Those scammers scurrying around the Internet must believe I got off the last turnip truck from Podunkadilla.
They are forever trying to give me millions of dollars they say I won in a lottery I didn’t enter or from a dead relative in a mysterious foreign land I’ve never heard of. They send me e-mails pouring out misery and tales of impending death, begging me to take millions of dollars from them and do “good Christian deeds.”
Puh-leeze
Most of these missives wind up in my Yahoo bulk mail file or are trashed early by my Goggle spam blocker. The Internet is awash in this trash.
Sadly, there are some folks, often trusting senior citizens, who want to believe they could be rich by just helping their new e-mail friend who has a windfall to share.
One that really irritated me was designed to play on my religious beliefs. This “woman” claimed to be the widow of a South African embassy worker who had left her $15 million to follow biblical principles and do good works.
She went on to say since none of her family members were Christian she was turning to me following her recent stroke and ongoing battle with cancer. She didn’t want any phone calls: “I’m too ill.”
All I had to do was contact her bank and give them my own bank account numbers, Social Security number and other identification so she could transfer the funds. If I delayed, she’d have to find another Christian to help her.
Hummm. The next missive, I’m sure, would ask me to authorize a wire transfer from my funds to help set up an account at her bank for me so the transfer of the $15 million would go more smoothly.
You can see where all of this is going. With basic information about who I am and where I live, along with my bank account numbers and my bank’s routing numbers, she can access my accounts. My money’s gone. She’s gone.
Even more vicious is the e-mail purported to be a job offer from “Charles Russell, an artist and lover of the outdoors.” He says he was born in London, moved to Canada and back to London and claims he’s won “many prestigious awards” in both countries for his work.
“Americans are constantly seeking my work,” he writes, “and want to pay with a money order that is hard to cash in London.”
He wants to hire someone in America who will receive a 7 percent commission on sales. Here’s the scam: He sends the “money orders” to America for his victim to deposit in an American bank, get the cash, collect the commission and send the rest of the cash back via Western Union to him in London.
I received this e-mail in December, but Mr. Russell had been very busy for several months before he got around to me.
The January AARP Bulletin contains the story of Earl Walls, 65, from West Virginia who lost $6,000 in this specific scam and was arrested Sept. 26 on counterfeiting and check fraud charges.
The bank froze the bank account where his monthly Social Security check was automatically deposited. He had to borrow money to post bail since he had no access to his own funds. For two months he lived off loans from friends.
Walls thought he was working for “acclaimed artist Jack Russell” because he believed the unsolicited e-mail he received, just like the one I got, was a legitimate job offer.
Instead, it was a Nigerian scam using wire transfer fraud. These scams con millions of dollars and personal information from older Americans. And once you’ve wired money to these scammers, it’s gone for good.
There are now high-tech printers that can create checks so realistic they’re hard to for the average person to recognize as fakes. If you unknowingly deposit a fake check and draw money against it, the bank will hold you responsible when the check fails to clear.
Often, trained bank personnel quickly spot such checks. In Walls case, that did not happen. He learned the truth 10 days later when he went back to deposit more of Russell’s checks and was arrested in the bank lobby by police officers.
There are some common-sense rules that should always be in play as long as scammers cruise the Internet.
a) Never wire funds via Western Union or MoneyGram to a stranger.
b) Never give financial information to a stranger.
c) If you sell something on the Internet and are paid with a check that far exceeds the sales price and the buyer asks you to send the rest of the money back with the item … you’re being scammed.
d) Don’t draw against the funds in your account from a check until your bank says the check has cleared.
e) You can report a scammer by calling the Federal Trade Commission’s toll-free hotline at 877-382-4357 or file an online complaint at www.ftc.gov.
f) Report mail fraud to the Postal Inspection Service at 800-372-8347.
A spokesperson for the Washington State Attorney General’s Office says consumers continue to inquire about e-mails from foreign lotteries. You can’t legally play a foreign lottery in the United States. And you can’t win any legitimate lottery if you didn’t purchase a ticket in the first place.
There’s also a scam letter with a Mega Millions logo being mailed with a counterfeit check. It’s a counterfeit draft money-laundering scheme to get personal financial information from unsuspecting players.
If this bogus check is deposited, it will bounce and may be sent back to the fraudulent organization stamped with the victim’s bank routing number and account information. The sender will then use that information to attempt to get money out of the account, the attorney general’s spokesperson said.
My gramma used to say, “If it seems too good to be true, it is.” That’s still darn good advice.
Linda Bryant Smith writes about life as a senior citizen and the issues that concern, annoy and often irritate the heck out of her now that she lives in a world where nothing is ever truly fixed but her income. You can e-mail her at ljbryantsmith@yahoo.com.
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