Scammers double the dupe rate

Scammers double the dupe rate

Daniella Miletic

March 6, 2011

REPORTS of Australians being scammed by con artists have more than doubled since last year, with consumers losing more than $63 million, a fraud report by the nation's consumer watchdog shows.

Fraud authorities believe the surge is due to consumers spending more time online. As well, overseas crime syndicates that design clever, sophisticated scams are becoming more prolific in their attempts to lure Australians into a financial trap.

More than 42,000 scams were reported last year; in 2009 there were 20,000. ''More of us are using online and mobile technologies and we are using them to do more things,'' said Peter Kell, head of fraud at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

''This has opened up new opportunities for scammers and provided additional ways to target consumers and additional means by which they can obtain personal information.''

This, coupled with scams sounding more legitimate, made it harder for consumers to detect a fraud. ''The dramatic growth in scams reported to the ACCC underlines that this sort of activity is now being carried out by sophisticated criminal networks,'' Mr Kell said.

''There is no doubt globally that more criminal networks are undertaking this sort of activity, and as the internet allows easier cross-border communications criminal networks are taking advantage.'' He said the ACCC had increasingly been working with counterpart overseas agencies to respond to crimes.

According to the commission's annual scam report, to be released today, about 16 per cent of consumers and small businesses who reported scams lost money last year, ranging from a few dollars to $4 million, the amount lost by a small-business owner who got caught up in a Nigerian scam.

Although the number of reports to the commission increased in 2010, the amount reported lost, $63 million, was down slightly from 2009.

Online scams remained the biggest area, increasing from 14,000 reports in 2009 to more than 19,000 in 2010.

There was a significant increase in scams initiated by telephone, which grew from about 2000 in 2009 to more than 14,000 reported in 2010.
Many were from overseas callers taking advantage of cheap or free-over-the-internet services, Mr Kell said.

The report also showed a marked increase in scams involving people claiming to work for government departments or major businesses.

''We saw this take on several different forms. One claimed to be from the Australian Government Grants Department … no such department exists,'' Mr Kell said.

Scammers used publicised events as a front for their stories. Last September, when the ANZ became the first of 12 banks to be hit with a class action over penalty fees, its customers began to be targeted by scammers keen to exploit the publicity surrounding the legal case.

ANZ customers reported receiving cold calls from people claiming to be from the Department of Fair Trading assigned to ''pay out'' customers as a result of the class action.

Scammers double the dupe rate

Sadly, there are as many scammers in the world as there are victims practically. Here in the US we are plagued with travel and vacations scams, contest scams, investment scams, work at home scams, auction and classified ad scams, door to door scams, identity theft scams, lottery scams, a host of Nigerian scams, economy related scams, malware and spyware from hell, phishing scams, religious scams and in many of those categories are the MLMs/pyramids, ponzis, autosurfs and HYIPs.

Scammers thrive and abound in a downturned economy such as we have been experiencing for the last few years, here. While many of these scams have been around for decades they seem to have really multiplied and so have the victims. People become desperate and needy and hopeless and they are often willing to try anything. Complaints to the FTC and the BB are zooming. I don't think that there is even any true way to guess the real numbers of people who are de-frauded in this nation, but I know it is in the mega millions.

Unemployment here is at an all time high and jobs that promise "easy money," "flexible work from home hours," "higher than average income" or advertise "no experience necessary" are just some of the ways con artists posing as fake employers get you on the hook to either steal your identity or make a quick buck. Work at home scams have just grown substanially with our high unemployment rate. No more of the old envelope-stuffing and craft-assembling gigs, it's all about "fast profit" work-at-home schemes that claim you can get rich from the Internet. And they will use any method to appeal to people. Religion, your health and illnesses, your children, anything.

Hell, Craigs List alone should be shut down!! 20 murders (that authorities KNOW of- imagine the ones they have no idea about) have occurred because of and linked to Craigs List, children and adults have gone missing from answering personal ads on there, thousands of people robbed and ripped off, auto thefts, home invasions and robberies, abused, raped, assaulted, numerous crimes committed, and hundreds of women sell themselves and their "services" from there, let alone the MLM's, HYIPS and AutoSurfs advertising there and the phony job ads and selling phony merchandise ads and even selling illegal drugs! People sell children on there! A woman was jailed for trying to sell her baby for $10,000.00! One man was recently caught and convicted of human trafficing from Craig's List ads! Others have been caught selling children for sex! Good Grief! That place is a complete cesspool. They need to be shut down in my opinion. I consider them to be one of the most dangerous websites on the net. Currently there are 5, count them, 5 Craigs Lists murderers serving jail time. And most of them have not been caught as of yet! And yet what does the government do to protect people and stop any of this??? Zip!

Some brave caring soul has set up a Craigs List crime and News site. http://craigscrimelist.org/

Scams abound all over Face Book, My Space, blogs and Twitter. The internet has expanded scammer's reach, given them an international reach and provided them with an endless succession of new marks to bilk.

Scammers have become much slicker and the scams far more sophisticated than they used to be as well. Today's con artists have more complex and developed schemes than ever before. The Internet also protects scammers' identities and gives them a broad reach. When people are ripped off, they rarely complain or file any report because of the shame and humilation and who do they file to? Government agencies are ineffcient, overwhlemed and understaffed to deal with all the scams and the wheels of so called justice barely move at all. Scammers know this and they bank on it. People grow frustrated and simply give up complaining.

I find this all so very sickening and it just makes me frustrated and angry in the process. We can only hope that as people search the internet, they will find forums, articles and blogs where these scams are dissected, discussed and exposed for what they are. That is why this little forum is so important and so meaningful to me.

abso-bloody-lutely right.