• Hi Everyone,
  
  Because we care about the Online safety of all our
  Members we thought you might like to see the following
  article we from The Daily Astorian Web site at:
  
  www.dailyastorian.com: http://www.dailyastorian.com .
  
  We have no connection with The Daily Astorian,
  but their article is a excellent summary of the most
  common Internet Scams being perpetrated
  at the moment, so we wanted to share it with you.
  
  This is what it said:
  
  
  _________________________________________________________________________
  Thieves find open door through the Internet
  
  HTTP://www.dailyastorian.info/main.asp?SectionID=2&subsectionID=398&articleID=37708&Q=60995.06
  
  Web Posted 11/3/2006 11:39:00 AM
  
  Article :
  
  Beware of the people you meet online - and don't offer to
  cash their checks for them.
  
  The worldwide banking community - including the North Coast
  - is finding the Internet to be a major new source of
  check fraud, and the tactics people are using to lure their
  victims are increasingly devious and effective.
  
  "We've seen a whole lot of individuals that actually
  believe they're making a friend over the Internet," said
  Susie Piaskoski, operations manager at the Bank of Astoria.
  "That person spends up to six months chatting and getting
  personal. Once they get their trust, then they ask that
  person to negotiate (banking) items."
  
  
  Here is one possible scenario: A woman meets a man on a
  dating Web site. His photo shows him to be very attractive,
  and he claims to be a wealthy businessman from the United
  States. After a couple weeks of chatting online,
  she believes him to be her boyfriend. He says he is
  temporarily working on a project in Nigeria, and the banks
  there can't cash this check he just received. If he sends
  it to her, could she cash it and wire him the money?
  
  Of course, when she does so, it can take a week or more
  for the bank to realize the check is counterfeit.
  
  Meanwhile, the woman has sent the cash off to Nigeria.
  When the bank calls her, she finds out she is responsible
  for paying that money back. The scammer has his money,
  and she is left with the damages.
  
  Tom Unger, a spokesman for Wells Fargo Bank, said this
  kind of fraud, commonly called a Nigerian banking scam,
  leaves the customer at fault, often with no way of
  identifying the real culprit. It's not like when someone
  steals your checks, he said.
  
  "If someone steals your personal checks, you don't lose a
  penny because you will have called your bank and your
  account is frozen," said Unger. "With a phony money order
  or cashier's check, when you deposit it, you're responsible
  for those funds. You're telling the bank you're
  guaranteeing the item is valid."
  
  Scams are lurking everywhere online - not just on dating
  or chatting sites. They're on job sites, in banking e-mails
  and on e-Bay. Scammers keep finding new ways of tricking
  people into cashing counterfeit items, and when they do,
  there is little the law can do to repair the damages, which
  often amount to thousands of dollars. The Internet has
  become the most common way for predators to find their prey.
  
  Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis said he
  wasn't surprised people were fooled by a recent Internet
  scam that claimed to be recruiting secret shoppers.
  
  "It was one of the most clever things I've ever seen,"
  he said.
  
  The scheme offers people money to become secret shoppers.
  They are sent what appears to be a cashier's check for
  around $3,000. After the shoppers deposit the check in
  their bank account, they are told to write a check for a
  lesser amount, about $1,200, and send it through a
  money-wiring service.
  
  The check they're sent is, in fact, fraudulent, but it
  looks so good it's almost always initially honored by the
  bank. When the check bounces, weeks later, the bank debits
  the person's account for their $1,200 check and they
  discover the money they sent came out of pocket. If they
  call the police, they are told there is little that can
  be done.
  
  "With the Internet, it's nearly impossible to track these
  guys down," said Marquis. "If somebody did it in Astoria,
  yes, we could prosecute them if we could identify them.
  But these people have anonymous e-mail addresses that are,
  in fact, being filtered through another country. The
  Internet is a wild frontier. It's very difficult to police."
  
  The only way to combat these schemes is for people to be
  very skeptical, he said.
  
  Piaskoski said her bank has seen a couple cases of what
  she calls "advance fee schemes," another way fraudsters
  use the lag time between when a check is deposited and
  when it is identified as a fake to trick people out of
  thousands of dollars. A Canadian lottery scam has fooled
  a lot of people, she said.
  
  "They say you've won the lottery, and they say, 'We know
  you didn't enter the lottery. We randomly chose names,
  and you were chosen,'" she explained. "Then they say,
  'You have to pay taxes on that money. We'll give you an
  advance of your lottery winnings. You wire us $3,000,
  and then we'll send you your lottery winning.'"
  
  What they send looks like a cashier's check but it's
  counterfeit, and the bank customer loses whatever he or
  she pays out to cover the supposed taxes. The lottery
  "winnings" never arrive.
  
  Other people are looking for jobs over the Internet, said
  Piaskoski, and a company offers to "hire" them to negotiate
  checks for businesses overseas. They are promised a
  percentage of the money in the check in exchange for
  cashing it, but when the check turns up counterfeit they
  end up losing all the money they wired.
  
  Banks have been running ads, sending out fliers inside
  their customers' statements and posting information in
  their lobbies to warn people. But there are always new
  tricks.
  
  "Every time we think we know what's going on a new scam
  comes about," said Piaskoski. "Some of the fraudsters
  are writing letters telling people it is very important
  to keep their story confidential because their taxes would
  be raised if anyone found out. It's no longer even good
  enough for us to ask our clients questions about it.
  They've been told by the bad guys on the other side not
  to tell the truth."
  
  Marquis said he himself was nearly victimized by an
  Internet phishing scam recently. Phishing is when a scammer
  will send out a phony e-mail from a national bank, hoping
  the recipient will have an account there. The e-mails tell
  customers they need to update their bank account
  information. The e-mail takes them to a replica of the
  real bank Web site. When the customer puts their
  information onto the page, the scammers have everything
  they need to hijack the bank account.
  
  "The site looks almost exactly like the real bank site,
  but what you need to do is look at the URL, the Internet
  address," said Marquis. "This one had the bank name but
  it also had the words juniordesign.ro at the end. RO is
  the country code for Romania."
  
  A lot of Internet scams originate in Eastern Europe,
  he said, in Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Russia.
  
  "Be really leery," he said. "If anyone is trying to give
  you money, be suspicious. No bank will write you out of
  the blue saying we need information like your Social
  Security number or your account number."
  
  Unger said phishing is a big problem at Wells Fargo Bank
  because the company is so large and it has so many
  customers that could be targeted by a mass e-mail.
  He said Internet sales are another source of scams.
  
  "Don't do business with sellers you can't identify,"
  he warned. "Make sure you get paid before you ship anything."
  
  
  Thanks for visiting www.dailyastorian.com: http://www.dailyastorian.com !
  
  _________________________________________________________________________
  
  
  Please stay safe and alert everybody.
  
  Until next time, take care out there and happy computing!!!
  
  
  PenPals Plus
  http://www.dating-now.com

  December 6th, 2006 at 6:11 am

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