scammers
Here's another reason to have a sit-down with your elderly relatives and make them promise that if they ever,
ever find out they've won some money in a lottery they didn't enter, they should tell family members immediately.
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scams
Here's one more reason to avoid
mystery shopping scams:
you could be the one who ends up in jail. A woman in Minnesota answered a "mystery shopper" email (that she found in her spam folder, sigh) and signed up. It turned out to be the old
check fraud scam—they sent her a $2700 check and told her to deposit it and keep $300 a payment, then use the rest to make mystery shopper purchases. She took the check to her bank, and her bank called the police.
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scams
The Wall Street Journal ran an article yesterday about how to identify and protect loved ones from
con artists. One of the problems with being an easy mark—say, because of reduced mental capacity or increasing isolation—is that
you get put on a list and passed around to other scammers, says Karen Blumenthal, the author of the piece and a relative of one of these perpetually easy marks.
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scams
Is there anything scammers won't try in their attempts to disguise
advance fee fraud? Nope. Chelsea and her husband just found out that OMG THEY JUST WON 350K!!!1! from the Gaming Association of America. They'll be receiving their check shortly, but in the meantime the GAA has sent them a much smaller check for about $5,000 to cover any fees associated with the prize. All they need to do is contact the "non-government service tax agent (GST)" to take care of cashing and handing over that $5k, and they'll be swimming with hookers in champagne-filled pools.
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advance fee fraud
Banks usually avoid having to deal with the consequences of advance fee fraud, since they make the depositor responsible for coming up with the missing money when a check turns out to be fake. But a lawyer who just got scammed is
taking Citibank to court, because he says their "unconditional" guarantee that the check was legit led directly to his loss of $182,500.
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identity theft
Check-altering criminal mastermind Frank Abagnale has five ways to lockdown your checking account and secure your identity.
Check fraud isn't an anachronistic threat like Communism. Determined thieves can easily use your checks to steal your cash and your identity. Here's how to stop them...
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crime
Over at InfoWorld they have a story from a guy who was trying to sell something on Craigslist, and because he is savvy in the ways of the internet, did not fall for an obvious "overpayment scheme."
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Consumerist
dumb ideas
check fraud
