Last night I received an email saying that I had won five million dollars in an online lottery. As I was reading it I was laughing my head off because I knew it was a scam. This morning at the library I looked it up on the internet and it was listed as one of the fraudulent internet scams.I reported it to the Consumer Fraud Reporting network. I sure could have used five million dollars and all I would have been out was $1,500.00 for processing fees and security for depositing it to my bank account from a foreign country. Like the saying goes, "If it sounds to good to be true than it probably is." dooley
Dooley, you're just too smart for them! It is a shame that so many gullible people (who mostly cannot afford to lose the "fees" involved) do fall for these scams. Good for you, reporting the fraud. Too many folks would just shrug it off and not report it. You would have hurt yourself with $5 million--think of all those plants you'd buy and have to put in the ground!
With that much money I could just hire someone else to put them in the ground. I could sit and sip tea and give directions. LOL dooley
Dooley, I didn't know that this kind of scam is going on in your country too. Here is very common and it is also very rampant via the cell phone. Even though it is very rampant here, many people including professional had been victims of this kind of scam. Funny enough even though that the scams were reported in the local newspaper sometimes as headlines people are still getting scammed. I guess there are too many greedy people here not forgetting professionals too!!
I never ceases to amaze me the depths that people will sink to extract money from the vulnerable. My current 'favourites' are the ads you see running online telling you can earn hundreds of dollars an hour sitting at your computer performing an unspecified task. Unspecified of course until you pay a non-refundable signup fee. Sometimes it's some sort of task where you visit other sites and post spam comments and spam forum posts (that's how a lot of that activity comes about). And you certainly won't earn hundreds of dollars an hour. Hundreds of cents/pennies at best. You tell 'em Dooley.
For every scam out there, there are gullible people, usually ones that can least afford it, trying to 'hit it big.' Scammers prey on that gullibility. When the scam gets stale, its on to the next one. It's good to hear that stewbies have common sense. Jerry
I was very relieved when I needed to take over my Mom's checkbook a couple of years ago. She would not have fallen for one of the get rich quick schemes but if they were taking money claiming it was for animal protection or children she would have been a prime target.
Well done Dooley! We've got those scams here, too. The most common ones are letters from Nigeria where a prince/big brass military chap/politican is asking for your help in order to get their fortunes out of the country. We're talking quite a few millions, and of course you get to keep 1/10th of it as a thank-you gift. I still can't understand why people bite, since all scams usually get mentioned in the newspapers.
What is interesting about these type of scams is that they often catch out seemingly intelligent professionals like doctors and lawyers. Guess it is like the dog with a bone seeing his reflection and opening his mouth to have the other bone too.
Scams are getting more and more sophisticated. It started with the lottery scams which were usually pretty obvious to spot. Now I'm inundated with emails from banks (rarely the bank I actually bank with however!) telling me there's a problem with my account or something similar. I've never clicked on them but it's pretty clear what details they're going to ask for. There's also the tax rebate ones, which are pretty convincing (some of them have even managed to secure very official looking email addresses), especially if you believe you are due a tax rebate... What everyone must remember is that any email asking you for any sort of personal details is most likely a scam. Your bank/the tax office/anybody else is not going to contact you by email and then ask for your account or banking details. Ever!
