BEWARE!! Mail sacm

[ducken]

Thought I would give you guys a heads up on a mail scam that is making it's way around. You recieve a legit looking check with a letter saying you have won. The check it to cover "taxes and fees" then they want you to deposit/cash check and send the fees to them to send you your prize. After a week or so the bank will then figure out it is a worthless check. The check I got was drawn off of Wells Fargo. I called them and they wanted me to send them the check and letter, and told me about the scam.
Here is a link to a local news story.

http://www.wboc.com/Global/story.asp?S=5378904

[mcfd45]

Watch out for those damn sacms!!
J

[FlyingKiwi]

ROTFLMFAO.

"The check is in the mail" :rolleyes:

And the final great lie is..........

[Steamer]

I particularly noted the advice from State Police CPL Oldham to simply "throw it (the check) out." Since it is an attempt to commit fraud, and fraud is still a crime, doncha think it should be turned over to police or at least Postal Inspectors? I know this stuff is rampant, but damn, just throwing evidence away doesn't seem to be a prudent act. The easiest act, maybe, but "somebody" should be trying to prosecute these groups.

[ducken]

The way the guy a wells fargo explained it it is very hard to trace where these guys are from and sence it is an international thing, it makes proscution that much harder.

[FlyingKiwi]

Steve

Regarding Internet Scams.

Tracing them is literally impossible. They hack some dumb @ss business web site, who have naff security( and that is most of them), crack their mail server open, and use it as a relay for the email.

It appears to come from a bogus address, but can only be log tracked through the Internet Service Providors logs back to the business web site.

And most ISP's don't give a damn anyway, try telling the Italian Telecom provider that some scum bag has been trying for three days :eek: to hack your web server, and see what sort of response you get.

And don't get me started on China or the Phillipines, the language gets ugly.

Over 75% of all Internet traffic is SPAM or hacks.

For our secure sites, we have had to invest over $12,000.00 USD on hardware / software and weeks of time tuning to ensure they are above Visa / Mastercard standards.

Regarding Mail Scams.

Come on! someone unkown sends you a gobbing big check in the mail? And you think it is legit?

The postmark on the letter is "Botswanna", what you going to do, open it?

The postmark is somewhere you know no one, are you going to open it.

The surest pieces of advice I can give is this.

If you do not know the person who sent the email, delete it, do NOT open any attachments.

If it appears to be to good to be true, it is.

[Steamer]

Ian-

While I'll concede that it's at best difficult, there have been cases where a "foreign" scam was in fact of domestic origin, and successfully prosecuted by the US Postal Service. The US Postal Inspectors have a very high success rate in prosecuting cases of mail fraud. Since this was a scam using the regular US Mail, I'd still turn it over to inspectors. Once in awhile Lady Luck will smile on you.

As for the internet/e-mail scams, I absolutely agree that you should delete the e-mail as tracing those jamokes is definitely all but impossible, not to mention all the crap that can end up loaded into your computer. This is a completely different genus and species from the regular mail scams. Besides, it's just a good idea to ignore e-mail from people/places you don't know.

[EFD840]

Folks, repeat after me IF IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE IT IS A SCAM

Furthermore:

There is no such thing as getting something for nothing
You don't win contests you didn't enter, so if you haven't been to Spain you haven't won the Spanish lottery
If something's supposed to be free, and they ask for a credit card it ain't free
Banks, Ebay, Paypal, etc don't need to verify your information They already have it
That guy from Nigeria isn't real
That gal from eastern Europe isn't dying to chat with you and probably isn't even a gal


Now, back to the subject of good old-fashioned mail fraud.

There is one thing going on out there you really need to avoid. Some legitimate (using the term very loosely) companies are sending out 'advanced rebate' checks. These checks are for small amounts, usually five to ten dollars, and are completely valid. You can cash them at the bank and they will clear.

Sounds good, right? Well, not so fast. In the fine print, often on the back of the check, it says something like "cashing this check constitutes enrollment in company z's take yo money and give you something you didn't want plan". That $5 just cost you a year or more of $19.99 installment payments which don't have an opt-out until the end of the term. My advice would be shred these, but if you're tempted to cash it by all means READ THE FINE PRINT.

These dudes are in the crosshairs of various state and federal organizations so I don't think they've got much life expectancy left but they're out there and for now, they're legal. Buyer beware.

[NJFFSA16]

Watch out for those damn sacms!!
J

Are you being scarcastic?? :D :D

[CALFFBOU]

Damn- I fall for this sort of thing everytime.

[kd7fds]

Damn- I fall for this sort of thing everytime.

Really Bou? Hmmmm

BTW, can I get your address