I just want to make sure everyone knows there are bad people out there who want to get your money. Please read this.

• If you receive a message that a friend or relative is stranded someplace in Europe or elsewhere while on an unscheduled urgent trip requesting money, it is a scam! Your friend or relative is at home doing well – call them!
• If you receive a message letting you know you had entered and now won a Lotto somewhere, it is a scam! You didn’t win anything, but the sender will if you follow their instructions.
• Someone will not pay you for a shopping spree!
• The person who wants to pay you for your help to transfer millions of dollars due to some technical or legal issue is fibbing!
• Your rich distant unknown relative did not die leaving your a tidy sum of money.
• The rolex watch you have found on a website for a super deal is a scam. It’s only a deal for the bad guys trying to get your money.
• The US mail message you received from what looks like your bank’s letterhead requesting information about a new credit card is a scam. When calling the number included in the letter will be a computerized method to gain access to your account and PIN numbers.
• Your computer is not infected with a virus! The window that just popped up in your browser warning you is a picture (it has Windows controls, not Mac controls) is a scam to, at the very least, get you to pay for a virus service you do not need and probably does not work (Windows or Mac). At the worst, it is a virus which will do who knows what.
• The smokin’ deal you found on Craig’s List is not real! The requested method of money transfer is through a bogus third-party escrow domain which sounds like something related to eBay.

These things have happened to members of our club and/or my personal friends over the last couple of years who had contacted me asking for help. Until recently, all instances were caught before anything serious happened.

Last week a member did send (wire transfer) a sizable sum of money for a product which was being offered for 10-20% of normal value. The odds of this member of getting the product or their money back is extremely slim. Their bank said the wire transfer can’t be reversed (unlike a credit card purchase) and the local police, while being helpful in getting some information, can’t do too much. The only good thing is that it appears the wire transfer was to a US bank (not in Florida). They have started a FBI incident report, but I’m not sure what resources will be available especially with the recent issue with packages from Yemen.

Members, keep your guard up!

Do not give any personal information (SSN, Drivers License, birthdate, etc) to anyone!

• The IRS will not call you requesting this information!
• The SSA will not call you requesting this information!
• Your Bank will not call you requesting this information!

If the deal seems too good to be true, it is just that – TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!

• Check out the Caller ID – do a Google search for the phone number to see what others have to say – Caller IDs can be falsified!
• Check out the owner and registration of the website you are thinking about purchasing from here: <http://www.internic.com/whois.html>
• Check out the country of origin of the domain or dns servers found on InterNIC here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains>
• Check out the comments or testimonials using Google. Search for a sentence or persons name, city, and state in Google to see if the same exact sentence or person is posting the same thing on different sites. Put quotes around the sentence to find an exact match.

If the site or message is requesting a wire transfer only, it is probably a scam! Unlike credit card purchases, wire transfers appear to not be reversible!

I could go on with many, many more methods the bad people are trying to get your money. Common sense prevails! If you think something is wrong or doesn’t make sense, it is probably a scam. Ask someone for help or a second opinion before you do anything. Do a Google search using phone numbers and/or any content because you are not the first person the bad people are trying to scam!

Google, Google, Google!

Jim