Dec 02 2007
Scam Surfing
I’m a scam junky. I can spend hours reading about scams online and, I’ll be honest, very few of them offer anything new to the game. The bulk seem to center around greed and social engineering, and some basic precautions would seem adequate to defeat the vast majority of them.
While surfing for scams I came across this posting on Craigslist, and it caused me to snork my morning coffee. Hoping it’ll give you a moments levity, I’ll share it with you;
Credit Card Scam - Be Very Careful!
I got nailed by this scam last weekend and it still hurts.
Someone will approach you pretending to be your “loving wife” complete with gratuitous sex and your favourite snack. She will then subtly ask if you have a balance on your credit card. This is where you MUST answer “Yes, it’s completely maxed out”, otherwise she will cleverly slip it from your wallet while pretending to enjoy fondling your coconuts. Later that day, while you rest comfortably on the couch remote in hand, your card will be used to purchase half a dozen ridiculously overpriced “sale” items. The scam is so diabolical it resists any recourse by the presentation of one small gift, purchased with your card of course, special for you only. Your “loving wife” will then revert back to “moody hag” and disappear to wherever it is they go while you’re in the house.
On a happy note, I really like my new Steelers hat, it keeps my head quite dry during my new part time job collecting shopping carts at Superstore.
Source: Craigslist
You’ve been warned.
On a side note I got an interesting variant on the Nigeria thing. A woman called on the studio line at work last week. This in itself is odd ’cause the phone is only used for answering the lobby phone and the occasional Thai food order.
Apparently the phone is listed int he phone book as “S. Birch” Which mean we get the odd tele-marketer too, whom I promptly tell to fuck off. This way Andy gets a business line at residential prices, and it comes up on call waiting vaguely resembling “Silverbirch” the name of the studio.
…back to the woman.
She inquired if we have an apartment for rent at 680 Queens Quay West. I responded, I don’t know, you’d have to call the management office during business hours. After a five minute conversation here’s what I whittled out of her.
She got an email saying there was a “house” to rent at 680 Queens Quay West. She did some snooping and found it was an apartment building. The emailers then apologized and said,, sorry yes it’s an apartment, they might even have said a sub-lease but that wasn’t made clear.
So she look up any phone number belonging to our address and called it, randomly getting me. Lucky for her, I probably saved her some extra time figuring out the scam. She was suspicious, ’cause the latest email….here it is….
said to mail first and last months rent to an address in Africa. Ta Da!!!! I explained to her that it was a variant of an old scam, now preying on people looking for cheap housing in Toronto. The scammers must have either pulled an address out of a hat, or if your truly paranoid, got it when Andy, the studio owner, almost fell for a scam last year.
His was cool to. they book studio time, from Africa, send more than the required deposit on a phony money order and ask you to forward some to the guitar player in England. Before you have a chance to realize the money order is fake. Erik’s already had fun with these money orders. I was suspicious and called Erik about it at the time, so we got out long before they even sent us money. Andy is so hungry for bookings he would probably have been fished in, but he’s learned to trust my paranoia and asks me to look into any suspicious bookings now.
That’s my 2-cents worth.
It never ceases to amaze me the interesting variations on the “advance fee” scam that these people come up with.
I’m almost tempted to rent another PO box and add to my small collection of forged certified cheques, but it does sort of smack of effort, you know?
You’ve got that genetic scepticism thing going on and make for a bad scam victim, I don’t see many members of our little clan being taken for a ride by these people, we just ask too many questions.
Makes you wonder how so many people DO get taken though, doesn’t it?
I do find it hard dumbing myself down. Ego, hell yes, but that’s genetic in our family.
If it smells like shit…
and it looks like shit…
I’m not sticking around to see if it tastes like shit.