News Items

Lottery Scam Making the Rounds in the Mid-South :Memphis police say a lottery scam has made its way into the Mid-South.

In the scam, "winners" receive e-mail or postal mail advising them that they have won a lottery with a large payout. They are then sent a fake check with instructions to cash it or deposit it at the bank. The recipients are instructed to send most of the amount back to the sender for processing expenses.

The scams are originating from a number of locations like Canada, the United Kingdom, Nigeria and Australia.The checks sent are counterfeit and worthless.

A number of Memphis businesses and residents have lost money in the scam.

If you receive any check that you think might be a fake, have it verified before cashing or depositing.

Read More at http://www.myeyewitnessnews.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=6e4818ff-020e-4b9b-8599-0192e2541375

You Have Mail — and With It, Scams :If you are online and have an e-mail address, you most likely have received countless spam e-mails.So, what exactly is spam?Spam is simply the sending of unwanted and unsolicited bulk emails.

Some spam e-mails are, unfortunately, too often for shady products or suspicious services, and for so-called "get-rich-quick" schemes or, sometimes, for outright fraud.

In fact, the FBI just issued a warning on Oct. 18, 2006, which states that agency has become aware of a bogus spam e-mail claiming to be from the FBI. The attempt to defraud victims comes in two separate e-mails. The same e-mail address is used to deliver both phases of the spam.

The first e-mail claims to be from FBI Director Robert Mueller III, and advises recipients that they are the beneficiary of a large sum of money and that they can claim the money by providing an FBI Identification Record and a Certificate of Ownership. To make the message look more legitimate, information is pasted in the e-mail from the FBI.gov Web site defining what an Identification Record is and how to obtain it from the Criminal Justice Information Services Division.

The second e-mail claims to be from Donna M. Uzzell, FBI Compact Council chairwoman. The message informs the recipient the Certificate of Ownership is supplied, for a fee, by the country where the funds originated. It requires the recipient to respond to the e-mail for instructions on sending the money to FBI Nigeria, which then will issue the certificate.

Read more at http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/11/10/92420.shtml?s=te

New scam targets senior citizens: The Social Security Administration and the FBI have reported two new scams that have surfaced recently. The Social Security Administration has received more than 25 complaints from elderly Social Security beneficiaries after they received telephone calls from someone claiming to be from the Social Security Administration or Medicare. 

According to Beaver Dam Police Chief Gary Cox, the caller informs the potential victims that they are being assigned new Medicare numbers because Medicare no longer uses Social Security numbers. The caller asks for the victims' Social Security numbers and bank account information to insure that the old account number will correspond with the new one. In a few instances, the caller informed the victims that they needed to replace their Social Security cards because the format of the cards is being changed.

"In many cases, the caller already knew the victim's name, phone number, address and sometimes Social Security number," said Cox. "In every instance, the caller asked for the victims' bank account numbers. In some cases where the victims refused to give Social Security and bank account information, the caller would threaten and badger the victims until they relented and provided the requested information."

In many instances, the victims asked for a call-back number, and were given an 800 or 866 number that comes back to a real estate company or AARP.

About half of the victims contacted have provided Social Security and bank account information, but so far no bank accounts have been compromised.

The FBI scam involves spam e-mails claiming to be from FBI Director Robert Mueller III and Donna M. Uzzell, FBI compact council chairman.

The scam appears to be a typical Nigerian scam, advising the recipients that they are beneficiaries of a large sum of money, Cox said. It states that in order to claim the money, that recipients are required to obtain an FBI identification record and a certificate of ownership.

Read more at http://www.wiscnews.com/bdc/news/106763

  Investigator says thousands of dollars in goods destined overseas pass through Crossville: Two Internet scams passing goods purchased with stolen credit cards through Crossville to destinations overseas have been uncovered by the Cumberland County Sheriff's Department after investigators acted on a complaint filed from Virginia.

Investigator Ben Waller said he and Investigator Bo Kollros were following up on a Virginia man's complaint as a matter of routine when they stumbled onto one of the two credit card fraud operations Wednesday.

On Oct. 10 Riley Hensley of Virginia Beach, VA, called the sheriff's department to report someone attempting to purchase medical books using his credit card. The books were ordered to be delivered to a Gore Rd. address, Deputy Danny Stone's report stated.

Wednesday the two sheriff's investigators traveled to the Gore Rd. address to make a routine inquiry and the female resident confirmed that packages had been sent to her home to be repackaged and shipped to Nigeria, Waller said.

The investigator said the woman reported meeting a Nigerian resident in an Internet chatroom and after a month he asked if she would mind having a package shipped to her on his behalf. He then instructed her to forward the package to an address in Nigeria.

The local woman, who was giving investigators a statement yesterday at deadline, was unaware that the goods had been purchased with stolen credit cards. She told the deputies that she had been forwarding packages to Nigeria for ten or 11 months.

Read more at http://www.crossville-chronicle.com/homepage/local_story_293115422.html?keyword=leadpicturestory

You'll only lose in 'lottery': The woman knew it was too good be to be true.

First, she had never entered a European lottery.

Second, the letter with the check was addressed to her late husband. He died in 1985, and he had never entered a European lottery.

Third, she was supposed to cash the $2,994 check in the letter and send a check of her own for $2,841 as "an international clearance fee" to an address in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She was supposed to eventually receive more than $80,000.

And, oh, there was the admonition to "keep this award from public notice until your claim has been processed and money remitted to your account" because it was part of European International Lotto's "security protocol."
The woman instead called The Janesville Gazette. The newspaper called the police.

"We get, on average, two of these a week," said Craig Fritz, the Janesville police detective who investigates such scams. "Far more are happening that are not reported."

Read more at http://www.gazetteextra.com/lottoscam102106.asp

Burnt by the player from Singapore:He promised cheap Xbox, PlayStation sets and took our money – possibly $10m in total – claim Britons, Aussies.

Traders have accused Adrian Ng Shen Ling of accepting payment for electronic goods that were never delivered.

Read more at http://www.todayonline.com/articles/149851.asp

Changing check scams target the Heartland:

OLIVE BRANCH, Il. - Check cashing scams are nothing new to the Heartland.  We've told you before about schemes stretching from Nigeria to the Netherlands and everywhere else.  Consumer experts say the latest scams stem from the United Kingdom and Canada.

Starla Arnold just managed to avoid getting ripped off herself.  "I got real excited, I wanted to cash it, but I'm glad I didn't,"  says the Olive Branch, IL resident.

Arnold got a check in the mail Monday from a Michigan based company.   In the letter accompanying the check, it told Starla she was a winner in a London, England lottery.  All she had to do was cash the $1000 check, send the money to an Edmonton, Alberta, Canada address, and then she'd get more than $115,000 in return.

Starla's husband says they thought they hit the jackpot, but just to be sure, they went to the bank to check on the check.  Unfortunately, it was bogus.

Several other items on the check and letter just didn't match up.

We also received a call from Amy Henson of Perryville, MO, who says she also recently got a check in the mail that looked authentic but wasn't.

Amy and Starla wanted to warn others about the scams.

Consumer experts remind us of a few tips.  First and foremost, if you didn't enter a contest, you didn't win a prize or any money.  Also, it's against the law to enter a lottery outside the United States.