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.

" ...

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

"Financial adviser denies killing client.

FINANCIAL adviser accused of stealing an elderly client's cash and then murdering her today insisted he was not a crook.

Peter Crittenden, 64, allegedly seduced spinster Joan Beddeson before fleecing her of 280,000 and killing her when she demanded the cash back.

..."

http://www.thisismoney.com/20040621/nm79631.html

"Bank and building society counter staff are to be issued with guidelines to help them spot rogue traders taking advantage of their customers.

The Trading Standards Institute (TSI) initiative is meant to stop traders forcing consumers to withdraw cash under duress to pay their bills.

...

According to Trading Standards, many complaints relate to traders who cold call offering repairs.

The rogue traders often fail to carry out the promised repair or do so to a poor standard.

To ensure they receive payment rogue traders will force customers to visit their bank or building society to withdraw cash.

In some cases, traders will intimidate their customer by accompanying them to the bank or building society.

Often rogue traders will target pensioners with savings.

..."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3828645.stm

"Web Virus May Be Stealing Financial Data"

http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2004/06/25/ap1433972.html

"Gold coin scam wound up by the DTI"

...

Credit First Bullion Ltd of Upper Grosvenor St, London, ran a telesales operation and secured a number of sales for collectible gold coins. The coins were not sent to the customers, despite the company having sold them for 700% of their market value.

...

The DTI was alerted to Credit First Bullion Ltd's operation after dealing with a previous case involving its director, Andrew Laverty. Mr Laverty was involved in an art investment company, Chappell, Paige, Durant Ltd, which operated from the same address and was wound up on 19 November 2003 by the DTI, in the public interest.

...

"http://www.creditman.biz/uk/members/news-view.asp?newsviewID=3511&id=1&mylocation=News&chksrc=NNow4251

Chap I work with advertised his car for sale in Auto trader he was contacted by a Nigerian who offered to buy the car without haggling and to put a cheque in to his bank account for payment along with additional funds so it could be shipped to his wife abroad plus a little extra for the hassle. Good deal not, apparently the cheques have been fraudulently obtained elsewhere and you are liable to return them and will probably never see your car again

chad, sorry to hear about it. Does this guy smiles and laughs a lot?

"Broker Brewin in 30m 'fraud' claim"

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/business/articles/timid80104?source=

it happens again and again that those up the line do not seek to question why enormous profits are arising from a particular source.

on a general basis may i say that honesty and integrity are,in truth, rare in the financial world.

why do those up the line not seek to question....to my mind each is as responsible as the party creating the wrong-doing. this is an aspect which the regulators hasve never addressed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Allan Langley-Smith, who traded as Hadleys Estate Agents of Queens Road, Brighton, was found to have breached the Estate Agents Act by failing to disclose a personal interest to a client and failing to disclose a personal interest to a prospective buyer

...

The law states that an estate agent "must disclose to his client promptly and in writing that he, himself or any connected person has, or is seeking to acquire, a beneficial interest in the land or in the proceeds of sale of any interest in the land".
"

http://money.guardian.co.uk/property/movinghome/story/0,14438,1257570,00.html

Detection is the main problem. What's the legal definition of 'connected person'? Does it include friends and acquaintances?
IMHO, the law should be changed to say

"an estate agent must disclose to his client within 10 calendar days and in writing of all interests, known to the estate agent, in the purchase or proceeds
of sell of property/land."

some chain letter doing the rounds-can't give all the detail as I deleted it,oops...-using e-mail you have to send 3 to the person on the top of a list of five through (I think)PayPal and forward the e-mail to 40 other people with
some 25000 reading the e-mails.

"A clampdown on a new internet scam involving costly premium-rate lines was announced yesterday after it emerged that close to 60,000 people have complained of being ripped off since the start of this year..."

http://money.guardian.co.uk/scamsandfraud/story/0,13802,1262539,00.html

Why does it take 60,000 victims before action is taken?

Watchdog should act pro-actively.

"Be smart, protect your ID.

... 130,000 identity theft cases will be reported by the end of 2004, compared to 101,000 in 2003.

...
"

http://www.moneyextra.com/news/009050.news.html

Could these be part of the preparation for us to accept biometric ID cards?

CAIRO (AP)--U.N. weapons inspectors will return to Iraq in the coming days following an official invitation from the new government, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Tuesday.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters in Cairo that Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari had formally asked his agency to return.

"The return of U.N. inspectors to Iraq is an urgent necessity; not to search for weapons of mass destruction but to write the final report about the nonexistence of (such) weapons...in Iraq, which will enable the lifting of sanctions," he said.

The inspectors will be sent in the next few days, ElBaradei said.

U.N. inspectors left Iraq just before the war began in March 2003, and the U.S. refused to allow them to return, instead deploying its own teams to search for weapons of mass destruction.

ElBaradei said the coalition forces are not mandated to prove or negate that Iraq had WMD.

"The sole mandated authority is the IAEA and the international inspectors will continue the mission they started before the invasion," he said, adding that its mandate does not end until the final report is submitted. Following that report, sanctions imposed on Iraq can be lifted.


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 20, 2004 12:02 ET (16:02 GMT)

"Friends swindled out of 143,000
Public eye, Mail on Sunday
25 July 2004"

http://www.thisismoney.com/20040725/si80729.html

"Alert over bogus banks
Tony Hetherington, Mail on Sunday
18 April 2004"

http://www.thisismoney.com/20040418/si77050.html

i get each week telephone calls from america inviting me to invest money. a friend of mine sent 150,000 which was invested in shares and lost.

SURELY THE GOVERNMENT COULD SET UP A SCAM LINE SO ALL THOSE INDIVIDUAL COMPLAINTS COULD BE BROUGHT TO-GETHER AND THE EXTENT OF THE SCAMS SEEN...WITH EARLY REMEDIAL ACTION!!!