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PLEASE don't let you or your loved ones fall victim to this...

Alright, so you didn't win the lottery, find the long lost relative overseas or locate the dream job working from home. Not quite anyway...

To further warn and educate others after fellow AR blogs like George Tallabas ‘s Beware - Scammers have hit Active Rain !!!!, Steve Mun's Scam Spam , Bryant Tutas's Nigeria has found the Rain!!! and blogs on some of the scams hitting AR folks - I had to see if any of you caught this one.

Oprah had a GREAT and very informative show on some of the hot cons and scams out there and featured some of those who have fallen victim, usually because of greed or the desire to help.

Money

Here are some interesting segments you should read to help educate friends and loved ones.

http://www.oprah.com/money/credit/200704/money_20070413_284_105.jhtml

http://www.oprah.com/money/credit/200704/money_20070413_284_101.jhtml

http://www.oprah.com/money/credit/200704/money_20070413_284_111.jhtml

If you didn't see the show, it really was pretty good and quite accurate. Probably the best part if you don't feel like watching the show or reading the above links, is what you can do to protect yourself. Everyone should read this.... It's stuff even well educated, highly successful people have fallen for. Please don't be one of them!

http://www.oprah.com/money/credit/20070413/credit_sid.jhtml

If this helps even one person, this blog was worthwhile.

All the best,

Beth

Posted by Minnesota Home Staging Firm, Minnesota on 04/14/2007 04:56 AM

Comments (28)

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28 Comments on PLEASE don't let you or your loved ones fall victim to this...

APR

2007

Hi Beth - Thanks for bringing this to our attention. These scams have been going on forever. These days, the internet is the scammers best tool.

If you didn't enter a sweepstakes or lottery, obviously, you didn't win. However, GREED is the motivatition behind people falling for these scams. Also, work at home jobs these days are big scams and a lot of times what you will be doing is ILLEGAL. Also, you will never see a paycheck and the ringleaders behind the fake business will get all your personal information. (social, etc).

Stay away from these scams. No matter how tempting something might seem, don't fall for it. If you get unsolicited e-mail, just delete it. Never give anyone your personal info.

Stay safe!!!!

Hi Beth,

Great article. I truly feel sorry for these people that have fell victim to savage pranksters and scammers.

Best advice here, do not respond or corespond with any communication that you did not start.

I personally know enough unfortunate people in my own church or community that need help, that will be the best place for me to lend a charitable hand. Unfortunately for underpriviledged individuals around the world, these scammers have made it almost impossible for them to have a means to ask for help.

Good article.

I missed most of Oprah's show. I saw the part that featured the Ebay executive and he made some excellent points. Good to see shows like this aired.

I will check them out Beth, the scams these days are ridiculous yet large in number.

Fear and greed... great motivators.

As hard as it is to believe that someone could fall for the "Nigerian" scam a title company manager in N.E. Washington did. Then when she was cleaned out she started dipping into the escrow funds of the title company. After about $300K went bye bye she finally woke up to what she had done. The parent company covered the losses and she is now making license plates.

They are so blatantly false it is hard to believe people are that stupid. An official agency sending out an email over yahoo?? Or a company in Niger sending out an email but their email address is the UK?? Oh well there are fools born every minute.

Excellent post! We can not be too careful in today's world.

Informative post! On the lighter side....I use to respond to them... with a signature file that said

"Greetings, by the time you finished reading this, I've been assured you will be arrested by the authorities. I forwarded an earlier message to the Authorities and I received a reply that your arrest was imminent!"

I 'm sorry folks I just could not resist! I never received a second email from any of them! LOL!

Jim,

I've tried somewhat similar replies to the Nigeria-type scams. Also never heard back, but have often gotten back an "undeliverable" message... apparently the scammers' email addresses last little longer than it takes to send the spam to begin with! Or maybe they were by that time being held awaiting license-plate-making!

You just have to wonder what would make someone believe that a person in Nigeria would really be willing to give you millions of dollars to help them get more millions of dollars. The key thing to remember is if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. It seems like sometimes people want to believe so badly, they do not follow their best judgement.

Some people need to get a life! They are uninformed, and have nothing else to do.

Get a life

Beth, thanks for the heads up.

APR

2007

You can report Pshing incidents here. They are an organisation trying to police these scams.

http://www.castlecops.com/pirt

I must say, I have a community that needs me more than some of these fools! I believe in keeping things locally.

YOu know, it's not only the scams and spam that we have to worry about, but the amount of malicious adware and really really bad viruses seemed to have increased and are way too easy to end up on your computer. Lately, I have had tons of crazy pop-ups, even with my pop-up blocker on - trying to mimic windows, telling me to install the virus update - only I use norton, not windows virus program - so i knew it was fake - well, i cancelled and about 30 pop-ups appeared all at once, all over the page - you try hitting the X's to close the window - but there is a large chance of hitting the install button, which I think is their goal. I now run adaware and spybot every day, my virus scanner every week. It's really quite aggrivating how abusive this junk is!

Brian, as regards the "undeliverable" messages - it may be that someone else has reported the scam to their ISP and their email address has been yanked. I report these, with full headers, not only to the authorities but to the ISP that I can locate with the headers (or of the email address that appears in the body, if there is such) and to the website host of any website that might be contained within the scam. That's to get quicker reaction - this kind of activity is against the Terms of Service of most ISPs and website hosting services and you can shut them down quickly so that fewer people are caught in their web.

APR

2007

Maureen, Joseph, Diane and Theresa - My pleasure...

Jason and Perrin - It is a bit sad isn't it?

Patrick - I agree completely. Sometimes the smartest people don't follow their instints. ALWAYS follow your first instinct. ;)

Jim - Isn't that the truth!!!! Love that your responses to them. Do you also tell the newspaper solicitors that their call isn't funny as you can't read - HA!?!?

Frank - You bet.

Guy - Great info. Thanks for sharing. I also neglected to site my initial response to $##$% blogs awhile ago where I also posted the email address to forward any Nigerian scams to. My good ole cohort's at USSS LOVE getting those - HA! No seriously, they have a task force set up in Nigeria to help combat these scams.

Chris - I wish everyone had their priorities right like you.

Jane - You are soooo right. Isn't it awful?

Tricia - Great info. I didn't even know that. Appreciate you sharing!

All the best,

Beth

Thanks, Beth. There are so many scams running out there, it is getting to the point that we will have to avoid almost everything to prevent being victims.

A new twist to your post. We always talk about emails, yesterday I received a phishing phone call! I mean how stuipid can they get with caller ID giving me the name of the the person and local phone number!

Thanks Beth, for the heads up. I just delete all the emails, it's the calls that bother me. I'm on the do not call list and wonder why that doesn't work (or apply) to these people!

Steven - The sad thing is you may be right!

Jim - Irony ins crazy isn't it? And no one ever said the criminals were bright...

Carole - I agree, but have to admit I haven't gotten any calls. Are you on the NDNC registry?

APR

2007

I am on the list, the calls come anyway. So I politely ask them to take me off their lists---I'm not sure how they get away with it but I just got another this morning.

APR

2007

I just had the PayPal scam email fly into in my inbox the other day. That one was on Oprah as well. It's amazing how good these guys are a reproducing websites like EBay and PayPal...so scary. Thanks for the reminders and links...good info!

APR

2007

I was emailed the nigerian scam through active rain the other day....

I have a brother in law that fell Victim to a scam,, lost thousands of dollars to them.. since then I am always on the look out,, I am thankful I have never fallen victim to any. I don't plan on it either..

APR

2007

Beth,

Thanks for the post. If it is too good to be true............!

A scammer would have to get up pretty early in the morning to get a scam over on me. I can't believe that so many people still buy into all their garbage. I research everything to death!

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