For more than four years, dozens of restaurants in San Francisco have been tacking on surcharges to diners’ bills, claiming that the money was to go toward health care costs. But it turns out that millions of those dollars were just going into restaurant owners’ pockets. [More]
scams
Visa, FICO Warn Card Issuers Of More Sophisticated ATM Crimes
By 1.24.13
Card skimmers have been around for a while. And while they may have gotten smaller and harder to detect, the people using the skimmed data were generally limited to how much cash they could pull out of victim’s accounts in a day. And so a new breed of criminal has figured out a way to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from ATMs. [More]
PayPal Says It’ll Change Its Fraud Filters So Users Won’t Get Frozen Accounts So Dang Often
By 1.21.13
Frauds and scams are awful and when it comes to your money, of course a service like PayPal is expected to protect customers from such shenanigans. But the company’s infamous process of filtering frauds has also proven difficult for customers trying to prove they actually are who they are in the past. That’s all changing now, says PayPal. [More]
Bank Employee Explains Why It Takes So Dang Long To Process Debit Card Fraud Claims & Disputes… And Other Fun Stuff
By 1.17.13 — Updated: 5.23.17
We hear a lot from readers who say their debit cards were charged for services they didn’t receive — whether by fraud or by ineptitude on the part of a merchant — and who are now waiting for their bank to please put back the money that was wrongfully taken from them. [More]
Professor Tries, Fails To Defend Payday Lending As Legitimate Form Of Credit
By 1.16.13
Most regular readers of Consumerist know that we’re not exactly fans of payday loans, which charge upwards of 25 times the interest of a high-interest credit card and hundreds of times the interest on a standard loan. And yet, there are people — well-educated people at that — who stick with the argument that payday loans are a good thing. [More]
Consumers Now Feeling The Pain Of Post-Holiday Gift Card Scams
By 1.4.13
Back in December, we told you about how scammers could take money from your gift card before you even get a chance to use it. Now that people are trying to cash in those cards, they’re feeling the sting of finding out they have a zero balance. [More]
FBI Nabs Woman Who Claimed To Be Aunt Of Newtown Victim In Order To Collect Funeral Donations
By 12.28.12
It’s a sad reality of life that where there is tragedy, there will always be those who take advantage of such tragedies and try to make a buck off it. Almost as soon as news hit of the Sandy Hook shootings just two weeks ago, officials had to warn the public of scammers raking in cash with various schemes. Just yesterday, the FBI arrested the woman in New York City who was allegedly posing as the aunt of Noah Pozner, a child killed at Newtown Elementary to collect money for a funeral fund. [More]
Family Of Child Killed In Sandy Hook Shootings Shuts Down Scam Website
By 12.20.12
We told you on Monday morning about the scammers who were setting up fake Facebook accounts, websites and Twitter feeds in the names of the 20 children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT. Now the family of one 6-year-old victim is trying to put a stop to it. [More]
Scammers & Spammers Try To Cash In On Sandy Hook Shootings
By 12.17.12
It’s no surprise that there are horrible people in this world who will try to take advantage of peoples’ desire to do something, anything, positive in the wake of a tragic event. Sadly, the shooting deaths of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary is no exception to that rule. [More]
Here’s Another Reason To Avoid Giving Gift Cards
By 12.14.12
By this point, we’ve probably all given or received gift cards during the holidays. But most consumers don’t know how easy it is for scammers to steal value from these cards, and what a pain in the butt in can be to get that money back. [More]
Xmas Tree Lot Owner “Impressed” By Scammer Who Sold His Trees And Pocketed Cash
By 12.11.12
A man in Tacoma who runs a Christmas tree lot to raise money for his charity is out around $500 because a scammer allegedly pretended to be a lot employee, selling trees at a deep discount and pocketing the cash. But while he’s unhappy about the loss, he seems to have mixed feelings about the scammer. [More]
Don’t Fall For The ‘Buy Puppies From The Airport’ Scam
By 12.7.12
So you’re thinking of getting a dog and then you see an ad using the local airport’s logo, images and letterhead saying you can get a pooch from the airport’s kennels; you just have to pay hundreds of dollars in advance before you pick the puppy up. It might seem like an obvious scam to you, but plenty of people are falling for it. [More]
ING Direct Customer Caught In Debit Card Fraud Gray Zone
By 12.6.12
Most cases of ID theft and credit/debit card fraud involve the thief going whole-hog on the victim’s account, spending as much as they can in a very short period of time. But what happens when that fraudulent activity isn’t enough to set off alarm bells at the bank? [More]
Walmart Lists “Sending Someone Money” As A Reason You Shouldn’t Wire Money To Someone
By 12.5.12
A lot of international fraud scams involve having to wire money to the scammers, and they’ve become so commonplace that operators of wire services like Western Union train employees to keep an eye out for red flags indicating a possible scam might be occurring. But we think this warning sign from Walmart and MoneyGram might be a little too over-cautious. [More]
FTC Shuts Down Robocall Scammers Pretending To Be FTC
By 12.3.12
This story is like the scene in a straight-to-DVD thriller where the protagonist needs to decide which of two seemingly identical characters, both of whom claim to be her real partner, to shoot dead. Except it’s not really anything like that because it involves robocalling, no one gets shot and it probably doesn’t star Judd Nelson. [More]
Credit-Repair Scammers Hit With $7.4 Million Penalty, Continued To Break Law
By 11.30.12
I don’t know about you, but if I’m running a scammy business and get hit with a $7.4 million penalty from the federal government, I’m at least going to think twice about running the same scam again. And yet, a Florida couple completely disregarded court orders by continuing to sell people on their illegal credit-repair system. [More]
Regulators Ask Mortgage Marketers To Please Cut Down On The Lying In Their Ads
By 11.19.12
The 2011 Mortgage Acts and Practices Advertising Rule prohibit mortgage lenders and brokers from making misleading claims about government affiliation, interest rates, fees, costs, associated payments, and the amount of cash or credit available to the consumer. Shockingly, some folks just didn’t listen. [More]
Lawyer Who Took Out Annuities On The Dying Pleads Guilty 1 Week Into Trial
By 11.19.12 — Updated: 3.4.13
Depending on your point of view, Joseph Caramadre of Cranston, R.I. is either an opportunist who scammed the terminally ill, or a great philanthropist who found a win-win loophole and made last few months of the dying easier and more comfortable. The federal prosecutors who charged him with wire and mail fraud leaned toward the former. [More]
