This is a good guide for todays world, the only thing I saw in it that I would question is their suggestion that you use a sevice like PayPal when dealing with online purchases. Although PayPal has been the standard for a long time(mostly due to it's association with Ebay), I have had problems with them, and heard first hand from aquaintances and various forums and online sources that claim to be totally frustrated with them in the past couple of years. Administrative mistakes that end up costing us users money coupled with difficulty getting through to anyone at PayPal for help are the main ones. Some cases involved that I'm familiar with would have faired better if they had of paid via credit card, especially in the cases where payment was made for a product that never arrived. I realize this is not a scam(I hope), but it can cause a consumer to have been "ripped off" all the same.

 

Bejesus, as if we can't enough of these ... more types of scams, no. 10 is a real bugger "Scam of the Year" ... from Sherly Smolkin of Toronto Star - http://www.thestar.com/business/personal_finance/2013/02/01/the_10_biggest_scams_of_the_year.html

 

I found it interesting to learn why so much spam/phishing is done with such poorly concealed fradulence. Apparently they are targeting the very most gullible or obtuse people they can. They don't use very sophisticated or convincing scams because they don't want to waste time on marks that may be drawn in initially but get a bad vibe and back out.

Realizing that, it seems very difficult to protect these people from scams. The only thing I can think of is to waste scammers time to reduce their ROI. Think of it as community service...

 

If they want to talk to you, just let them talk and talk and talk. Put the phone down on speakerphone and ask a bunch of inane questions and play along, but don't give any personal info. Eventually they will get frustrated and end the call.

Same goes with the Nigerian prince scammers...

 

Refer them here: http://www.itslenny.com/

(that site is so, so worth a visit and a listen)

 

I fell for one of those email scams that said something like "Canada Post tracking #xxxxxxxx undeliverable" and as I was expecting a parcel, I opened it, no doubt releasing a tidal wave of malware.

 

Those malwares must have created havoc on your pc ... that must have been a bunch of PITAs to get rid of. I was lucky that opening an email asking for "emergency funds" by a scammer disguised under a friend's email (only I haven't been in contact with the friend for years) didn't cause harm to my pc.

Here's another scam alert: http://www.thestar.com/business/per..._finance/2013/02/05/ignore_fake_emails_from_bell_and_canada_revenue_agency.html ... with tax season nearing, don't fall for it!

 

http://www.thestar.com/news/investi...3/09/toronto_senior_one_of_90_allegedly_targeted_by_home_renovation_scheme.html

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/phone-scammers-fleece-retiree-house-home-214556875.html

Very sad and unfortunate situations ... seniors are so vulnerable to these predators.

 

Not sure if this falls under scams..but certainly a novel way to collect money from all the suckers out there ($100 a piece) in order for them to "qualify" for winning their home.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dail...blogs/dailybrew/why-want-own-house-ontario-couple-unloading-home-203112809.html

Assuming they find 300 suckers that are each willing to part with $100 at the opportunity to win this ..home, and who knows what pitfalls await them after taking
possession...it still is a novel way of "selling your home"..and collecting possibly more than it's worth on the open real estate market.

 

http://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2013/11/30/online_dating_relationship_ends_badly_13m_later.html ... not a pleasant experience to have so keeping the thread/warning updated. :anonymous:

 

Here's one for landlords...I've read they are currently in Alberta.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti.../canada/british-columbia/landlords-powerless-as-tenants-get-free-ride-1.1307443

 

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/08/02/kijiji_vacation_rental_scam_strikes_again_at_the_same_cottage.html ... not sure if there is a season for scams but don't fall for this one - buyers' (renters in this case) beware!

 

Yes, that is an old and common scam. Hopefully all landlords are familiar with it...

 

Fraud and abuse of the elderlies doesn't necessarily come from external forces ... http://www.cnbc.com/id/101920770 .. disgusting.

 

And when it comes to fraud in Canada..it's not just the seniors who get taken, but a percentage of seniors do..

http://www.flippingfrenzy.com/category/canada/


and who can forget "Concrete Equities' on Dragon's Den...

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/investing/concrete-equities-fraud-rallies-investors/

Investors, meanwhile, were in the dark. “We never had an annual meeting. We never got a financial statement,” Town says. As long as the dividends kept coming—Concrete paid out just under $5 million to investors between 2005 and 2008—nobody fussed. Inside the company, though, things were worse than investors could have imagined. “They were basically running everything out of just one bank account.…They figured they’d just keep raising money and paying back the ones with the money they’d been using,” Steven Butt, president of brokerage and property management firm Avenue Commercial, which sold a building to Concrete and continued to manage it under contract. The only difference between this and a Ponzi scheme was Concrete Equities had some assets. But perhaps not for long.

Hmmm? "Rob Peter to pay Paul'...that's been around for a long time..nothing new here.

 

On a lighter note, this is an oldie but a classic. The "P-P-Powerbook" story. How a scammer got scammed.

https://encyclopediadramatica.es/P-p-p-powerbook


Here's the PDF link. A long read but well worth it, great poetic justice.
http://joi.ito.com/images2/thepowerbook.pdf

 

This story falls under the title: There IS NO FREE LUNCH!..people.

An Ottawa couple have spent three days leading on scammers who are trying to manipulate the couple into paying thousands of dollars to receive a lottery prize.

"[They were] so persistent, it's unbelievable," said the wife.

This kind of scam is called an advance fee fraud, in which victims are conned into paying taxes on millions of dollars they've supposedly won before they can receive the prize money.

On Tuesday night, Paul and Carole <name withheld) received a phone call telling them they'd won $2.5 million and a 2014 Mercedes Benz. The scammers told the couple they qualified for the lottery prize just by using their credit and debit cards.

"We immediately were skeptical of it, but I had time on my hands so I thought, OK, I'll just see what the scam is," the husband said.
"It was kind of fun for a while."

The couple were emailed a raft of official-looking documents, pictures of supposed former winners, pictures of the car and an invoice for $5,000 dollars in taxes and fees, the amount they'd have to fork over before getting the payoff.

The scammers also kept phoning back, telling the couple not to let anyone else know about the transaction and win, including their own bank teller.

When the couple finally told them they were onto the scam, other people called the <namewithheld> claiming to be lawyers, wondering why they didn't want the prize.

"I contacted the police and they have so many calls of this type that they just can't address them," said the husband.

Ottawa police say no legitimate lottery will ask for money up front.

"So if you ever get a call saying you've won something but have to send them money, that should be a red flag right there," said the Ottawa Police Staff Sgt.

So the moral of this story is folks..if you smell it's a scam from the start..DON'T LEAD THEM ON pretending you
may be interested. They will continue to bother you with all kinds of nuisance phone calls.
JUST HANG UP IMMEDIATELY ON THEM.

 

This story falls under the title: There IS NO FREE LUNCH!..people.

So the moral of this story is folks..if you smell it's a scam from the start..DON'T LEAD THEM ON pretending you
may be interested. They will continue to bother you with all kinds of nuisance phone calls.
JUST HANG UP IMMEDIATELY ON THEM.

... +101%!

 

For the travel bug - last thing you need to worry or have your vacation ruined:

Jane Young lost $1,500 to fraud after reserving a hotel in England through Booking.com. ...

http://www.thestar.com/business/personal_finance/2014/10/12/we_help_hotel_fraud_victim_recover_1500_roseman.html ..

 

Who would have thunk that 1-800 # is not toll-free but here is it:

1-800 charges linked to company accused of targeting seniors

... Online warnings about 1-800 number

It turns out that ITD 1-800-533-5964 has a lot of people concerned....

 

Beav; I read that story on CBC News. The 80 odd year husband (who recently had to go into some kind of seniors LTC?) was the one that fell for it.

It was some kind of discount coupon/travel promotion thing that he and she never used. Because he agreed to enroll and gave them THEIR BANK ACCOUNT NUMBER to set up automatic monthly deductions, they were "on the hook" until someone (friend I think) called that 800 number to cancel the monthly withdrawals.

The wife never was responsible for the financials during her marriage and depended on the husband to do it all, so she didn't have a clue about the monthly withdrawals..not a good thing in any case.

Yes, it is still can be considered targeting seniors..but the spokesperson at the 800 number mentioned
that "they don't specifically target seniors".......in other words..they will target anyone that responds to
their phone calls and is naive enough to give them banking information for services that they really don't
understand or can use.

 

Don't answer 1 800 calls.

Don't give out ANY personal or financial info on the phone

Don't bother with anything that is free. Even if you are a greedy goblin, nothing is free. Free is actually expensive.

Hang up or do what my dear old Dad would do. Start to ask the following question and the caller will hang up on you immediately. The question?

"Will welfare pay for that". He did it for two years running and saw a noticeable decrease in calls. I guess their name got removed from some call lists. He never got past saying will welfa....before they hung up on him. Drove my mother nuts.

And if you do something stupid....don't blame it on everyone else. Look in the mirror.

 

"Will welfare pay for that".

One that I concocted, but haven't yet used, is "I was afraid it was another one of those collection agencies calling".

 

This thread "Little Black BooK of Scams" probably shouldn't be in the "Deals and Freebies" category, because the scams out there are neither deals nor freebies.

I don't know how many of you caught the CTV W5 program yesterday (Dec 6th) on 'CHEATIN HEARTS' which is about the internet scams on dating sites like "matchdotcom" etc where the scammers prey on vulnerable females.

In the W5 segment a woman around Guelph was taken for over $7000-10,000 when her "online friend" kept feeding her emails about what she wanted to hear, promising that they would meet soon..but in the meantime he was stuck in jam in Dubai when he "flew there on business" and lost his wallet and identity in a taxi . She offered to send him some money so he could get back to Canada.
He insisted that the best and fastest way was by Western Union....

At first <M.C.> declined <R's> offer but eventually he relented, promising to repay the money she advanced. Rosanna wired $7,000 via Western Union. It wasn’t until weeks later that she found out that it was all a con – her money had vanished along with Marc Campbell

Now this next one..you really have to ask yourself....how can anyone be so naive (dumb) as to send money without ever meeting them face to face..it is unbelievable how she got sucked in with a "fraudster"that used a fake name and picture.

Ellen told W5 that she met a man named <> online through Matchdotcom. What followed was an elaborate scheme that saw her send fraudsters more than one million dollars. But at the outset she was taken by his friendship.

At first the amounts were small. But money transfer documents provided to W5, eventually showed hundreds of thousands of dollars being sent to Singapore, England, Spain and, eventually, Nigeria. In hindsight, Ellen says she doesn’t understand how she was conned into sending so much money. She believes that she may have been brainwashed.

Of course she was brainwashed..she ended up transferring her ENTIRE LIFE SAVINGS (around 1 million dollars Cdn) to these fraudsters.
Everyone needs to wake up and understand that these social media sites are prime hunting grounds for fraud artists that can sweet talk you to wire them money. They are experts at this kind of crime and they never get caught, that is why it's so lucrative to them. On the internet, you can be anyone you want to be..fake names, fake pictures.
fake identities..they don't exist...

Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/w5/w5-investi...tigates-scams-that-prey-on-those-seeking-online-romance-1.1567247#ixzz3LFhaAveA

 

^ I can still recall, in Toronto in the early 1970s........a guy, (until he got caught), used to hit the bars of airport hotels on the weekend and tell unaccompanied women, (he didn't want 2-3 of them putting their heads together and perhaps figuring him out), that his private jet was undergoing emergency maintenance and that, not being from Toronto/Canada/Whatever, he had no readily available money.

He pulled in $1,000s (or perhaps tens of $1,000s) before he was caught.

Anyway......point of the story.....newspaper reporter went to see him and asked how he managed to pull it off....reporter said "You're nothing special, how did you do it?"

Guy replied "They want to believe........they can see the 'big score' and think if they hand over their savings it could be them flying to exotic places in a private jet".


(As the W.C. Fields movie said You Can't Cheat an Honest Man)

 

Not sure where to post this but definitely freebies here .... courtesy of Amazon ... gotta love that online vendor, :biggrin:

Amazon Glitch Sends Man 51 Free Gifts

https://ca.screen.yahoo.com/broken-news-daily-latest/amazon-glitch-sends-man-51-000000160.html

 

*****This thread is too important information to have buried under Personal Finance. ****
***** It needs to be moved to the top of CMF next to hot topics. *****

Adminlease move this thread so it is more visible to be updated periodically.

WARNING WARNING WARNING !

Internet phishing emails with legit looking Mastercard logo and and address that looks like "MastercardSecureCode" etc.

This is a PHISHING EMAIL..DO NOT PROVIDE ANY INFORMATION TO THESE SCAMMERS!

If you do, they will steal your identity and your credit card.

Report it as a phishing email scam to your credit card company by phone, if you don't know how to forward it to you credit card fraud dept.

Call your C C company by phone and get the legitimate link for your MC or Visa,
or whatever card ipersonal information they are phishing for,
to report the attempted fraud!.

 

^ While this is not the hottest topic of the day, we already got the top spot on CMF for this ... each:

Adminlease move this thread so it is more visible to be updated periodically.

... and I agree with this as it constantly needs to be kept "fresh" ... how about you send this request at the Site Feedback section below? And what do you think about changing the title to read as "** Scams Alert!!! Station** ?" Only if the cmfAdmin is willing - pretty, please :tiger: