Mail Fraud
Some people always want to believe they can get something for nothing. That sort of wistful idealism/gullibility is part of what produced the subprime mortgage crisis. It's why some of us play the lottery, just because it WOULD be fun to get a million somethings for nothing.
It is a belief that can all too easily be exploited.
Working at a financial institution, I have recently encountered an attempted mail fraud scam in which people are receiving counterfeit cashier's checks with their names handwritten; often these checks are delivered by UPS. Sometimes there is no explanation for the check, but more often than not, they are asked to take the check as payment for online work or to help someone move from Brazil or some other reason, to deposit it and keep a percentage, then wire funds back to a third party.
The catch, of course, is that the check would not be paid, so after the victim has sent off money to a stranger, the deposit would be taken away and they would find themselves out thousands of dollars.
Fortunately, most people are suspicious enough to call to verify that a check is valid, and most banks are alert enough to watch out for fraudulent checks. But as the economy worsens, people are going to get more and more desperate and less and less careful, and it only takes one careless person and one careless bank.
These scams are based on the same principles as phishing emails: someone, somewhere, is going to take the bait, either through distraction or carelessness or greed or desperation.
Phishers are clever. I recently got an email purporting to be from paypal, notifying me of possible fraudulent activity on my account that they wanted to verify. The email was clever, but the address was clearly weird: service@limited.org. I forwarded that to paypal's spoof email address.
It's important to be alert to these issues, and please remind anyone you know who gets one of these offers that you really can't get something for nothing.
It is a belief that can all too easily be exploited.
Working at a financial institution, I have recently encountered an attempted mail fraud scam in which people are receiving counterfeit cashier's checks with their names handwritten; often these checks are delivered by UPS. Sometimes there is no explanation for the check, but more often than not, they are asked to take the check as payment for online work or to help someone move from Brazil or some other reason, to deposit it and keep a percentage, then wire funds back to a third party.
The catch, of course, is that the check would not be paid, so after the victim has sent off money to a stranger, the deposit would be taken away and they would find themselves out thousands of dollars.
Fortunately, most people are suspicious enough to call to verify that a check is valid, and most banks are alert enough to watch out for fraudulent checks. But as the economy worsens, people are going to get more and more desperate and less and less careful, and it only takes one careless person and one careless bank.
These scams are based on the same principles as phishing emails: someone, somewhere, is going to take the bait, either through distraction or carelessness or greed or desperation.
Phishers are clever. I recently got an email purporting to be from paypal, notifying me of possible fraudulent activity on my account that they wanted to verify. The email was clever, but the address was clearly weird: service@limited.org. I forwarded that to paypal's spoof email address.
It's important to be alert to these issues, and please remind anyone you know who gets one of these offers that you really can't get something for nothing.
posted by Devin at 10:07 AM
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