OKCupid Brags That It Experiments on Humans, Too

If you look for dates online, you’re the guinea pig for all kinds of experiments run by snarky Internet types, who grind up your loneliness and use it to feed their algorithms. Christian Rudder, one of the founders of OKCupid, proudly admitted as much on Monday in a post on the company’s blog entitled: “We Experiment on Human Beings!“
OKCupid’s admission wouldn’t have come if people hadn’t gotten so angry about Facebook’s (FB) decision to tinker with users’ newsfeeds and publish the results in an academic journal.
The Facebook backlash came because they were conducting experiments on people’s emotions without the subjects’ permission. By that standard, OKCupid’s experiments were much worse. After all, dating is all about feelings. In one test, the company wanted to see if its matching algorithms—the way that it predicts whether people will like one another—worked. So it told people who it thought wouldn’t like each other that it thought they would like each other. So, you know, OKCupid performed the equivalent of setting people up on bad dates and then watching them from across the restaurant, giggling.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-28/okcupid-brags-that-it-experiments-on-humans-too#r=lr-sr 

Former JP Morgan Chase Banker Convicted of Elaborate $779k Bank Fraud

HOUSTON – Carlos Lavin Ibarra, 33, of Houston, has entered a guilty plea to one count of bank fraud, announced United States Attorney Kenneth Magidson.

Ibarra worked at JP Morgan Chase Bank in Houston. He admitted that while employed there, he purchased or caused to be purchased $779,000 in cashier’s checks on accounts owned by a person from Nigeria. This person was deceased at the time of the defendant’s actions and Chase was not advised of his death. The defendant admitted he acted fraudulently and without authority.

The cashier’s checks were all made payable to “Ben Leasing.” Ibarra admitted he caused another individual to obtain a certificate of operation under the assumed name of Ben Leasing from the County Clerk of Harris County and open a bank account in that name. However, that person refused to accept the cashier’s checks and Ibarra then re-deposited the checks at Chase. He further caused eight more cashier’s checks to be purchased in various amounts, payable to different individuals with whom Ibarra had a relationship. Three of these checks were subsequently exchanged for identical Chase cashier’s checks. All of the Chase cashier’s checks were deposited into different bank accounts in Houston. 

http://www.justice.gov/usao/txs/1News/Releases/2014%20July/140709%20-%20Ibarra.html