Group items tagged

Dear Liz: I'm confused about paying down credit card debt. Some say to pay the lowest-balance cards first and others say the highest balance or the one with the highest interest. I have almost $16,000 on credit cards ranging from a $4,930 balance on a card with an 8.24% interest rate to $660 on a card with an 18% rate. Answer: Actually, the first question you should ask is "How much credit card debt do I have compared to my income?" If your balances equal half or more of your annual earnings, you may not be able to pay it all off. You should make appointments with a legitimate credit counselor (such as one affiliated with the National Foundation for Credit Counseling at http://www.nfcc.org) and a bankruptcy attorney (referrals from the National Assn. of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys at http://www.nacba.org). If your situation isn't that dire, the fastest way out of debt is to pay the minimums on your lower-rate cards and send as much money as possible to your highest-rate card. Once that's paid off, concentrate on paying off the next-highest-rate card, and so on. Some people instead like to target balances from smallest to largest to get a quicker feeling of victory, but you typically pay more in interest with that approach. Ranking credit card firms Dear Liz: My wife and I have had our bank's airline cards a long time, but we want to change because it's become almost impossible to cash in the miles. What I don't see in various card-comparison articles are ratings of the card issuers for customer service and fraud protection. Our bank has been quite good at both, but what about the other issuers? Answer: People are often unduly impressed when their credit card issuers contact them frequently about possibly fraudulent charges. The issuers are the only ones at risk in these situations, since under "zero liability" policies you can't be held responsible for bogus charges. Also, if their software were better, they might do a better job of separating legitimate f

Since March 2007, federal investigators have uncovered more than $5 billion in Medicare fraud, but they suspect that might just be the tip of the iceberg. As the prolific bank robber Willie Sutton reportedly said of robbing banks - because that's where the money is - health care fraud has become a huge problem throughout the country. According to the U.S. De­part­ment of Justice, Geor­gia ranks 12th in investigations, seventh in the number of fraud cases and sixth in total recovered - almost $98.95 million in 2012. In the Southern District of Georgia, more than $27 million in restitution was collected last year in one of the country's largest Medicare fraud prosecutions in 2005 - The Bio-Med Plus in Savannah. In Augus­ta, optometrist Jeffrey Spon­sel­ler was sentenced Jan. 9 to 33 months in prison and ordered to pay $441,000 in restitution for bilking Medicare. Federal investigations into Medicare fraud have exploded in response to the problem, said David Stewart, who recently left the U.S. attorney's office where one of his duties was health care fraud coordinator. Medicare fraud affects everyone because Medicare has become the primary health care coverage for most Amer­i­cans when they turn 65, said Ken­neth Crowder, who recently left the U.S. attorney's office and joined Stewart in private practice. When Medicare coverage started in 1966, 19.1 million were enrolled. In 2013, that number was 43.5 million, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. With the last of the baby boomer generation turning 50 this year and increased health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act, Stew­art and Crowder said fraud is expected to expand. Going after health care fraud holds the promise of getting money back for the government, Stewart said, which is another reason the Jus­tice Department has set that as a top goal. The attack on those defrauding Medicare and military health care provider TriCare occurs in crimina

"Identity Thief" is a 2013 movie starring Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy about a woman who steals the identity of a man named "Sandy." After the McCarthy character steals the Bateman character's identity, all types of high-jinx ensue. In real life, identity fraud is a very serious matter that frequently ruins the credit of the victim and takes a great deal of time and effort to resolve. With the 2013 tax filing season starting on January 31, 2014, the season for tax identity fraud is also upon us. Stolen identity refund fraud (SIRF) is a subset of identity theft that involves the criminal stealing the tax "identity" of an individual. Similar to any identity fraud, a criminal committing tax identity fraud obtains key information about the victim. In the tax context, the key is obtaining the individual's name matched with his or her social security number. Once that is obtained, the SIRF thief submits a false tax return in the name of the victim claiming a tax refund. Unfortunately, in many instances the refunds are issued. The fraud may be discovered when the unsuspecting victim files his or her own return and discovers that the IRS will not issue a refund because a return has already been filed under their social security number. It can be very difficult for the individual to get this straightened out with the IRS once the tax identity theft has been committed. Like other identity theft, tax identity theft frequently causes the victim a number of problems including damaging credit ratings, and reducing state or federal benefits. The victims of tax identity fraud are frequently the elderly, or individuals collecting subsistence payments who are not required to file federal income tax returns. For the elderly and those who are not required to file tax returns, it may take much longer for such individuals to discover that they were victims of tax identity fraud. Nevertheless, the fraud may impact those individuals by reducing state or