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.

Counterfeit Visa Travelers Cheques in circulation!

Counterfeit financial instruments are circulated in a variety of Internet scams. The ploy is always to get someone to cash them and then wire the money back to the person behind the scam.

In the past couple of weeks, readers and other sources have brought to my attention that counterfeit Visa Travelers Cheques are in circulation.

Visa has provided resources to identify these instruments.

You can call them at 1-800-227-6811 to verify an item. This can also be done on-line, here.Visa also has a good interactive tool to identify the security features of the Visa Travelers Cheque, here.

The trick is to ALWAYS verify them before you negotiate them using your good name!

Some of the scams being used to trick people into cashing these items are known as work-at-home (job) scams, secret shopper, romance, lottery and auction scams.

A collective name for all of these scams that ask you to cash an item and send the money back to the scammer is called the advance fee (419) scam.

A lot of the sites dedicated to fighting scams are also seeing an alarming trend, which is that people are getting arrested for attempting to cash these items.

I recently had a conversation with the fine folks over at FraudAid about this trend.

A great (new) resource about all the counterfeit paper being circulated is FakeChecks.org.

People, who fall for these scams do so because they are lured with something that is too good to be true. The old saying is that if it is "too good to be true, it is NOT!"

Here are some other counterfeit instruments, I written about that are still in circulation:

Counterfeit MoneyGram Money Orders being passed via Internet Scams

Counterfeit Cashier's Checks Fuel Internet Crime

American Express Gift Cheques Being Circulated in Internet Scams

Counterfeit Postal Money Orders Showing Up in IScams Again

Here is a picture of counterfeit Visa Travelers Cheques that were sent to someone about a week ago. They were sent from the United Kingdom, however the scammer wanted the money wired to Nigeria.


(Photograph courtesy of Raleigh)

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

(Counterfeit check picture courtesy of cknlomein at Flickr)

There are a record amount of counterfeit cashier's checks, official checks, money orders, travelers and gift cheques in circulation. This is an attempt to pass on information that the average person can use to tell IF the item is real or a counterfeit (fake).

As a disclaimer -- this is only a guide and if you deposit or cash items from people you don't know -- you do so at your own risk. The quality of these items is getting better all the time.

I’ve put together a list of the known counterfeit items in circulation, along with the current telephone numbers to verify them. You will probably receive these items after being lured with a (too good to be true) get rich quick scheme that doesn't make very much sense.

The best method to verify an item is to go to the maker, or issuer of the check (cheque). They probably will know if they issued it. The key here is to make sure you are speaking with the real issuer (maker) of the item.

Never trust a number provided on the instrument, fake telephone numbers are sometimes set up that will even verify in 411 (information).

Simply stated, as long as the communication companies think they are being paid, setting up a fake number is no problem. We are seeing fake numbers set up by scammers pretty frequently.

Since these numbers are often set up in 411 (information) rather easily, I recommend using Phonevalidator.com. This site provides a service that shows if a number belongs to a cell, or a land line. It also provides telephone directory and Google results for the number queried.

Quite often, fake numbers set-up to verify checks are cell phones.

The Internet is a good way to find the true issuer (maker) of an item. The key is to make sure you are visiting a legitimate site.

Fake websites (especially those pretending to be financial institutions) are a growing problem, also. An easy way to check if a site is legitimate is by using TrustWatch, which verifies whether a site is known (trusted) or not.

If you are interested in taking a look at some fake sites, claiming to be financial institutions the Artists Against 419 has some great examples of them on their site.

A common denominator in most of the scams is that there will be a request to send the proceeds, minus your paltry cut (normally via wire transfer) back to the person sending you the instruments. That is (unless) they are buying goods from you. In this case, your property is what they want you to send to them.

Some of these lures include, but aren't limited to (new lures surface frequently), secret shopper, romance, lottery, work-at-home and auction scams.

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.

So far as auction scams, eBay will no longer offer any protection for paper financial instruments on their site.

Here are some of the known items being counterfeited in large quantities and literally circulating worldwide:

Visa Travelers Cheques: 1-800-227-6811.

MoneyGram Money Orders (counterfeits may still use the old Travelers Express logo): 1-800-542-3590.

US Postal Money Orders: 1-877-876-2455 (mail fraud) option 4, then go to option 2.

American Express Gift and Travelers Cheques: 1-800-221-7282.

FDIC Alerts on the counterfeit cashier's and official checks in circulation, here. There is a feature that allows you to search them. I would try it by using the name of the institution.

Counterfeit cashier's and official checks change almost daily. The counterfeiters use legitimate account numbers and convincing looking check stock that will verify in most automated telephone verification systems.

It's probably good advice to never trust an automated system. In the case of a counterfeit, real ABA/account numbers are used by the counterfeiters. Because the information is real, they get past an automated verification system fairly easily. If you really want to know and believe an item is a counterfeit, ask to speak to a live person, preferably in the fraud department.

If you are dealing with a suspected counterfeit cashier's, or official check, I highly recommend reading a post I collaborated on with Tom Fragala (CEO of Truston Identity Theft Protection Services):

Counterfeit Cashier's Checks Fuel Internet Crime

Bank employees sometimes verify counterfeit instruments as legitimate. In some instances, especially at a teller window, they have been mistaken. If this occurs, you will be notified days later and the bank will take no responsibility.

Even more alarming, I have talked to and get comments/e-mails from people all the time who are getting arrested after trying to negotiate these items.

Here is what I wrote about this growing phenomenon in a previous post, along with my personal speculation as to why this is happening more frequently:

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.

The real victims can probably blame this new phenomenon on all the criminals, who are pretending to be victims and then cashing the items themselves. Here is how I described this in a recent post, where an International task force discovered millions of dollars (face value) of these items destined to be shipped, worldwide:

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 normally claim to be victims. A key way to pick out a reverse scammer is that, in most instances they forget to wire the money back to the scammer that sent them the counterfeit instrument.

Internet crime victims report counterfeit American Express gift cheques being sent to them!

Scam (too good to be true) lure courtesy of miriyaparino at Flickr.

Counterfeit checks like all the ones recently discovered by an International law enforcement team being sent from Nigeria aren't the only bogus financial instruments being sent all over the world.

In this recent effort against this activity, over 15,000 counterfeit instruments were discovered in a months time.

For the past couple of weeks, I've received a lot of e-mail and blog comments from people receiving counterfeit American Express gift cheques in the mail with instructions to cash them and wire the proceeds (minus a paltry commission) back to the sender (scammer).

The reason for all the e-mails and comments are because of previous posts, I've written about these counterfeit financial instruments.

Other than having their financial world ruined, there are reports of people getting arrested after trying to pass some of these instruments. One victim recently wrote me after discovering she had been scammed -- and told me that when she tried to report her problems to the authorities, they advised her to seek legal advice before proceeding -- or she might be charged with money laundering.

The American Express gift cheques can be verified by calling 1-800-525-7641.

Counterfeit MoneyGram and U.S. Postal money orders are still also being sent to people as payment for goods, or in too good to be true lures that are nothing more than a scam.

A lot of these bogus financial instuments come from work-at-home scams, secret shopper, romance, lottery and auction scams. New varieties of these scams appear from time to time, but the common denominator in any advance fee (419) scam is that it is too good to be true and it makes little, to no sense.

Another common denominator in most of these scams is that they will try to get you to wire money. Here is what I wrote about this in a previous post:

The fraudsters want you to cash these counterfeit gift cheques and send (normally wire) the money back to them. When they are discovered to be fraudulent -- you end up taking the "rap" for the scammer and they disappear in an "electronic mist."

If you've received any of these items in the mail, I've compiled a lot of information on how to identify them and report them to the right people, here.

Another development being seen is that real scammers are getting their hands on these instruments, who have no intention of wiring any money, anywhere. In effect, they are scamming the scammers. This makes it a lot harder to figure out, whether or not, a person is a victim or a scammer. Maybe this is one of the reasons more people are getting arrested?

Of course, if the victim never wired the money, they are probably lining their own pockets (my opinion).

The bottom line is that falling, or getting involved in one of these scams can cause you a lot of financial pain and suffering and you might even get into worse trouble.

Oprah's name spoofed in sweepstakes scam

At about the same time, Oprah did a show on Internet scams, the Illinois Attorney General (Lisa Madigan) issued (another) alert about scammers using Oprah's name to instill (trust) in the garbage they send.

Although, Oprah has run some sweepstakes recently, this one is a scam!

From Attorney General Madigan's press release:

According to Harpo Productions, Inc., which produces The Oprah Winfrey Show, several legitimate sweepstakes were held in the summer of 2006 through Oprah.com but all winners were previously notified. Harpo Productions, Inc. has not sent any letters in 2007 announcing additional winners for this sweepstakes. The sweepstakes letters being mailed to consumers have a check enclosed that is made payable to the letter recipient. The checks look real but are actually counterfeit. Consumers should disregard these letters and should not attempt to cash the checks.

The letters and checks are props in an especially devastating form of consumer fraud—conning check recipients into believing the checks are real, convincing recipients to deposit the checks into their banks, and even persuading the recipients to wire their own money to the con artists.

Full release, here.

Oprah covered this (and a lot of other scams) on her show yesterday, which can be seen on her site, here.

She also mentions this and another scam involving tickets to see her show on her site, here.

Tom Fragala (MyTruston) and I collaborated on a post about counterfeit checks being used in a variety of I-Scams a few months ago:

Counterfeit Cashier's Checks Fuel Internet Crime

Oprah's name is being used because of her immense popularity, which is a common theme in a lot of this activity. Popular brands, disasters and even government agencies are used in same manner, also!

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.

If You've Really Won the Lottery - Why Are They Asking You to Send Money?

I've written a lot about the various Advance Fee scams out there - and judging from my inbox - the lottery variation of the scam is huge.

I sometimes get four or five notifications that I've won a lottery, or sweepstakes, daily.

Last evening, I read an article written by Linda Leatherdale of the Toronto Sun about a grandmother losing a lot of her hard-earned money as a result of falling for them.

Linda Leatherdale writes:

But more than anything, she wanted to pay for a university education for her three grandchildren. So she entered the sweepstakes.

Lo and behold, a few months later she received a letter that she had won. Ecstatic, she read what she believed to be an authentic lottery letter, which asked her to send
in $25 to collect her prize.

CASH MAILED OFF

Not trusting giving out personal financial information, via cheques or credit cards, she sent cash. Then other letters arrived -- from the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and other parts of the world. Some invited her to play a new lottery, others said she'd won and to send money to collect her prize.

Toronto Sun story, here.

I've seen the lottery scams, where a high-dollar financial instrument is mailed to the "intended victim," along with instructions to wire the money back - but mailing the smaller amounts ($25 to $50) was an activity that was new to me.

With Spam software that sends these "winner notifications" by the millions - I can see, where this could be a lucrative enterprise for the fraudsters behind this.

I guess the moral of the story is to look for the behavior. I've never won the lottery (I play Mega Millions sometimes) - but if I did - I doubt anyone would be asking me to send money.

It would probably be the other way around, or they would be sending me money!

Linda's article mentions "Phonebusters" as a good resource to educate people on Internet scams. I agree and you can link to them, here.

Down here in the U.S., another good resource is the FTC, link here.

Please note that these "lottery scams" cross borders with the click of a mouse.

You can also report these scams at both of these sites, which is something I highly recommend!

Doing so might save another grandmother out there!

For another post about lottery scams and the sheer amount of spam circulating "winner notifications," link here.

The Shopping Group Inc. is a Secret Shopper Scam Outfit

The Shopping Group Inc. of Kitchener, Ontario (Canada) is sending out counterfeit checks recruiting people to become secret shoppers. The mission - should they choose to accept it - is to cash a fraudulent check and wire the money back to their superiors.

Of course - if caught, or when they are - The Shopping Group Inc. - only cares that the proceeds are wired back to them, preferably by MoneyGram, or Western Union.

It seems (as usual) - they are asking their employees (victims) to shop Walmart - probably because Walmart offers both "check cashing" and "wire transfer" services.

Although - I am taking a light hearted approach to this - anyone who falls for this ploy is likely to be out of a lot of money and (maybe) will lose their freedom.

If you receive one of these checks (being sent unsolicited) - take a deep breath - and put it in your "shredder."

To read the story from CDAPress.com about this - link here.

Here is the most recent post, I've done on Secret Shopper scams:

According to Google - The Secret Shopper Scam is Acting Up Again

In most of these scams, counterfeit cashier's checks are used, here is a post I did on that subject:

Counterfeit Cashier's Checks Fuel Internet Crime

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

BIN (Buy it Now) Scams on eBay

Fraud on eBay has victimized a lot of people AND eBay rarely admits fault, or takes effective action against the fraudsters. The latest activity seems to be BIN (Buy it Now) scams.

Ina Steiner of AuctionBytes reports:

"Over the past month, eBay sellers on U.S. discussion boards have been discussing the problem of Chinese "BIN bandits" on eBay. The problem described by posters is that newly registered, zero-feedback members from China are buying BIN (Buy It Now) items from eBay sellers in a systematic fashion, and not following through on the transactions."

It seems the intent of these BIN (Buy it Now) scams is to get the merchandise shipped (0ff-eBay) and pay for it via a payment scam. This might be done with fraudulent cashiers checks (rampant in the world of internet fraud), or with one of the fraudulent debit/credit card numbers (sold in Internet Relay Chat) chatrooms OR even with one of the counterfeit money orders that are flooding the world of Internet scams.

Another problem with this scam is eBay refunding the fees to sellers when one of these BIN bandits backs out of a transaction. There seems to be a lot of "negative feedback" regarding eBay's process to get the fees refunded. Allegations are that the process is full of red tape and it often is difficult to get a refund.

Ms. Steiner stated in her article:

"One seller alleges that in a previous BIN bandit episode that lasted over 7 months, eBay only took action when sellers flooded the California and New York Attorneys General's offices with complaints."

Another speculation from the article is:

"Some eBay sellers have speculated that the BIN bandits might be members of eBay's affiliate program who receive generous compensation for sending new bidders to eBay.com. In the U.S., affiliates can earn between 40 - 70 percent of eBay's revenue on winning bids or Buy It Now transactions within 7 days of an affiliate action. Affiliates also earn between $12 and $20 for each new active confirmed registered user (ACRU) driven to eBay (http://affiliates.ebay.com/)."

Link to article from AuctionBytes, here.

eBay is taking limited action, but only the sort that won't limit their profits. For one, they suggest only using PayPal (which they own and profit from) and there are a lot of people out there, who prefer other methods of payment.

The article refers to a lot of this coming from China, but other points of compromise could be Nigeria, Singapore and those Eastern European nations. "Buy it Now" fraud seems to be the latest mutation of Auction fraud, which sometimes includes Advance Fee scams.

When reading the AuctionBytes article, I came across a great site dedicated to fraud on eBay (eBayMotorsSucks). The site is very up-to-date and a great resource to protect people. I highly recommend it.

Here are some previous posts, I've done on Auction fraud:

Do It Yourself Hacker Kits

25 Ways to Avoid Auction Fraud From a Seller's Perspective

eBay's Fraud Hall of Shame

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.

The Human Side of Fraud on the Internet

Ian Katz Business Writer for the Florida Sun Sentinel had this rather sad story of an individual victim of Advance fee fraud (419) that occurred on a dating site.

"For Gerri Tennenbaum, it was a "vulnerable moment" when she trusted someone she thought of as a friend. Now, the victim of an elaborate counterfeiting scheme, she might be out $9,200, her rental apartment and any hope of getting Hanukkah gifts for her two children. A divorced schoolteacher struggling to raise her 9- and 12-year-old boys -- both of whom are mildly autistic -- Tennenbaum was feeling frazzled in early November by eight days without electricity after Hurricane Wilma."

Another lonely and vulnerable victim harvested off a dating site by a cyber criminal in Nigeria, who was duped into cashing counterfeit money orders and wiring the money (Western Union) to Nigeria.

For the full story, please read; Chatroom 'friend' takes all mother has using online money-order scheme.

It is the individual in these crimes that suffers the most. The best defense against the cyberscum (cowards), who hide behind a keyboard and do this is to make people aware.

Here is a previous post, I did on Criminal Activity on Dating Sites.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) (Nigeria) goes after this type of activity in Nigeria and recently actually paid back some money to a few victims.

Romance Scam 419 Yahoo Group (US) is a good resource on dating scams and they are known to scam the scammers. Of course, if you are confronted with internet fraud, it is always best to report it to the authorities. In the U.S. you can do so at the Internet Crime Complaint Center (FBI).

As parting thought tonight, Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukkah. Protect the good people out there by passing the word to those who are unaware of the dangers that lurk on the internet.

Counterfeit (MoneyGram) Travelers Express Money Orders

I'm surprised I haven't seen many reports in the media on counterfeit Travelers Express Money Orders. They seem to be frequently appearing in advance fee scams, particularly on auctions, such as E-Bay. Please note that these scams don't only happen on auction sites, they can occur on dating sites, within chatrooms and arrive via spam e-mails etc. etc.

I was even recently contacted by a reader where the (advance fee scam) attempt was made with a Qchex, (checks you can have e-mailed to you) as payment for a rental. Of course, the reader was then solicited to wire the excess $4,500.00 to someone, who was supposed to arrange furnishings. Upon verification, the check turned out to be counterfeit and our reader avoided becoming a victim of this scam.

Here is my most recent post on Qchex: Addressing QChex Fraud.

The counterfeit items reported to me are being made in the $1,000.00 to $1,500.00 range. They are being passed either for high value merchandise, or given as overpayments on the asking price of the merchandise. The seller is then being duped into wiring the money, normally overseas.

Some of the items reported to me also had Walmart and Ace Check Cashing logos on them.

Recently, there have been a lot of counterfeited U.S. and Canadian Postal Money Orders used in internet scams. Here is a post, I did on them: More on Postal Money Order Scam.

According to the U.S. Postal Service, they were being produced in Nigeria and Eastern Europe.

The items being passed seem to mutate. For some time, they were counterfeit cashier (official) checks, then came the official government money orders and now it seems, money orders in general. The thing to be aware of is the behavior, which is a come-on (normally over the internet) to cash the items for a percentage, or to negotiate them over the amount of something you are trying to sell and wire the excess money. Once in awhile they are to free some beautiful model from Eastern Europe, or Nigeria, who is facing oppression in her homeland.

For information on how to determine if a Travelers Express Money Order is good, click on the title of this post.