When you send someone a gift card, you do so under the assumption that no one with access to the card has been draining any of the balance. That’s what we assume when having a card sent to the recipient, or when mailing it ourselves: why check to make sure the whole balance is there? Police say that a woman fulfilling Amazon gift card orders took advantage of this for a few years, draining $18,000 in Amazon gift card balances to her own cards. [More]
Crime & Fraud
Police Can’t Crack Mysterious Case Of More Than 100 Egging Attacks On Cleveland Home
By 3.6.15
Anyone who’s ever had to clean up after an egging attack knows it’s no fun to wipe up a goopy mess of yolks, whites and cracked shells adorning your home or car. But one Cleveland house has had more than the usual isolated egging, as the target of about 100 incidents in the last year in a mysterious spate of attacks that have police stymied. [More]
Police: Woman Swilled Other Customers’ Drinks, Hit TGI Fridays Manager In Head With A Glass
By 3.5.15
It’s bad enough to purloin drinks from your fellow restaurant patrons, but police in upstate New York say one TGI Fridays customer added insult to injury by not only walking around sipping from other customers’ beverages, but she then allegedly smashed a drinking glass against the manager’s head after being told she’d have to leave. [More]
‘Microsoft Tech Support’ Phone Scammer Threatens To Cut Man Into Little Pieces & Throw Them Into River
By 3.4.15
We already know that scammers use a variety of unsavory tactics when trying to take advantage of consumers; from impersonating federal agents to threatening jail time. But an alleged fraudster of the so-called “Microsoft Tech Support” scam took things to a decidedly nastier level when his hustle began to unravel. [More]
Telemarketers Accused Of Using Political Robocalls To Pitch Caribbean Cruise Packages
By 3.4.15
While people at various points on the political spectrum may disagree about many topics, one sentiment many of them share is a distaste for prerecorded phone calls from political organizations. Like them or not, they’re generally legal even if the recipient is on the federal Do Not Call list. But when you use a supposedly political telemarketing call to ultimately shill for a cruise line, you’ve crossed over into the dark side. [More]
Consumers Lost $1.7B To Scams In 2014, Imposter Crimes On The Rise
By 3.2.15
For the 15th consecutive year, identity theft topped the Federal Trade Commission’s list of top consumer complaints. But its reign could be coming to an end following a significant increase in the number of scams in which con artists impersonating government agents and law enforcement personnel part consumers from their money.
[More]
Police: Man Tried To Pass Off Wooden Dummy As Real Person So He Could Use Carpool Lane
By 3.2.15
We all know how enticing that carpool lane can be — but when you’re driving solo, you just don’t belong there. Police in New York say one driver tried to get around the rules for high-occupancy vehicle lanes, as they’re also known, by setting up a wooden dummy as his passenger. [More]
Suspected Walmart Masturbator Says He Has “A Problem With Sticking His Hands In His Pants”
By 3.2.15
While no stuffed animals were involved this time, yet another Walmart patron has been arrested and accused of pleasuring himself in front of his fellow shoppers. [More]
Man Finds His Missing Log Cabin 3,750 Feet From Where He Last Saw It
By 2.27.15
Though sometimes it feels like your keys, wallet or phone can just go walking away from where you left them, a man in Oregon was shocked this week to first find that his log cabin had been stolen, and then to find that it had somehow wandered 3,750 feet away from its original resting place. [More]
Police Say Trucker Used Bond, James Bond-Style Device To Avoid Paying $95 Toll
By 2.27.15
Perhaps you think you’re clever, sure, but just because you can pull a James Bond and movie move and rig your car in a way that helps you break the law, doesn’t mean you won’t get in trouble for it. Police in New York say a truck driver tried to skirt the rules by modifying his bumper in such a way that it could flip up and hide his license plate when he went through tolls. [More]
Restaurant Co-Owner Accused Of Creeping On Women With Camera Hidden In Bathroom
By 2.24.15
Police in Maryland say the co-owner of a local restaurant group took advantage of his customers in one of the most invasive ways possible, by allegedly setting up a video camera in the women’s restroom at one of his restaurants so he could secretly film them going to the bathroom. And cue those shudders, folks. [More]
Ex-Employees Claim Intuit Let Fraudulent TurboTax Returns Through For The Money
By 2.23.15
Are fraudulent tax returns the fault of the IRS, or caused by a weakness in the most popular software programs that consumers use to file their taxes? Former employees of Intuit, maker of TurboTax, allege that the company prevented security staff from flagging and shutting down obviously fraudulent accounts. Why? Market share. Fraudsters were ditching TurboTax and using other tax software when the company flagged their returns. [More]
Uber Drivers Are Quietly Rating & Blacklisting Passengers
By 2.23.15
Anyone who’s hired an Uber car knows that you can give your experience a star rating when it’s done, but the thing you probably aren’t aware of is that Uber drivers are keeping tabs on passengers, and that supbar customers can end up being blacklisted. [More]
Delta Air Lines Passenger Arrested For Allegedly Assaulting Flight Crew Members, Police Officer
By 2.19.15
It’s one thing to have a mile-high cocktail, but it’s an entirely another to get to the point where you’re kicking and screaming at the flight crew. Los Angeles airport police say they arrested an intoxicated Delta Air Lines passenger after she allegedly became “belligerent” toward the crew during a flight. [More]
Police Say Texas Teens Shot Blow Darts At Fellow Walmart Shoppers
By 2.19.15
Two Texas 18-year-old men have been accused of treating Walmart customers like some kind of animal to be hunted. Police say the twosome blew darts at shoppers, including an elderly woman on a motorized scooter and a 10-year-old boy. [More]
What Can An ID Thief Do With My Social Security Number?
By 2.17.15 — Updated: 5.2.17
When I was working at the library in college, every student had to tell me his/her student ID number to check out a book, and with very few exceptions that number was also the student’s Social Security number. Oh boy, the profitable things I could have done if I’d been enterprisingly evil. [More]
Police: Drunk Drivers Poured Water On Road After Crash To Make It Look Like Ice Caused Accident
By 2.16.15
What kind of awful person deliberately makes a road icy in the winter? The kind of person who does it to cover up a drunk-driving accident. At least police in New Jersey busted an alleged icing scheme cooked up by two men accused of driving while intoxicated. [More]
Shoppers Watch From Inside Store While Two Strangers Have Sex In Front Of Strip Mall
By 2.16.15
With all the crazy characters out there, shopping can often be a spectator sport for the rest of us more mundane browsers. Or it can turn into a free peepshow, as patrons of a California strip mall found out this weekend when two people who’d reportedly just met started humping each other in public. [More]
