The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security Read Online Free PDF Page A

hours your branch is open for business?" She answered, and continued answering his string of questions. "How many employees at your branch use our service?" "How often do you call us with an inquiry?" "Which of our 800-numbers have we assigned you for calling us?" "Have our representatives always been courteous?" "How's our response time?" "How long have you been with the bank?" "What Merchant ID are you currently using?" "Have you ever found any inaccuracies with the information we've provided

    you?" "If you had any suggestions for improving our service, what would they be?"

    And:

    "Would you be willing to fill out periodic questionnaires if we send them to your

    branch?"

    She agreed, they chatted a bit, the caller rang off, and Chris went back to work.

    The Third Call: Henry McKinsey "CreditChex, this is Henry McKinsey, how can I help you?"

    The caller said he was from National Bank. He gave the proper Merchant ID and then gave the name and social security number of the person he was looking for information on. Henry asked for the birth date, and the caller gave that, too.

    After a few moments, Henry read the listing from his computer screen.

    "Wells Fargo reported NSF in 1998, one time, amount of $2,066." NSF � non sufficient funds - is the familiar banking lingo for checks that have been written when there isn't enough money in the account to cover them. "Any activities since then?" "No activities." "Have there been any other inquiries?" "Let's see. Okay, two of them, both last month. Third United Credit Union of Chicago." He stumbled over the next name, Schenectady Mutual Investments, and had to spell it. "That's in New York State," he added.

    Private Investigator at Work All three of those calls were made by the same person: a private investigator we'll call Oscar Grace. Grace had a new client, one of his first. A cop until a few months before, he found that some of this new work came naturally, but some offered a challenge to his resources and inventiveness. This one came down firmly in the challenge category. The hardboiled private eyes of fiction - the Sam Spades and the Philip Marlowes - spend long night time hours sitting in cars waiting to catch a cheating spouse. Real-life PIs do the same. They also do a less written about, but no less important kind of snooping for warring spouses, a method that leans more heavily on social engineering skills than on fighting off the boredom of night time vigils.

    Grace's new client was a lady who looked as if she had a pretty comfortable budget for clothes and jewelry. She walked into his office one day and took a seat in the leather chair, the only one that didn't have papers piled on it. She settled her large Gucci handbag on his desk with the logo turned to face him and announced she was planning to tell her husband that she wanted a divorce, but admitted to "just a very little problem."

    It seemed her hubby was one step ahead. He had already pulled the cash out of their savings account and an even larger sum from their brokerage account. She wanted to know where their assets had been squirreled away, and her divorce lawyer wasn't any help at all. Grace surmised the lawyer was one of those uptown, high-rise counselors who wouldn't get his hands dirty on something messy like where did the money go.

    Could Grace help?

    He assured her it would be a breeze, quoted a fee, expenses billed at cost, and collected a check for the first payment.

    Then he faced his problem. What do you do if you've never handled a piece of work like this before and don't quite know how to go about tracking down a money trail? You move forward by baby steps. Here, accord- mg to our source, is Grace's story.

    I knew about CreditChex and how banks used the outfit - my ex-wife used to work at a bank. But I didn't know the lingo and procedures, and trying to ask my ex- would be a waste of time.

    Step one: Get the terminology straight and figure out how to make the request so it sounds like