How To Guide

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Julia Abrantes

Julia Abrantes was the victim of a romance scam. She fell in love with a man she met online and was all set to meet him. She went to John F. Kennedy airport to meet him as he was coming from out of town.

She waited six hours for this person, who did not turn up. ‘I was devastated,’ she said. ‘He wound up winning my heart.’ She not only lost her heart to him, but he also relieved her of a lot of money.

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Patrish Giocolo

Patrish Giocolo met a man from California who had traveled to Ghana to build roads or so he said. She was careful, however. ‘I did an Internet search, and sure enough, they were accepting bids in Ghana for building roads.’ So she thought he was legitimate.

A month later, they started chatting on the phone. Soon the requests for money started. She sent him a pair of workboots, then $500, then another $150. Then she was told that he had been in an accident and… Read More

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Karen and Chris

Karen and Chris had gone for a holiday to Prague when they were conned by a Prague taxi driver. ‘On our second night there we negotiated a price of 300 with the taxi driver; he drove us back to our apartment. My partner gave the taxi driver 500 CZK, and he saw very clearly the taxi driver produce a wad of notes put the 500 in with the wad of notes and produce a 50 and stated to my partner, that is what you gave me. My partner said ‘no way we gave you 500 and I just saw what you did’ the driver denied, with that my partner said call the police then because I am not moving out of this taxi until the police arrive.’

The driver walked back and got Chris out the cab and started hitting him. When Karen went to help him, he hit her too. She fell down and had blood flowing from her split lip. She got into a nearby pub and asked for help. When people… Read More

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Lynette Geeham

Lynette Geehan, a teacher in St. John’s in Canada, was a victim of identity theft. A childhood acquaintance who knew her name and date of birth was able to commit crimes using her identity.

Lynette is finding it difficult to check whether her name is not on any lists of people who have been convicted of committed crimes. ‘I went to the RCMP and they did their own investigation and they gave me a letter saying it doesn’t match the name and it doesn’t match the fingerprints associated with the name [of the criminal], but nobody seems to be able to get it off my record,’ she said.

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Joe Salazar

Joe Salazar, 38, of Omaha, Nebraska spent a night in jail after calling the police to report a burglary at his home, and he also spent two weeks in jail – including last Christmas and New Year’s Day – after being pulled over for speeding. He had been the victim of identity theft.

Salazar believes the identity theft occurred after the unknown… Read More

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Theresa Barth

It is entirely possible that when you go to an employment agency to look for work, and they ask for your personal details, you may become a victim of identity theft. Theresa Barth, 32, ran an employment agency at Diversity: Employment Agency, LLC, on William Floyd.

But she was actually running a scam. She stole the identities of several people to create forged cheques and also other scams. She has been arrested and charged with the crime. However, police do not know how many people have been scammed.

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Gloria Carlo

Gloria Carlo, 51, a single mother, kept all her savings with Bank of America. She can barely make ends meet with an income of around $2,000 from her pension and benefits. However, she lost $68,733.77 in the apparent identity-theft scam.

She filed a police report, she filed an affidavit of fraud and tried to talk to the bank, till everything was pushed to the back burner. She had to deal with the deaths of her mother and brother and her own critical… Read More

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Jason Trulex

When Jason Truxel grew up and was denied a mortgage because of bad credit rating, he was surprised. He asked for his credit reports and was even more shocked to discover that there was a lot of debt in his name and also bank account which he had never opened.

One account had been opened when he had been only thirteen. Jason was the child victim of identity theft. But the worst thing was that it was his own father who had stolen his identity and ruined his credit. His father also told him he would not be able prove anything.

However, when credit cards with Jason’ name were found in his house, Jason’s father, Matt, was arrested and convicted of credit card fraud.

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Diamond Dave

Diamond Dave is only 11 years old, but is a victim of identity theft. According to records he owes thousands of dollars in rent, cell phone and cable bills.

Who stole his identity and misused it? It was his own mother, 31 years old who did… Read More

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Bruce Lachot

Bruce Lachot, a dentist, decided to buy a new car and was tempted by a great deal on a new BMW M5.  He spoke to a friend in the FBI who said it would safe to buy a car off the net. He went to Autotrader.com which had many M5s for sale.  He started negotiating with a seller who said he was in Munich, Germany, and bargained the price down to $55,000.

He wired the money to the German seller despite misgivings because it was supposed to be via an escrow account. He put the money into six separate accounts because the seller said he could save taxes. The escrow company confirmed receipt and the seller said he would be shipping the car. When the car did not come within the scheduled time, Lachot asked him and the seller said he had been busy and would be sending the car soon.

Now, Lachot finds himself out $55,000, with no new sedan, and no chance to recover the money, a victim of one of the most… Read More

Mary Thai

Mary Thai was looking for a house for rent in Houston and found one which she liked. It was three bedrooms with an upgraded steel kitchen, close to work. They went with the agent who presumably had the property and signed the deal and the lease agreement.

She gave the agent $1,400 in cash and he gave her a keys. The he said the remote did not work and come back with it. She and her husband did not see him again. The real broker told her that she had been swindled and the house was for sale and not for rent.

The house had been listed on craiglist. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office is investigating Thai’s case.

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Sharon Smith

Sharon Smith was flabbergasted when she discovered her Cleveland home listed as a rental on Craigslist.com, part of an apparent scam. She wanted to sell the house not rent it out.

Her realtor received a call from a woman who responded to the online ad. The woman said she got an e-mail back from a… Read More

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Nancy Timmerman

Nancy Timmerman, after responding to an employment ad in the local paper, received a job offer from a company calling itself Secret Shoppers Inc.

Part of the job, she was told, was to check the effectiveness and efficiency of Wal-Mart’s money gram facility. For this, the company sent her a check for nearly $2,700 drawn on Pioneer Federal Credit Union, Nampa Branch.

She was told to cash the check and then send part of the money using Wal-Mart money grams back to the company. She had heard about such scams operating in the internet world. It took time for her to realize such scams can and were being run in the ‘real’ (read offline) world too.

She took the check to the Nampa Branch of the bank. They told her the check was a fraud.

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Brooke

Brooke actually received a check for $2890 from the same place. ‘I knew it was too good to be true, but I went to a check place to cash it because I knew they would check… Read More

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Jessica

Jessica recounts her experience about getting calls from various people at various times offering her a refund of $500 from her social security. She has been told that since she has always paid her taxes on time, and has no criminal record she is eligible for a refund.

When she asks for the caller’s name the person gives a common name, but speaks ‘with a thick foreign accent’. Jessica got suspicious when everybody asked for her bank account information in order the credit the money directly into her account. She has refused to give out the sensitive information, because she is pretty certain that it is a scam.

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Matt

Matt said he got the 500 dollar SS scam too.  The person called up from 910000000000 and asked for bank info from him but Matt did not give it to him.

‘”He asked ‘Why don’t you want 500 dollars?”  I replied that I didn’t believe that there would be 500 dollars.  He went on from there at which time I let him have… Read More

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Bryan Rutberg

Bryan Rutberg a Microsoft employee in Seattle had a Facebook account and one day his daughter noticed that his status was showing “BRYAN IS IN URGENT NEED OF HELP!!!” She asked her father what was wrong. Shortly after, he found out that his account had been hacked and he kept receiving calls from friends offering to help.

Apparently, many of friends received emails saying that Rutberg had been robbed at gunpoint while traveling in the United Kingdom, and needed money to get home. One even sent $1,200 to a Western Union branch in London. The criminals had stolen his identity, hacked into his account and locked him out of it by changing the password. It took him more than 24 hours to get his account deactivated.

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Mark Neely

Mark Neely in Australia also had his Facebook account hacked with a similar message posted. The message said that he had been mugged at gunpoint in UK and needed money to get back home to Sydney. ‘I immediately attempted to log into Facebook, but… Read More

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Mulvie Wright

Mulvie Wright, a 76-year-old widow from St Agnes, Cornwall, died suddenly from a brain hemorrhage  and it was only after her death that her family found that she had been in contact on a daily basis with 34 bogus ‘psychics’ based in Luxembourg, Switzerland, the US and Ireland and giving them money.

One psychic told her she had done a reading and got ‘the jack of spades card which dominated the deck of your destiny – a symbol of treason and disaster that you must absolutely destroy in order to avert the curse!’

Another fake psychic (’ever present to protect and assist you’), wrote bullying letters claiming that she was missing out on untold fortunes from a lottery win (’Dear Mulvie, Quite honestly I was expecting a reply from you. Even today I was impatiently waiting for the mailman…’). Her family is not sure how much money must have gone to the fake psychics.

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RH

RH, 83, of Guildford, Surrey, received up to 70 letters a day from various scammers including clairvoyants.… Read More

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Suzanne Finch

Suzanne Finch, Chief Communications Officer for the College of Business Administration at San Diego State University (SDSU) noticed an unexplained attempt to charge $2900 to her MasterCard, Her card information had been used to make purchases at Stein Diamonds, an online jewelry store in Los Angeles

Way back in 1985 she had applied for a Sears store credit card in. In 2001, Sears turned over their card accounts to Citibank, which converted them into true MasterCard credit cards — apparently a perfectly legal practice.

Finch’s personal information had also been used to open up another new credit account in her name, but without her consent. Finch filed reports with the police in San Diego and Indianapolis and also called in the FBI. She has been fortunate not to suffer any financial losses because she intimated the card company immediately, but she knows that her identity has been compromised.

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Leigh Grady

Leigh Grady of Massachusetts has been the victim of credit card scams through VistaPrint.com for several years. ‘Though I have been a… Read More

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Roger

Roger, an educated man in his 40s was aware of lottery scams, but still when he received an email saying that he had won the equivalent of thousands of dollars in the British lottery, he fell for it. The email was well written and contained telephone numbers.

When Roger called, the lottery representative said that he would not have to pay any taxes or fees out of his own pocket. He could pay the fees and taxes out of the first installment of his winnings after he received them.

A British cashier’s check for $7,600 soon arrived and he deposited it in his bank account. After a week he mailed a check for $5,500 to cover taxes and fees, as directed. But the check never cleared, and several weeks later, Roger’s bank informed him that the $7,600 cashier’s check had bounced. Now he was out $5,500 of his own money.

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Doris Dixon

Doris Nixon became the victim of another lottery scram. She got a letter saying she’d won the lottery, and all… Read More

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Frances Connors

Frances Connors was surfing the popular social networking website when the ding of an instant message alert sounded. It was from a pal and the online chat started off with innocent chit chat. ‘She tells me she was robbed at gunpoint, her credit cards, phone and cash stolen. She asks if she can ask a favor of me. She needs tickets to get her (and her family) out of there. She needs cash and she’ll pay me back tomorrow.’

Frances thought it was strange and was on the phone with common close friends who did not know that she was supposed to be in London and were unable to reach her. Frances then told the person she was chatting with that she was going to call the police and the person disappeared. Her friend’s account had been hacked. Fortunately nobody sent any money. But her friend faced a lot of problems getting back into her account.

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Natasha Cann

Natasha Cann, 32, who lives in Australia, used her Facebook account for sometime in… Read More

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Michael Wnuck

Michael Wnuk, well over 60, met Lidiia, 38, while traveling in Poland. She said she was a healer who could treat any disease including incurable cancers. ‘Right at the start she told me that she was in love with me, and if I marry her she would cure my cancer. A month later she arrived in Chicago and 11 days later we got married at the Circuit Court in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.’

He later found out that the marriage was a fraud, because she continually kept on ripping him off, bad-mouthing him to his friends and wishing that he was dead. She finally staged an incident and accused him of abuse, when to a battered women’s shelter and got a restraining order from court.

‘Some months later the divorce process, which I originated, was completed at the same court. This time it was with a different judge and the judgment was based on the Marital Settlement Agreement. Lidiia had total of three lawyers helping with her legal affairs, all paid by the state. Now, she is… Read More

Andrew Hearn

Andrew Hearn, of Bognor Regis UK, says that twice money was removed from hi Nationwide account on a single date and he found out by chance when he was checking his account on line.

‘I phoned head office and they were most helpful, turned out it was a group in the Philippines doing this scam. The disturbing thing was that I was told that it could have been in the last 2 months and was most probably a victim of cloning. Also I cannot understand how they cannot trace back to the source with all this electronic tagging.

‘There have been one or two garages near me that had someone install a second device to record transactions and pass on information. Also when you get your receipt, your last 4 digits are blanked out, but the garage operator at the till also has a full record of your card number. At least I get my money back in about 5 days. Security is a joke!’

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Elaine

Elaine who lives in London discovered that around £1200… Read More

Tarik Pierce

Tarik Pierce, a writer, wrote about his experience with a telemarketing fraudster. One day he received a phone call purportedly from the Bank of America, offering him a new line of credit. As he used to get phones from Bank of America off and on, he did not pay much attention, till he started hearing a scratching sound.

He figured out that it was not a genuine call, but let the conversation continue. The telemarketer tried to sell him the good points of having a second line of credit. Before he could ask for other bank information, Tarik informed him that his attempt at gathering information was denied and that was the end of the conversation.

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Gecko Communications Inc.

U.S. Attorney Bradley Schlozman said. “Telemarketers deliberately targeted thousands of credit-challenged persons and promised them that, in exchange for a payment of about $219, they would receive a major credit card. In reality, not a single customer received a credit card; at most, victims only received applications for credit cards. These were low-income and credit-challenged people… Read More

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Crystal Barber

Crystal Barber was scammed by a cashier’s cheque scam just a day before her marriage.

She was using Ebay to sell a wedding dress that didn’t fit because she learned that it would be cheaper to buy a new one than to alter the old one.

She thought she had found a buyer from England but instead of using Pay-Pal, a trusted internet paying system, the buyer insisted on sending her a cashier’s check for $2,350 more than she was asking.

He then asked her to wire the extra cash back to England. The check was a fake but the U.C.B. bank in Lawrenceburg cashed it nonetheless. Now the bank wants their money back, and they want Crystal to reimburse them.

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Sandra

Sandra of Florida though she could be smart and fell into a trap anyway. She says, ‘I was contacted about giving dance lessons from a girl that supposedly works in a club in the UK. She asked me how long would it take for her to learn the dance style… Read More

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Stuart

Stuart runs his own coaching and training business. Once he had his wallet stolen and immediately called up the banks to stop all activity on his cards. However, since he fumbled with some questions, they did not do so. Later he found that the criminals and withdrawn £4,000 from his business account, £300 from his personal (bank account), £14,000 from his Visa card, spent £2,500 to buy a video camera and £1,000 in a clothing shop.

His wife had received a call from somebody saying a cheque had been returned and asked to verify the address. His wife also gave out some security information. It took Stuart four months to get his identity back and he had to take out time from his work for this and deal with the fall-out of the crime.

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Sharon

Sharon remembers that once she had bought an expensive sofa along with a few smaller decorative items at a large furniture/appliance store here in Omaha. The cashier asked for her credit card, her driver’s license, and an additional… Read More

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Steve

Steve, a financially successful Massachusetts man in his 30s, received an email wherein the writer claimed to be a hit man hired to kill Steve. The hit man offered to call off the job if Steve gave him $75,000 — $15,000 more than he said he had been paid for the hit.

This hit man seemed to have done some research on Steve. He knew Steve worked in the financial services industry and that he could afford the $75,000 price.

Steve was given a phone number to call… four days to raise the money… and a warning not to contact the police. But Steve did go to the police, who had seen similar emails and explained to him that this was only a scam and that his life was not in danger.

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Mark O’Neill

Mark O’Neill is a writer and once when he was on his computer doing some work and chatting when he received an instant message, ‘I am hitman. I been paid lot of money to kill you by good… Read More