California Lottery Nails Dishonest Retailers

When you cash in a small lottery prize at a lottery retailer, the amount might not exactly what you were were entitled to receive.

On 7/1/08, the California Lottery announced that they are using undercover agents to sting dishonest retailers, who cheat lottery winners out of their prizes. The press release on this matter pointed to a case in Morgan Hill, California where a dishonest retailer (and another individual) are being charged with grand theft of lottery tickets ranging in value from $500 to $25,000.

I decided to see if I could find any additional information on arrests and discovered another one that was reported by cbs13.com in Lodi, California. CBS 13 in Sacramento, with cameras rolling, approached Baljut Kang (one of the two arrested in Lodi), who refused to talk at first. Eventually, Kang stated to the reporter that the undercover agents found "some ticket in the garbage," which made them think she and her son were committing fraud (?).

According to the article, an undercover agent turned in one ticket worth $990 receiving only $24. Another ticket was presented at the retailer worth $25,000 and the agent was paid $10 for it. The article also states that this was the result of a statewide lottery sting. Other retailers were caught in Southern California.

The official press release indicates that this is the first enforcement effort of this kind anywhere in the country. This made me wonder if other States should run sting operations, also?

While dishonest retailers getting caught cheating customers is something new, lottery scams are big business for criminals. Spam e-mails, unsolicited telephone calls and even snail mails are used to dupe people into thinking they have won the lottery. Frequently, a person is then asked to negotiate a fraudulent instrument to cover tariffs and taxes and wire the money across an International border.

The California lottery has an interesting page, which can be seen on their website warning the public about this type of activity. In February, I did a post on the eve of a $270 Mega Million Lottery prize, about fraudsters attempting to impersonate the California lottery to trick unsuspecting people into cashing worthless checks.

Please note that scams -- where unsuspecting people are duped into cashing worthless checks and wiring the money before the financial institution catches on -- aren't limited to the lottery variety. Other varieties involving bogus financial instruments include work-at-home (job) scams, secret shopper, romance and auction scams. Known bogus items in circulation are Postal Money Orders, Travelers Express (MoneyGram) Money Orders, American Express Gift Cheques and Visa Travelers Cheques. A good site to learn more about scams involving fake checks is FakeChecks.org.

In California when you claim a ticket for a prize under $600, the retailer has to validate it in a machine, which prints a receipt showing exactly how much the prize was for. A good idea is to make sure you take a look at this receipt to ensure you are getting the right amount of money.

If you note suspicious activity, I'm sure that the dedicated law enforcement personnel at the California Lottery would like to hear from you. They can be reached at 1-800-LOTTERY.

Bank of Mellon reports a second data breach

Last week, the Bank of Mellon disclosed they had lost unencrypted tapes containing the personal and financial information of several million people about three months ago.

Now it is being revealed that about a month ago, another incident involving a missing (unecrypted) tape occurred. This time, scanned images of checks, along with other assorted sensitive information disappeared. The Check 21 Act, passed in 2004 allows financial institutions to electronically deposit images of checks instead of using the actual paper check, itself.

According to press release on the matter, they are now going to start using encryption. I wonder how many other institutions out there are still not encrypting all of their confidential information?

Ironically, if you read the privacy and security pages on Bank of Mellon's site, they seem to be very pretty savvy about both identity theft and privacy issues.

The first incident occurred on February 27th and the now revealed second incident occurred April 29th. If they knew it happened on April 29th, why wasn't this one reported with the other one? The February 27th incident was reported last week, which was well after April 29th.

Of course, I'm sure that the "official explanation" will be that they didn't know if it was really missing and no one is really sure if the information is being used to commit identity theft.

Here is the low down as reported in Pittsburgh Tribune Review on the April 29th occurrence.:

The most recent incident occurred on April 29 when a backup data-storage tape containing images of scanned checks and other payment documents was lost while being moved from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, spokesmen for the bank said Friday. It involved data of 47 institutional clients and a yet to be determined number of individual customers.

A ComputerWorld article by Brian Fonseca highlighted concerns that are being investigated by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who is working with his peers in other States to determine why it took so long to report the matter. AG Blumenthal is also asking some hard questions as to why some tapes disappeared and other ones arrived at the storage facility.

The obvious reason, he might ask this question is that it probably points to an insider being involved (my speculation). If this is the case, it is very likely they had somewhere to get rid of the information, or more specifically, sell it.

His press release on the matter listed a lot of institutions, who may have had customers compromised in these incidents.

One thing I wanted to add is that in the most recent occurrence, they are stating scanned checks were contained on the tape. This would make it pretty easy for criminals to use the information to produce counterfeit checks. In recent years, we've seen checks counterfeited on a massive scale, and sent all over the world via snail mail, or even Federal Express and UPS. A recent joint investigation conducted in several nations revealed that these items were being produced on an industrial scale in certain countries.

Many of these counterfeit checks are passed via "too good to be true scams" on the Internet. There are also organized criminal gangs that pass counterfeit checks, also.

Interestingly enough, the way laws governing counterfeit checks are written, the banks have almost zero liability and pass off the loss to the entity who accepted them.

Since counterfeit checks are normally exact copies of actual checks, this made me wonder if sometimes the source of the information to produce them is coming from all the scanned checks being electronically transferred between businesses and financial institutions? Payment (credit/debit) card is transmitted and stored pretty much the same way, and there is certainly a history of these transactions being targeted for criminal purposes, frequently.

According to their most recent press release, the Bank of Mellon is offering free credit monitoring and identity theft insurance through Experian. This has become standard in the wake of most data breaches, but it doesn't necessarily protect a person from all forms of identity theft.

Some examples of where free credit monitoring doesn't catch identity theft right away are medical benefit fraud, employment fraud, government benefit fraud, some forms of check fraud and last, but not least, when it is used to commit crimes of other than a financial nature.

Additionally, the ComputerWorld article mentions that at least one class action law suit has been filed as a result of this:

This week, a lawyer representing 40 affected individuals filed a class-action lawsuit against the New York bank in Connecticut Superior Court. Attorney Michael Stratton, who represents the plaintiffs, said he is seeking up to seven years of free credit monitoring and credit insurance for customers, along with unspecified damages.

I found a list of companies that might have had their customers compromised in these data breaches on the Connecticut AG site:

People's United Financial Inc., John Hancock Financial Services, Inc. (acquired by Manulife Financial Corporation), The Walt Disney Company, TD Bank Financial Group, The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, Hudson United Bancorp (acquired by TD Bank Financial Group), United Parcel Service, Inc., Wachovia Corporation, MetLife, Hudson City Bancorp, Eastman Kodak Company, Burlington Resources (acquired by ConocoPhillips Inc.), Providian Financial (acquired by Washington Mutual, Inc.), Penn Fed Financial (acquired by New York Community Bancorp), ADESA, Inc., Alcatel-Lucent, Odyssey America Reinsurance Corporation, Seacoast Financials Services Corp. (acquired by Sovereign Bancorp), Viewpoint Bank, Diamond Shamrock (acquired by ConocoPhillips Inc.), Sound Federal Bancorp (acquired by Hudson City Bancorp), Big Lots, Inc., Guidant Corporation (acquired by Boston Scientific Corp), New York Community Bancorp and ACE Limited.

Bank of Mellon press release on this matter, which contains information for potential victims, here.

Mega Millions Lottery spoofed in scam

The California Lottery announced that the Mega Millions lottery -- where $270 million was won last night -- is now being being used to trick people into cashing worthless checks.

The intent behind this is to get people to cash a bogus check and send the money back to them before your bank, or financial institution of choice, realizes the item is NO GOOD!

Most of the time they prefer you wire them the money so it has disappeared into thin air when the criminal aspect is discovered. Once the money is picked up -- especially via Western Union or MoneyGram -- the sender has little to no recourse.

The intended victim is lured into cashing the check and (normally) wiring the money with a promise that there is a LOT more MONEY (please) on it's way. Of course, more money never arrives and the person cashing the check ends up being held liable. Please note, there are stories circulating about people getting arrested for cashing countefeit financial instruments, also.

From the press release on the California Lottery site:

While eyes are watching to see if someone is lucky enough to capture the $270 million MEGA Millions jackpot tomorrow, California Lottery officials warn of a scam arriving in some mailboxes.

The letter from LOTTO LINE claims the recipient has won USA MEGA MILLIONS and includes a check to be cashed and used to pay administrative fees. The check may look authentic, California Lottery officials say, but beware that if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Apparently, this isn't the first (or probably the last) time the California Lottery has been impersonated. Here are the previous alerts, I found on the site about this:

CA Lottery Africa Scam

Lottery Logo Scam

Good Samaritan Lottery Scam

MEGA Millions Mail Scam Fradulent Check Scam

International Lottery Scheme Email Scam

Lottery scams are not the only scams involving bogus financial instruments. Counterfeit checks and other bogus financial instruments are sent to the "unwary" all the time. Known bogus items in circulation are Postal Money Orders, Travelers Express (MoneyGram) Money Orders, American Express Gift Cheques and Visa Travelers Cheques.

A great place to learn about these scams is FakeChecks.org.

The FraudAid people (Annie and team) have an excellent page on their site about lottery scams, also.

Full alert from the California lottery, here.

January Symantec Report reveals questionable blogs, polls and Nigerian Scam restitution schemes

If you ever want to know what criminals and other misfits are up to on the Internet, watching spam traffic can reveal a few clues.

After all, spam is the vehicle most cybercriminals use to pass along whatever scheme they are behind designed to part people with their hard-earned money.

Symantec noted in December that close to 75 percent of all e-mail being sent is spam.

A little over a week ago, they issued their January report, which showed spam levels peaking towards the end of December to 83 percent.

Highlights noted in the January report are:

Holiday Spam Spikes: Spam levels reached new levels as spammers inserted holiday-oriented keywords into everything from subject lines to images.

Spammers Get Honest? Not So Fast: Spammers tried a new twist on an old scam, falsely promising past spam victims restitution of $100,000.

As Oil Prices Hike, Spammers Strike: This new spam claims to identify gas stations that fraudulently tamper with pump prices.

Not-So-Happy New Year: Recipients were invited to download a fun New Year’s song and dance, but instead found themselves downloading something far more malicious.

Presidential Polling Scam: Promising gift cards in exchange for opinions, spammers leverage the US presidential primaries to collect personal information.

Beware of Blogs: The use of blogs within spams appears to be on the rise, particularly in China where simplified character sets are common.

I found the 419 restitution activity interesting. In case you've never heard the term "419," it is the penal code in Nigeria for the infamous Advance Fee scam.

Here is what the report said:

419 spammers who have traditionally used stories about African dictators to defraud individuals have recently changed their approach to these types of emails. Certain 419 scams observed by Symantec this month claim to offer compensation to victims of 419 scams. The scam states that payments will be supervised by UN officials and about 150 scam victims will be paid compensation of $100,000 each. It provides some URL links as a reference to money that was successfully recovered by 419 scam victims. At the bottom of the email, it explains how the money may be recovered and the fraudulent background of such emails may be observed.

Interestingly enough, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)of Nigeria has made real victims whole with funds seized from 419 scammers. You can see some real examples of this on their site.

The most recent time, I've mentioned the EFCC on this blog is when they were part of an International task force that intercepted large quantities of counterfeit checks at post offices in several countries. These counterfeit checks are normally used in advance fee scams, where people are tricked into cashing them and wiring the proceeds back to the criminal(s) sending them.

This led to a major press campaign and new website dedicated to educating the public about these checks called FakeChecks.org. The United States Postal Inspection Service, who worked with the EFCC on the task force, is one of the major sponsors of this site.

Most advance fee scams can be traced to a spam e-mail.

So far as the other trends noted, spammers and scammers are very adept of using what is popular or newsworthy to spread their deceit on the Internet.

It's probably not a surprise that they are taking advantage of the rise in oil prices, or political polls to lure people into their web.

If you would like to read more about this, the January report from Symantec can be read in full, here.

Are Internet Check Scam Artists staging a December Surge?

(Picture of counterfeit financial instruments recently intercepted in the mail by an International law enforcement task force)

In the past several days, I've noticed a surge in counterfeit check alerts from the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation). From December 19th to the 21st, the FDIC issued 26 alerts from various financial institutions throughout the United States reporting counterfeit activity using their information.

These checks are used in all the different varieties of overpayment scams. The basic MO (method of operation) in these scams is to trick someone into negotiating a bogus financial instrument and sending the money back to the person behind the scam. The victim is offered a small part of the money for doing this.

Of course, they are held liable for all of it when the item is discovered to be fraudulent.

Some of the known varieties of the overpayment scams are the lottery, auction, secret shopper, romance and work-at-home (job) scam(s). Please note you can search any of these "scam" terms at the top of this page for more information.

Spam e-mail is normally the vehicle in which these scams are presented, however they show up in more traditional print venues (including junk mail) from time to time, also.

One thing to bear in mind is that counterfeit checks (cheques) often appear to be legitimate in verification systems. The reason for this is simple, they use legitimate account numbers.

Victims have even asked employees at their financial institution of choice if the instrument was legitimate. Sadly, the items are often so good that the person is told that they are real. A financial institution employee verifying an item offers you no guarantee that the item is good. The person passing the instrument is the one who is liable for it.

Another tricky thing is that many financial institutions will also give their customers credit for these items in their accounts. This often gives the victim a false sense of security and causes them to send the money back to the scammer before realizing what is going on.

Federal rules dictate that banks can only put holds for a specified period of time depending on what type of check it is. The people behind the scams know about this and take advantage of it.

Although the money can be sent in a lot of different ways, most scammers prefer the use of Western Union, or MoneyGram wire transfer services. The reason for this is once the money is picked up (often within minutes), there is no recourse for the person who sent it.

Besides counterfeit checks, we've seen other instruments counterfeited on an industrial scale and sent to unsuspecting people, also. The known items in circulation are have included Postal Money Orders, Travelers Express (MoneyGram) Money Orders, American Express Gift Cheques and Visa Travelers Cheques.

The end result of these scams is that the person negotiating the item will be held financially liable. People are also getting arrested in certain circumstances for passing these items, also.

The National Consumers League recently set up a site (fakechecks.org), which is a great reference on Internet scams involving checks (complete with visual presentations), here.

Here is a post, I wrote with more information on how to verify one of these items:

Tools to verify those too good to be true financial instruments you got in the mail

Please note that if the deal you are being presented is too good to be true, or you are being asked to wire money it probably isn't worth going to the effort of trying to verify the item.

Also note that these scams have become so sophisticated that there is no guarantee that any amount of verification can guarantee the item is legitimate!

International investigation in Nigeria regarding counterfeit checks could lead to arrests, worldwide

A joint operation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, United States Postal Inspection Service and the United Kingdom Serious Organized Crimes Agency has substantiated that a lot of counterfeit checks are being shipped via mail out of Nigeria.

From This Day courtesy of AllAfrica.com:

A statement by Osita Nwajah Head, Media & Publicity of EFCC said the exercise is the first multi-national interdiction operation of outward bound packages in the country. It saw agents of the three law enforcement agencies poring through tones of outward bound packages in the pre-exporting mail processing centres of the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) and private courier companies like FedEx, UPS and DHL. The operation produced startling discoveries of how criminal elements operating from the country ship fake documents and counterfeit financial instruments abroad. In several packages were found fraudulent identification and counterfeit financial instruments neatly concealed in carbon paper to evade the sensors of scanners.

In all, 15,129 counterfeit cheques related to advance fee fraud scams were intercepted. They include 6,948 blank cheques and others drawn for the sums of $145.9 million, Euro 211,077, 218.00, over two million Pounds Sterling and 120,450.00 Canadian dollars.

Thus far, according to the report, no arrests have been made. The checks used in different variations of the advance fee scam are normally mailed in quantity to distributors and then mailed to the individual victims to cash. My guess is that this effort was to gather evidence, which will enable law enforcement to tie in the counterfeit checks to criminals in several different countries.

To substantiate this guess, the article in This Day states:

Similar interdiction operations were carried out simultaneously in Spain, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. The global initiative against 419 scam will climax with an international press conference in Washington DC, to be conducted by Chief Executives of selected law enforcement agencies around the world. The EFCC is one of the agencies invited, the statement pointed out.

In an advance fee scam, social engineering ploys (trickery) are used to dupe people into cashing these bogus financial instruments and wiring the money back to the criminals behind the scheme.

When the check is discovered to be fraudulent, anywhere from right on the spot to about ten days later, the person passing the item is left holding the bag. This can translate into a loss of their freedom (getting arrested), being held financially liable, or a combination of both these consequences.

Interestingly enough, the report states that fraudulent identification documents were being shipped along with the counterfeit checks. This might lead some to speculate that not all of these items are intended to be pawned off on advance fee victims. Counterfeit checks and counterfeit identification documents are a well-known combination used by individuals, or groups committing the more intentional variety of check fraud.

Advance fee victims are duped into using their own information to cash the items.

A new trend has been noted called reverse scamming, also. This occurs when scammers have the bogus instruments sent to them, cash them and then never follow the instructions to wire the money.

If confronted, these reverse scammers will always proclaim (loudly) to be victims, however if they don't wire any money anywhere, their intent in passing the item is pretty obvious.

Hopefully, enough evidence has been gathered in this operation to prosecute fraudsters all over Europe and North America, as well as in Nigeria.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission's motto is "The EFCC will get you anywhere .....anytime." With a little luck, this investigation might end up proving how true this statement is!

This Day story, here.

A lot of people are led to believe that advance fee scams are all from Nigeria. Although some of them are, Nigeria isn't the only point of origin for this activity. In fact, because of all the press on Nigerian scams, I've seen a lot of these other advance fee fraudsters impersonate Nigerians to lay the blame, elsewhere.

Counterfeit money orders, gift and travelers cheques have been circulating in these scams in the recent past, also.

I've written other posts about how the EFCC goes after criminal activity, here.

Internet criminals stealing information from job sites isn't anything new!

The recent reports about 1.3 million Monster users having their information stolen from the job site has become somewhat of a major news story. While this seems shocking, the truth is that job sites have been targeted for the information they contain, or to recruit people to commit crimes (sometimes unknowingly) for quite awhile now.

Jim Finkle at Retuers (courtesy of the Washington Post) recently covered this story:

Monster.com waited five days to tell its users about a security breach that resulted in the theft of confidential information from some 1.3 million job seekers, a company executive told Reuters on Thursday.

Hackers broke into the U.S. online recruitment site's password-protected resume library using credentials that Monster Worldwide Inc said were stolen from its clients, in one of the biggest Internet security breaches in recent memory.

They launched the attack using two servers at a Web-hosting company in Ukraine and a group of personal computers that the hackers controlled after infecting them with a malicious software program known as Infostealer.Monstres, said Patrick Manzo, vice president of compliance and fraud prevention for Monster, in a phone interview.

Symantec -- who broke the story has published some of the examples of the fake job offers being sent to people -- posting their resumes on Monster, here.

People can protect themselves by being aware of the social engineering aspects of these scams. The job offers are always too good to be true and normally don't make very much sense.

Most of them are ploys to either cash bogus financial instruments, or launder the proceeds of Internet crime. Another red flag is that the employee is solicited to wire money, normally across a International border.

The employee (victim) then ends up financially liable, and in some instances, can even end up facing criminal charges. In most areas, cashing bogus financial instruments and money laundering is considered a crime.

The scammers, who offer these jobs intend to get someone else to take all the risk for them, while they reap most of the financial rewards.

Monster isn't the only place, where this happens. The risk is there on just about any of the Internet job sites, including Craigslist.

If you use these sites, it's a good idea to verify, who you are talking to before accepting a job offer.

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has an excellent page about job scams on their website, here.

Because these fake employers gather their victims's personal and financial information, they are likely to become an identity theft victim, also.

The page on the Privacy Right Clearinghouse site gives good advice on how to deal with this, also.

The good news is these scams are pretty easy to spot and a little awareness can prevent them from happening altogether.

Reuters story (courtesy of the Washington Post), here.

Are Counterfeit Documents being Mass-Produced in Nigeria?

In the past several years, we've seen all sorts of counterfeit financial instruments (money orders, cashiers checks and now American Express gift cheques) being passed in Internet scams.

A recent TimesOnline story stated:

Nigerians are forging passports and cheques on an industrial scale and that huge numbers of false documents are passing through provincial British airports.

The face value of the fraudulent financial instruments discovered in "routine checks" amounted to millions of dollars, and the documents (non-financial) are probably used in "illegal immigration.

Story, here.

The TimesOnline article also mentions that the UK is a staging ground for a lot of the stolen merchandise, which are proceeds of auction fraud.

According to the article, the activity also enables the criminals to return (easily) should they get caught:

Suspected Nigerian fraudsters, who have been deported in exchange for charges against them being dropped, are re-entering Britain using forged travel documents and resuming their activities, according to the study.

Other suspects are absconding and disappearing because, unless they are accused of crimes involving more than £50,000, they are being released on bail.

I wonder how many of them get bailed out on a stolen identity, assume another one, and go right back into business?

We seem to see story after story about what a huge problem counterfeiting has become. One of the main reasons is that technology makes it easy to do, and if anyone is caught, the consequences are minimal.

It's true that the article is about activity in the United Kingdom, but the problem isn't contained to the British Isles.

And Nigeria isn't the only place counterfeit documents are being made.

Asia has also been a reported "source" for a lot of counterfeiting. For instance, it's widely believed that North Korea has been flooding the world with "supernotes" (counterfeit $100 bills) that are almost impossible to tell from the real thing. Wikipedia article, here.

If you read through the article, it tells of ties to terrorist organizations and organized crime syndicates.

Nigeria might be a source of counterfeit documents, but they aren't the only one. The United States also is known to have a lot of counterfeit documents being produced, also.

If they didn't, it would be hard for the 14 to 20 million illegal immigrants to find jobs.

Swapmeetdave.com has an interesting page has an interesting page (with pictures) of a lot of the counterfeit items (from Nigeria), here.

Check Cashing Jobs - A Quick Way to Drain Your Bank Account and Maybe Go to Jail

I got this e-mail today inviting me to make $5,000.00 a month (minimum) working a couple of hours a day. Of course, I need to use my own bank account - which will be drained of all it's funds - when the bank discovers the transactions are fraud. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't.

Recently, I wrote about how banks often clear these checks - and even sometimes verify them as good - then take your money anyway. Of course, since in most of these instances, the money has been sent (normally wired somewhere); the person who negotiated the item is left holding the bag.

Welcome to the "Check Cashing Scam," that organized fraud gangs are using to recruit people to take all the risks - while they collect all the "real money" via Western Union, or MoneyGram.

In reality, the people who do this, are being conned into laundering fraudulent transactions - mostly from auction sites - such as eBay.

Recently, we saw Australian teenagers and a Better Business Worker get caught up in this scam. Please note that the some of the Australian teenagers are facing charges - which can be another "nasty" side-effect of getting involved in this activity.

Here is an example of one of the come-on letters (note the reference to identity theft at the bottom):

Dear Jobseeker,

This offer was sent to you in response to your resume on www.monster.com.

The job we are offering requires only two hours per day during which you will check your e-mail and go to your bank. You will be given a position of representative within our company which means that you will be a collaborator and not an actual employee. There is no experience required; only the knowledge of using an e-mail account and a bank account. It does not matter if you already have a job or not if you have two hours to spare each working day.

What is required of you in order to be eligible for this job:

- Honesty, responsibility and dedication to this new line of work;- An existing active bank account that you will use to cash money orders and checks (no information is required about your bank account);

- Access to the internet and a small amount of free time every day in order to check your e-mail twice per day (once in the morning and again in the evening).
What we offer during this job:

- Flexible working time: you chose what hours you want to work;- Working at home: you only need to check your e-mail and make trips to your bank;- Professional support via e-mail;- No selling involved no kit to buy, we will not charge you anything, and you will not handle any merchandise;

- Minimum pay: $5,500 (from commissions and a $900 monthly salary);- Commission: 10% off of every money order/check that you cash, instantly money in hand that you will deduct from the cashed amount. If you receive a check of $1,000.00 your net income is $100.00, our company supports any fees. You can receive a maximum of 3 checks/money orders per day which will earn you between $300 and $900 cash in hand each day.

If you are interested our staff will send detailed information about the contract which you must sign in order to get started. We reserve the right to keep you on probation for the first month, meaning that we will decide at the end of the first month whether you will be a permanent employee or not.

It is very important for us to know how willing you are to work for our company. Also, we are keen to know about your skills in contacting other people and above all we are looking for candidates that are ready to work and seek to self improve all the time. Our company just started this program and we need personnel loyal to our company and our program. We believe that we represent an excellent opportunity for everybody, a chance to start a new career without much knowledge but with great perspectives. Even if you are not willing to grow with our company this still remains an excellent opportunity for those who need a temporary or a secondary job.

We are confident that you will make the right decision and hope to hear from you soon.

IMPORTANT:

-You must be over 21 years old.-You need to live in U.S.A. (legal residents and immigrants can also apply) and have an active bank account.

If you meet these conditions please contact us by replying at this e-mail address to receive the contract and detailed information about this job.

We will never ask you for bank name, bank account number, routing number, credit card, passwords, ssn number etc. If anyone asks for those on our behalf please do not give out this info. This is to ensure that you will not be the victim of an identity theft case.

Thank you

Scammers Posing as Victims?

Lately, we have seen a surge of fraudulent financial instruments circulated through the internet. Daily, there are alerts by the FDIC on counterfeit cashier checks (FDIC: Special Alerts) and other alerts on counterfeit postal money orders, counterfeit money orders in general and counterfeit Qchex items (checks mailed to your e-mail).

These counterfeit instruments are often (as you will see maybe not always) used to commit Advance fee fraud, where the goal is to get someone to wire money (normally overseas) after cashing one of these instruments. There are many versions of these scams and victims are harvested off of job, dating, auction and lottery sites.

Thus far, it seems that law enforcement has had little success in prosecuting these advance fee crimes because the people passing the fraud checks are considered victims and since the money is wired to some faraway locale, the senders are also hard to go after.

While there are millions of victims out there, we are starting to see the criminal element take advantage of a general apathy in prosecuting these crimes by posing as victims.

Here is a story out of Montana from the AP (Man admits depositing bad check), where a man opened an account with one of these checks, drained it and never wired the money back to Nigeria. In this story, the culprit admitted, he felt it was a scam and didn't really think the bank would honor the check.

I doubt if he communicated his concerns to the bank!

The key to spotting these counter-scams is that no wire transfer takes place. Even when a wire transfer takes place, the person passing these items is sometimes getting money for something they sold in addition to (normally) a "little extra" for negotiating the item. Another key-factor indicating collusion is when the passer suffers no personal financial liability for doing so. Many of these items are passed at institutions that cash checks for a fee, which include grocery stores and even Walmart.

These institutions often bear the initial and often final costs of accepting the item when the passer tells their collection department that they no longer have any of the money. Of course, maybe they are just claiming to no longer have the money?

I've recently seen evidence (sent to me by readers) in the form of e-mail correspondence that advance fee scammers are directing people to these establishments, partially because the banks are becoming wiser and these businesses often offer wire transfer services, also.

When these people collect a substantial amount of money, plus a "tip" and then claim they can't pay it back without being able to show money being wired; serious consideration should be given towards further investigation.

This is especially true in the case of auction scams. In most cases, the advance fee scammer isn't interested in the money and only the cash, which is wired to them. In theory, the auctioneer (who never sent the merchandise and cashed the check) could very well be laughing all the way to the bank. Some of these counter-scammers could doing this over and over again and if they are confronted, they cry "victim."

After all, most of the auction sites flash a warning about this type of scam when people are posting to sell something. It make one wonder how many people could be posing as a victim out there?

This leads me to believe that although we must protect the victims, we also need to take a hard line on those attempting to take financial advantage of the situation. The bottom line is that pretending to be a victim, or even attempting to pass an item that one suspects to be fraud makes the person making the fraud claim as guilty as the person, who sent it to them.

What is needed is more through screening of fraud claims, making it mandatory to produce evidence that money was wired and in cases (where the passer suffered no personal financial liability) that everything makes sense and they never received any financial gain from it. There should also be mandatory reporting of these incidents from which data bases could be created that would identify "repetitive victims." One of the reasons this activity continues to grow is the continuing lack of reporting and investigation when it occurs. In the long run, failure to get aggressive on this matter will only inspire more of it, which makes all of us victims.

Criminal Activity on Dating Sites

I was reading an article by Christopher T. Heun (InternetWeek) on the amount of fraud on dating sites. He quotes an industry analyst that approximately 10 percent of the profiles on any given site are fake.

Recently, I've seen victims duped into cashing fraudulent money orders and or cashier checks by someone that met in a chatroom or on a dating site. Dating sites are another place where fraudsters go to harvest victims.

In the article, Dan Larkin (Internet Crime Complaint Center) states "People are already going to [dating Web sites] in a somewhat vulnerable position and the bad guys play on that. The reality is, people either don't know they're a victim or don't want to report it."

Dating sites are often used to recruit people into cashing fraudulent instruments and reshipping scams. These involve fraudulent financial instruments, or merchandise purchased with them. They are then asked to ship the merchandise, or negotiate the instrument into cash and wire the money to the fraudster.

In both scenarios, once the transactions are determined to be fraudulent, the victim is often left responsible for the financial loss. Even worse, they might face criminal charges.

Of course, there are also the mail order bride scams that can be found on these sites. Sometimes these scams are also set up on sites created by the fraudsters themselves. Here is an excellent link with information on how to spot these scams:

http://www.dangersofinternetdating.com/mailorderb.htm

There are also a lot of sexual and violent crimes are initiated on the internet. The "Home Page" of the link above is a really good site for anyone, who desires to protect themselves, or someone they know from the dangers of dating on the internet.

http://dangersofinternetdating.com/

In the busy world of today, there are a lot of people using the internet to find companionship. Whenever something becomes popular, it seems to attract the criminal element. In the end, being aware and informed is probably the best defense against becoming a victim.