The shocking rise of financial abuse involving wills

A GOLD Coast woman and her elderly mum walked into lawyer Marie Fedorov’s office. The daughter did the talking and alarm bells went off.

Could you be a victim of financial abuse?

GOLD Coast lawyer Marie Fedorov “smelled a rat” when an elderly woman came into her office with her adult daughter to change her will.

The daughter did all the talking and told Ms Fedorov that her mother wanted her to be the sole beneficiary of the will.

“When I questioned the elderly lady to confirm that this was what she wanted, she appeared to not understand what she was at my office for. When I explained this to her she appeared very confused,” Ms Fedorov said.

“The daughter then said to her mother: ‘Remember mum, we’re here to change your will to leave everything to me.’ The elderly lady said: ‘Oh yes. I’m happy to do what my daughter wants me to do, so just tell me where to sign.’”

Ms Fedorov was concerned about the elderly woman’s mental capacity and so asked her some general questions, which she couldn’t answer.

“I recall seeing the daughter become very uncomfortable and she said: ‘Mum only has mild dementia, she is fine.’ But after I obtained the woman’s medical details from her doctor, and realised she was not able to make legal decisions, I refused to prepare the requested legal documents,” Ms Fedorov said.

Marie Fedorov is concerned by the number of elderly people she’s seen being asked to change their wills.

Ms Fedorov, from Fedorov Lawyers, claims she’s seen a massive increase in financial elder abuse in recent months.

“I’m on the lookout now because I care about seniors and don’t want them to be left high and dry,” Ms Fedorov said. “Sadly, a large number of victims are too afraid or too ashamed to speak up while others fear being isolated from their family.”

A report by the Elder Abuse Prevention Unit, shows a 20 per cent increase in reported cases of financial abuse from 2014-15 to 2015-16. The report also found that more than three-quarters of perpetrators reported between 2015 and 2016 were related to the victims.

The NSW Elder Abuse Helpline was receiving up to 180 calls a month in 2017.

Ms Fedorov had another upsetting experience when a real estate agent organised an appointment with his ‘friend’, an elderly woman. The man told Ms Fedorov the woman wanted to change her will and leave a large portion of her estate to him.

“Our meeting was at the woman’s home because she was unwell. She couldn’t walk and so she was confined to a chair in the living room,” Ms Fedorov said. “The man wouldn’t leave the room, even though I asked to speak to the woman alone. But, when I asked the man to get me a glass of water, I had a few minutes alone with the lady.

“She told me she’d only recently met the man, as he was trying to get the listing for her house and promised her that, if she put him in her will, he’d get her a better price for her house. I quickly organised to see the woman on another day, without the real estate agent, and we were able to finalise her will without the real estate agent being involved.”

There’s been a spike of people preying on the elderly and getting them to change their wills.Source:Supplied

The Queensland Government recently introduced tough laws offering sanctions for guardians, administrators or those holding power of attorney who are accountable for financial abuse towards seniors.

Anyone taking on the role as a paid carer for the elderly person within the previous three years would be excluded from holding such power.

Ms Fedorov believes a major cause of financial abuse of the elderly is “inheritance expectation”.

“Many people expect to receive assets from their parents and will coerce seniors into signing wills or enduring power of attorney in order to get all of their assets prior to the older person’s death,” Ms Fedorov said.

“Often, people are doing ‘dodgy deals’ so they can transfer all of the assets and put their parents in a nursing home.”

In another recent case, Ms Fedorov saw an elderly woman and her two daughters, who were trying to have the mother change her will to exclude one of the other sisters.

When Ms Fedorov asked why she wanted to leave her daughter out of her will, she explained her other daughters asked her to.

“When I spoke to the mother alone, she told me she didn’t want to change her will and that she only came to my office because her daughters insisted,” Ms Fedorov said.

“I explained to her daughters that their mother did not want to leave their sister out of the will. The daughters were not happy, but I was pleased the mother was able to leave her will as it was, to include all of her daughters.”

Ms Fedorov advices elderly people to see a lawyer without having friends or family in the room. Lawyers frequently come across the elderly being bullied, so they have developed strategies to help people through the process.

Finally, police are taking family violence as seriously as terrorism

Jude McCulloch, Monash University; JaneMaree Maher, Monash University; Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Monash University, and Sandra Walklate, University of Liverpool

Victoria Police recently announced that family violence perpetrators will be treated as seriously as terrorists and murderers.

This strategy represents a major milestone in the evolving police approach to family violence. Though family violence results in far more death and injury, terrorism is nonetheless considered Australia’s leading security threat.

The Victoria Police strategy represents an opportunity to reset security priorities by recognising family violence as the foremost contributor to the preventable death and injury of women and children.

Acknowledging family violence’s harms

Following in the footsteps of those who have noted the similarities between terrorism and family violence – using such terms as “intimate terrorism” and “everyday terrorism” to make this point – Victoria Police’s acting chief commissioner Shane Patton said:

… the consequences of family violence are the same as terrorism … We have death, we have serious trauma, we have serious injury and we have people impacted for the rest of their lives.

However, the scope of the harms of “everyday terrorism” are far more widespread.

Between 2002-03 and 2011-12, 488 women were killed across Australia in homicides perpetrated by their current or former partners. In the previous two decades, five people were killed in terrorist attacks in Australia.

In contrast, on average at least one woman is killed in Australia each week, usually by an intimate (ex-)partner.

Family violence is the leading preventable contributor to death, disability and illness in women aged 15–44. It is responsible for more disease burden than high blood pressure, smoking, and obesity.

Victoria Police research that informed its strategy indicates that in the past six years, more than 11,000 perpetrators harmed three or more victims.

In 2016-17, there has been 16 family violence killings in Victoria. This represents 28% of all homicides.

Shifting police practice

As the gatekeepers of the criminal justice system, police are critical in shaping the community understandings of crime. If the police don’t take a crime or threat seriously, it’s likely the public won’t either.

A few short decades ago, family violence was hidden, excused or trivialised.

Today, family violence, most typically intimate partner violence committed by men against their current or former partner, is recognised as the most prevalent type of violence against women. It is now also considered a serious crime and a pressing social issue. Changing police practices and priorities are central to this.

Until the 1980s, criminal assault in the home was, in police parlance, generally considered to be “just a domestic”. Those now labelled perpetrators of family violence were seen as having gone “a little too far with the missus”.

When women called police for help, officers either did not attend or did not intervene to protect the woman or arrest the perpetrator. Once a woman calls for help and does not receive it, or has the abuse trivialised or blamed on her actions, she is unlikely to call again.

Today, family violence is core police business. Across Australia, police receive a call related to family violence approximately every two minutes. Grim though these figures are, they reflect a major shift in police priorities and growing community recognition that they are a critical resource for those experiencing family violence.

Until the 1980s, Victoria Police, like most police forces at that time, was male-dominated and socially conservative. Women comprised a tiny fraction of the force, and police leadership was almost exclusively male.

Attitudes of police officers serving in this context often seemed to reflect and reinforce the notion of women as male property and at least partly responsible for the violence they experienced.

The new millennium marked a significant break in police tradition with the appointment of Christine Nixon as Australia’s first – and to date only – female police chief commissioner. She provided strong leadership around social inclusion and family violence.

In Nixon’s first year in office, Victoria Police published a violence against women strategy. In 2004, it developed a code of practice that required police to prioritise responding to family violence calls.

After Nixon left office, in another Australian-first, in 2015 Victoria Police established a Family Violence Command and appointed Dean McWhirter as assistant commissioner for family violence. The command aims to provide organisational and policy guidance and identify good practice.

What the change will mean

Family violence will now be investigated as major crimes by specialised units. Priorities will target repeat offenders and work to predict violence and intervene before women and children are injured or killed.

Perhaps just as important is the message the strategy sends about family violence as serious crime. Now, it really is everyone’s business.

The National Sexual Assault, Family & Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.

Jude McCulloch, Professor of Criminology, Monash University; JaneMaree Maher, Professor, Centre for Women’s Studies & Gender Research, Sociology, Monash University; Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Monash University, and Sandra Walklate, Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology, University of Liverpool

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

How the Chinese cyberthreat has evolved

Dorothy Denning, Naval Postgraduate School

With more than half of its 1.4 billion people online, the world’s most populous country is home to a slew of cyberspies and hackers. Indeed, China has likely stolen more secrets from businesses and governments than any other country.

Covert espionage is the main Chinese cyberthreat to the U.S. While disruptive cyberattacks occasionally come from China, those that cause overt damage, like destroying data or causing power outages, are more common from the other top state threats, namely Russia, Iran and North Korea.

But Chinese cyberaggression toward the U.S. has been evolving. Before their espionage became a serious threat, Chinese hackers were conducting disruptive cyberattacks against the U.S. and other countries.

Hackers unite

Chinese hackers were among the first to come together in defense of their country. Their first operation against the U.S. occurred in 1999 during the Kosovo conflict, when the U.S. inadvertently bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese reporters. The patriotic hackers planted messages denouncing “NATO’s brutal action” on several U.S. government websites.

Chinese hackers struck the U.S. again in 2001 after a Chinese fighter plane collided with a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft. The midair collision killed the Chinese pilot and led to the forced landing and detention of the American crew. Both Chinese and American hackers responded with disruptive cyberattacks, with the Chinese hackers defacing thousands of U.S.-based websites, including the White House site.

What is especially important about this incident, though, is what happened next. The People’s Daily, China’s Communist Party newspaper, issued an editorial decrying the attack against the White House. The paper called it, and the other attacks, “web terrorism” and “unforgivable acts violating the law.” On the anniversary of the incident in 2002, the government asked Chinese hackers to forgo further attacks against U.S.-based sites. They complied.

That was the last big cyberattack from Chinese patriotic hackers against the U.S. While Russia seems to condone, if not outright encourage or even sponsor, its patriotic hackers, China has taken a stance against that sort of activity, at least with respect to U.S.-based sites.

Targets at home

In addition to reining in its patriotic hackers, China appears to have refrained from conducting cyberattacks that cause overt damage to critical infrastructure in other countries, like the Russians did to Ukraine’s power grid. However, it has used disruptive cyberattacks to help enforce censorship policies within its own borders.

The Chinese government’s “Great Firewall” keeps internet users in China from accessing censored foreign sites such as those that advocate Tibetan autonomy. Users’ traffic is filtered based on domain names, internet addresses and keywords in web addresses.

Chinese hackers have also used denial-of-service attacks to temporarily take out sites whose activity the government wants to block. These attacks overwhelm target servers with large amounts of activity, preventing others from using the sites and often knocking the servers offline.

Back in 1999, the government launched DoS attacks against foreign websites associated with Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in China. Then in 2011, a Chinese military TV program showed software tools being used in possible cyberattacks against Falun Gong sites in the U.S. The tools were developed by the Electrical Engineering University of China’s armed forces, the People’s Liberation Army.

More recently, in 2015, U.S. and other foreign users visiting sites running analytics software from the Chinese search engine provider Baidu unwittingly picked up malware. The malicious code was injected into traffic going back to the users by a device collocated with the Great Firewall. The malware then launched DDoS attacks against GreatFire.org, a site that helps Chinese users evade censorship, and the Chinese language edition of The New York Times.

Espionage at the forefront

By 2003, China’s interest in cyberespionage was apparent: A series of cyberintrusions that U.S. investigators code-named “Titan Rain” was traced back to computers in southern China. The hackers, believed by some to be from the Chinese army, had invaded and stolen sensitive data from computers belonging to the U.S. Department of Defense, defense contractors and other government agencies.

Titan Rain was followed by a rash of espionage incidents that originated in China and were given code names like “Byzantine Hades,” “GhostNet” and “Aurora.” The thieves were after a wide range of data.

They stole intellectual property, including Google’s source code and designs for weapons systems. They took government secrets, including user names and passwords. And they compromised data associated with Chinese human rights activists, including their email messages. Typically, the intrusions started with spear-phishing.

In 2013, the American cyberintelligence firm Mandiant, now part of FireEye, issued a landmark report on a Chinese espionage group it named “Advanced Persistent Threat 1.” According to the report, APT1 had stolen hundreds of terabytes of data from at least 141 organizations since 2006.

The Mandiant report gave details of the operations and provided evidence linking those thefts to Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army – and named five officers of the unit. This was the first time any security firm had publicly disclosed data tying a cyberoperation against the U.S. to a foreign government. In 2014, the U.S. indicted the five Chinese officers for computer hacking and economic espionage.

Mandiant described APT1 as “one of more than 20 APT groups with origins in China.” Many of these are believed to be associated with the government. A report from the nonprofit Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology describes 15 state-sponsored advanced persistent threat groups, including APT1 and two others associated with PLA units. The report does not identify sponsors for the remaining groups.

The Five-Year Plan

According to the institute, China’s espionage supports the country’s 13th Five-Year Plan (covering the years 2016 to 2020), which calls for technology innovations and socioeconomic reforms. The goal is “innovative, coordinated, green, open and inclusive growth.” The ICIT report said most of the technology needed to realize the plan will likely be acquired by stealing trade secrets from companies in other countries.

In its 2015 Global Threat Report, the American cyberintelligence firm CrowdStrike identified dozens of Chinese adversaries targeting business sectors that are key to the Five-Year Plan. It found 28 groups going after defense and law enforcement systems alone. Other sectors victimized worldwide included energy, transportation, government, technology, health care, finance, telecommunications, media, manufacturing and agriculture.

China’s theft of military and trade secrets has been so rampant that editorial cartoonists Jeff Parker and Dave Granlund depicted it as “Chinese takeout.”

US-China agreement

In September 2015, President Obama met with China’s President Xi Jinping to address a range of issues affecting the two countries. With respect to economic espionage, they agreed that their governments would not conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of business secrets that would provide competitive advantage to their commercial sectors. They did not agree to restrict government espionage, a practice that countries generally consider to be fair game.

In June 2016, FireEye reported that since 2014 there had been a dramatic drop in cyberespionage from 72 suspected China-based groups. FireEye attributed the reduction to several “factors including President Xi’s military and political initiatives, the widespread exposure of Chinese cyberoperations, and mounting pressure from the U.S. Government.” The ICIT believes China may also be asserting greater control over its operatives and focusing on unspecified high-priority targets.

The U.S.-China agreement also calls for the two countries to cooperate in fighting cybercrime. Just weeks after the deal was signed, China announced it had arrested hackers connected with the 2015 intrusions into the Office of Personnel Management’s database. Those had exposed highly sensitive personal and financial data of about 22 million federal employees seeking security clearances. The Washington Post observed that the arrests could “mark the first measure of accountability for what has been characterized as one of the most devastating breaches of U.S. government data in history.”

The cyberthreat to the U.S. from China is mostly one of espionage, and even that threat seems to be declining. Nevertheless, companies need to be wary of losing their data, not just to China, but to any country or group seeking to profit from U.S. trade secrets and other sensitive data. That calls for staying ahead of the cybersecurity curve.

Dorothy Denning, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Defense Analysis, Naval Postgraduate School

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A man has been fired for turning up to work drunk — while he was off-duty

CAN you be sacked for getting drunk outside of work hours? The short answer is yes, you can.

FOR most of us, the office is the last place we’d go after a night on the town.

But a Geelong man has lost his job after he turned up to work after hours to sleep off an alcohol binge.

According to the Australian Financial Review, Sean Lewer, who worked on board a ship, was sacked by employer Inco Ships after he tried to return to his workplace after a night of heavy drinking.

On the day of the incident, the oil and gas worker knocked off work and went out for pizza and beer with a colleague.

At 10pm, he tried to return to his ship to sleep off the booze, so he would be ready to start his morning shift.

However, security guards stopped him from boarding due to his intoxication, which caused Mr Lewer to become aggressive.

The father-of-one called in sick the next day, and was fired for breaching the company’s drug and alcohol policy, behaving in an “aggressive and intimidatory manner” and jeopardising health and safety.

While the man said he was “deeply ashamed” of his actions, he claimed he shouldn’t have been let go, as the incident occurred outside of work hours and because he hadn’t actually managed to enter the property.

However, the Fair Work Commission upheld the decision and backed the oil and gas industry’s zero-tolerance alcohol strategy.

Despite the incident occurring outside work hours, Commissioner David Gregory said the decision was “reasonable”.

“The rationale for having a policy in place that provides that employees are not to access the refinery jetty or vessel after having consumed alcohol is the same in both circumstances,” he said.

“It is obviously designed to protect the individual and to prevent them endangering others.”

Original article found HERE.

Explainer: the charges against an Australian man accused of being an ‘economic agent’ for North Korea

Kevin Boreham, Australian National University

On the weekend, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) arrested and charged a 59-year-old Sydney man over allegations he acted as an “economic agent” for North Korea by facilitating exports from the rogue nation.

The AFP claims he has committed offences under the Weapons of Mass Destruction (Prevention of Proliferation) Act. This marks the first time charges have been brought under this act.

It will further allege he has committed offences under the Charter of the United Nations Act and the Autonomous Sanctions Act. This second law was enacted as a response to the UN Oil-for-Food scandal.

The AFP will allege the man is guilty of the following offences:

• brokering the sale of missiles and missile components, which could contribute to the delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction, and related expertise from North Korea to other “international entities”; and
• attempting to transfer coal from North Korea to entities in Indonesia and Vietnam.

These charges relate to both UN sanctions and Australian autonomous sanctions. It is set against the background of recent tougher UN sanctions against North Korea in respect of its nuclear and missile programs.

What are these laws?

The Weapons of Mass Destruction (Prevention of Proliferation) Act was intended to put the onus on exporters from Australia not to export items that, while having legitimate uses, could be used for nuclear, chemical and bacteriological programs.

Relevant to these charges, the act also provides generally that where a person supplies goods to another, believing or suspecting on reasonable grounds that the goods may be used in a program for the development, production, acquisition or stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction, the person is guilty of an offence punishable by imprisonment for a maximum of eight years.

The purpose of the Charter of the United Nations Act is to enable Australia to apply sanctions that give effect to the Security Council’s decisions.

The International Trade Integrity Act amended the Charter of the United Nations Act to include a new section. This section provides an offence for people or entities that engage in conduct that contravenes a UN sanction enforcement law.

The International Trade Integrity Act was intended to enhance the operation of Australian laws:

… to strengthen enforcement of all UN sanctions and combat foreign bribery.

The act came in response to the recommendations of the 2006 inquiry into the involvement of Australian companies – mainly the Australian Wheat Board – in kickbacks to the Iraqi government for the sale of wheat to Iraq under the UN Oil-for-Food Program.

UN sanctions against North Korea commenced with a Security Council resolution in 2006 that imposed an arms embargo, assets freeze and travel ban on those involved in its nuclear program. It also banned a range of imports and exports to prohibit the country from conducting nuclear tests or launching ballistic missiles.

UN sanctions against North Korea have been amended and extended several times since. In August 2017, a resolution imposed a complete ban on North Korea coal exports. In September 2017, another resolution introduced a full ban on the supply, sale or transfer of all condensates and natural gas liquids to North Korea, and a limit for all refined petroleum products.

In response to UN sanctions, Australia prohibits the procurement of coal from North Korea and the import of any items banned by UN sanctions as relevant to the country’s ballistic missile program.

The purpose of the Autonomous Sanctions Act is to establish an autonomous sanctions framework to facilitate the conduct of Australia’s external affairs. Autonomous sanctions are those imposed by the Australian government. The then foreign minister, Stephen Smith, said in his speech on the bill in May 2010 that autonomous sanctions are:

… highly targeted measures intended to apply pressure on regimes to end the repression of human rights, to end the repression of democratic freedoms, or to end regionally or internationally destabilising actions.

Smith referred to:

… the autonomous sanctions Australia has had in place on North Korea since 2006 in response to its missile and nuclear tests.

The Autonomous Sanctions Act provides for an offence in respect of autonomous sanctions identical to that in the Charter of the United Nations Act.

Australia’s autonomous sanctions against North Korea have also been amended several times. Relevant to these charges, they include a comprehensive ban on any activity related to North Korea’s extractive industry, including establishing or participating in a joint venture, partnership or other business relationship with a person or entity engaged in that industry.

The charges show that Australia is determined to effectively implement UN and Australian sanctions, against the background of the serious failures to prevent and punish violations of sanctions against Iraq under the UN Oil-for-Food Program.

Kevin Boreham, Course Co-ordinator, International Law Clinical Program, ANU College of Law, Australian National University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.