Reports of frauds, deceptions and scams keep appearing, weekly even daily, on
major news channels and newspapers. Some of these frauds seem just too big and remote to be of immediate, direct relevance to our daily lives. But, we will eventually pay for the consequences and damages, in taxes, costs of goods and services, regulations, copy-cats etc.

I hope we can collect, in one thread, frauds and scams, reported or heard. We must become more aware and more educated to guard against frauds and scams
which impact upon the health, well being, and wealth of ourselves and our families.

Hello,

My name is Edmund Gbadago currently working as a consultant here in the United Kingdom. I found this medium; I work as a consultant for a fabric company in United Kingdom called Interface Fabrics Limited).I will like to know if you can work online from Home/Temporarily and get paid weekly.

***YOUR TASK IS TO CO-ORDINATE PAYMENMTS FROM CUSTOMERS AND HELP US WITH THE PAYMENT PROCESSING***

We will be glad to offer you a job position in our company, Interface Fabrics Limited)/we need someone to work for the company as a Representative in all part of the world. This is in view of our not having an office presently in Countries. You dont need to have an Office and this certainly wont disturb any form of work you have going on at the moment.

BENEFIT IS AS FOLLOWS:-
* The average monthly income is about $2000....
* No form of investments from you....
* This job takes only 1-3 hours per day....
* You do not pay any form of taxes....

REQUIEDMENTS:
* Name..................
* Address...............
* City..................
* State.................
* Postal Code...........
* Phone.................
* Email.................
* Age...................
* Occupation............
* Bank Name.............

If you are interested in being our representative out there please get back to this email with the informations asked above to start receiving payment from our customers and start cashing right away.

Example: Get a Money Order,cashirs Check or a Treasury Bill of $1000 and get 10% off the $1000 which is $100 as your salary immediately.

Reply me as soon as possible if you are interested for more details to this email below and I will be glad to get back to you within 24hr.
Web site: - http://www.interfacefabricsgroup.com/home.html
Product Samples: - http://samples.camirafabrics.com/

Interface Fabrics (Sales and Customer Service)
Hampton Mills,
Mir field,
West Yorkshire,
WF14 8HE
United Kingdom
Phone: +447024099296
Email address:edmund_gbadago@yahoo.com

***Best Regards***
***Edmund Gbadago ***

jeffmack,

Well the address exists, although the company has changed name!

Interesting error on the address though!

Mir Field is actually MIRFIELD

Pair jailed over royal phone taps

The interesting bits ...

Mulcaire had a year's contract with the News of the World for "research and information services" ... and it was ironic that Mulcaire ran a company - Nine Consultancy - that offered a service protecting clients from media intrusion.

Losing a home on costa del scam

"Thousands of new homes have been built in Albox, southern Spain as the market burgeoned in recent years but some owners have discovered their homes were constructed without planning permission."

"One of the developers blamed by residents is Procoal, which the BBC has learned is still advertising in the UK.
However its managing director Juan Franciso Alarcon was less keen on publicity when confronted by BBC reporter Paul Kenyon.
Mr Kenyon and film crew were manhandled and forcibly removed from the company's offices."


Greystone, are you OK where you are in Spain?

Arrests made in VAT fraud probe

"Customs officers have made 10 arrests across England and Wales in a 250m value added tax (VAT) fraud case.

The arrests relate to "carousel fraud", where criminals import high value goods free of VAT, from other countries in the European Union.

..."

axdpc. You seem to have a thing about this "carousel fraud". Let it go.

I was short changed once on the "dodgems" and I know I was peeved for an hour or so but, hey, life goes on.
:-)

Bolshi, sincere thanks for your concern :-) I probably had too many bad experiences...

So you've met my 1st wife as well? Phew!
:-))

Bolshi, LOLLL.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6341129.stm

A scam!

BA to charge 240 for extra bag

British Airways is planning to add up to 240 to the cost of a return long-haul flight if passengers want to check in an extra bag.
Travellers on shorter international trips will face a bill of 120 and those on domestic journeys, 60.

Analysts said the tactic was a way for the airline to cover costs - and possibly to ease its move to Heathrow's Terminal 5 next year.

The whole baggage thing is a scam anyway. I weigh just over 11 stone and my missus is under 9 stone. We get the same baggage allowance as the ultra fat 18 stone beggars queuing next to us. They then have the cheek to charge us if we are a couple of kilo's over the allowance for baggage.
Fume! ;-(

Bolshi, IMHO, air travel costs and chages shouold be itemised in detail. Including separate items for staff cost, baggage handling cost, company profit margins, fuel costs etc. The fuel cost and carbon charges should be directly based upon the total weight of passenger, clothes, baggages, seating, food and drinks to be served ...

On Wake up to Money this morning they were talking about one of the low cost airlines letting you take what you wanted on the outward journey and then making punitive excess charges for the return leg.

TP

Let's have a tax on lard-arses!
:-)

TP,

That is an underhand scam, so is not warning passengers on the luggage limitations BEFORE they buy the tickets :-(

Apparantly BA has advised staff to avoid mentioning the new charges when booking tickets unless the punter specifically ask about BA's luggage policy.

I hope the passengers don't take it out on the check-in staff ...

Frhttp://www.telegraph.co.ukom

Not made in Britain

By Richard Gray and Adam Lusher, Sunday Telegraph
11/02/2007

It is Sunday afternoon. You have studied the food displayed on the supermarket shelves and made your selection. Price has probably been a factor but, for most shoppers, the primary consideration is quality. What we want is what we see on the packaging: a succulent steak, a pie that is puffed up to perfection, a cake that has the same light, springy texture as the one pictured on the wrapper. And, increasingly, we want to know where it came from. The majority of British shoppers prefer - what with the proliferation of diseases spread by edible animals - to buy British. If it claims to be an Aberdeen Angus steak, we'd like to feel reasonably reassured that it has more than just a nodding acquaintance with the breed. If it says Royal Oakham chicken, it would be nice to know that it has spent its life in or around a place called Oakham.

Yet the truth is that very few of us actually know exactly what we are eating and where it comes from. Did that salmon really swim up the River Dee? Were those Jersey Royals really from the soil of the Channel Islands or might they be a much cheaper Irish variety? And that Oakham chicken? Take a closer look at the small print on the packaging and it will reveal that while the product is made in this country, the meat is actually "chicken from farms in the UK and the EU". In fact, Marks & Spencer insists it is made with only British meat, in spite of what the label says. But it certainly isn't from Oakham. "There are several places called Oakham," says the store's spokeswoman. "It is just a name we gave to it. It is not meant to be meat from Oakham."

With suspicions that an outbreak of bird flu at Bernard Matthews's Suffolk farm is linked to an earlier instance of the deadly H5N1 virus among geese in Hungary, warning bells have begun ringing over the origins of the food we eat. The fact that a Hungarian slaughterhouse used by the Matthews company is less than 30 miles from the source of the outbreak in geese, and equally close to the abattoir where 13,000 of the birds were gassed last month, means it is now seen as a possible source of cross-contamination. While the company has repeatedly claimed that there is "no connection" between its Hungarian operation and bird flu in Suffolk, a link appears increasingly likely.

It will come as little surprise to most food producers that Bernard Matthews also appears to have been less than forthcoming about the origins of its meat. It is a practice that is widespread in the industry. The fact is that under current food-labelling rules, companies are allowed an enormous amount of leeway to confuse, at best, or even to mislead consumers. And most take full advantage of it. So woolly is the legislation that meat imported to Britain and then processed here can be labelled as indigenous.

While food producers are not breaking the law, it could be argued that the lengths to which some go to convince us that our shopping baskets are brimming with home-grown and produced goods are unethical and even deceitful. One might think, for example, a Lincolnshire or Cumberland sausage would contain British pork. Similarly with a Scotch egg. But these are perfectly legal descriptions of processed dishes made from imported ingredients.

Shoppers have begun fighting back against this loophole in the regulations. Last month Tony Blair called for clearer food labels to help consumers buy British produce. Within days David Cameron, too, had jumped on the bandwagon, backing a campaign by the Country Land and Business Association to encourage consumers to be more questioning about where the food on their plates comes from.

It is widely believed within the industry that shoppers are starting to do just that, and that many have reached the point at which they will no longer put up with sharp practices. The fall-out will hit producers in the pocket.

The fact is that "food fraud" as it is known, is big business and stretches across a range of key products. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) believes that about 10 per cent of our weekly shopping may be "counterfeit". Many of the everyday goods that we buy - honey, orange juice, ham, butter and coffee - generate serious money for the food cheats. From printing misleading labels to diluting or modifying the food itself, it has become more commonplace than ever for suppliers to dupe consumers.

The FSA carries out spot checks on food and drink to ensure they are both safe to consume and that the customer is getting what was paid for. Using sophisticated specialist equipment, it has identified that only 54 per cent of bags labelled as basmati rice contained the pure product: the remaining 46 per cent had all been diluted with inferior varieties, some by as much as 60 per cent. Last year the FSA beefed up its prosecutions. Two Essex-based companies, Basmati Rice and Surya Rice, were each fined 8,000.

Two months ago, an inspection by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) at one Worcestershire supermarket supplier raised suspicions that battery-farmed eggs were being packaged and labelled as the more expensive free-range option. With such a wide distribution network, these eggs could have found their way on to supermarket shelves all across the country.

As a nation, we are egg lovers. We eat nine billion each year, and just under a third are free-range. But Defra suspects that almost 30 million eggs labelled free range are no such thing. And by the time they reach the consumer it is almost impossible to tell. To tackle this, Defra has developed a highly accurate means of determining the truth. When eggs are first laid, their shells are still relatively soft, and in battery farms new-laid eggs rest on wire racks, leaving tiny marks on the surface. Invisible to the naked eye, these marks can be seen under ultraviolet light. Not, admittedly, an option for busy shoppers but a key weapon for food scientists in the war against fraud.

Lord Haskins, the former chairman of Northern Foods who was appointed rural recovery co-ordinator by Tony Blair after the foot and mouth outbreak six years ago, likens the producers' practices to the cash for honours scandal. "It's like loans to political parties. It isn't illegal but it shouldn't be happening.

"For example, a turkey can spend its entire life in another country and then be processed here and presented as British: that is clearly wrong, even if it isn't against the regulations. And it isn't just with poultry. In the pork industry there has been the problem of supermarkets bringing in legs of pork from Denmark, processing them here, and labelling them British.

"People forget that more than 40 per cent of food here doesn't go through supermarkets and doesn't get labelled at all. It goes into restaurants and God knows where it comes from. The catering industry is notorious for not worrying about its reputation with customers."

The tricks of the trade, it would seem, are legendary. "There are people out there who will buy cutting plants in this country and then bring in chicken from another country and cut it into pieces here," says Charles Bourns, a Gloucestershire poultry farmer and chairman of the National Farmers' Union poultry board. "There are cooked products which come from Thailand. They can't export fresh because they've had H5N1 so it's simply cooked there."

Almost all supermarket chicken ready meals use Thai chicken. For example, your local Morrisons supermarket's Chicken Tikka Masala, priced at 2.99, says "produced in the UK" on its label. Indeed it was, but the chicken comes from Thailand. The sourcing of poultry has long caused consternation and it is an area of particular interest to the FSA. Bulking up a chicken breast with water is, the agency has discovered, an old supplier's trick. One of its recent surveys established that almost half the frozen chicken breasts examined had a meat content of between five and 26 per cent less than appeared on the packaging, and that some chicken breasts contained as much as 43 per cent added water. Scallops and scampi were also found to have worryingly high levels of water, with almost half those examined containing 10 per cent.

Lean mince is another area of concern. The Association of Public Analysts suggest that while 27 per cent of all mince is now labelled "lean" or "extra lean" it is, in fact, just as unhealthy as "standard" mince. Sharp practice is also applied to tuna: there is tuna\u2026 and then there is bonito, a member of the mackerel family. It is significantly cheaper than its chunkier cousin which, given the high EU import levies on some fish, has led some makers of processed tinned tuna to label it as pure tunameat when it is in reality a mix of the two.

Since only 10 per cent of the honey Britons eat is actually produced in this country it was only a matter of time before someone was caught selling counterfeit produce. Two years ago Richard Brodie, a beekeeper in the Scottish borders, was caught passing off Argentine honey as his own. When the spotlight was shone on the industry it revealed that whole batches from India and China were contaminated with chloramphenicol, an antibiotic banned in food production worldwide. Honey from Vietnam, Cyprus, Tanzania, Moldova, Romania, Argentina, Portugal, Spain and Bulgaria was also found to contain traces of the substance.

Potatoes, long a staple in our diet, are another favourite of the food fraudsters. Rogue traders pass off inferior types as King Edwards. When the FSA took some samples from supermarkets they found that 35 per cent had been falsely labelled. Of those, almost a third were Ambo potatoes, the King Edward's arch-rival.

Falsely labelling meat as organic is a well-known trick.

Organic meat generates 200 million of sales every year in Britain and the industry is growing by the second.

In December, Julie's restaurant in west London - one of the capital's most fashionable spots - was found to have been serving standard meat and chicken that its menu declared to be organic. The food fraud had come to light when FSA officers, conducting a routine hygiene inspection, spotted that the restaurant listed dishes of sausages, chicken and lamb as organic. Yet its meat delivery records revealed that, between October 1 and November 1 last year, not a single ounce of organic meat had been ordered. The scam had saved the restaurant 4,200 during the 52 days in question, but Johnny Eckerperigan, its managing partner, was subsequently fined 11,500 and warned that if he appeared before the courts again on similar charges, he could expect a prison sentence.

The result of this case and others is that local authority enforcement officers will soon be given testing kits that can differentiate between organic and non-organic. The kit, devised by the FSA and the Central Science Laboratory, can detect antibiotic drugs that are not allowed in organic meat production.

Convictions such as that of Eckerperigan have been welcomed by many involved in the food industry. Robin Maynard, campaigns director at the Soil Association, which champions organic farming, believes more checks should be made. "The tougher the policing by trading standards and environmental health officers, the better it is for genuine, committed organic outlets and for organic consumers," he says.

Patrick Holden, the association's director, is equally committed to weeding out the fraudsters. "The defining characteristics of 21st-century agriculture are globalisation and the centralisation of distribution systems so that the origins of food have become anonymous," he argues.

"We buy from some place on the planet from someone we will never meet and the product becomes so mixed up that it hasn't really got an identity by the time it reaches us. The artificial imagery and spin of food packaging creates an impression that our food comes from beautiful rolling hills. But this masks the true story. The identity of the producer is obscured behind the branding. People are starting to realise this now and there is a tidal change being expressed in the market place. If companies won't take note of this, they will lose out. This is going to have a long-lasting effect. For millions of people, cheap white meat has replaced red meat as a healthy option. But the truth is that cheap white meat comes with a hidden price tag. As we are now seeing."

The scam and lies of global warming? Interesting article. One bit I didn't realise is that the Southern ice caps are growing!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece

Bolshi,

Well spotted.

I'm one who subscribes to the view that global warming is a lovely gravy train on which to jump to find ways of making money.

On another thread I drew attention to Frederick Forsyth reminding us on Question Time that the Romans grew wine grapes on Hadrian's Wall and of how hot it was in the Middle Ages.

Carbon, CO2 and all the similar worries can be just as easily explained as the result of the earth getting warmer, instead of the more widely publicised view of them being the cause of it getting warmer.

TP