Steven Rambam
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Steven Rambam (AKA "Rombom", both transliterations from the Hebrew are valid) is the founder and CEO of Pallorium, Inc., a licensed Investigative Agency with offices and affiliates worldwide. Pallorium maintains U.S. offices and affiliates in Texas, Louisiana, California and New York.
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[edit] Career
Since 1980, Pallorium's investigators have successfully closed more than 9,500 cases, ranging from homicide investigations to missing persons cases to the investigation of various types of sophisticated financial and insurance frauds. Steven Rambam was one of the first investigators to expose "prime bank note" and "trading program" frauds, and his investigations in conjunction with U.S. federal law enforcement agencies resulted in some of the first convictions and imprisonment of P.B.N. fraudsters.
Steven Rambam has coordinated investigations in more than fifty (50) countries, and in nearly every U.S. State and Canadian province. Steven specializes in international and multi-jurisdictional investigations, and within the past few years he has conducted investigations in Israel, South Africa, Holland, France, England, India, Mexico, Guatemala, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Germany, Abu Dhabi, China, Mongolia, the Philippines, Thailand, Laos, Jordan, Vietnam and Brazil, among other locations.
Steven Rambam and Pallorium have conducted or coordinated in excess of 500 foreign insurance-related investigations, including hundreds of "death claim" investigations. A significant number of these cases have resulted in confessions, arrest and prosecution.
More than 500 newspaper and magazine articles have reported on Pallorium's investigations, and Steven has been interviewed by numerous local television broadcasts, and by national and international news broadcasts such as "Sixty Minutes", "48 Hours", "BBC", "CBC", "NPR", "IBA News" (Israel), NBC's "Dateline", "The National", "ARD Report Mainz", "Discovery Channel", "Geraldo" and "America's Most Wanted". Steven was recently asked to host a weekly investigative television show.
Steven is currently coauthoring, with novelist Rick Dakan, a non-fiction book, "Stealing Your Own Identity". Dakan (http://www.rickdakan.com) is, most recently, the author of "Geek Mafia" and "Geek Mafia: Mile Zero".
Pallorium's online subsidiary, PallTech (http://www.palltech.us), offers access to nearly eight hundred (800) data sources, and to seven (7) major proprietary databases, and provides online investigative support services to 2,800 investigative and law enforcement agencies. DataVerification.Net, a custom web portal owned and operated by PallTech, provides specialized identity verification and underwriting solutions to the insurance industry.
Steven is perhaps best publicly known for his pro bono activities, which have included the investigation of nearly 200 Nazi collaborators and war criminals in the USA, Canada, Europe and Australia. Steven has also coordinated efforts to expose terrorist groups' fundraising activities in the United States and has conducted investigations which resulted in the tightening of airport security in 8 U.S. cities.
Steven Rambam has lectured on topics ranging from "the location of missing persons", to "the criminal use of false identification", to "foreign investigations", to "war crimes and the pursuit of war criminals".
Steven is a court-recognized expert witness on matters ranging from "investigative techniques" to "foreign investigation" to "sophisticated financial frauds" among other topics.
Steven is a member of IIN, WAD, WIN, NAIS, ION, AIIP, NCISS, BOMP, COIN, IJI, IOA, TALI, ACFE, ASIS, Intelnet, IWWA, ALDONYS and other investigative associations.
Various websites report that:
Rambam is also a technical advisor providing information for the private investigator character (named "Rambam") in a number of Kinky Friedman's mystery novels.[1][2] Rombom frequently refers to himself as Steven Rambam.
Rombom is also a regular speaker on the topics of investigations and he has appeared a number of times at conferences for computer hackers, including the popular H.O.P.E. conferences. Rombom has been declared an expert on the topic of investigations by a judge in a 2001 California trial.
In 1996, Rombom (as "Rambam) received press for his efforts at finding Nazi war criminals. He also was noted for revealing evidence that Elvis Presley had Jewish ancestors.[3]
[edit] Lawsuit against spamfighter
In September 2004, Steven Rombom's company, Pallorium, Inc., sued Joe Jared, operator of the free OsiruSoft Open Relay Spam Stopper, alleging that Jared was innappropriately including Pallorium, Inc. on its spam blacklist pages.[3][4] Jared's blacklist site ran software that determined that Pallorium was running an open mail relay and published that information. The case Pallorium vs. Jared was ruled in favor of Jared. During the trial Jared acknowledged that he had no proof that Pallorium had ever been used to transmit spam and that he had no evidence of an open relay at pallorium.com. Jared stated that his Spam Stopper list was a compilation of his own research and other unverified lists obtained from collaborators. In his judgment for Jared, the judge ruled that the Communications Decency Act provided him with immunity from such lawsuits provided that he was making a good faith effort to stop spam. The judge noted that Pallorium was an "innocent party" and it was suffering from "collateral damage from the war on spam", but the law prevented Pallorium from recovering damages from Jared.[5] Pallorium appealed the decision of the trial court, but on January 11, 2007 the California Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment in favor of Jared. The appeal court ruled that "the Communications Decency Act immunizes 'a provider . . . of an interactive computer service' who makes available to 'others the technical means to restrict access to material . . . the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.'" As the Court said, "whether Jared's filter was over-inclusive is irrelevant so long as he deemed the material to be 'obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.'"[6]
[edit] Arrest and charges for impersonating an FBI officer
On July 24, 2006 Rombom was arrested by the FBI on charges that he unlawfully interfered with an ongoing case prosecutors filed against Albert Santoro, a former Brooklyn assistant district attorney who was indicted in Jan. 2003 with one count of money-laundering. [7][8][9]The arrest of Rombom occurred as he was in the halls of Hotel Pennsylvania, preparing for his speech at the HOPE Number Six hacker conference in New York City. (Note that he later gave a similar speech which has been immortalized as a video.google clip.) Authorities alleged that Rombom impersonated an FBI officer while visiting the in-laws of a person that he was paid to investigate. The government alleged that Rambam was attempting to intimidate a confidential informant in an ongoing case against Santoro.[10]
Rombom appeared in federal court on September 13, 2006. He was released without bail and his arraignment was originally scheduled for October 23, 2006.[1] The case was dismissed without prejudice on the recommendation of the prosecutor on October 13, 2006.[11] The U.S. Department of Justice acknowledged that the witness that Rombom had been accused of pursuing was in fact not a government witness. The "official identification" shown by Rombom was acknowledged to have been Rombom's state-issued Private Investigator identification card and not FBI credentials. The prosecutor who approved the arrest of Rombom was removed from the underlying case after all charges against Rombom were dismissed, and Rombom announced (A.P. newswire) that he is considering pursuing a civil lawsuit against the persons that filed the (false) complaint against him.
[edit] References
- ^ a b "Andrew Dalton "Inspiration for Kinky Friedman's mystery novels accused of posing as FBI agent" Associated Press September 13, 2006
- ^ About Pallorium Pallorium, Inc. official website
- ^ a b Brian McWilliams "Spam, the Nazi hunter and Citizen Joe" Salon.com September 7, 2004
- ^ The Morris Law Firm "Recent Victories: A Victory Against Spam"
- ^ Superior Court of California, County of Orange Pallorium vs. Jared et al court ruling issued September 25, 2004.
- ^ Court of Appeal Opinion, January 11, 2007 "Opinion"
- ^ Brian Krebs "FBI Charges HOPE Speaker with Witness Tampering, Obstructing Justice" Washington Post Security Fix July 24, 2006
- ^ Brian Krebs "Agents Arrest Background Specialist at Hackers Forum" Washington Post July 25, 2006; Page D05
- ^ Brian Krebs "HOPE Speaker Arrested by the Feds" Washington Post Security Fix July 22, 2006
- ^ CNN.com "Kinky Friedman inspiration gets busted: Private eye is charged with posing as FBI agent to bully witness" July 25, 2006
- ^ United State of America vs. Steven Rombom, Order of Dismissal of Magistrate's Complaint; October 13, 2006

