After Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) canned its former chief information officer recently for inappropriate conduct, it's now turning its attention to a former manager who was in charge of the software behemoth's internet domain names. Carolyn Gudmundson was indicted late last week on 11 counts of wire fraud and seven counts of mail fraud.

The whopper: stealing more than $1 million from Microsoft and Expedia.com (a travel website), along with another California company. With all those charges, Gudmundson faces up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000.

The defendant apparently used her Microsoft corporate credit card to pay for internet domain names for the company, for which she paid highly inflated prices using doctored receipts. She didn't provide receipts in many cases as well, but still was provided reimbursement by her former employer. First of all, Microsoft should not have provided expense report reimbursements without a receipt, but that's not the issue here. Criminal fraud is.

In addition, Gudmundson filed fraudulent invoices with travel site Expedia.com for domain names she had never paid for. Somehow, she also convinced a California domain name registrar to pay a "G.M. Lossman" for transferring multiple domain names to Microsoft. That's a lot of fraud just for involving internet domain names, yes? It's quite an intricate swindle based on something very rarely looked at in corporate America -- domain name management. That is, unless large receipts start showing up in those expense reports.

[DISCLOSURE: I own MSFT shares as of 12-10-07]

The New York Times reports that former hedge fund manager and CNBC commentator Seth Tobias left quite a lurid tale before he allegedly drowned in his Jupiter, FL., pool in September. Tobias' wife has been accused of murdering her husband, while his brothers are the beneficiaries of a disputed will.

Before getting into the details, this story has a distant connection to BloggingStocks. After all, blogger and Mad Money Host Jim Cramer was Seth Tobias' boss at Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS). As Cramer said: "I don't understand why this hasn't ended up on CSI: Miami yet."

Here are the key details:

• Hedge fund and CNBC host. Tobias ran a $300 million hedge fund called Circle T out of offices near Palm Beach's Breaker's Hotel and was a commentator on CNBC's Kudlow & Company -- hosted by Larry Kudlow, a former cocaine addict and partner of Cramer's on CNBC who would be a good fit alongside Fox's Bill O'Reilly.
• Gay bar. Tobias was known to frequent a gay bar called Cupids in West Palm Beach where he met a go-go dancer named Tiger who "is blond and covered with tattoos that look like stripes."

Shortly after the market closed today, I got one of my familiar MarketWatch.com bulletins in my in-box. But it wasn't concerning after-hours earnings or the Dow's (latest) triple-digit drop. Rather, it simply stated: "Home-run king Barry Bonds indicted on perjury, obstruction of justice charges."

Yowsa. While everyone always just assumed Bonds used the juice at some point in his career, I think this comes as a surprise to many sports fans. A federal grand jury has accused Bonds of lying under oath when he said he was unaware that substances handed out by personal trainer Greg Anderson were steroids. Bonds has also maintained that he did not use steroids in 2001, as he chased the single-season home-run record, then held by Mark McGwire.

According to MarketWatch, John Burris, "one of" Bonds' lawyers, told San Francisco radio station KCBS the Bonds would plead "not guilty." Burris also asserted that Bonds "will be found not guilty." Burris says the indictment was a shock, as the government doesn't have proper evidence to bring such a claim.

MSNBC reports that General Electric Co.'s (NYSE: GE) NBC Dateline was able to track 12 of 20 Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPods it left as bait for thieves.

About 110 million iPods have been sold since they were introduced. And people have been murdered for them. And many iPod owners have had them stolen. Moreover, as Dateline discovered, Apple could easily track the thieves and help reunite the owners with their stolen iPods. However, despite an average of five or six calls per customer service rep per day asking for help with stolen iPods, Apple has stayed out of this problem.

Dateline's Chris Hansen created a ruse to find out whether he could track stolen iPods. He left 20 lying around for thieves to steal in cities around the U.S. And when the thieves registered their stolen iPods so they could buy songs from iTunes, Hansen had them send their name, address and other contact information to Apple and Dateline. Hansen then drove to the thieves' houses in an RV to give them a fake prize. At that point he listened to their explanations of how they got their iPods, then showed them the incriminating video of them stealing the iPods.

Nathaniel Hawthorne may be dead, but his spirit still lives on at Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT), specifically in this store in Attalla, Alabama. You can recognize the store because it's the one with the two petty thieves out front, wearing signs around their necks: "I am a thief, I stole from Wal-Mart." The signs, ordered by a local judge (they were worn for eight hours on a couple of Saturdays) have received positive comments from shoppers, according to the store manager; signs that the 1800s are alive and well.

As William Faulkner wrote, in the south, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

Surely the mainstream retail climate has moved past expending precious management time and justice department resources on the humiliation of those desperate individuals (or, as one of the punishees claims, victims of misunderstanding) who steal items of miniscule value. Most companies who own stores build losses into their forecasted income statement. But at Wal-Mart, the scarlet letter lives on.

It seems that no matter where I travel on the Internet these days, I run into another new warning about some evil Internet-borne threat that wants to invade my computer, rifle my bank records or expose my personal life in order to wreak havoc and inject trouble while accomplishing a complete withdrawal of my life savings. Thanks to a worthwhile investment in McAfee (NYSE:MFE) products, I have been safe, at least until now. But it seems that the times are changing in the arena of Internet crime. Actually, it's probably safer for me and other PC users now. We're not the desired targets any more. Now it seems that the criminals are more interested in going after the big guys. It's that old rule about deep pockets -- the more you have, the more someone else wants to get it.

Luckily enough, I came across a systems security suite that appear to have it all covered. Kaseya, McAfee and Singlefin, a St. Bernard Company (OTCBB:SBSW), have come together under the umbrella of Secure My Company, a monthly subscription service providing systems protection from the inside out. Given the fact that an emerging tactical attack on business is being mounted from the user side of business equipment, it is very important that companies monitor the dissemination of internal data to exterior destinations. Secure My Company has chosen their three focus providers to create a synergistic defense against data intrusions and theft from outside a company and from within.

Internet security is one game where you must be at least one step ahead of the competition, especially when you consider that the competition wants to bleed your funds or to just plain ruin you. We're not talking about business competition. We're talking about those individuals and organizations that operate strictly in defiance of the rules. They are criminals who will stop at nothing to gain access into what you have worked so hard to build. If you are personally in charge of your system or network security then you'd better be up to date. If someone else handles those details for you, then make sure that they're on the ball. Today's computer criminals aren't the hackers and virus writers that we've all become used to. We're dealing against a smooth, savvy and intelligent bunch. They only way they will respect you is if you demand that they will and that means keeping them locked out, for good.