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.

"CASH MACHINE SCAM GROWING.

...

The scam involves fitting a device to a cash machine which scans the card details as it enters the machine.

Those details can then be used to make a copy card - but the person's pin number is still needed. Police believe the people responsible are looking over the card-users' shoulder to watch them entering their number, or even using tiny secret cameras.

..."

http://www.thisissouthwales.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=104152&command=displayContent&sourceNode=102611&contentPK=9131575

"Roof falls in on buy-to-let scam

Investors who put 100m into social housing rentals face heavy losses as company at centre of scheme goes under.

Well over 1,000 people are nursing heavy losses after being duped by a dodgy property investment company promising "guaranteed" annual returns of 15%, it was revealed this week.

The investors, who included accountants, lawyers and doctors, handed over five- and six-figure sums after being seduced by the company's glossy brochures and slick spiel, which talked about how they could cash in on the buy-to-let boom.

The firm, PPP Ltd (known as Practical Property Portfolios), used adverts in publications such as the Financial Times to wax lyrical about the money that could be made by purchasing cheap properties in the north of England, which the company would refurbish and let out to "social housing" tenants.

...

PPP was based in Gateshead, Tyne & Wear, and used a firm of solicitors called Murray Humphrey, which has offices across the north-east, while its "rental guarantee scheme" was underwritten by an Isle of Man insurance company called Templeton Insurance Ltd.

One of PPP's main directors, John Potts, clearly isn't (or wasn't) short of a bob or two. As well as driving a Bentley and an Aston Martin, he owns the actual red Jaguar MkII used in the TV detective series Inspector Morse.

...

Anyone with inquiries about PPP or its associated companies, which include Napeer (Holdings) Ltd, Napeer Housing Ltd, Bluebell Housing Ltd, Aaron de Vere Ltd and Janspeed Consultancy Ltd, should contact Anthony Supperstone and Charles MacMillan at BDO Stoy Hayward, 1 City Square, Leeds LS1 2DP.
"

http://society.guardian.co.uk/housing/story/0,7890,1163206,00.html

A variation on the missed call is a text message saying you have voicemail with a number to dial to retrieve. I had it twice but was suspicious - O2 told me the number redirects to an overseas premium rate.

kernow, another one that does not sound correct !, as far as I know a number cannot be redirected to another number by a third party without the third party paying. The number may well be premium rate and therfore expensive but I dont think it can redirect to a higher cost number at the users cost. However my info is for non mobiles but I think it applies to mobiles. Do you know what the text message said? and I will check it out.

"Online vigilantes tackle eBay cheats.

"

http://www.thisislondon.com/news/business/articles/timid76071?source=

"Home Office warned of Romania scam."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,1271,-3919567,00.html

Internet phone dialler fraud

Updated: 5 April
Who is affected: All internet users

ntl would like to warn all customers about the risk of inadvertently loading premium rate phone dialler software onto your computer. This software could reconfigure your computer to dial a premium rate number to connect you to the internet, or cause your computer to dial other premium rate numbers without your permission, resulting in large phone bills.

This problem mainly affects dial-up internet customers, but can also affect broadband customers if you leave your phone line plugged into your computer.

Whilst there are legitimate uses for dialler software applications, many are designed to be downloaded and installed without your consent and to connect to premium rate telephone services, sometimes costing as much as 1.50 per minute, without your knowledge.

How to tell if you are affected
You should thoroughly check your phone bill for any 09 premium rate numbers, and check your dialler settings to make sure there are no unrecognised dial-ups set up. These can be found by going into Internet Options on your Control Panel, and clicking on the "Connections" tab or by searching for "Dial-up Networking" in Windows Help.

What should you do?
Installing and configuring a reputable firewall application will protect your PC from unauthorised downloads, and give you an opportunity to block any attempted downloads from unrecognised sources. You can download a free firewall here. You should not download software from the internet unless you are sure of the source.

It is your responsibility to make sure your computer is not used to make these unauthorised premium rate calls, and as an ntl telephone customer, you can bar premium rate phone calls from your line. Other telephone service providers can also offer this service.

If you suspect that you have been the victim of such a fraud, contact ICSTIS, the body that supervises telephone information services such as premium rate services, who can investigate cases of telephone fraud.

If you are an ntl broadband customer and you also have a conventional modem in your PC, we advise you to physically unplug your modem lead from the wall socket.


This may be of some interest to someone from ntl homepage!!!!!

Thanks to Mega...

i feel that bt charging structure is almost equivelent to a scam in that it is so difficult to find out from bt what one can do to obtain better value for money. one needs to know what to do and instruct bt for instance why should i need to phone bt to instruct a change of numbers for familly and friends when bt each quarter can simply introduce the 10 best numbers for me via their computer data.

Just received a letter from Hospital Plan Insurance Services,
44,Baker St. London.
Offers prizes of 100 to 60000. Read on-
"simply complete a non-binding direct debt to claim......"
Unfortunately nothing else in the envelope, so cant give
futher details.
mac

i see another bank scam reported in the press yesterday viz. banks receive money that is not correctly due to them or where the recipient no longer exists to claim the money. guess what? the bank simply sits on the money and eventually counts the money as part of its profits. if i recall correctly the aggregate amount which has been or will be snatched is of the order of 15 billion pounds. a member of parliament is very active in seeking a remedy ..with the aim that these amounts pass to charity.
hopefully more will reach genuine charities compared with the mere 3% which reaches true charities out of lottery payments.

Follow the link below on how to spot the ATM Scam!!!!!!!!

http://www.utexas.edu/admin/utpd/atm.html

"Don't be a victim
Take care of your credit cards

Credit card fraud is more than one kind of crime...

Counterfeit

Most cases involve "skimming" where the genuine information held on the card's magnetic strip is copied electronically onto another card without the owner's knowledge.

"Card Not Present" Fraud

This involves using fraudulently-acquired card details (often from a discarded receipt) to make a purchase over the phone, the internet or by mail order.

Identity Theft

Known in America as "dumpster diving" this relatively new (but increasingly more common) crime is often refered to here as "bin raiding". Offenders can glean enough information from our rubbish to pull off the most elaborate frauds using our personal details.

Cash Machine Fraud

Many cases occur when the cardholder's PIN is kept with their card in a purse or wallet that is stolen.
Be aware of anyone who is crowding you at an ATM. Known as "shoulder surfing", offenders find out your PIN and then steal your card using distraction techniques or pickpocketing.
Offenders also can tamper with the ATM causing your card to stick in the machine. They later retrieve it and use it with your PIN.

The Facts...
Fraudulent use of card details occurs most often through telephone and mail ordering, less so through the Internet.
Estimates suggest that 1 in 5 credit card frauds committed on-line involve betting sites, according to a study by Europay and APACS. Card users "borrow" other people's card details for their stake in a growing industry that sees some 75m wagered every day, with about 300,000 punters placing bets on-line.
Skimming is the most prevalent type of card counterfeiting and criminals are estimated to lift information from as many at 200 cards a day, using them to spend an average 1,600 on each card they copy

How You Can Protect Your Cards
Guard your cards - don't let them out of your sight when making a transaction.
Be careful with your transaction receipts - don't lose them and dispose of them carefully.
Check your receipts against your statement regularly - contact your card issuer immediately if you find a discrepancy.
Never write down your PIN and never disclose it to someone else - even if they claim to be from your card issuer or the police.
Report lost or stolen cards immediately to your card issuer. You will find the appropriate number on the back of your statment and Directory Enquiries hold most telephone numbers.
Sign any new cards immediately and ensure you cut up the old card when the new card becomes valid or is activated.
Don't keep your cards in the same place as your cheque book.Keep your purse and wallet secure about your person. If you use a handbag, make sure your purse is kept in a secure pocket and be aware pickpockets.
Don't leave cards unattended in briefcases, pocket book or jacket. At work, keep your bag and other personal belongings locked in a cupboard or drawer.
When on holiday, use the hotel safe or safe deposit box.
Consider registering with a card protection scheme, particularly if you have a number of cards

..."


http://www.operationscorpion.org.uk/dont_be_a_victim/money/victim_cards.htm

My wife just received an email fraud from someone pretending to be Ebay security. They get your email address from Ebay and then send you a warning against fraud and ask for your personal details e.g. name, address, credit card no., 3 figure security code, expiry date, and PIN number.

Although the email looks authentic with logos etc, the email is fake, not from Ebay and the spelling and grammar errors suggest the email prob comes from abroad or someone foreign.

Just delete the email if you get one.

Marzipan, thanks, what was the sender's email address?

Getting volumes more spam since the b? virus (forgot the name) since a month ago
(late April/early May).

"As spam is to e-mail, spyware is to the web. Can it be stopped?"

http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2737004&subjectID=348909&emailauth=%2527%2528P%25224H%252E%255B%255CRPX%253C%250A

We don't all pay for the Economist...

" ...

The practice is widespread. Spyware that monitors a user's online activities and triggers advertisements in response is present on over 4% of computers, according to one study. The top three spyware firms claim their software is installed on around 100m PCs. Yet most users are unaware it is there. That is because the software is usually installed in a bundle with other programs, such as the peer-to-peer file-trading software with which many internet users swap music. Another kind of spyware automatically installs itself when a user merely visits a particular site, a trick known as drive-by downloading. Having sneaked on to a PC, spyware applications can severely degrade its performance. Mostly, it is very difficult to remove; some programs are even designed to make removal as hard as possible.

The most nefarious forms of spyware steal information such as credit-card numbers or passwords by monitoring every keystroke a user types. This kind of software is already illegal, and is relatively rare. Much more common, however, is advert-triggering software, produced and distributed by software companies operating in a legal grey area, who prefer to call their products adware. There is real money to be made in hijacking screen real-estate and selling it to advertisers.
..."

Thanks...

Gangs of European spammers are moving to Britain to exploit a legal loophole which allows them to bombard email inboxes with impunity, anti-spam experts warned yesterday.
Campaigners have claimed the gangs are moving from countries such as Italy, where they face severe financial penalties or prison, to Britain, where the most they can expect is a 5,000 fine. No spam operator has been fined in the UK and the gangs see the country as a soft touch.

Unsolicited junk mail accounts for more than 70% of all email. Industry experts predict this will increase to 80% by the end of the year and to 90% by next summer.

The anti-spam organisation Spamhaus claims that legislation introduced in December 2003, allowing unsolicited emails to be sent to business addresses but not personal ones, has been seen by spammers as giving them free rein to interpret the law as it suits them and spam anyone they like.

Steve Linford, Spamhaus's founder, said the law was full of "gigantic loopholes" and its punitive measures derisory.

Britain, he warned, was on course to become one of the world's fastest-growing sources of spam and was already 10th in the table of the worst spamming countries.

Mr Linford said at least one major Italian spam gang had moved its operations to Britain because spammers can receive up to three years in prison in Italy simply for sending unsolicited mail. When Spamhaus exposed its practices the gang tried to mount a campaign against it, sending fake emails purporting to have come from the group.

Mr Linford regularly receives death threats from spam gangs because of his campaign. He said: "We get all sorts of threats from the American spammers, from 'We are coming to shoot you' to 'The next package you open will blow you out of the country'."

One death threat said: "You are a dead man. As God is my witness you will die soon horrid violent death [sic]."

British email marketing companies have not resorted to such extreme measures. Instead, they are using the loopholes to threaten Spamhaus with potentially devastating legal action if it continues to name them as spammers and block their mass mails targeted at business addresses.

Spam, according to British legislation, is "unsolicited email sent without the consent of the addressee and without any attempt at targeting recipients who are likely to be interested in its contents". The law bans only the spamming of private email addresses.

The Department of Trade and Industry agreed that business emails should be exempt from the law, a move which means spammers can fill up people's work email with adverts for Viagra, child porn and money laundering scams without their permission. The law, say campaigners, allows spammers to claim their emails are intended to go only to business addresses when they go to all and sundry.

A 5,000 fine faces those who spam private addresses and fail to stop doing so if a complaint is made. But a fine has never been handed down and, according to insiders, is unlikely to be because no extra funds or staff to deal with the problem were put in place at the Office of the Information Commissioner, the government body meant to regulate the information industry.

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Mr Linford said the government's claims that it allowed business addresses to be spammed at the behest of business was nonsense. "This comes as quite a surprise to us because any normal person and any British business who is inundated with spam is fed up with the stuff. More and more UK spammers are starting up because they are seeing that there's no action against spammers," he said. "Spammers know they can come here and spam the whole country with almost total impunity."

It is estimated that many spam companies, particularly those selling Viagra, make weekly profits of around 15,000. Others are simply frauds. A major concern now is the expansion of Russian gangs who offer to attack other businesses computers, sending viruses.

"Russian spam gangs are now a big problem on the internet," said Mr Linford. "These gangs will attack computer networks around the world for you and that is a much more serious form of spamming. American spammers tend to be conmen and fraudsters - and we see them operating in partnership with British spammers - but the Russians are much more hardcore. There is a level of criminality that they employ that is worrying. And our law allows them to come and do it here."

"Fraudsters are taking advantage of the summer months when top executives are away to send fake invoices, according to the Advertising Standards Authority.

The body is warning businesses to beware of unfamiliar bills, especially those from Swiss, Austrian and Czech companies.

"It's not usually a huge amount of money, and so people have paid up," said an ASA spokeswoman.

She said the problem was affecting firms across Europe.

Non-existent subscriptions

"The invoices are sent out. Then [the fraudsters] call companies to remind people to pay," said the spokeswoman.

..."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3826183.stm