Robert Allen promises to make you millions teaching you how to buy real estate with no money down. Unsurprisingly, Ripoffreport is littered with complaints about his company and those that use his name. Here’s the story they tell:
fraud
French President's Bank Account Hacked
By 10.20.08
While French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been posturing as an international leader during this time of global financial crisis, thieves have been raiding his online bank account, withdrawing small amounts over an extended period of time. Just goes to show that identity theft can happen to anyone, whether or not you’re important enough to have people Photoshop your love handles away. For best protection, install and keep up to date a good security program, like ESET. Only log into your bank from the main URL, never click on a link in an email that appears to be from your financial institutions. Use usernames and passwords that are a string of random letters and numbers. Write them down and hide it in a secure place, not inside of a fresh hot pain au chocolat.
Interview: I Fought Off The US National Bank Scammers
By 10.19.08
Almost immediately after Laurie Lucas picked up the phone, the many from “Legal Affidavit Office” began reading off a litany of charges he said “US National Bank” had filed against her. Theft of property. Fraud. Money laundering. “Eric Matthews” said that he, “felt sorry for the tragedy that was getting ready to befall” her for her failure to pay back a $5,000 payday loan. They would be coming to arrest her tomorrow morning at 11am, he said in an identifiably Indian accent. When Laurie protested that she had never taken out such a loan, or even a payday loan in her life, and had never heard of US National Bank, Eric said she should have kept better records…
What Are The Latest Fraud Stats?
By 10.19.08
Looking for stats about how fraud has risen over the past year. I was able to find a few data points:
Walmart Sells You An Empty Box Instead Of A Laptop — But You Bought It With Stolen Credit Cards
By 10.14.08
You know how sometimes in football both teams will screw up on the same play and the penalties will offset? We’ve just found the fraud version of that situation. Three men brought a laptop computer box to Walmart and said that they’d been sold an empty box. Walmart thought they were being scammed, so they called the police. That’s when all hell broke loose.
Beware The Grannie Scammers
By 10.6.08
Watch out, grannie, there’s a new scam out there and they’ve got your number. Like we told you last week, conmen are calling up elderly folk and using social engineering to pose as their grandchildren, and they need money money fast. Usually they say they were traveling in Canada and just got in a car accident and need thousands of dollars for repairs or bail. How do the scammers fool the grandparents?
5 Scams To Watch Out For During A Recession
By 10.6.08
The LA Times says that recessions are boom times for scammers looking to take advantage of desperate people. They’ve listed 5 common scams that do well in a poor economy. They include bankrupcy scams, foreclosure scams, and fake home-based businesses.
Happy Ending: Always Look A Gift Check In The Mouth
By 10.2.08
There’s a happy ending to our story, “Always Look A Gift Check In The Mouth” about the guy who opened up a new bank account just to deposit a check he thought might be fraudulent and indeed, turned out to be. Fred writes:
WaMu Lent $24.5 Million To One Shady Family Of ID Thieving House Flippers
By 9.24.08
If you’re expecting this story to be about the worst bunch of shady house flippers from the height of the credit boom, you’ll be disappointed. This story is about a family that took WaMu for huge amounts of money by buying homes and selling them to their friends and other family members for grossly inflated prices — and pocketing the profit while the homes fell into foreclosure. They did this as the California real estate market was imploding, and after WaMu had announced that it had tightened its lending standards.
Beware Of Apartment Scammers
By 9.24.08
In the course of searching for a new place to live in Minneapolis, I found a great condo right in the area I was looking for, renting for $900/mo for a 1 bedroom which included electricity, gas, water, sewer, garbage, cable, and high speed internet! Sound too good to be true? You bet…it was a scam.
Always Look A Gift Check In The Mouth
By 9.19.08
My brother who is a junior at college sent out a bunch of applications for college grants and other sources of funding to pay for his education. Late this summer he received a check in the mail sent to him from one of the organizations that he sent an application to. The check wasn’t huge, but the $3500 would come in handy, and certainly would have been a huge help in paying for his books, and housing. When the check actually came in the mail it was just a check, nothing else, no letter of congratulations, explanation or anything else telling him why he had received the money…
Lehman Brothers Did Business With Mortgage Fraudsters Back In 2000
By 9.15.08
The Lehman Brothers collapse is shocking! Unless you remember a little story from 8 years ago…
Verizon Tech Made 5,000 Sex Chat Calls On Customer Accounts
By 9.11.08
The next time you’re disputing a 900 number call to a sex hotline and the CSR tells you nobody else could have made that call, remind them of this story. Over the past 10 months, a Verizon technician made 5,000 calls to sex chat hotlines, totaling 45,000 minutes of dirty talk at a cost of $220,000. He placed the calls from over 950 tapped residential and commercial accounts throughout Bergen county in New Jersey. He has since resigned, and been charged with theft by deception and theft of services.
Ex-Countrywide Employee Sells Your Data, They Offer Credit Monitoring Service, Hang Up When You Ask For It
By 9.11.08
Re: Countrywide Sends Fraud Alert Letters: ‘Your Info May Have Been Sold,” Reader Esqdork writes, “Yesterday, I phoned Countrywide to get them to extend the credit monitoring service [that they offered in their apology letter] to my co-borrower and was promptly hung up on.” The only surprise here is that they even picked up in the first place.
Countrywide Sends Fraud Alert Letters: 'Your Info May Have Been Sold'
By 9.9.08
I received a letter from Countrywide today that says:
eBay To Be Credit Card, PayPal Only
By 8.29.08
The word is that eBay is banning checks and money orders, and buyers will have to use PayPal or (if the seller has a credit card merchant account or an account with a service called ProPay), credit cards.
Who's Smiling Now? Enzyte Scammer Gets 25 Years In Prison
By 8.28.08
Steve Warshak, founder of the company responsible for “Enzyte,” has been sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $93,000, says the AP. U.S. District Judge S. Arthur Spiegel also ordered the company, along with other defendants, to forfeit more than $500 million that it bilked from consumers.
Former Best Buy Manager Arrested For Stealing Identities From Mailboxes
By 8.27.08
It’s always fun when you spot people you know in the paper. Like when one reader saw an article about his former Best Buy manager, charged with seventeen counts of third-degree identity thief. Mariusz Paliwoda of Conneticut was arrested recently for stealing over 100 pieces of mail from rural folks’, then using the information to create credit card accounts. Only the cream of the crop, or former Domino’s managers, make it to the top of Best Buy!
Milford man charged in ID theft operation [New Haven Register] (Photo: Getty)
