Directly and indirectly members of my family have had two scamming attempts made upon us. While neither was successful you should be aware of the scenario.

Yesterday, my 90 year old mother-in-law was called by an unknown party telling her that her grandson, (my nephew), was in jail in Peru with his friend and the friend was charged with possession of marijuana. They wanted $2600 to be wired to him for bail. They also told her that they shouldn't tell my sister-in-law, mother of this nephew. My MIL, not knowing what to do, asked another brother-in-law, the only one in the home town what to do. He made efforts to wire the money (not his most brilliant move.) Fortunately he also called my nephew's mom (despite the warning not to) who said "What are you talking about? Peru? He stopped here this morning on his way to work (in a Midwestern city.) Fortunately, my brother-in-law managed to stop the money transfer. The scammers called back wondering where the money was and my brother-in-law stalled them and told them to call back. Meanwhile he involved the police hoping they could get a telephone trace if another call was made. At the moment, I don't know of any follow-up to that.

About three months a similar scam was attempted directly on us. The scenario was an Email this time. A college friend (from 45 years ago) of my wife's purportedly sent this email saying that she had been purse-snatched in Aberdeen Scotland...lost her passport,credit cards and money and needed $2500 to get back to her home in the West Coast and clear her hotel bill in Scotland. A phone number was given. My wife showed it to me as she was suspicious. The phone was allegedly at a hotel in Aberdeen, so I made a trans-Atlantic call to that number (which did not match the phone number of that hotel as listed on their website. We suspected a scam. It was answered in an unprofessional fashion one would not expect from a telephone at the front desk of a major hotel. I asked to speak to our friend. "She's out, I'll pass the message." I did an internet check on the telephone exchange to find out that the UK area code was not in Aberdeen but was an exchange companies use to forward telephone numbers elsewhere. We were also suspicious in that we do not regularly talk to this friend, in fact had no contact with her for about four years. She is a widow, but we knew that she had sons who would have been more logical people to contact before contacting us. So I sent the scammers an email saying OK, (name of person) We have to verify that this is you. Please send us an email with the following information. What was the name of the dorm you were in with my wife? And other questions to which only she would have known the answer. I also said "this does not seem like your writing style" (which is a very breezy stream of consciousness sort of style.) We, of course, never heard back from them. A few days later we did hear from my wife's friend. Several of her friends had been contacted this way. She had never been in Aberdeen or even Scotland and hadn't recently been away from her West Coast city. Fortunately no harm was done to us, our friend or any of the other people contacted. I did forward the information I got to our FBI who forwarded it to Scotland Yard for any possible investigation. I've heard nothing further, nor do I expect to.

I also recently noticed that there was a $2400 item on my credit card statement for airline tickets from Toronto (where I have never been) to Islamabad (where I hope never to go) and return. I immediately contacted my credit card company who stopped my card and issued another one. I still don't know if that was a scam or an honest mistake but it was removed from my billing and I got a note from the credit card company saying the "issue was resolved."

So just to warn DDNers that if approached with this sort of plea, investigate first and verify.

Jon

The second scenario ("I've been mugged in Scotland, please send money") has been hitting the Irish dance community intermittently for the past couple of years. I've received emails purportedly from Irish dance teachers I know, from Irish musicians and fellow Irish dance parents supposedly mugged in Scotland and wanting funds wired. Fortunately it was easy to tell each time that it wasn't genuine. The grammar and spelling was so poor that I knew it wasn't written by the supposed author. It's awful the way these scammers try to take advantage of people. There was a story in the newspaper just this week about an elderly couple scammed out of $94,000 in some sort of sweepstakes scam. So sad.

I've heard of those types of scams before. Plus, all my friends know that I wouldn't have that kind of money so I'd be tipped off immediately.

My mum was bitten by the "Hi, we're calling from Microsoft and you've got an infected computer. Just send us $250 and we'll clean your computer for you...' scam that was going around Australia last year. The worst part of it wasn't the loss of $250, it was the beating her ego and confidence took when I told her it was a scam. We lost my father a couple of years ago and Mum was just getting confident with navigating her way around cyber world paying bills, Internet banking, etc (Dad had previously done this) so it totally killed it for her. . The worst part about it was that I'd sent her an email a couple of months beforehand telling her about the scam, but she hadn't read it...

^i would be personally worried as to how those people knew you well enough to know the names of friends they could potentially scam you with, Jon & Tansey - there's no anonamynity (sp?) in those scams - it would freak me out a bit!

My first port of call for anything slightly fishy is to go to Snopes - I love that site!

Cheers
Di

PureTap wrote:

^i would be personally worried as to how those people knew you well enough to know the names of friends they could potentially scam you with, Jon & Tansey - there's no anonamynity (sp?) in those scams - it would freak me out a bit!

The scammers had hacked into the email accounts of those people I knew; it was one at a time over the past 2 years or so. When they do that they send these phishing emails out to everybody on the accountholder's email contact list. There were no further problems. Oddly all were acquaintances and not friends who knew me well enough to ask for that kind of money, so I knew immediately that the emails weren't genuine. It didn't and doesn't worry me for myself, though I do feel badly for those who got hacked.

I got the "I've had my bag stolen..." scenario one as recently as yesterday. It was from my friend's actual (free) email account and used her signature. This one purported to have happened in Madrid. As I live in the same city as this person and had indeed seen her the day before, I wasn't fooled.

But scary just the same.

I have heard of this too. The best response is to ask questions like John did, details about the past that most people won't know. Another spin on it that I heard is that someone will hack a facebook account and send a message from that account to pretty much all the friends telling them a similar sob story. They were wrongfully arrested for a minor offence abroad, or had their passport stolen, etc. They play the odds that someone will send at least some money without questioning it.

That Aberdeen one has been going around for years. I got an email from a former student not long after we moved to Sydney with the same message. Emailed her straight back telling her to change her password.

Helen

My boyfriend got the "We're from Microsoft, you have a virus one". He's in IT. He got them to call back and he set up a virtual machine for them to play around in. He kept them occupied for hours. It sucks that they managed to get so many people, but at least we managed to keep one away from other people for a few hours.

I never get any of these scams. Dad gets quite a few in the post which are always fun to laugh at and neither of my parents are very internet savvy so I often have to read their emails for them anyway (their emails are sent to me too so I can delete these things before they even know they have them).

I know someone who once fell for the scam, though it wasn't out of stupidity. We're both members of a travel website and have each other on Facebook, and someone who's also from that site and on Facebook sent him a Facebook message saying he's stranded in the Philippines, his money was stolen, etc and needs money transferred asap. He believed it because the message came from the other guy's FB (not some random email), they know each other in person, and considering we know each other from a travel website, it's not surprising to hear of members from that site visiting exotic locations (many of us have also experienced extreme misfortunes such as robbery while traveling). In the end, it turned out his Facebook account had been hacked, and the guy who sent the money didn't realize it till after he had wired a huge amount of money to a scammer impersonating our friend. The scammer had also tried to pull the same trick on several other members of that website who are also on FB, but not everyone fell for it.

Here is what he posted on the forum of the travel site to warn everyone (along with info on how to avoid it):

forum.virtualtourist.com . . .

I have had a couple scam emails in the past... One was from a dance mom at my daughters studio...Almost thought it was legit because i didnt know this mom very well... saying she was stuck in some other country and has had all her money stolen and needed help... The other said I won some European lottery from google!! They even had the logo and everything! All they needed was a couple hundred dollars to send me my prize of 2.35 million euros!! Scary that these people actually get away with this stuff!!

Honestly, it's hard to believe that anyone ever falls for this crap. I really just don't understand. No, you didn't win the lottery, you did not win a prize for being the 1,000,000,000th visitor, a prince does not want to transfer you his fortune, and so-and-so is not in a Turkish prison. If a once-acquaintance needed help they probably have a list of 20 to 30 people before they would call you (person from 10-30 years ago) and they certainly wouldn't do it over Facebook. And on that note, no service (facebook or named charity) is going to donate 1 penny, 5c, 25c, $1 for every time a photo or bit of text is re-posted. In fact, guess that 85-90% of "Status Stories" are just straight up not true.

I will say that I have heard of one scam that someone almost fell for that I think is totally justifiable, because it was very ornate. In college I had a roommate from Taiwan. The first week of school, a bunch of guys in Taiwan called her parents (somehow making it trace to America) and said that they had kidnapped their daughter including details about her classes and the city we were in. Thus, when the cops came and knocked on our door at 2am I had to prove that the girl in the bed next to mine WAS my roommate and that she was fine and then we had to get her to call her parents who were considering paying the kidnappers to save their daughter. It's a parent's nightmare, and the scam preyed on the fear and had enough detail that if they had the money they probably COULD have kidnapped her. So, I kinda understand that.

Maybe there should be a pre-internet tutorial: "What's real and what's not." Then again, no one would probably do it (like no one reads TOS and what not) and we'd be in the same place we are now.

Honestly, it's hard to believe that anyone ever falls for this crap. I really just don't understand. No, you didn't win the lottery, you did not win a prize for being the 1,000,000,000th visitor, a prince does not want to transfer you his fortune, and so-and-so is not in a Turkish prison. If a once-acquaintance needed help they probably have a list of 20 to 30 people before they would call you (person from 10-30 years ago) and they certainly wouldn't do it over Facebook.

]

I used to think this, but then I watch my own parents and grandparents on the internet, and I can see how people fall for it. I highly doubt anyone in generation Y would, because we grew up with the internet. You're a freak if you don't have facebook etc.

However some generations didn't, and aren't aware of the full scope of some peoples hacking abilities. I can certainly see how an elderly woman, who grew up with snail mail could get sucked in.

My mom received a large check in the mail from deceased relatives from another country. Of course I knew it was a scam but she refused to believe it so I went to the bank with her as she tried to cash her $10,000 check and of course the bank laughed at us.

Here's a new one, or rather a more sophisticated twist on an old one. We all know that a lot of scams depend on the victim depositing what looks like a good check, usually for work or services rendered, then sending all or part of the money to someone else. Ultimately they find out days later that the bank has taken the check amount back out of the account because the check wasn't good after all. This can happen even if the victim waits until their bank can verify that the check has cleared OK. Scammers send their "employees" a "payroll" check which looks like it came from a well-known company; same watermarked paper, same routing number, same checking account number. Of course this will come to light at the latest when the well-known company reconciles their bank account. Here's a check on the statement which isn't in their books; so they get their money back from the victim's bank. It's legal for them to get their money back out of that bank account even though the victim's bank has already told their account holder that the check has cleared.

But where do these checks come from? The second half of the scheme involves the scammer, who is really located offshore, hiring someone inside the country to "process paychecks". The scammer furnishes the paper stock, the check-writing software, the postage stamps, etc. along with the dollar amounts and names and addresses of people to pay. The payroll-processing employee really does get paid for their work because the scammer needs them to keep sending out checks. But just like someone whose computer has been hacked and is being used by an invisible third party to send out spam, sooner or later the the payroll-processing employee will find out that they have been acting as part of a criminal scheme.

I just remember one that my ex boyfriend nearly fell fir a couple of years ago when looking for a new apartment in Sydney. Last year a girl I knew almost fell for the exact same thing,

They advertise an Apartment in the middle of the city that is fully furnished and cheap to rent. The 'land lord' emails you and tells you they are abroad, but will send the keys via courier at the same time you wire them a deposit. There was a lot of back and fourth emailing before we got to that part of the scam, they build up this whole bag story that could actually be legit, but totally isn't.

^Oh man, we ran into a million of those when we were looking for a house to rent. The sad part is that the houses were usually legitimately for sale, so even if you drove by to take a look at the property, you might not think anything was amiss. We were immediately suspicious when we contacted one of the scammers and the number we called was disconnected. They insisted on only doing business with us via e-mail (another huge red flag), and their spelling and grammar were atrocious. And when we drove by the house in person, there was just no way anyone would ever rent it for as low of a rate as they were saying. And, of course, we were never going to send anyone money without even seeing the inside of the house, even though that's exactly what they wanted us to do. So what we started doing was driving past all the properties we were interested in and looking for the signs in their yards. We'd take down the number on the sign and then call that number instead of the one from the online ad.

Funny thing is that the house we actually ended up with belongs to a guy who is in Chicago and couldn't make it down to meet us before we signed the lease, so I was freaking out that it was another scam. But his neighbor had the key to the house and let us in to see it before we signed anything, so that was a good sign. It still took me a long time and lots of e-mails back and forth before I was convinced that it wasn't a scam. But we've been living there for almost five months now, so I'd say we're in the clear.