Saturday, June 02, 2007

Criminals scam military families using the Red Cross name


Identity thieves have no honor. They don't care if they steal from our grandparents, or the families of those, who protect all of us by putting themselves in harm's way.

Here is a particularly ghoulish scheme reported on the Red Cross site:

The American Red Cross has learned about a new identity theft scam targeting military families:

The caller (young-sounding, American accent) calls a military spouse and identifies herself as a representative from the Red Cross. The caller states that the spouse's husband (not identified by name) was hurt while on duty in Iraq and was medevacuated to a hospital in Germany. The caller stated they couldn't start treatment until paperwork was accomplished, and that in order to start the paperwork they needed the spouse to verify her husband's social security number and date of birth. In this case, the spouse was quick to catch on and she did not provide any information to the caller.

Just to set the record straight - the Red Cross doesn't notify family members when this happens!


Not sure, where the identity theft ghouls are getting their lists to target military spouses? The Red Cross stated in their press release that the family member isn't identified by name, but this might have changed by now. Recently, I read a story from the New York Times, where a well known data-broker (InfoUSA) was selling marketing lists of senior citizens, known to gamble on the Internet, to lottery scammers.

I’m guessing that data brokers sell telephone lists to market goods and services to the military, also.

Not only are these blood suckers stealing information to enrich themselves, they are also putting military family members through a lot of personal grief, unnecessarily! Imagine what a call like this does to the family member, who receives it!

Red Cross press release, here.

Red Cross main page, here.

These are people that do a lot of good for other people, when they need it!

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