This scam disappears years ago but is back. They will promise you loan despite your credit history, as long as you start sending them money first. Just like any other scam... you don't get what you want... and whatever money you sent over... you can forget about seeing them again. There is absolutely, no refund.

We know its tempting when you urgently need to clear some bad debts... but think about the possibility of getting into worse debts if you believe in such too-good-to-be-true schemes.

Bloody Scam!

"Cherie found an offer online that promised her money despite her credit history. She contacted the company and quickly received a letter telling her she qualified. So she started to dream about what she could do with the cash...The catch -- she had to send the lender some money first. She wired more than $1,000 to an account in Canada, but grew suspicious when the company called asking for more...."

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There is a report of a sweepstake fraud. This old lady sent money to "buy" the sweepstakes. And when the news came that she had "won" the lottery, she smell the rat. Soon, she found that she was right and she had lost a total of more than $2.600 in the scam... the money that she used to buy the lottery in the first place. She had already lost money even though she didn't believe in the winnings when it finally came.

"For months, 84-year-old Martha C.'s mailbox in the Sacramento area was cluttered with sweepstakes letters. Often marked "Urgent" or "Prize Research Intelligence Agency," the letters wooed her with enticing-sounding offers of potential big winnings.

Trying to better her chances, she sent in $10 here, $20 there. With a son and a disabled daughter who could use the money, the churchgoing widow was always hopeful...."

Always buy the national lottery. Any other lottery in your mail box (email or your real mail box) are scams. And Scammers Shall go to Hell!
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This is nice...

"The campaign saw 25,000 mobile phone users aged between 18 and 24 receive a message telling them they might have won £1,000 in cash.

But a second message arrived soon after informing them that the message was a fake and warning them about scams.

The OFT estimates that 6% of scam victims are aged between 16 and 24. "

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The news at Jacksonville reported several cases of puppy scams. As expected, most of the scammers involved in the scams are overseas, which makes tracking difficult.

"Sisneros contacted the seller who claimed he was a missionary in Africa trying to find good homes for the puppies. He was selling them for $700 a puppy. Sisneros wired the money, but his puppy never arrived."

The following are some good advice if you are buying or selling stuff from a stranger in another country, over the internet.
"If you're buying use an Escrow Account or a Credit Card.
If you're selling, don't ship anything until the funds have cleared the bank.
If the buyer sends more than you're asking, it is a scam." » Read More

A scam that is striving in India where poor people are picked from the streets with a job offer, unknowing that they have been targeted by a kidney racket.

''I was picked up at the railway station and offered a job for Rs 250 daily wage. Then I was taken to a place and my blood test was done. I was told it was done to check if I have any illness,'' said Shakeel, one of the victims.

After that Shakeel was kept under virtual house arrest and then earlier this week, he was sedated and when he woke up he was without a kidney.
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If you are crazy about cereal and health, this article about breakfast cereal is for you.

"..... experts from 5 universities reviewed the leading kid's cereals, including these reduced sugar versions, only to discover that the calorie amount was equal to the regular high sugar variety. In fact the ONLY one that had somewhat fewer calories was General Mills Cinnamon Toast Crunch-and it only dropped by 10 calories in each serving."

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We had always thought that using one-off password for banking is safe, but it appears that there is a "SIM Swop Scam" which allow scammers to hijack your cellphone number and receive the passwords via SMS. How this works is still unclear, but we believe that the safest thing to do is never to use a public computer for banking, and watch out for phishing sites. And for the banks, it might be better to use security tokens for passwords rather than sending via SMS.

"The transaction had taken place on the day his SIM card was swopped, but, because he was on holiday, Lindsay hadn't switched on his laptop in days.

The transfer was possible as the crooks had received an SMS once-off password from his bank, via Lindsay's hijacked cellphone number - a security measure used by banks to authorise payments to new beneficiaries." » Read More

What you see is not always what you get when you date online. In fact, she just dated a Nigerian who cheated her retirement savings.

"We were supposed to be married this Christmas. He asked if I could assist him with his project and I didn't hesitate because we were a couple. I borrowed $20,000 on a personal loan and sent him the lot."

She has now been forced to postpone her retirement to pay off a large debt.

"James" turned out to be one of a gang of Nigerian scammers targeting dating sites.

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We thought these scams were gone, but this is not true...

"Now there's a new twist in the scams that collectively have bilked thousands of people of millions of dollars. Someone claiming to be a high-ranking U.S. Marine Corps officer seeks to move $25 million in funds from those killed in insurgent attacks out of Iraq...."

This is definitely not a new twist from the usual 419 scams. Such scams have been around (check out records) trying to mimic the "Three Kings" where soldiers found a "fortune" in Iraq and trying to ship out the money.

In any case, we doubt there would be so much money there. I thought the storyline was supposed to be "Gold Bars"? » Read More

Another seasonal scam warning. Don't contribute money to scammer's Christmas party!

Carol Odell of the Bureau in Colorado Springs says thieves start by targeting gift cards displayed on store counters.  "They steal the number off the back.  They wait a few days after it's been purchased, and then they check to see if there's a balance left on that card."  If there is a balance, your card already may be invalid before you try to use it.  "If they are placed up front where anyone could get ahold of them, you probably don't want to buy those.  You want to get them where they're in a more secure place, so that the numbers will not have been stolen or scratched off."
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The Christmas is coming and expect more scams. The scammers need to make more money for their celebrations! Watch Out!!

"Although holiday-themed spam is less widespread this year than expected, e-mails containing ads for gifts, stocks and Viagra still proliferate..."

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Never trust a check in your letter... until you see the real cash.

"The letterhead says Citi Financial," Mary Lou Vega said. "It says "final prize notification' ... It has everything that a check should have, the security background and micro-printing."

Everything, that is, except for a stake in reality.

"I'm afraid that if someone does cash it, they're going to end up paying," Vega said. She did some digging and found the sweepstakes addresses came from a mental hospital...

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This is not a fake check scam:

"U.S. hay prices are the highest since record keeping began in 1949, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, opening the door for scammers to try to make a quick buck.

Les Wentworth is a third-generator farmer who, with his brother, grows hay, wheat, beans and corn on 500 acres near Ephrata, about 100 miles west of Spokane in central Washington.

Wentworth recalled losing $50,000 that a dairy farmer paid him in the 1980s for a load of premium alfalfa hay. A truck driver they both knew offered to haul the hay to the dairy farm west of Washington's Cascade Range, then sold it to someone else and pocketed the money."

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A woman in her 60s was duped of her life savings of RM109,000 in a scratch-and-win scam. 

The woman from Kluang was promised a car and paid the money in four instalments. Instead, she got about 13 electrical items.

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We didn't know that phone surveys are that "lethal"!

"According to the study, 37 per cent of Atlantic Canadians said they had received a call from someone asking them to participate in a survey, only to find out that the intent of the call was to get them to buy a product or donate money."

The next time you are received a phone survey, make sure that it doesn't cost you anything.
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Maybe there are too many of them, and its difficult to track and catch the scammers since they are all over the place.

"The latest twist involves an e-mail, supposedly from a teachers’ credit union, warning me that the Internet is full of phishing scams, as they’re called, and assuring me that they will never ask for personal information in an e-mail. Then it says that because of security breaches, my bank card has been suspended, and I have to call a certain number to reactivate it.

The number to call was in the 641 area code. That’s in southeast Iowa, an area dotted with mostly small towns.

So I called. The phone was answered not by a person, but by a computer that asked me to enter my credit card number, the code numbers on the back, the expiration date and my PIN number.

So I gave them the numbers. No, I didn’t give them real numbers. I repeatedly pressed in the No. 1 and was then told my bank card expired in 1944. The computer thanked me and announced that my card was now activated."

If he uses real card numbers, it will be recorded and used by the scammers.

"My suspicions have brought me to the point where I trust practically no one online, so the chances are pretty slim that I’ll ever become a victim."

I am one of the same.
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It does not matter how you receive this "great" news, via email or phone calls. If a man has not heard about such as scam before, he will be overwhelmed by the "great" news. Ofcourse, all of these lottery and prize are not real, and the scammers would require you to wire some of your own money over before they can release the "lottery" or "prize".

You are just one of the millions receiving these scams every day. And if you reply to these scammers and wire the funds over, you are just giving him a "lottery winning" using the money in your own bank!

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This articles talks about a scam that fools you into keying in the Captcha figures.

"In the new scam, an icon of an alluring woman suddenly appears on a Windows computer infected by a virus. After clicking on the icon, the user sees a photo of an attractive woman who vows to take off an article of clothing each time the jumble of figures next to her is entered.

But the woman never fully undresses, and after several passwords are entered the program restarts, possibly enticing unsuspecting users into trying again."

We agree that these can be used to help the scammers get past the Captcha, but they are usually quite harmless. It would not be useful against financial institutions, that issue temporary keys via SMS or security tokens. There is no way for the "alluring woman" on the screen to read your handphone or security tokens which are not attached to the computer.

btw, if you see a "dancing lady" on your desktop without any known installation, your computer is badly, badly compromised.
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This is what a retiree (Killian) did after losing some money to scammers. As you might know, once you bite a bait earlier, the scammers will keep coming back asking for more. What Killian did was much less "harmless" than the scam baiters at 419eater, but he did waste the scammers time.

"During one recent swindle effort, the caller said Killian had won a prize and that he'd have to settle the tax issue first by sending money to a law firm in New York.

Killian told the caller that he would rush to his bank and get the money. When they called back a few hours later, Killian mocked them."

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Not all competition prize are fakes, but where there are real competition prize, there will also be scams to exploit the greed.

This is well said:
"Members of the public must realize that prize-winner announcements that demand the immediate transfer of money are fraudulent," head of the investigation division of the social security and aid directorate general at the Social Affairs Ministry, Irwan Rais, told The Jakarta Post last Thursday.

"There is no such thing as an obligation to pay prize tax into a bank account owned by an individual," he said.

In fact, never trust any prize winnings which you did not participate, and always contact the parent company running the competition, game, etc.

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This scam can be found through online survey and this is how it works:

"Along with the description came a check for nearly $5,000, they were told they were secret shopping a money order service and to deposit the check in their account.
“$800 was supposed to be ours and we had to wire back $4,184.”
A few days later they went to Kinney Drugs in Moravia, as instructed, to wire the money to a Canadian address.  "

As usual, if you believe in a "check" and decides to wire "cash" back to the sender, you are in for a scam. As we have warned earlier, a "check" is merely a piece of useless paper unless it is cleared by the bank and the money is IN. Never trust checks and money orders until you see the real money.
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A staggering figure of 30million people were scammed in 2005. On the other hand, imagine the amount of money transferred to the scammers during the year alone. Assuming that the average loss is $100 each, that would total up to $3billion lost to scams within a year.

And what is the most common scam? 419 scams? Nope. Its Phony Weight-Loos Product!!

"An estimated 30 million adults paid money, or gave up personal financial identification, to a fraud of one kind or another, according to the commission's report based on its latest consumer survey.

The most common type of scam was for phony weight-loss products, with an estimated 4.8 million people as victims.

Tied for second were scams involving foreign lotteries and "buyers clubs," which each victimized an estimated 3.2 million people. Buyers clubs are scams in which people are charged for a membership they did not agree to buy.

Other common scams include fraudulent prizes, in which people paid for a prize they never received, and work-at-home schemes, in which people paid for programs that promised to boost their earnings."

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"More than $432 million was sucked from the federal treasury last year through tax scams, program cheats and theft, loss and damage to government property.

Public accounts records for the last fiscal year show taxpayers were on the hook for $152.5 million in fraudulent claims for employment insurance benefits -- up from $127.6 million the year before. Another $205.1 million was drained from federal coffers through tax fraud or evasion, according to figures from the Canada Revenue Agency.

It's not known how much of that money will be recovered since cases are still before the courts."

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Botswana (a country in Southern Africa) news report about job scams. The scammers would go through seemingly elaborate "screening process" where the candidate is "selected" and then directed to a training center. However, the scammers aren't prepared to go further than that, and the victim is asked to pay for training fees so as to secure a high-paying package.

"He(Scammer) wrote in his email that candidates who pay training fees are guaranteed employment after training and that they would be paid an annual salary of $180 000 (P1, 089,591.95) as of this Wednesday's currency exchange rate).

He also said at the end of training and prior to employment, candidates will be paid 30 percent of their annual salary (P326, 877, 59) cash as start-up salary."

Wow, that is a big carrot indeed. Remember, when you apply for a job and is sent for training by the employing company, you should NOT be paying for the training course. The employers should be the one paying for it. You only pay for a training course when you have applied for it on your own.

In another scenario, some scammers may ask that you attend a training course to obtain a specific certification before they can employ you. It such cases, the scammers may offer to facilitate and sign up the victim for the course.
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A Canadian news has reported a mutation of the 419 scam. Scammers are now targeting people who are cash-strapped and needs to borrow money urgently.

The scammers will act as loan providers and ask the victims to deposit 10-20% of the money that they wanted to borrow. The victims may be told to wire money to the scammers' (or money mule) bank account to cover loan fees, finance charges, etc. Obviously, the victim will find themselves in worse finance situation after wiring the money over. Not only will they lose their deposit, they will never see the "Loan" as promised by the scammers.

"The BBB has received 14 complaints in the past month, and losses to victims total $20,000. Canadian authorities say they've also received several complaints about the firm."
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