Scams. Is anybody that stupid??

I often wonder if there is anybody stupid enough to fall for those Nigerian emails and I got my proof today in my local paper. A woman passed a counterfeit $100 at Walgreens, was arrested and her story was that her "boyfriend" on the internet ( whom she has never met) sent her a book hollowed out and filled with $100 bills. She was to keep some and turn the rest into gift cards and return those to him so that they could buy airfare home for some soldiers who were in the war zones.
**sigh**

 

Well, there are people who 'lent' all their savings to total strangers, because they promised to marry him or her once they arrive from country X (which they, of course, will never do).
I also remember the story of a man who tried to buy weed online, but only received oregano. He didn't realize it until he tried so sell it. He then went to the police to press charges.....and, of course, was arrested himself.
The point is: Some people are indeed stupid.

 

Tampa - woman calls police to report her boyfriend for domestic argument. Cops come and smell weed odor. Go into spare room to find a grow house. Arrest both on felonies.

 

A close friend's elderly mother fell into the "sweepstakes" scams.

The "you have won" but we need a deposit to process the award. My friend finally had to get involved, bringing in the state AG, and the postal inspector for mail fraud.

Worst part was not the money she lost, upwards of $10K, but when my friend FINALLY convinced her this was a scam the scammers simply started threatening her by phone with physical harm to her grandchildren if she didn't pay. She was really scared and started sending money again. Poor thing, she really believed they were going to harm her family.

It turned out that the scammers had found the mark with her, later it was determined she was in the very early stages of dementia so it all made sense to her. Very sad stuff.......and obviously no one was ever charged, or even identified through all the off shore shell companies and dead ends.

 

Well, taking advantage of stupid people is one thing, but scamming people suffering from dementia is really disgusting.....

 

Elderly couple got a call late at night from their "Grandson" late at night. He was in jail in Mexico and could they wire him some money. He was to afraid to ask his parents. The guy had the right names etc. They wired the money only to find out later they had been scammed.

 

The problem is that these people prey on your ignorance. Are these people really stupid? Maybe to you but the problem is that with each new scam coming up these predators will try to come up with a way to con people. Lots of times they go after the elderly because they aren't as internet savvy and more likely to believe these cons.

As others have mentioned, while you still may get some Nigerian or some other email saying you won millions there are always new scams going around. The call from a relative is another scam that occurred a few years ago. Most families really don't keep in touch and so it is easy to believe that someone is calling because of a financial problem. Latest scam was from the "IRS" saying that you need to pay them because you owe back taxes. I got a few of those calls last year but the biggest clue was that the "agent" had a foreign accent. I never answer my phone and let it to go the answering machine so I just ignore the call. I got another call from a "creditor" saying that I owe them money and they will come arrest me or have a collection agency come after me and I just ignored that one too.

 

There are idiots out there. In the eighties I ran a rock'n roll nightclub. From time to time we'd have to toss a problem customer. SOP was to have security escort the customer out front. I would then politely ask them to exit the property, not to return. If they declined, we would call the local PD. In turn they would repeat what I said and many times the customer would still refuse to exit the property. The police would then explain if they didn't leave they would be arrested for trespass. So far I've described the normal idiots of the world. We now move on to the George Costanza "King of the Idiots!" Of those hauled in for trespass that they could have easily avoided, close to half had outstanding warrants!!! The arresting officer would routinely return to let me know. One of them had an outstanding bench warrant for failure to appear for trial! Every time this happened I'd just shake my head.

Good Luck!
Ric at Joes

 

There is a new scam where people are told they need to buy thousands of dollars in itunes gift cards, to pay the IRS. People are doing this. They think they are paying the IRS in itunes gift cards. Then they are surprised to find out afterwards that they were scammed.

 

I recently got a "Grandma, is that you?" call of the same nature. I'm sure it was a scam.

What amazes me, however, is the number of people who will click on those scam emails that are all too common.

 

I've been getting lots of calls from "the IRS". Two things make me laugh about them. The first being, "This is the last time we will contact you." I always say to the recorded voice, "Promise?"
The second funny thing is the recording starts off, "This is the IRS, The Internal Revenue Service." Ohhhhh, thanks so much for telling me what IRS stands for!
geez.
I saw an ad last night for Ooma internet phone service that said they can block calls somehow. Does anyone have this and does that feature actually work?

 

Sometimes even "sharp" people can fall for scams. My wifes beauty parlor owner who has a very successful business going got a call from the electric company stating that they havent recieved last months payment. They said they would cut off the electric if they didnt get $1000 in two hours. She was in the middle of a busy day and figured it was just a simple mistake that she would solve easily and the last thing she needed was to have the electric cut off. So she paid the $1000 . Hard to believe a successful business woman would fall for something like that but they got her at the right time on the right day.

 

That is hard to believe....$1000 electric bill for a month? and to whom did she send this new payment? Apparently, it wasn't just a check made out to the electirc company.

 

There's a really good book, "The Confidence Game and Why We Always Fall For It" by Maria Konnikova. People, for the most part, are easy to hustle. And it doesn't have to for big bucks either. It's the small con that we can write off as "oh well", because we feel smarter for the experience (e.g. I'll know better next time). That being said, if there were not people naive enough to fall for the Nigerian Prince or the IRS...well, those cons wouldn't still be running. How many of us have had the unsolicited call from "Microsoft Windows Help Desk" by "Larry" of the sub-continent accent? And you know...you know...someone has nipped at the bait.

 

I'm not worried. Any potential grand kids would be half Asian and looking for a Mr. Ben Franklin.

 

I dont know all the details Quentree,she told my mrs. when shes having her hair done. I have no reason to doubt her.I think she made a police report.

 

For a while, in tech news, stories of Microsoft Windows support staff calling people was making the rounds. The scam was basically, the person calling tried telling you, you had a virus on your computer and that they needed you to install special software on it to fix it. The scam being, this special software was malware and turned your pc into a bot to attack other networks.

One day I finally got the call - didn't realize it was them until after I hung up and regretted it for days, hahaha. I could of fired up a VM (virtual machine) with Windows on it quickly and screwed with them for hours / had a bit of fun.

 

Nigerian Scams are this under developed West African country's third largest export industry so don't count on them being shut down any time soon.

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Also called 419 scams (referring to article 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code) they rip off naive internet users to the tune of tens of millions of dollars each year.

The biggest victim was Nelson Tetsuo Sakaguchi, a senior director of Brazilian bank Banco Noroeste S.A. of Sao Paulo who embezzled $242 million between 1995 and 1998 in the 3rd biggest scam in banking history.

The bank went bust. $170 million was eventually recovered after fleets of luxury cars and mansions in Nigeria, Switzerland, and the U.S.A. were seized.

Nigerian Scams And Organized Crime.


Research by Aunshul Rege of Rutgers University, USA in 2009 described in detail how well organized Nigerian Scams function:

• Young members with computer skills and speed are recruited from the many cyber cafes.
  
  
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  "Organizers" are put to work constructing fake profiles using phony pictures (e.g. from modeling web sites) and fake documents (some provided by dishonest government officials).
  
  
• Some of these (often college graduates) work composing romantic letters and mapping out online courtships while others acquire e-mail lists for bulk mailing.
  
  
• Tech savvy hackers are used to steal credit card details and carry out Identity Fraud.
  
  
• "Cross-overs" (who hold legitimate government and financial positions) also assist criminal networks with fake letterheads, documents, money orders, stamps, seals, id, etc.
  
  
• "Communicators" establish contact with the targeted "Mugu" (meaning "fool"), sometimes on genuine dating web sites and sometimes using Identity Theft to open accounts on these sites.
  
  
• ​
  "Executors" who can speak foreign languages then go to work scamming unsuspecting victims via email and phone using their communication skills.
  
  
• Trained Psychologists are sometimes hired to help coach Executors in how to handle difficult "Mugu" (fools or victims).
  
  
• "Enforcers" are entrusted to coerce or extort victims to pay up, and to protect the organization should aggrieved victims show up trying to reclaim lost money.
  
  
• "Money Movers" finally facilitate the flow of scammed monies around the globe.
  
  
• Scammers work 6-8 hour shifts around the clock.

 

This is a prank call to a woman from a radio station saying they were going to cut her social security-- one of the funniest I've heard-nobody was taking money from this lady.