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  • Geebo 9:00 am on November 21, 2022 Permalink | Reply
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    The red flags of a rental scam 

    The red flags of a rental scam

    By Greg Collier

    Ever since real estate listings have been available online, there have been real estate scammers. Typically, these scammers pose as landlords who are renting a house. The listings the scammers post are almost always copied from a legitimate real estate listing. A few details such as the rental cost and contact information will be changed. Depending on how far the scammers want to take it, the rental scam could end up costing victims anywhere from a small security deposit, to that plus first and last month’s rent. The scam can also leave victims homeless, as many have moved into homes that weren’t legally rented to them.

    That almost happened to a family from Wichita, Kansas, recently. They found a home for rent that was listed on both Zillow and Facebook Marketplace. The first red flag they encountered was the property was listed for a higher rent price on Zillow than it was on Marketplace. They contacted the seller from Marketplace, hoping they could get a deal.

    The family was asked to pay a $60 application fee to the Marketplace seller through Cash App. They started getting suspicious, but the Marketplace seller assured them this was being done for security reasons.

    After paying the $60, they received an application that was just copied and pasted into an email. The application was lacking important questions that most landlords would need to know. When the family returned the application, the Marketplace seller started hounding them for a $200 security deposit for a property the family hadn’t even seen yet. It was at this point, the family called police, who told them they were being scammed.

    While this incident isn’t a comprehensive detailing of all red flags in a rental scam, it does have the major ones. If you find a rental listing that has two different rental prices, the one with the lower price is more than likely the scam listing. Never make payments to supposed landlords or rental agents using apps like Cash App, Zelle, or Venmo. It’s easy for scammers to take your money and disappear through these apps. Lastly, if a seller is trying to pressure you into making a security payment without seeing the home, there’s a good chance they’re a scammer.

    Moving into a new home is always a big life decision. It should be researched like any other big life moment. Always do a Google search on the home’s address. This could help reveal duplicate listings. If in doubt about who is actually renting the home, check with the county tax assessor’s office or website. The information is free and public and will help you avoid any potential scammers.

     

  • Geebo 9:00 am on November 18, 2022 Permalink | Reply
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    What is the Instagram hostage scam? 

    What is the Instagram hostage scam?

    By Greg Collier

    If you’re a regular reader of our blog, when you hear the words ‘hostage scam’ you may think it has something to do with the virtual kidnapping scam. Or since Instagram is involved, you might think it has something to do with your Instagram account being held hostage by scammers for money. However, it’s really an investment scam that forces its victims to help perpetuate the scam.

    While scrolling through Instagram, you may have come across posts of people claiming they’ve made a lot of money investing in cryptocurrency. If you have, you may have seen a victim from one of these scams. The scam usually starts when an Instagram user sees one of their friends make a post like this. The victim is directed to another Instagram user who can help them have the same financial success in investing.

    In one instance, a woman from Indiana was told by a so-called cryptocurrency expert, if she invested $500, she could multiply that investment. She sent the man $500 and later was told her investment ballooned to $5000. When she tried to get her money, the story took an ominous turn.

    The victim was told that if she wanted her money, she would first need to make a video where she has to say she made money through this investment scheme. This is where the hostage aspect of the scam comes in. Her money was being held hostage until she made the video. She did make such a video, but never received any money and was out her $500. But the story doesn’t end there.

    The video she made was shared by the scammers all over social media. This allowed the scammers to make their scheme appear legitimate, and they were able to lure in more victims. This led to the woman being harassed by other victims of the scam, thinking she was the scammer.

    Social media is not really a place where you should be taking investment advice. Considering how much misinformation is already shared on social media without verification, would you really trust investment plans from there?

    Unless you are already savvy about the ins and outs of cryptocurrency, it really should be avoided as an investment, as a recent crypto crash demonstrates. And as always, no investment is ever guaranteed a return. You should only ever invest money that you can afford to live without. There are no magical get-rich-quick investments.

     

  • Geebo 9:00 am on November 17, 2022 Permalink | Reply
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    Postal delivery scam back in time for holidays 

    By Greg Collier

    The delivery scam really never went away. It was insanely popular with scammers during the pandemic, when we were supposed to be sheltering at home. Since then, there have been reports of this scam, but nowhere near as many as during the pandemic. However, with the holiday season on the horizon, this scam has started to pick up steam again.

    Since many of us will be expecting packages delivered to our homes for the holidays, scammers are betting on people being paranoid about the delivery itself. Several regions across the US are reporting an increase in scam text messages that claim to be from the United States Postal Service. These messages say you missed a delivery to your home, or it will say that the package address wasn’t clear enough.

    The message contains a link to click on, so you can supposedly reschedule the delivery. In previous instances of this scam, if you click the link, you’d be taken to a website that looks like the USPS website but isn’t. You’d then be asked to enter your financial information because there is a redelivery fee of $3.00. From here, the scammers would use your financial information to steal as much as they can from you before you notice.

    If you receive a text message like this, think about it for a moment. Did you give the post office your phone number? You probably didn’t and there’s no way for them to find it. The days of the White Pages are over. In general, government services are not in the habit of calling or texting their users. In the majority of cases, if there’s a problem with the service, you need to go to them.

    The best way to protect yourself from this scam is to not click on any links in text messages from people you don’t know personally. You can also sign up for the USPS Informed Delivery service, so you can know exactly when a delivery is expected to be delivered to your home.

     

  • Geebo 9:00 am on November 16, 2022 Permalink | Reply
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    Power company CEO almost falls for shut-off scam 

    Power company CEO almost falls for shut-off scam

    By Greg Collier

    The holiday season is probably one of the worst times to be preyed upon by shut-off scammers. Not only is most of the country starting to experience much colder weather, but many of us have a lot on our minds. These are two situations shut-off scammers are hoping to find their victims in.

    In case you’re not familiar with the shut-off scam, this is when scammers call you posing as your local power company. The scammers will say that you’re behind in your bills, and your power will be shut off in 15 minutes. They’re hoping you’ll panic and make a payment to them, usually through some untraceable means like gift cards or cryptocurrency.

    Recently, in San Diego, shut-off scammers unknowingly called the CEO of the local gas and electric company. Posing as representatives of the CEO’s company, they told the CEO there was an issue with his bill, and that his service was in danger of being terminated. The CEO told the phony customer service rep his bill is normally deducted from his bank account.

    According to the CEO, the scammers were ready for that response. They told him this was a problem they were running into and plenty of other customers were saying the same thing. The scammer may have tipped their hand when they told the CEO they could go into his bank account and help him correct the situation. The CEO hung up on the caller and called the actual customer service department of his company, who told him it was a scam. He was even taken aback over how much information the scammers had about not only him, but other members of his family as well.

    We often say that anybody can fall for a scam, regardless of socioeconomic status or education level. Here we had a successful CEO who almost got taken by scammers posing as his own employees.

    But getting back to the scam itself, utility companies don’t threaten customers with termination of service by only giving them a 15-minute warning. If, for some reason, you were to be behind in your account, you would receive a written warning in the mail notifying you of the termination date. Typically, the utilities will give you enough time to try to make some kind of payment arrangement.

    If you receive a call like this that threatens to turn off your service, hang up and call the number to the utility company listed on your bill. This will allow you to not only check the status of your account, but will also warn them about the scam.

     

  • Geebo 9:00 am on November 15, 2022 Permalink | Reply
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    Missing teen scam hijacks social media 

    By Greg Collier

    Nothing gets shared on social media faster than the report of a missing child. Posts like that elicit such a visceral reaction in us that we’ll share the post without verifying it. This is precisely what scammers are hoping for when they post phony reports of missing children on social media. As we tend to point out, scammers will use any type of tragedy, real or imagined, to fleece their victims.

    In Wyoming, it’s been reported that scammers are posting the picture of a teenage boy who allegedly went missing after not returning home from school. The name of the boy changes, but the pictures largely stay the same. These posts are being posted by several different people, with some of them claiming to be the boy’s mother. The scammers are said to have been making these posts in community and neighborhood groups, and pages dedicated to other missing children.

    So, you’re probably wondering what the scammers can possibly gain by creating a fictitious missing child. The missing child post is just an avenue to get the post shared as widely as possible. Once the original post is shared enough times, the scammers will change the post to whatever their latest scam is. In the Wyoming case, the posts were changed to posts for a banking scam.

    So, of course, we always want to help when a child has been reported missing, and we still can. But before you share that post, you might want to make sure it’s from a credible source. For example, if the post comes from a local news station, a police station, or an established organization like The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), it’s probably a legitimate post.

    You may also want to check the age of the post. If you share a post that is years old and the child has been found, repeated posts could make things more difficult not only for police but the child’s family as well.

    Lastly, you could be sharing a false post that is designed to hurt someone.

     

  • Geebo 9:00 am on November 14, 2022 Permalink | Reply
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    Work from home scammers have thought of everything 

    By Greg Collier

    We never like to give scammers any credit, but sometimes they’re pretty clever and their scams ingenious. A profitable scam requires a massive investment of time and has to be planned out meticulously. Plans have to be made for almost any situation, in case something with the scam goes off-script somewhere along the way. That’s part of what makes scams so frustrating. Scammers could probably be successful in legitimate fields if they put their minds to it. Instead, we get stories like this where victims lose thousands of dollars.

    A woman from the Kansas City area recently graduated from college. Since she didn’t own a vehicle, she wanted to find a job where she could work from home. She accepted a job offer that she thought was a legitimate company. What was actually going in is that the scammers were posing as this company. She even did her due diligence by researching the company.

    The problems started, as most work from home scams do, when she received a check from her phony employer. They asked her to deposit the check into her bank account, then use Zelle to send money to an office supply company for her work equipment. Surprisingly, Zelle blocked the transaction.

    The scammers didn’t even hesitate. They then instructed her to go to a local Bitcoin ATM to send $4500 to the office supply company, which she did.

    As you might expect, the check turned out to be a fake, and now the woman is responsible for the $5000 check she deposited into her account.

    No matter how legitimate the company may seem, no real employer is going to ask you to deposit a check into your bank account and then have you use it for business expenses. Real companies just don’t work that way. They also won’t have you pay vendors using apps like Zelle, nor Bitcoin ATMs. Real employers have vendors that they’ll pay themselves to furnish any equipment that may be needed for a legitimate work from home job.

    Anyone who says otherwise is just trying to rip you off.

     

  • Geebo 9:00 am on November 11, 2022 Permalink | Reply
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    Child kidnapping scam spreads across country 

    Child kidnapping scam spreads across country

    By Greg Collier

    Last month, we discussed a scam that was targeting the families of public school children in the city of Boston. In this scam, the scammers would call the parents of school children and tell the parents that their child had been kidnapped. The children were even referred to by name in these phone calls, making the scam seem legitimate as possible.

    This is known as the virtual kidnapping scam. The reason it’s called virtual is that the scammers really haven’t kidnapped anybody. They’re just hoping they can convince their target that the kidnapping is real. Previously, scammers have claimed to have kidnapped parents, spouses, or adult children, but now they’ve branched out into claiming to have kidnapped school kids.

    What started out recently in Boston, has started to spread to other parts of the country. For example, a mother from Rhode Island received a call saying that her son had been abducted from a local drug store. She was told that her son had been taken by drug dealers from the store’s parking lot. Ransom was demanded from the women for the safe return of her child. Thankfully, local police were able to find her son was still at school, unaware of anything that had happened.

    Granted, Rhode Island isn’t that far from Boston, so some may think that the scam is localized. However, there have now been reports of the scam taking place in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Not exactly the Boston suburbs. In the case of Santa Fe, the scammers are particularly targeting the parents of children who attend Catholic schools in the area. As in the Boston scams, the actual names of the school children are being used in the scam.

    The thought of their child being abducted is the greatest fear of most parents. A phone call like this could put them in a state of panic they’ve never known before, so it’s easy to understand why they would think the kidnapping was real.

    The best way for parents to protect themselves from this scam is to know about the scam in the first place, so they know how to react if it happens. If you get a call like this, the first thing you should do is to try to contact the police on another line. You may want to also consider discussing this scam with your children and establishing a code word that only you and your children would know.

    It’s believed that the scammers get information about the children from public posts on social media. While we’re all proud of our children and want to share their accomplishments, you may want to limit social media activity about your kids to close friends and family, and make sure the posts can’t be reshared. And as always, consider having a discussion with your children about what information is and isn’t ok to share on social media.

     

  • Geebo 9:00 am on November 10, 2022 Permalink | Reply
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    Don’t get scammed shopping for the must-have toys 

    Don't get scammed shopping for the must-have toys

    By Greg Collier

    We didn’t want to start talking about Christmas shopping yet, either. But if you want to get one of the must-have toys of the season for your kids or your grandkids, you probably want to get a jump on things now. Plus, it’s better to be aware of how the scams work now before it’s too late into the holiday season.

    Scammers love to take advantage of items that are in high demand. If they’re not scalping the item for an exorbitant mark-up, they’re selling knock-offs, or not selling anything at all.

    When items are in high demand, scammers will set up websites that look like they’re a legitimate marketplace where you can buy these items. They’ll often advertise the items at below-market value to entice customers to their website, typically on social media. Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest is where you’ll usually find these ads.

    If you go to one of these websites thinking you’re getting a deal on these toys, you’ll be mistaken. What typically happens is either the scammers will send you a cheap imitation of the toy you’re looking for, or they’ll take your money and disappear.

    There are ways to protect yourself from these Grinches. Try to stick to reputable and known retailers. If you think you’ve found a deal from an unknown retailer, do a Google search on the name of the retailer along with the words ‘scam’, ‘complaints’, and ‘reviews’. This should give you a good indication if the retailer is legitimate.

    You should also do a whois search on the retailer’s domain name. This should let you know when the website was created and where it’s located. You’ll probably want to avoid any retailers from overseas.

    Even if you’re using a reputable retailer’s website, be on the lookout for third-party sellers. On the item’s listing, it should tell you who the item is being sold by. Again, do a Google search on the company to check for complaints.

    Lastly, always use a credit card when buying online if you can. Credit cards offer more protection than other forms of payment that can be used online, and it will be easier to dispute a transaction if you’ve been scammed.

     

  • Geebo 9:00 am on November 9, 2022 Permalink | Reply
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    Coffee table on Craigslist leads to con artist 

    Coffee table on Craigslist leads to con artist

    By Greg Collier

    One of the oldest scams when it comes to selling items online is the overpayment scam. Traditionally, a victim would advertise an item for sale on a platform like Craigslist. They would be approached by a prospective buyer who wanted to pay by check. When the seller received the check, it would be more than the amount they asked for. The buyer would say they made a mistake and would ask the seller to deposit the check and return the overage.

    This is also a version of the fake check scam. The check is always fake, and after the seller deposits it and sends money back to the buyer, the bank finds out the check is fraudulent. This leaves the seller on the hook to their bank for the full amount of the phony check.

    Since those times, many online sellers caught on to the fake check scam. That didn’t mean that the overpayment scam went away. It’s still around, but now has a more digital aspect to it.

    For example, a woman in Pennsylvania listed a coffee table for sale on Craigslist. The table was listed for $300. A man who claimed he wanted to buy the table sent a cashier’s check for $1550. She was told to deposit the check and keep $300 for herself and give the remaining $1250 to the movers when they come to pick it up.

    Just as an aside, there’s a similar scam where the ‘movers’ are in on the scam and just take the money. However, today’s scam does something different.

    After a few days, the buyer said that the movers couldn’t make it, and he changed his mind about buying the table. The buyer then asked for $1450 back from the seller, and wanted it sent to him through Zelle, which the seller did. The same day the seller sent the buyer the money, the seller’s bank discovered the check was a fake.

    For once, police were able to track down and arrest the scammer, although that’s the exception and not the rule. There was no report whether the seller got her money back or not. Since she used Zelle, there’s a good chance she didn’t, even with the scammer being arrested.

    If you sell items online, some of the old rules are still true. The first one is not to accept checks. Or, at least tell the buyer that there will be a delay in shipping until the check is verified as genuine. If you receive payment for more than the amount you’re asking for, it’s a scam. The buyer didn’t make a mistake, and there are no movers.

    While it may be convenient to accept payments through platforms like Zelle, Venmo and Cash App, they can also be manipulated.

    Your best bet is to only sell locally and only take cash.

    Lastly, we always recommend meeting the other person at a local police department. Many police departments now have areas designed for such exchanges. While it won’t guarantee you won’t be scammed, it goes a long way as a deterrent to scammers.

     

  • Geebo 9:00 am on November 8, 2022 Permalink | Reply
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    Online-only banks vulnerable to familiar scam 

    Online banks vulnerable to familiar scam

    By Greg Collier

    Online-only banks can be a boon to many. They give those who are underserved by traditional banks a place to safely keep their money. They can be a great tool for those in lower-income households, or those in rural areas who don’t live close enough to a traditional bank. Unfortunately, these banks and more importantly their customers, are still vulnerable to a scam that’s been mostly affecting traditional bank customers.

    Chime is an online-only bank that many people use. They offer lower fees than traditional banks, and customers’ money is still insured by the FDIC. Recently, a Chime customer received a phone call from someone claiming to be a Chime representative. They told her that there was possible fraudulent activity on her account. She was then given instructions on how to protect her money from being stolen from her account. In actuality, the representative was a scammer who was directing her money to a scammer’s account. The scammer ended up taking $1400 of the customer’s money, her entire paycheck.

    If this sounds a lot like the Zelle scam, you’d be correct in thinking so. While Chime does not use Zelle, it does have its own platform for sending money to friends and family. This can be exploited in the same way that Zelle has been in the past year or so.

    In this instance, Chime seems to act more like a traditional bank, as they refused to refund the victim her money. Many of the banks that use Zelle have refused refunds to victims, stating that since the victim initiated the transaction, even under false pretenses, they’re not eligible for refunds.

    Whether the bank is traditional or not, if someone calls you and tells you that you need to move your money to another account to protect it, they’re scamming you. If you receive one of these calls, hang up and call your bank at their customer service number listed on their website, or your debit card.

     

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