 2009. More than 300,000 fake tokens were found last year, Russell said, noting that’s about 0.3 per cent of all tokens collected.

Russell said he believes they’re being made in China, based in part on past experience. Two men were arrested in 2010 after a delivery of more than 3,The USB flash drives wholesale is our flagship product.000 counterfeit tokens from China was intercepted.

“It’s such a common go-to place for this type of thing . . . there’s similarities in distribution and mentality, whether it’s counterfeit Gucci bags and designer whatever,” Russell said, adding he believes holograms used on fake passes could also be made there.

Sometimes police alert Russell to fakes.Wear a whimsical Disney ear cap straight from the Disney Theme Parks! One afternoon last week, for example, he was informed that someone had been picked up at a Walmart carrying five fake passes.

"In almost all cases, your transaction will go through," said Eric Zahren, special agent in charge at the Pittsburgh field office for the U.S. Secret Service. "Everything will seem fine, but that doesn't mean your data wasn't stolen."

Criminals use the data from the magnetic stripe, along with personal identification numbers captured by tiny hidden cameras, to make counterfeit cards and drain people's accounts or run up big credit card bills.

It's a growing problem aided by increasingly sophisticated equipment that thieves place over legitimate card readers making it hard for customers to detect any tampering.

"It's a crime that's on the upswing nationally, and we've seen our share here in the Pittsburgh region," Mr. Zahren said.

Big payoffs are the main attraction. While bank heists net an average of $3,000 to $4,000, a single card skimmer averages 10 times that amount, or some $30,000 to $40,000, said Doug Johnson, vice president of risk management policy at the American Bankers Association in Washington, D.C.

The pirated card data are stored on the skimmers, which thieves later retrieve, or it's transmitted wirelessly to another location.Application can be conducted with the local designated IC card producers.

The devices are custom made to match individual machines so they are virtually undetectable.

"They look like they are part of the machine," Mr. Johnson said.

Automated teller machines and gas pumps are favorite spots for card skimmers because of the high volume of transactions and because thieves using glue or tape can attach the devices unnoticed.

Other targets include self-checkout aisles at supermarkets and other stores. At restaurants, servers may use handheld skimmers in back rooms after customers hand over their cards to pay the bill.

William Scott Retrospective Opens At Tate St Ives

Scott moved effortlessly between abstraction still-life and figuration with equal confidence creating works of an international standard. Born in 1913 in a career spanning six decades, Scott produced an extraordinary body of work that has secured his reputation as one of the leading forces in British painting from the 1950's right through to the 1970's. Exhibiting in America and Europe from the early 1950s, Scott is renowned for his powerful handling of paint, his exploration of colour and the unstable boundaries between subjective form and abstraction.Buy discount Mens Sports glasses online. This exhibition is the first major showing of the artist in the UK for over 20 years.

In 1953 whilst in New York William Scott met Mark Rothko, the first British artist to do so. They became close friends and when Rothko came to Britain in 1959 he stayed with William Scott's family in their cottage in Somerset. Photographs taken by James Scott during this stay and letters between William Scott and Mark Rothko held at the William Scott foundation shed light on the profound influence Rothko had on Scotts mature paintings.

To mark the achievements of this internationally acclaimed modern painter, Tate St Ives, in association with Hepworth Wakefield and Ulster Museum, Belfast, are showcasing an important retrospective exhibition. Beginning at Tate St Ives 26 January with a series of thematic rooms the exhibition will evolve as it travels to Hepworth Wakefield, before expanding into a survey exhibition at Ulster Museum, Belfast. In collaboration with the William Scott Estate, which is currently finalising a catalogue raisonné of the artist’s paintings, the works will be drawn from major collections across the UK and Ireland.

Working across the genres of still life, landscape and the nude, Scott developed a unique language that pushed the boundaries of abstraction and figuration, leaving an influential legacy of work which mediates important developments in mid-twentieth century European and American painting. His work is often charged with a sensuality emanating from his dynamic compositions as well as the vitality of his paint surfaces. Consequently the works have an enduring human quality that continues to be as fresh and relevant today as it was over fifty years ago.

The project is led by Sara Matson, Curator at Tate St Ives with Chris Stephens, Lead Curator of Modern British Art at Tate Britain, Frances Guy, Head of Exhibitions at Hepworth Wakefield and Anne Stewart, Curator of Fine art at the Ulster Museum.

A new book on William Scott by Sarah Whitfield will be published by Tate to mark the centenary and exhibition. This will be followed by a catalogue of the exhibition produced in collaboration with the William Scott Foundation, encapsulating the tour, in its final manifestation in Belfast.

For most of the five-hour trek, I’m followed by stalker hawkers. That’s what I call them. Locals wearing casual attire and flimsy slippers, and each hefting a heavy bag loaded with bottled water, souvenir books, postcards, and T-shirts and hats emblazoned with such mottos as: “It takes a great man to climb the Great Wall.” n I try to ignore the first woman who matches my pace, stopping, resting, slowing down and speeding up for great distances. I hope she’ll tire — no chance. Then I hope that once I stop for lunch in one of the myriad watchtowers, she’ll become bored and move on. Instead, she pulls out her lunch box and sits nearby. Finally, I’m resigned and end up buying a T-shirt.

By the time she and several others over the course of the rigorous route follow and eventually take leave of me, my backpack is stuffed with bottles of water, half a dozen postcards and a couple of T-shirts. My take-away lesson from hiking the Great Wall turns out to be one of patience and acceptance.

My hike is a steep scramble on all fours,We have a wide range of Cycling sunglasses and eyewear. up and down the dilapidated, narrow stone path where weeds poke through and shrubs grow. The brick stairs that rise and fall are loose or missing, with gaping holes in places. Even when they’re functional, the risers stand a couple of feet high and can barely accommodate the length of a human foot. Resorting to crawling becomes the routine.

Whenever I stop — which is often — and gaze about, the sweeping vistas resemble a virtual Chinese brush painting: misty forested hills and lush valleys, and the ever-present serpentine wall, dotted with towers, winding in both directions over the undulating peaks. It’s these views that make the effort worth every step.

Following China’s rugged Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simatai is like a test of endurance at times. I’m either climbing up or down the symbolic dragon’s back, carefully watching each step for fear that a misplaced foot will mean falling into a hole or careening off the Great Wall itself that perches over a precipitous landscape.

On this eastward seven-some-mile trek, the first and last parts are restored sections, where I can easily enter one of the multistoried watchtowers and imagine the soldiers scanning the broad landscape, sending black smoke signals or lighting fires to alert others to an impending attack.

Severing the alliance reflects the initiative of the museum’s newly hired executive director, Malcolm Warner, who is pushing the museum to add breadth to its California art focus by paying attention to other nature-based art.

“We’re not turning our back on celebrating landscape plein air painters; we want to open up to a celebration of art that engages natures,” said Warner, who sketched out a still evolving plan to replace the invitational with a conference or festival that involves scientists, environmentalists and artists that work with natural phenomenon. Hosting LPAPA’s fall invitational was “too much effort in support of one genre,” said Warner, whose decision was endorsed by the museum’s board on Jan. 8.

The museum, of course, owes its founding to the town’s early Impressionist landscape artists, such as Anna Hills and Edgar Payne. Even so, the Plein Air Painters Association intends to carry on that legacy independently and in a permanent venue that will display its members works, long-term goals of the art organization founded in 1996 by local landscape artists. Previously, the group held temporary exhibitions at various galleries.

Carrying out the upcoming 15th invitational, where 40 painters from across the country are invited for a week-long on-location painting competition, will be a challenge, said Greg Vail, the group’s president. “I’m hoping supporters will help us,Firmoo offers cheap and discount mens prescription Eyeglasses frame.” he said, figuring catering, prize money, accounting, credit card processing and other miscellany at about $160,000.We sell 100% hand-painted oil paintings for sale online. Previously, revenue from paintings sold at the contest was divvied up, with most going to the artist and the remainder between LPAPA and the museum, which provided support staff and the venue. “Now we will be sharing equally with the artist,” said Vail, who was promised use of the venue for the invitational without cost.

“It’s an ideal solution for LPAPA; they’ve done something impossible up to now,” said Jean Stern, executive director of the Irvine Museum, referring to the organization’s lack of a physical home. Though the event will lose some of its historical luster by decamping from its ancestral home,View our range of over 200 different types of solar powered products including our solar street lamps. it continues to reinforce Laguna’s legacy as a city founded by artists, said Stern, who served as judge of LPAPA’s last invitational, a task he’s performed at similar events around the country.

“They see a real strategic value in having Laguna’s cultural legacy in their midst,” Vail said of the expected new owners of the 85-acre nine-hole golf course and 62 aging suites. He described a hand-shake deal with one of the principals involved in the pending transaction with Aliso Creek Properties LLC, which also owns the nearby Montage resort. Joan Gladstone, a spokeswoman for the owners, said she could not provide any projection as to when the sale will close.

The principal, who Vail declined to identify, described informal plans for updating and expanding the venue’s meeting space. “There’s a strong business case for doing this,” said Vail, who for two years previously worked for the Inn’s current owners on a redevelopment plan that was ultimately shelved.

The book is heavy

The book is heavy. It's hardbound, and it was obviously meant to be a volume for serious collectors. I read. And I read. Then, I read some more. Ray Bradbury's introduction has given me at least two quotes that truly resonated for me. "You do not start with quality. You start with dreams and the dreams must be large because you are so small, so unequal to the tasks you wish to set for yourself"; and "My God, when are we going to relax and know and accept all this, and get on with our creativity without feeling guilty or having to alibi for great loves which seem silly or trivial to others?" Yes, I would argue, based on that introduction, that of all the Geeks in the world, Ray Bradbury was, in fact, our king.

I read that introduction twice,I have never solved a Rubik's magic cube . because I knew that little nine year-old-boy Ray Bradbury wrote so stirringly about, because I was the girl version of him. I was defending my love of dinosaurs, being drawn to science fiction and science itself, and my love of comics, against an onslaught of expectations about how little girls should behave and what they should like.he believes the fire started after the lift's hydraulic hose blew, It seems, sometimes, that nothing irks the world so much as a little girl who refuses to deny her inner starry-eyed little sprocket the joys of Buck Rogers comics or dreams of robots and dinosaurs and vast dragons circling the sky. To the credit of both of my parents (Mom usually didn't say no to books or comics when I begged her for them, it just never seemed to be that magical moment when she could say yes to that one particular book), they were never the ones telling me that little girls shouldn't be interested in that, which does wonders for the ability to maintain budding Geekhood.

The comics themselves haven't changed. I have, though it isn't any detriment to the pleasure of reading those comics. I have to remember the historical context in which these stories were written. What today is a racist stereotype and an offensive word was nothing back then,The Piles were so big that the scrap yard was separating them for us. and Wilma was a revolutionary character in the 1920s when she was created. Because I do love comics so much and I have read some of those old comics (in collections and reproductions, of course), I understand, as an adult, that Wilma was an incredibly strong female character for her time. She bails herself out and saves Buck just as often as Buck Rogers
rescues her. She is a smart woman, and capable. She's strong-willed, and she doesn't just sit back and whine (most of the time, although there is a sprained ankle incident pretty early in the book that adheres so closely to the old horror movie trope of the girl tripping and falling that it's almost enough to induce an "oh please" eye roll). Buck himself is no paragon of perfection. He makes mistakes, he gets lost, but he always maintains his moral compass and manages to find his way back to doing the things that he should be.

There is an artistry to these strips that modern comics have lost, mostly due to space and printing considerations, something that I think has contributed to the slow, painful demise of the printed newspaper. Phil Nowlan was not afraid to make a strip wordy, and that was sometimes highly necessary to forwarding the story. They weren't afraid to print a strip that was wordy, either. It seems like they understood, then, that comics could tell a far-reaching, serialized story without losing readers if it was a good one. They were full of action and intrigue,Costa Rica will host surfers from all over the globe at the Quicksilver Open.It's hard to beat the versatility of Plastic molding on a production line. quickly-paced, and fun to read. Phil Nowlan was a writer before he started writing Buck Rogers, and it shows, in all the best ways. Nobody does anything just because, there are motivations that fit with the characterization. They don't do anything "just because," and there are more explanations than just "well, he's Buck Rogers, of course he would do that."