Damn those Scams

My sister is in Ghana for the summer educating the locals on the dangers of HIV/AIDS. She’s in a small village and recently just found a small local internet cafe shop in the village. Before, she had to trek 30 minutes by car into the city to have access but now its a small walk away. What’s surprising is what she told me while she was in the cafe:

all the locals here
are doing internet fraud
i see people here with notebooks of cc numbers buying crap online
it’s VERY SCARY
west africans since they have access to the internet
countries like uganda are too poor or war riddenn
here they are free and have time to do it they literally buy crap!

You’ve been warned.

There was a story this morning on ABC’s Good Morning America about scams. Here are the 5 but you’ll probably want to go and read the whole story to get an in depth view of what each entails.

5 Scams Consumers Need to Know About
No. 1: The Phony Job Scam.
No. 2: The Overpayment Scam.
No. 3: The Lottery Scam.
No. 4: Vishing.
No. 5: Called ID Spoofing.

They also have a “Savvy Consumer” site that has lots of information about not getting scammed. Probably a good idea to skim over the site.

A friend posted this last week and I got her permission to repost it here to alert everyone else:

Has anyone else been getting crank calls in Spanish asking you to call some 1-800 number back and when the man talks it sounds like he was cut off mid conversation when he leaves a msg? They keep calling a couple times a week on my cell phone. I have no idea how they got hold of my number. After talking to a few co-workers, they’ve also said they’ve gotten the same thing. Strange. What is that all about? Hmm.

And the Truth about Cell Phones and the Do Not Call Registry List from the Federal Trade Commission.
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/01/dnccellphones.htm

Apparently, I have seen fake websites and mass e-mails passed around scamming people into putting their numbers into these fake cell phone registries. What happened was the opposite. Instead of getting your number blocked, you end up getting more calls. Only the FTC site and number are legitimate. Remember there is only ONE DNC Registry. There is no separate registry for cell phones.

EDIT- a few mins of googling brought me to:

Two pages that had the same exact complaint. File a report on them and DO NOT CALL the missed number or number left in the voicemail back. It’s a scam to get you to pay for the crook’s calls.
https://digitalstylz.wordpress.com/2006/03/28/786-879-6669/

http://www.clampants.com/archives/000232.html

And a page about all the different kinds of phone frauds and how to stop them. Wow! I didn’t know there were that many!

http://www.consumer-action.org/english/articles/264#Topic_02

Maybe I’ll disconnect my cell phone and go back to using pagers. This is ridiculous. Or better yet, just send me a good, old fashioned snail mail.

The washington post has an article on how even if you get scammed into writing a check to a scammer, you’re stuck paying back the bank. Worth a read, there’s even a check list of “Telltale Methods of Check Scammers.”

Schaefer is one of thousands of consumers who have been victimized by an increasingly common check scam that relies on the vagaries of the banking system to take advantage of unsuspecting consumers.

Federal rules require banks to release funds from a consumer’s deposit quickly, usually within one to five business days, depending on the kind of check. However, it can take weeks before a bank discovers a check is fraudulent.

Read more

Worley scrolled through his in-box and opened an e-mail, addressed to “CEO/Owner.” The writer said that his name was Captain Joshua Mbote, and he offered an awkwardly phrased proposition: “With regards to your trustworthiness and reliability, I decided to seek your assistance in transferring some money out of South Africa into your country, for onward dispatch and investment.” Mbote explained that he had been chief of security for the Congolese President Laurent Kabila, who had secretly sent him to South Africa to buy weapons for a force of élite bodyguards. But Kabila had been assassinated before Mbote could complete the mission. “I quickly decided to stop all negotiations and divert the funds to my personal use, as it was a golden opportunity, and I could not return to my country due to my loyalty to the government of Laurent Kabila,” Mbote wrote. Now Mbote had fifty-five million American dollars, in cash, and he needed a discreet partner with an overseas bank account. That partner, of course, would be richly rewarded.

(click on title for full story)

[via digg]

Another good reason to be aware where your personal info is printed on.  Apparently fraudsters/scammers are on the lookout of your discarded airline boarding pass.  With very little work, they can over take over your identity and potentially make you wish you were just a bit more careful.  Personally, I try to shred anything that has the least bit of personal info on it.

If the expert was right, this stub would enable me to access Broer’s personal information, including his passport number, date of birth and nationality. It would provide the building blocks for stealing his identity, ruining his future travel plans - and even allow me to fake his passport.

Read more here.

[via slashdot]

It always warms my heart to see guys like this put away.

From the Kansas City Star:

Managers of an Iowa telemarketing firm were convicted in federal court Wednesday of conspiring to swindle more than $10 million from almost 50,000 people with poor credit. Jurors concluded that Zachery T. Whitehill, 29, of Sahuarita, Ariz.; Bradley L. Lovstad, 44, of Muscatine, Iowa; and Jaime E. Cook, 30, and Monty E. Wanless, 30, both of Kansas City, promised pre-approved credit cards for a $220 fee, but delivered only card applications. All of the managers worked for Gecko Communications Inc., which had offices in Kansas City, Shawnee and Lawrence. The men were convicted of conspiracy to commit telemarketing wire fraud. Whitehill, Lovstad and Wanless each were convicted of three additional counts of aiding and abetting the crime. Cook was acquitted on the aiding and abetting counts.

Here’s a thought, perhaps not enough scammers are hitting me (knock on wood) enough to have me enraged to the point of constantly posting about them.  Anyone want to contribute their stories or suggestions?  Just let me know and I’ll give you an account.

I got another call from that damn number. I refuse to pick it up, because, well, I think its a waste of time to reason with these scammers. You think that if I ask them nicely with sugar on top that they’ll even give a moment’s thought about taking me off of some list, or that they’ll feel like its their moral obligation to not bother me? Hell no. They want to take my money, and if they can’t, they’ll hang up and pester me another time when they think I’ve forgotten. God I hate these telemarketers

So my sister of all people got her identity stolen. Someone had swiped her contact info along with her credit card information somehow. She theorizes that it was done when she made an online donation to the Darfour relief effort. She was lucky since she monitors her credit card activity quite frequently and noticed charges being made to porn sites. She called her credit card company up and they automatically refunded her the charges and closed the account. They said there were also two pending charges that they would follow up with, but it didn’t seem to be a big deal. She thought that was the end of it. But it wasn’t.

The “two pending charges” are apparently for an eBay listing this scammer had posted selling a used car that doesn’t exist.

Apparently someone else got scammed in the process of all of this. The same identity thief used her contact info to register an account on eBay and sold some unsuspecting guy 3 states away a car. He took the money and then gave the guy my sister’s contact info. So now he’s calling asking where his car is, and of course she doesn’t have it.

She immediately contacted eBay about it, and they said their “Investigations Department” would look into it. She has also contacted the local police department to file a report just to have everything documented. This is what inflames me about eBay, they’re a multi-billion dollar company, but what responsibility do they have to their customers when incidents like this happen? What are their duties in restitution?

eBay might be a blessing to some, but more and more, its becoming a big curse to most.