Penpals Plus - December News Bulletin

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.

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:

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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!

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Please stay safe and alert everybody.

Until next time, take care out there and happy computing!!!

PenPals Plus
http://www.dating-now.com

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Message Added: December 6th, 2006 at 6:11 am