Scammers are very organised and tactical people and more often than not it is not the stories they fill you with that makes you fall into their trap it is their persistence. Once they hone in on a victime they stick like a leech and try every means possible to steal from you.
How they do this? This is what i plan to tell you, lets take a look into the scammers network.
Most scam artists work in teams numbering from 5 to 10. This team of scammers are usually working on 10 to 20 victims at once (could you, maybe, be one of them?). They have a hierarchy which begins with the lowest level , a YAHOO BOY/S. This yahoo boy sends out thousands of thousand of messages, winks, hugs, etc to unsuspecting victims. They steal pictures of beautiful girls or handsome men online and use it as their profile, then they wait for replies. When the replies come, they follow a script on how to reply to these victims, then they transfer 'the work' to someone more experienced in the team and more capable of carrying on their trickery with more skill. This skilled scammer gets you to trust him/her, love him/her and then comes up with a well made sob story to take your money.
It is just like sales, the yahoo boys do the cold calling. They hit up anyone and everyone they can and do not discriminate between old or young, male or female, rich or poor, Christian or not. It is simply a game of numbers. Once they get someone interested, that lead gets transferred to someone with better "closing skills". It's like having a manager take over to close the deal.
Just make sure they do not close the deal on you. Fall in love but be careful when doing it over the internet. There are people that will use that love to rob you blind, people pretending to be other people, people that would rod you of your love and make you feel dejected. Be careful and really know who it is you are communicating with. Read the other topics on my blog to know the signs of scammers and learn how to avoid and protect your heart.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
KEEP SENIOR CITIZENS INFORMED
This excerpt was culled from www.katu.com, and was written by Anna Song of Katu News.
SWEET HOME, Ore. – Janella Spears doesn’t think she’s a sucker or an easy mark.
Besides her work as a registered nurse, Spears – no relation to the well-known pop star – also teaches CPR and is a reverend who has married many couples. She also communicates with lightning-fast
sign language with her hearing-impaired husband.
So how did this otherwise lucid, intelligent woman end up sending nearly half a million dollars to a bunch of con artists running what has to be one of the best-known Internet scams in the world?
Spears fell victim to the "Nigerian scam," which is familiar to almost anyone who has ever had an e-mail account.
The e-mail pitch is familiar to most people by now: a long-lost relative or desperate government official in a war-torn country needs to shuffle some funds around, say $10 million or $20 million, and if you could just help them out for a bit, you get to keep 10 (or 20 or 30) percent for your trouble.
All you need to do is send X-amount of dollars to pay some fees and all that cash will suddenly land in your checking account, putting you on Easy Street. By the way, please send the funds though an untraceable wire service.
By this time, not many people will fall for such an outrageous pitch, and the scam is very well-known. But it persists, and for a reason: every now and then, it works.
For Spears, it started, as it almost always does, with an e-mail. It promised $20 million and in this case, the money was supposedly left behind by her grandfather (J.B. Spears), with whom the family had lost contact over the years.
"So that's what got me to believe it," she said.
Spears didn't know how the sender knew J.B. Spears' name and her relation to him, but her curiosity was piqued.
It turned out to be a lot of money up front, but it started with just $100.
The scammers ran Spears through the whole program. They said President Bush and FBI Director "Robert Muller" (their spelling) were in on the deal and needed her help.
They sent official-looking documents and certificates from the Bank of Nigeria and even from the United Nations. Her payment was "guaranteed."
Then the amount she would get jumped up to $26.6 million – if she would just send $8,300. Spears sent the money.
More promises and teases of multi-millions followed, with each one dependent on her sending yet more money. Most of the missives were rife with misspellings.
When Spears began to doubt the scam, she got letters from the President of Nigeria, FBI Director Mueller, and President Bush. Terrorists could get the money if she did not help, Bush’s letter said. Spears continued to send funds. All the letters were fake, of course.
She wiped out her husband’s retirement account, mortgaged the house and took a lien out on the family car. Both were already paid for.
For more than two years, Spears sent tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everyone she knew, including law enforcement officials, her family and bank officials, told her to stop, that it was all a scam. She persisted.
Spears said she kept sending money because the scammers kept telling her that the next payment would be the last one, that the big money was inbound. Spears said she became obsessed with getting paid.
An undercover investigator who worked on the case said greed helped blind Spears to the reality of the situation, which he called the worst example of the scam he’s ever seen.
He also said he has seen people become obsessed with the scam before. They are so desperate to recoup their losses with the big payout, they descend into a vicious cycle of sending money in hopes the false promises will turn out to be real.
Now, Spears has gone public with her story as a warning to others not to fall victim.
She hopes her story will warn others to listen to reason and avoid going down the dark tunnel of obsession that ended up costing her so much.
Spears said it would take her at least three to four years to dig out of the debt she ran up in pursuit of the non-existent pot of Nigerian gold.
This is just one case from the million of cases of scams around the world. The elderly continue to be victims of these type of scams. We must try to educate our parents, grand parents or any elderly relatives we have so that we protect them from these painful experiences.
SWEET HOME, Ore. – Janella Spears doesn’t think she’s a sucker or an easy mark.
Besides her work as a registered nurse, Spears – no relation to the well-known pop star – also teaches CPR and is a reverend who has married many couples. She also communicates with lightning-fast
sign language with her hearing-impaired husband.So how did this otherwise lucid, intelligent woman end up sending nearly half a million dollars to a bunch of con artists running what has to be one of the best-known Internet scams in the world?
Spears fell victim to the "Nigerian scam," which is familiar to almost anyone who has ever had an e-mail account.
The e-mail pitch is familiar to most people by now: a long-lost relative or desperate government official in a war-torn country needs to shuffle some funds around, say $10 million or $20 million, and if you could just help them out for a bit, you get to keep 10 (or 20 or 30) percent for your trouble.
All you need to do is send X-amount of dollars to pay some fees and all that cash will suddenly land in your checking account, putting you on Easy Street. By the way, please send the funds though an untraceable wire service.
By this time, not many people will fall for such an outrageous pitch, and the scam is very well-known. But it persists, and for a reason: every now and then, it works.
For Spears, it started, as it almost always does, with an e-mail. It promised $20 million and in this case, the money was supposedly left behind by her grandfather (J.B. Spears), with whom the family had lost contact over the years.
"So that's what got me to believe it," she said.
Spears didn't know how the sender knew J.B. Spears' name and her relation to him, but her curiosity was piqued.
It turned out to be a lot of money up front, but it started with just $100.
The scammers ran Spears through the whole program. They said President Bush and FBI Director "Robert Muller" (their spelling) were in on the deal and needed her help.
They sent official-looking documents and certificates from the Bank of Nigeria and even from the United Nations. Her payment was "guaranteed."
Then the amount she would get jumped up to $26.6 million – if she would just send $8,300. Spears sent the money.
More promises and teases of multi-millions followed, with each one dependent on her sending yet more money. Most of the missives were rife with misspellings.
When Spears began to doubt the scam, she got letters from the President of Nigeria, FBI Director Mueller, and President Bush. Terrorists could get the money if she did not help, Bush’s letter said. Spears continued to send funds. All the letters were fake, of course.
She wiped out her husband’s retirement account, mortgaged the house and took a lien out on the family car. Both were already paid for.
For more than two years, Spears sent tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everyone she knew, including law enforcement officials, her family and bank officials, told her to stop, that it was all a scam. She persisted.
Spears said she kept sending money because the scammers kept telling her that the next payment would be the last one, that the big money was inbound. Spears said she became obsessed with getting paid.
An undercover investigator who worked on the case said greed helped blind Spears to the reality of the situation, which he called the worst example of the scam he’s ever seen.
He also said he has seen people become obsessed with the scam before. They are so desperate to recoup their losses with the big payout, they descend into a vicious cycle of sending money in hopes the false promises will turn out to be real.
Now, Spears has gone public with her story as a warning to others not to fall victim.
She hopes her story will warn others to listen to reason and avoid going down the dark tunnel of obsession that ended up costing her so much.
Spears said it would take her at least three to four years to dig out of the debt she ran up in pursuit of the non-existent pot of Nigerian gold.
This is just one case from the million of cases of scams around the world. The elderly continue to be victims of these type of scams. We must try to educate our parents, grand parents or any elderly relatives we have so that we protect them from these painful experiences.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
wrong impressions
I would like to correct some wrong impression expressed by a reader concerning my blog.
First of all i do not encourage people to scam bait, for this reason i have added the header as you now see in my blog title.
Please i do not mean to sterotype the victims of scams when i stated that they were desperate, by all means not victims of scams are not all desperate. Hopefully i have not given a false sense of immunity for those who do not fit this profile. When i was speaking of victim's profile i was looking at victims in the eyes of these scammers who see their victims as desperate and try to milk them.
Scammers are very organised these days and how they work is what i hope to enlighten you upon so that if you recognise any pattern in anyone you have met online you get away before it is too late.
Scam baiting ir really dangerous and must be avoided at all costs. ReAD my blog and drop your own opinions. I highly appreciate all your comments. Thanx!
There's more to come stay tuned.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
hOW sCAmmERS uSE cALL RoamING/fORwarDINg
This is crazy! suddenly i can be in more than one place at the same time!!! Its not magic folks, that my friends is the power of call forwarding, call roaming or call diverting which ever term you chose to call it. It is so convenient you can be anywhere in the world and still answer your calls.
Well i aint gonna go all techie on you guys, but i will tell you how scammers use this technology to trick people out of their cash (trust man to find a way to use everything for one form of criminality).
Well journey with me into the underworld of scam men/women (women are in the game too, you didn't think only men were having all the fun did you?!).
Call forwarding is as easy as three steps, (i know i said i wasn't goin to go all techie on u guys but hey its three steps ok! its important):
After logging into a website like toolfreeforwarding.com there are many others but i think they have one of the best rates, you;
(1) you pick the country you want the phone line in
(2)select your number(new country number)
(3)and then lastly you select where you want to forward your calls to and then you type in your current location number.
I think thats three and a half steps,thats besides the point!
So it is as easy as this to get a phone number from whatever country and link or divert it to the number you are using now anywhere you are, aint technolgy a b**ch!
What that means is that anyone for example can have a a uk,canadian or an american number and answer their calls from their local number and they can be anywhere,sweeeeeet!!
Not so sweet when con men use it though and i'm gonna tell you just how they do it.Its simple really. Con men know how to identify desperate people and they milk desperate people dry. A scammer gets a European or American number and leads you to believe that he is an American or European,infact they make you believe they are so in love with you and they are coming over to marry you.
This brings me to the desperate thing again, scammers know women and men outside europe n America are desperate to get hooked up to these 'elite' citizens, so they pretend they are from these countries and promise marriage to these 'deperate' people' in the hopes of scamming them out of their cash. I mean with the american and european numbers which they use to decieve it is no surprise the success rate f this type of scam.
Once they have gotten you to believe then they spin you with a fake package or what ever story they come out with to scam you.
So please be careful when someone gives you a number from anywhere they claim they might just be next door to you. Love yourself Give your love but keep your money unless you are ABSOLUTELY sure of what you are putting it in.
Love y'all! will bring you more inside secrets,until we meet again i go undergoround to discover more secrets.
Well i aint gonna go all techie on you guys, but i will tell you how scammers use this technology to trick people out of their cash (trust man to find a way to use everything for one form of criminality).
Well journey with me into the underworld of scam men/women (women are in the game too, you didn't think only men were having all the fun did you?!).
Call forwarding is as easy as three steps, (i know i said i wasn't goin to go all techie on u guys but hey its three steps ok! its important):
After logging into a website like toolfreeforwarding.com there are many others but i think they have one of the best rates, you;
(1) you pick the country you want the phone line in
(2)select your number(new country number)
(3)and then lastly you select where you want to forward your calls to and then you type in your current location number.
I think thats three and a half steps,thats besides the point!
So it is as easy as this to get a phone number from whatever country and link or divert it to the number you are using now anywhere you are, aint technolgy a b**ch!
What that means is that anyone for example can have a a uk,canadian or an american number and answer their calls from their local number and they can be anywhere,sweeeeeet!!
Not so sweet when con men use it though and i'm gonna tell you just how they do it.Its simple really. Con men know how to identify desperate people and they milk desperate people dry. A scammer gets a European or American number and leads you to believe that he is an American or European,infact they make you believe they are so in love with you and they are coming over to marry you.
This brings me to the desperate thing again, scammers know women and men outside europe n America are desperate to get hooked up to these 'elite' citizens, so they pretend they are from these countries and promise marriage to these 'deperate' people' in the hopes of scamming them out of their cash. I mean with the american and european numbers which they use to decieve it is no surprise the success rate f this type of scam.
Once they have gotten you to believe then they spin you with a fake package or what ever story they come out with to scam you.
So please be careful when someone gives you a number from anywhere they claim they might just be next door to you. Love yourself Give your love but keep your money unless you are ABSOLUTELY sure of what you are putting it in.
Love y'all! will bring you more inside secrets,until we meet again i go undergoround to discover more secrets.
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