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Showing posts with label Money Scam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Money Scam. Show all posts
The Federal Trade Commission is suing the marketers of AcaiPure and colon supplement colopure for consumer fraud.
The products advertised on radio, television and the Internet for as little as 99 cents shipping feature fake endorsements by U.S. television talk show diva Oprah Winfrey and celebrity lifestyle host Rachel Ray.
"Too many 'free' offers come with strings attached," David Vladeck, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a release. "In this case, the defendants promised buyers a 'risk free' trial and then illegally billed their credit cards again and again -- and again. We estimate about a million people have fallen victim to this scam."
Vladeck said he would not use the supplement because the pills do not always contain acai, a purple berry smaller than a grape harvested from the acai palm tree.
The acai berry, native to South and Central America, is touted for its antioxidant properties but there is no scientific evidence it can contribute to rapid weight loss. The ads claimed weight loss of 25 to 30 pounds in the first month.
Since 2007, more than 2,800 complaints have been filed against Phoenix-based Central Coast Nutraceuticals Inc. with law enforcement agencies and the Better Business Bureau, the FTC said.
A new kind of scam is spreading involving health insurance scam, and it's costing the unemployed thousands.
Scammer companies are trying to get consumers to buy discounted plans, promising discounted coverage which is comparable to reputable companies. "They even go so far as to claim that any place that accepts Blue Cross or Blue Shield will accept these cards," says Ric Herrold with the Better Business Bureau.
For an registration fee, consumers receive a realistic insurance card in the mail, usable at doctors, pharmacies, dentists, vision care centers. The fee can be up to $200, along with a monthly fee. Then when they need it most, Herrold says they understand their coverage isn't what they thought. "They might go to the doctor for a luxurious procedure...only to find out, 'sorry, we don't carry this.'"
Consumers should be on the lookout for persistent robo-calls with no option to ask questions and high pressure phone tactics. Also, scammers are targeting the unemployed and those with pre-existing cfsssonditions.
If you suspect a scammer is trying to get you, contact the Better Business Bureau at 419-531-3116.
Password change required!
Dear sir,
We recently have determined that different computers have logged onto your eBay account, and multiple password failures were present before the logons. We strongly advice CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD.
If this is not completed by Aug 15, 2010, we will be forced to suspend your account indefinitely, as it may have been used for fraudulent purposes. Thank you for your cooperation.
| Click here to Change Your Password |
| Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered. |
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Thank you for using eBay!
Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered.
I get so many phishing fraud email messages from Ebay, that I have come to the point where I am not sure.
From: Evan Jacob
Date: Tue, Aug 4, 2010 at 12:43 AM
Subject: I WILL LIKE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT YOU,
To:me
Dearest one,
Darling i'm very sorry to keep you long, please forgive me. I am more than happy to read your reply to my mail, How is your day?i hope you are very fine and healthy.
i promise to tell you more about me in my next mail,my name is Miss Evan Jacobs, i am single and have never been married, i am from Sudan in East of Africa, i am 25 yrs and 5in8ft tall,58kg weight.
Earlier i was residing in Darfur refugee camp in Chad on July 2006, at a time there was a division and dispatch of some of the refugees due to the over population of the people in Chad, i was taken to Senegal in West African on 10th August 2007 where i'm presently residing in N'dioum refugee camp due to the civil war in my country. i am suffering in pains in this camp and i really need to have a man by my side to encourage me. i am willing relocate from this country.
Date: Tue, Aug 4, 2010 at 12:43 AM
Subject: I WILL LIKE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT YOU,
To:me
Dearest one,
Darling i'm very sorry to keep you long, please forgive me. I am more than happy to read your reply to my mail, How is your day?i hope you are very fine and healthy.
i promise to tell you more about me in my next mail,my name is Miss Evan Jacobs, i am single and have never been married, i am from Sudan in East of Africa, i am 25 yrs and 5in8ft tall,58kg weight.
Earlier i was residing in Darfur refugee camp in Chad on July 2006, at a time there was a division and dispatch of some of the refugees due to the over population of the people in Chad, i was taken to Senegal in West African on 10th August 2007 where i'm presently residing in N'dioum refugee camp due to the civil war in my country. i am suffering in pains in this camp and i really need to have a man by my side to encourage me. i am willing relocate from this country.
My late father Dr Col Daniel Jacobs was the industrial Managing director of (JACOBS AND INDUSTRIAL COMPANY LTD) in KHARTOUM the economy capital of my Country(Sudan) and he was also the personal adviser to the former head of state before the rebel attack our house one early morning and killed my mother and father in cold blood. i escaped death because i was in school when the rebel attack our house. i was the only issue of my late parents,i have no brother nor sister. This Refugee Camp is headed by a Reverend Father am using his office computer to send you this email and i only enter his office when he is less busy in his office.
I would like to know more about you and your hobbies and what you are doing presently. my dream is to meet sincere, faithful, kind and trustworthy person. i will tell you more about my family background in my next mail. Attached here is my picture and i am Hoping to hear from you soon.
Miss Evan.
Cross-border crime is an unnecessary aspect of the globalization of the economy and communications.
Law enforcement authorities around the world are on the alert for the "419 fraud," also known as the "Nigerian Letter."
The scam originated with a Nigerian-based network that has since gone quite global. Normally, e-mails are sent to potential victims overseas, inviting them to invest in a money-laundering scheme or some other business scheme.
Receivers who show an interest are asked to travel to a third country or remit a considerable "investment" to a bank account in a foreign country. Once the money is in the account, the scammers immediately transfer the money to an account in a different country.
Investigators in each country get to work only on one piece of the puzzle, so to speak. They are helpless to track down suspects who remain in their home countries. Cases of 419 fraud cases started to be reported in Japan a few years ago.
One vengeance of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) is a crime ring nicknamed the Pink Panthers. They are jewelry thieves believed to be typically from the former Yugoslavia and have robbed numerous jewelry stores around the world, including Europe, the Middle East and Tokyo.
Alarmed by this trend, the National Police Agency used the expression "globalization of crime" for the first time in this year's white paper.
In the past, foreign criminals in Japan were typically groups of relatives and those from the same region, or those who fled to their home countries after committing the crimes.
But recently, international criminal organizations of an entirely different nature have begun sensitive Japan. Also quite disturbing is the recent spread of cyber crimes and crimes related to child pornography. The threats of drug trafficking and international terrorism are growing, too.
Can any national police force actually fight crimes that cross national borders?
So far, more than 800 people who have committed crimes in Japan have eluded capture by fleeing the country. Even when Interpol is concerned, the outcome of the investigation varies from country to country, and arrests and extraditions are rather rare.
For successful operations that cross national borders, Japanese law enforcement authorities must forge close working relations with their complement in as many countries as possible.
For example, if a Japanese citizen is kidnapped, and a payment demand has been confirmed coming from abroad, Japanese police should be able to ask investigators in that country to trace the call.
Close international collaboration will also enable concurrent pursuit of members of a criminal group scattered around the world.
Japan already has two-sided treaties on mutual assistance in criminal matters with such countries as the United States, China and South Korea. But the treaties need to be multilateral.
To create a worldwide law enforcement network, the functions of Interpol, whose members consist of 188 nations and regions, need to be unbreakable. But criminal laws vary from country to country, as does the authority and capacity of law enforcers. Obviously, the rule of each country must be respected, which renders really close collaboration a bit of a challenge.
But we must remember that criminals often slip through this sort of "ambiguity."
It is time for the international community to take a good, hard look at the traditional ideas of law enforcement and determine what needs to be updated.
lucky winners of LACASERA
I got a fraudulent SMS from an unknown number sometime last week and after a lot of thinking, I decided to share the experience with you and get some reactions. The SMS goes thus; 'Congratulation! You have won #250,000.00 Your no is among the 42 lucky winners of LACASERA (A popular soft drink in Nigeria) DRINK PROMO. Ticket no, GXB30. Call 08131889692. To claim your prize. (Please note I reconstructed the SMS verbatim).
It didn't help that I was in a bad mood when it came in and I couldn't help replying the scammers with some choice words that my mom spent close to 20 years trying to prevent me from learning. My response; ' You muthafuckers must be really dumb to think anyone will fall for you scam… Lacasera promo,my arse!you dumb fucks can't even spell right. (Also reconstructed verbatim).
I know I shouldn't have done it, but I was at the end of my tether. I get an average of 13 fraudulent proposals every year; an average of one per month. The pretty imaginative proposals range from purchase of oil refineries to inheritances left by dead relatives, with astronomical figures being dangled in front of you in the frenzied bid to separate you from your cash. I have had people call me up and address me by my first name, claiming to have met me in the past and offering me deals which promise fantastic returns. Depending on my mood, I play along until I feel I've burnt enough of their airtime and then I hang up and refuse to pick subsequent calls. In the past, it was just foreigners that were being targeted but with increased surveillance by anti-fraud authorities (local and International), the fraudsters switched their focus to the local scene with varying degrees of success.
The sentence structures of the proposals are nearly always filled with grammatical errors. Most 'yahoo boys' (local parlance for scammers) are school dropouts and they invariably expose their lack of education when they try to communicate with people. Another trait of yahoo boys is to offer fantastic returns on a seemingly easy business deal. I had a guy call me up one day, claiming to be a Port-Harcourt based staff of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. He offered me a return of N15,000,000 (approximately 99,000 dollars) if I would agree to bribe his boss with N200,000 (approximately 1,400 dollars) so he would award me a contract to supply NNPC with some office equipment. I told him to stick it up his arse and cut the call!
On the streets of Lagos, it is common to see young lads who have no verifiable source of income driving flashy cars, wearing expensive clothes, and sporting the latest communication and entertainment gadgets. In clubs they buy the most expensive bottles of liquor and hold court in the center of their sycophant friends who more often than not, find 'other' friends when the pipeline goes dry. Really, if I were a cop and I saw a 20-year old kid driving a Honda Accord 2008 model and carrying a blackberry, I would shoot him in the leg and drag him to my station and ask questions later. The '419' (local slang for advance-fee fraud) boys, in their 'pursuit of happiness', go to great lengths to snag a 'maga' (local slang for victim of these schemes) including employing diabolical means. Stories abound of scammers who patronize witch-doctors for 'special powers' to help them fleece their targets of their money.
This group of individuals, who represent less than 0.0001% of Nigeria's population, have given the country a terrible reputation in the community of Nations. Nearly every form of communication that emanates from Nigeria or a Nigerian is scrutinized with a fine tooth comb. Nigerians who travel out of the country are usually separated from boarding or arrival lines and frisked to the point of embarrassment at airports. I seriously am not looking forward to travelling out of the country anytime soon, especially after the Christmas Day bomb scare by that dumb-ass Abdulmutallab fella which has gotten international airport security teams paranoid about Nigerians.
I'm not defending the actions of these people, but how come the world behaves like Nigerians are the scum of the earth? America has one of the highest crime rates in the world, ranging from gang violence to drug wars. Britain is home to crackpots and skinheads who stab people on the streets. The Russian mafia is one of the most feared in the world and they have some really heavy scam artists too. So, why is Nigeria so vilified? It gets my goose whenever I read any negative report about Nigeria on the internet. Sony released an advert for the new PS3 and in the ad, a guy said; 'If you believe everything you hear on the internet, you'll be a Nigerian millionaire.' Come on! After some ranting by the Nigerian Government, the material was withdrawn and a high-powered delegation from Sony visited Nigeria and met with Information Minister, Dora Akunyili to apologize. Why was it allowed to air in the first place? That goof almost made me NOT buy the PS3 console after my xbox 360 packed up (But I'm too much of a game freak to let that get to me! Sony, behave or… …)
Ok… I'm outta breath! I don't know why but I just felt the need to let out some steam. Not a very prudent first piece but I hope you guys will understand and bear with me… See you next week, be safe.
This article has been taken from http://www.modernghana.com/movie/8293/3/a-fraudulent-sms-and-a-disjointed-rant-w.html
From: Lisa Williams
Date: Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 9:12 PM
Subject: THANKS, FOR YOUR RESPONSE
To: me
My Dearest,
How are you today? I am very happy for your respond to the mail I sent to you.
My name is miss Lisa . W. Omini from Darfur Region of Sudan l am 22 years and presently I am residing in the refugee camp here in Dakar Senegal as a result of the death of my family by the rebels
My father and my mother were killed by rebels in our residence house in the capital city Darfur. My late father Dr.Jonas . W. Omini , was the Chairman, Nas-Melton Oil and Gas Company a private extracting oil firm in Darfur before He was killed with my mother one early morning by the rebels as a result of the civil war that is going on until now in Sudan.
It is only me that is alive now and I managed to make my way to the West African state called Senegal where we are leaving now in a refugee camp here in Oakam North, 12 km from the capital city of Dakar Senegal, please don't be discouraged for hearing this.
However iam using the computer at the office of the reverend father who is in charge of the refugee camp to write to you. I would like to know more about you.Your likes and dislikes, your hobbies and what you are doing presently, remember that you caught my attention in that site that was why I wrote you in first place
Attached here is my picture for you,though I am not all that photogenic,I hope you wouldn't mind, Awaiting for your reply soonest.
from my heart.
Miss Lisa.
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