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

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

NPR apparently did a story this morning about online privacy and while this was happening, I got visited by someone at NPR.org. I can only assume that Steve Inskeep was listening to the story and decided to google himself. All the while, I was listening to the story and was wondering how easy it was to get someone’s information and use it for evil purposes. Within the 5 minute story, I was able to dig around, find out how old Steve Inskeep was, where he lived, how much he paid for his house, when he bought it, and how much it was going to be worth in 2007 (triple its value).

Apparently there’s a family tiff going on where a renowned neuroscientist/psychiatrist lost up to 3 million US dollars in a nigerian scam. And now his son has filed a lawsuit to remove him as the administrator of the family’s multimillion dollar partnership. So now I know why scamming is the third largest industry in Nigeria, because even the best of us can be lured into a scam by greed and just not being aware of there are a lot of shady people out there in the world.

“While it seems unlikely, even ludicrous, that a highly educated doctor like (Gottschalk) would fall prey to such an obvious con, that is exactly what happened,” the son’s attorney wrote in court papers.

Read more about it here from CBS.

The Coshocton Tribune is reporting of a scam where emails are being sent that are supposedly from the “Social Security Administration” that alerts you that your identity has been stolen, and sends you to a phony “official SSA” website where they ask you to verify your social security number, bank info, etc.  You know the drill.  DON’T DO IT!

Once directed to the phony site the individual is asked to confirm their identity with “Social Security and bank information.” Specific information about the individual’s credit cad number, expiration date and PIN number is then requested.

Whether on the agency’s Web site or by phone, Social Security will never ask you for your credit card information or your PIN number.

Scanning the news this morning, I found this acrticle about this scam that is pretty disturbing.  Pressing a few keys on your home phone will give the scammer total access to use your line to make long distance calls.  Turns out most of these scammers are guys locked up in prison, and figure they can make nice long international calls on your dime.

Individuals claiming they are AT&T service technicians are calling peoples home.

They claim to be conducting tests and say that in order to complete the tests they need the owner to press the following numbers and then hang up.

Nine—-Zero—-Pound.

But by pressing these numbers and hanging up you will give the caller access to your phone lines and they can make long distance calls using your number.