As if one trip to a luxury spa resort wasn't enough for American International Group (AIG) following its taxpayer-funded bailout, the company had plans to do it all over again.

50 AIG managers were scheduled to do a deluxe retreat at the Ritz-Carlton resort in Half Moon Bay. The company said it was going to host 150 top-producing agents for educational purposes.

The cost of this "educational opportunity?" Ritz Carlton rooms go for $300 to $1,200 a night, plus high costs for meals, drinks, and entertainment. If the earlier trip is any indication, this whole extravaganza could cost the company around $500,000.

Outrage from taxpayers has led management to cancel this outing, and lawmakers are relieved. Some defended the trips as standard fare for high-level producers for insurance companies. The independent agents win these trips by selling a lot of insurance products. Yet it seems excessive in light of the taxpayer assistance required by AIG.

With taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars of loans made to AIG to help keep them in business, the company needs to find another way to give incentives to the sales force. Standard industry practice or not, these trips don't go over well during a time when belts are being tightened by the little guys. The cancellation of the trip is good news for now. Let's see what AIG comes up with next.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

If we ever needed an argument against using taxpayer money to bail out private companies who made bad decisions and are teetering on the brink of extinction, this is it.

Less than one week after the U.S. government forked out $85 billion related to the American International Group (AIG) mess, the AIG executives took a little jaunt to a California spa and spent $440,000 on their stay.

The executives stayed at the exclusive St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, and plunked down $139,000 for rooms, $147,000 for banquets, $23,380 spa services, plus other expenses for alcohol and entertainment. A normal two-night stay at the St. Regis with a "health and wellness" package costs $1,200. Quite the bargain, especially for a company begging for taxpayer handouts.

Kevin Trudeau, author of the book "The Weight Loss Cure 'They' Don't Want You to Know About," has been banned from participating in infomercials for the next three years. In addition to this punishment, a judge has ordered him to give up over $5 million in profits from the book. And amazingly, this is Trudeau's second time being found in contempt of court in recent years.

In 2004, Trudeau was order to stop misrepresenting the content of his books in infomercials. A judge said that he was misleading consumers, making them think the weight loss book would give them an easy method that would let them eat whatever they wanted to after they were done. Except the diet wasn't simple; it required colonics by a licensed practitioner and injection of a human growth hormone, and it never really ended. Dieters really couldn't eat whatever they wanted, because the book said they should only eat organic food and avoid brand name foods, fast food, and meals at chain restaurants.

A dance with the Internal Revenue Service is one that I never want to do, and I suspect everyone reading this feels the same. Unfortunately for Dancing With the Stars champion (and Indy 500 champ, but I'm focusing on the important stuff) Helio Castroneves, the IRS is after him and he has been indicted on multiple count of tax evasion.

Castroneves makes his home in South Florida, and the indictment happened in Miami on Thursday. The IRS says he failed to report $5.5 million in income between 1999 and 2002. His sister Kati is his manager, and she was indicted too, along with his lawyer, Alan Miller.

The charges against Castroneves include one fraud charge and six charges of tax evasion. Each of those counts could get him up to five years in prison, for a total of 35 years. (But maybe he'll get lucky like Wesley Snipes and find himself acquitted of some of these charges.)

It seems not a day goes by that I don't hear of some new method of identity theft or credit card fraud to guard against. And yesterday was no exception.

I spotted an article about a group of Huntington bank customers whose debit card information had been used to buy several air conditioners at Overstock.com. Huntington was quick to deny fault in the matter, deferring the blame to, "some link on the Internet." Thankfully Overstock.com quickly reimbursed the fraudulent transactions and shed some light on how the theft may have occurred.

Alan Johnson, who heads up the fraud department at Overstock, told our local paper that the numbers were likely compromised by "card tumbling," a method of fraud that seems fit for an upcoming episode of Numb3rs. Since I can't call in Charlie Eppes to explain card tumbling, I'll do my best to break it down for you.

Much in the same way that a locksmith focuses on how a lock works in order to pick it, card tumblers focus on the rules and math that govern how credit card numbers are created in order to get to your money. Once they create a credit card number, they test it for validity and if successful it's used on sites that don't verify other information such as the name or security code on the credit card.

Perhaps what is most frightening about this method of theft is that you don't have to use your card online or have the number stolen to lose out. Even though the normal methods of safeguarding your credit and debit card numbers won't protect you from this method of hacking, there is one step you can take to keep your funds safe. To avoid the realization that someone in Nigeria has emptied your entire account, you can have your debit card attached to a secondary account in which you only keep money you are going to spend in the near future.

According to a recent report on TMZ, Rich Fields, the voice of television's The Price Is Right, was recently the victim of identity theft. He has, apparently, lost $71,000 and his accounts are frozen. When I heard this, I was struck with a few major questions:

"So that announcer guy is named Rich Fields?"

"Since when does TMZ cover sub-celebrities?"

The U.S. Mint is officially the P.T. Barnum of currency. It's addicted to showmanship. Yesterday, in a heartwarmingly goofy ceremony at Washington DC's Lincoln Memorial, an actor dressed as Abe unveiled its four new designs for the penny, all of which will be released in 2009 to commemorate the 200th birthday of the put-upon Civil War president. They're just the latest pocket party favors for our ongoing patriotic fervor.

While Lincoln will appear as usual on one side (facing right, the only president to do so on our circulating coins), the flip side will depict four Abe-ish icons issued in rotation: a log cabin inscribed with his birth year, an image of Lincoln the rail splitter studying on a log, a portrait of the young legislator in front of Illinois' state capitol, and a shot of the U.S. Capitol under construction as it was when he was our troubled country's leader.

But as historian James W. Leowen investigated in his 1999 book Lies Across America, the log cabin is a fake. That right. The cabin pawned off on the public as the one Lincoln was born in, and the one that will be engraved on our money, was built in 1895, 30 years after Abe's death, as a tourist draw.

Another retailer announces a major data security breach... Forever21 has announced that nearly 100,000 credit and debit card numbers were illegally accessed by hackers. Customers who shopped at Forever21 on nine specific days in 2004 and 2007 may be victims. I doubt any of you have your receipts from then, but here are the dates:

• March 25, 2004
• March 26, 2004
• June 23, 2004
• July 2, 2004
• July 3, 2004
• August 4, 2007
• August 5, 2007
• August 13, 2007
• August 14, 2007

Also: The Fresno Cali store between November 26, 2003 and October 24, 2005.

I'm already questioning the intelligence of the hackers. They had the smarts to get around the security measures and get into the system. Yet they steal data that is several years old? Sounds like an awfully stupid criminal move to me.

One positive bit of news related to this data theft is that three people have been indicted based upon this scam, which included 11 other retailers. Forever 21 says that after having forensic consultants examine their records, they determined that over half of the compromised card numbers are no longer active or the cards have expired.

It happens all the time. One Comcast customer was dumped for using too much web service on a plan he purchased because it was "unlimited." The company told him the word referred to the fact he could be on his computer as much as he wanted, not that he could view as many pages and videos as he wanted. And then Comcast tried selling him a more expensive plan. Infuriated, he fought back, launching a fiery blog and a cutting YouTube protest to tell the world he'd been ripped off. And a consumer advocate was born.

In July, Sprint put a cap on its previously "unlimited" data card usage, following Verizon and AT&T. Now, 5 gigabytes is all you get unless you want corporate monkeys to shut off your supply. Americans aren't the only ones to suffer the bait-and-switch defended by dense legalese and bent logic in the Terms of Service contract: U.K.'s Vodafone puts similar caps on its "unlimited" mobile phone plan, as does Canada's TELUS.

Ken and Daria Dolan, America's First Family of Personal Finance, answer your money questions every Friday.

Click here to ask Ken and Daria your question.

Eleven banks have now been claimed by the FDIC this year and more institutions are at risk of failure now than at any time in the last five years. Talk about a big flashing sign that this banking mess is far from over!

So how do you know if your bank is safe? Making sure it is FDIC insured is a good first step (learn how this insurance works here), but it isn't always enough. Here's how to find a secure bank to protect your deposits.

Dear Ken and Daria,

With all the recent bank failures, how can I find out if my bank is safe?

-Richard

Are you concerned about the safety of your money? Learn how the FDIC and latest bank failures affect you at Dolans.com.

Sure, $7.2 billion sounds like a lot of money. And to me, it is a lot of money. But to the people who lost their savings and their retirement, it's not so much. Enron was once worth $68 billion to its shareholders, so at just over 10% of that amount, $7.2 billion will do little for those left holding worthless shares of stock.

To be eligible for part of the settlement, the shareholders had to have purchased stock between Sept. 9, 1997 and Dec. 2, 2001. It's estimated that there will be 1.5 million investors who will get part of the settlement, and they will receive an average of $6.79 per share of common stock (a stock which once was worth over $90 a share). All funds should be distributed by the end of the year.

The settlement is being funded mostly by JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, which were accused of participating in the accounting shenanigans that led to the collapse of Enron. This is the largest settlement ever in a securities case, now surpassing the WorldCom settlement of $6.1 billion which was a record at the time. But I'm sure it's no consolation to those whose retirement accounts were wiped out.

I won't say that cruise ship art is bad, because everyone has their own tastes. But I will say this is not stuff you're going to see at Christie's, unless Rembrandt ever did super-saturated landscapes starring Snow White, or Francis Bacon attempted colorized photos of the Rat Pack (pictured, on a Princess ship). But that's exactly the kind of stuff the cruise lines'' "fine art" departments try to sell passengers after a long day of piña coladas and free buffets.

I also won't call these kinds of events scams, because lots of people already have, pointing out that because they happen in international waters, consumer protection is scant. I have myself already pointed out the free alcohol, which says a lot, too, and which has a documented history of making ugly things look attractive.

When litigator Mitchell Berns was told by Delta that his flight was canceled because of weather, he didn't get mad. He did research.

He checked with the National Weather Service and found out the airline's excuse was a sham: Snow wasn't due for many hours.

See, airlines are allowed by law to cancel flights because of bad weather, but Berns knew at a glance that Delta was just using it as an excuse. He booked with another airline, took off, and then filed suit against Delta in small-claims court to force it to pay back the cost of his replacement flight.

Delta tried to settle the matter by offering him frequent flier miles. But as most travelers are already too aware, frequent flier miles are woefully devalued, over-issued, and flooding the travel market.

As Berns told Fortune -- and this is my favorite part of the story -- frequent flier miles are "Confederate currency." Just as Dixie once did, instead of dealing with systemic problems, the airlines are just printing more useless cash to pawn off challengers.

I just signed up to be on a game show. Or it feels like it, anyway.

Less than an hour ago, I happened to be reading the AARP Bulletin, which has a story this week about a $75 million class action lawsuit settlement with TransUnion, one of the three major credit-reporting bureaus. If you took out a loan within the last 20 years, opened up any sort of line of credit, got a car loan or took out a mortgage -- in other words, if you're over the age of 18 and breathing -- you're probably eligible to get something out of this.

Apparently, TransUnion violated a bunch of laws by selling private consumer information for marketing purposes, so look, if you want something for free and a chance to stick it to The Man, here's what you do. Either call 1-866-416-3470 where you can register your information, or go to ListClassAction.com and fill out your information; mailing address, phone number, email... Hey, how do we know TransUnion won't use all of this new information for more marketing purposes?

(I'm just kidding. I'm sure it won't. Still, the irony is kind of funny.)

Lawyers in Wisconsin are fighting over $200 million that was withdrawn from a medical malpractice fund and spent on an unrelated government program. On one side of the debate are the lawyers who say that lawmakers should be able to spend taxpayer money in whatever way they see fit. On the other side of the debate are those who paid into the fund who are now seeing their money squandered elsewhere.

I'm squarely on the side of the doctors who paid into the medical malpractice fund. The fund was started in 1975, and doctors practicing in Wisconsin are required to pay into it each year. Doctors must have malpractice insurance that covers claims up to $1 million, and the fund pays awards in exceess of that.

I don't find a gray area in this case. The doctors paid a special tax (called a fee, but we know it's really a tax) for a special purpose. They deserve to have their dollars directed at exactly what the dollars were collected for.