The Scam Alert Thread

[Hot Mega]

Post your scam alerts;

The latest I encountered is a suspected scam where scammers target sellers on craigzlist and offer to purchase your item and remit payment using paypal.

After you "agree" to the deal, you get a couple of emails. 1 from the "buyer" asserting the payment has been made and of course a ship to address in Nigeria. The second, a phony email purporting to be from paypal addressing you as your email address (paypal doesn't greet it's user that way) reflecting a payment and tracking information for shipping. Of course, you can easily confirm no such payment has been made to your paypal account.

Ultimately this scam works two ways I suspect. Obviously the first way is to get you to ship an item after conning you into believing your paypal has been credited with a phony paypal email. The second potential scam is to credit your paypal acct. with funds. But paypal's payment reversal policy has a loophole which enables the scam to work. As the payment would be classified as "services" rather than goods, there would be no proof that the victim who becomes the "vendor" provided any goods. So the "buyer" in this case the scammer gets the money back.

 

[Hot Mega]

To avoid being overcharged or bilked once you've purchased something using a credit card, only use a prepaid credit card.

I saw a woman claim she had been bilked out of over $300 after initially agreeing to a trial of diet pills. Her initial charge was to be less than $20 (I think) but she reserved the right to cancel to avoid recurring charges for following monthly supplies.

Needless to say, when the time came where she wanted to cancel...she got the run-around and never could find away to do so. $300 dollars later she was advised by the card issuer to cancel her account number associated with the purchase and open a different one.

I think she could have avoided all of this by getting a prepaid credit card, funding the card for only the amount you agree to pay then cancelling the card (either way) if you can't cancel the shipments.:2 cents:

 

[DukeLaCrosse]

beware of any ad for mystery shoppers or work at home

 

[Embryoyo]

I got hit with that craigslist scam last year when trying to sell a camera. He offered to pay me $300 for a $200 camera which seemed awkward to me in the first place, but I reluctantly agreed. Minutes later, I received an e-mail from "PayPal" saying the funds are "waiting" to be deposited into my account, but won't be deposited into the account until buyer confirms receipt of the shipment. This address was also in Nigeria. I automatically knew it was a scam from there, but decided to fuck with the guy trying to scam me for a while. I e-mailed him after receiving the fake PayPal e-mail, telling him I wouldn't send the camera out to him until I had the money in my bank account, so I could walk into my bank and get a statement showing I have another $300 in my account. He swore the funds were pending his approval of shipment, that it's a "buyer protection program". I asked, so why aren't they showing up (even pending) ANYWHERE when I log into my PayPal account. They would if this were true... and also, what about the seller? Where's the seller protection at? Even if PayPal actually did this "buyer protection" by withholding funds until the buyer shows receipt of shipment, who's to say the buyer would even ever admit receipt of package? Unless you send the item(s) registered with signature required of course, but then who wants to go through the hassle to dispute such a thing? I've dealt with mail fraud through eBay and the post office before personally, and it's not a fun process to recover your money or merchandise, even though it does work (after several months). Anyway, he ended up sending me several threatening e-mails telling me that he would kill my family and I in our sleep, and rape my sister (which I don't have) and dog (again, which I don't have) and bleed them out slowly if I didn't send him the camera. I sent him back an e-mail with about a paragraph of only "hahaha", reported him to PayPal, and that was the last I'd ever heard of him.

 

[Hot Mega]

I sent him back an e-mail with about a paragraph of only "hahaha", reported him to PayPal, and that was the last I'd ever heard of him.

This why I started the thread, to expose these types of maggots and have people be able to read ways of upstaging their schemes.

I think there ought to be some way of attacking these criminals by canceling the email accounts they use to perpetrate their frauds once they are identified and there is reasonable evidence they use it as a tool for fraud. We may not be able to get to those bastards where they are around the world but at least we can interdict their schemes.

If one email is being used in 100 or 1000 different scams at one time. You could theoretically interrupt all of them before they get started by one wise victim reporting the scam and the email being used getting shut down.

We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars everyday staging elaborate stings to prevent two consenting adults from having sex for pay when thousands of people are being defrauded in cyberspace at the same time and it would take a tenth of the effort to stop:2 cents:

 

[Hot Mega]

Frauds targeting bank accounts

Scams You Can Bank On
by Gail Liberman and Alan Lavine
Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Frauds targeting bank accounts are on the upswing; here's what you can do

As if the negative repercussions of the global financial crisis weren't enough, now savers have something new to worry about: Scams targeting bank accounts are on the rise.

One of the newest frauds involves recruiting unsuspecting job-seekers to help launder money. Those hired become "mules" -- people who never know they're collaborating with fraudsters, says Uri Rivner, who heads new anti-fraud technology for RSA, a division of EMC Corp., in Hopkinton, Mass.

The job postings seem legitimate; often the company has a professional-looking corporate Web site. The jobs may involve wiring money out of the country through an international wire agent. Or reshipping computers and other merchandise -- perhaps purchased originally with a stolen credit card.

(continued)

http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/107005/Scams-You-Can-Bank-On

 

[daboognish88]

I was scammed by Jolene Devil (aka Ashley Valentine) on the fetish site clips4sale. Apparently she's a washed up has-been who's now resorted to making old age fetish videos on clips4sale and scamming people through it as well. I paid her for a custom video because she was cheaper than other models and then she never made the video. Sent me a bunch of silly excuses as to why she couldn't send the video and then stopped talking altogether. If you've searched her and happen to find this please stay clear of her. I don't want this happening to anyone else.

 

[sean miguel]

I was scammed by a Nigerian prince, but then his brother, a Nigerian prince in exile who still has connections, promised he could recover my money for a fee. Here's hoping he can get my money back.

 

[~~whimsy~~]

I was scammed by a Nigerian prince, but then his brother, a Nigerian prince in exile who still has connections, promised he could recover my money for a fee. Here's hoping he can get my money back.

If not I know their mama and if you don't get your money back by next week I'll let her know and she whoop Prince Tyrone's ass up and down the street until he bleeds and cries your money back. Mama ain't playing.

 

[xfire]

I was scammed by Jolene Devil (aka Ashley Valentine) on the fetish site clips4sale. Apparently she's a washed up has-been who's now resorted to making old age fetish videos on clips4sale and scamming people through it as well. I paid her for a custom video because she was cheaper than other models and then she never made the video. Sent me a bunch of silly excuses as to why she couldn't send the video and then stopped talking altogether. If you've searched her and happen to find this please stay clear of her. I don't want this happening to anyone else.

Check Porn Hub, they've probably got your videos.