I’ve got to hand it to them. This week, they’ve managed to continually outdo themselves.
Amazing.
Last Friday, I wrote a post asking you guys how low will scammers go to rob people of their money. The post centered around an attempt to use cancer patients, God, and charities around the world to rip people off. Early this week, a scammer attempted to use the oil spill in the Gulf to scam people.
This week?
Well, this week brings us kidnapping, hostage situations, and ransoms. Seriously.
Lydia post this comment on my post last week…
My boss actually had gotten an interesting one a few weeks ago –
An old business associate (who wouldn’t be caught dead outside the State much less the country) was “vacationing” on a European tour when they were mugged. They needed traveller’s cheques sent to a certain P.O. Box so that they could get a new passport and enough money to get airfare home. Later it was discovered that the associate had gotten her E-mail hacked and the hacker had E-mailed all of the people on this business-person’s E-mail database. Fortunately, it was so out of context for the individual that she had 15 people call her to tell her she’d been hacked – no one was “fleeced” that time.
Kathi followed up with an explanation as to how the scammers work…
Hi Lydia….the scam email from a friend probably originated by someone hacking into their facebook account, then into their email from there.
It happened to one of my friends on facebook….I got the email (coming from his personal email address) about being stranded in London….But I knew what had happened.
Just a few days before, there had been a news story about a lady here locally, in our small town….that had that exact thing happen to her. After a couple friends, who knew she wasn’t out of town, called, they figured out what happened. She made a police report. They went to every Western Union office in the county….Told them to be on the lookout for anybody trying to wire money to this lady. Somebody actually showed up at a WU office, wanting to send money to help his friend out. Fortunately, he was stopped from doing so!
From what I understand, this has been happening with alarming frequency at facebook.
Despite the alarming situation, this is of course a scam. They’re just playing to your emotions to try and rob you.
Will this be as low as they go?
I sincerely doubt it.
4 Responses
Gosh! What will these idiots try next?? It leaves us to worry a lot, when we socialize on the web someone will hack our personal info to rob us….
don’t know what they will try next and if this is the proper place and time but be careful of the mystery shoppers as well. I signed up for one and they sent me overnight a mystery shop to go cash a western union check and then report bacck to them if I had problems with the independent operator was rude while cashing it. I was to keep so much of it as my fee and mail the rest of it to them. Oh, and I could deposit it into my bank account and mail their part to make it easy for me
One of my close friends had this exact thing happen to her out of Las Vegas,NV. Some moron sent the e-mail stating her and her husband went vacationing to Europe last minute and couldnt tell anyone of this surprise. But they were mugged and needed $2500 each to get back home to the states. Now… I knew this was a bunch of horse poop as my friend is a single unmarried woman who doesnt travel unless with the same group of friends she always does and non of them go out of the states. So I got on my computer and sent her e-mail address an e-mail I wrote as that is where it was sent from stating I am a law enforcement officer and am tracking the e-mails from her computer as we speak and immediately following got an e-mail replying ” So Sorry ” then they stopped the messages from her account and we changed all her account information and e-mail information to avoid this problem from reaccuring
A similar thing happened to me. My elderly grandmother got a call from someone claiming that I was in Canada and had gotten a DWI and needed $1361 for bail. They let her talk to “me” for about five seconds before taking the phone back and saying that was all the time I was alloted to have. They told her that it was imperative that she not tell anyone about it and that she send the money now. My grandmother was unsure what to do as I am don’t live near her and don’t call her often. Luckily, her daughter, my aunt, is a lawyer. She called her and my aunt called back the number that had called. She told them that she needed to speak to “me”. They told my aunt that I had already used my one phone call so she couldn’t. She informed them that she was my lawyer and I was her client so she needed to talk to “me” about the charges. They quickly hung up the phone. Then she called me to make sure that I was OK, guessing that it was a scam. Of course, it was and I was fine.
My grandmother was lucky that she has a daughter who is a lawyer and smelled he BS.