March is Fraud Prevention month.
I have written several articles for this blog about fraud
over the past few years. My goal with
each article is to help people recognize fraud and to help them warn others
about it as well.
Fraud covers a lot of categories; from identity theft to
lying about damage to a home that is for sale, from stealing a credit card to
billing someone for work that was never done.
Two of the most famous types of fraud are the Nigerian Prince
Letter Scam and the International Lottery Scam.
The Nigerian Prince Letter Scam is quite old and is so-named
because the letters originally said they were from a Nigerian Prince who is a
prisoner in his country after a violent government turn over. The Prince has money in another country but cannot
access it. If you would be willing to
send money to a contact that will bribe the guards keeping the Prince under
house arrest, he could sneak out of the country and then reward you with
millions of dollars for the help. The
reality is if you send money they will keep asking for more as long as you are willing
to send it.
The International Lottery Scam involves sending a letter
that congratulates you for winning millions of dollars in an international
lottery. In order to process the
delivery of this money into your account all you have to do is pay for some
minor legal fees with a money order and send the lottery organization your
account information for direct deposit.
Needless to say you won't see the money and they may try to access your
account through fraudulent cheques or withdrawals.
Other articles about fraud and scams that I have written
about are:
Keep safe and always feel free to ask questions of Rocky Credit Union staff about fraud and how to better protect yourself. Jerry
Do people still fall for that stuff? I thought everyone would know about those old e-mails and letters by now. Every e-mail I get with a warning or story I check at snopes.com or truthorfiction.com to make sure if it is real. I wish more did the same so they would stop forwarding the garbage and the scams.
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous, unfortunately there are people who do get scammed by these crooks. The staff here at the credit union has identified several of these scams and have been able to prevent dozens of members from losing money to these criminals, but there are people who send money directly and never see it again. This is why we do these kind of articles, to help people know some of the scams that are our there. Jerry
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