Our friends at www.scambusters.org have been uncovering some fairly nasty scams that are doing the rounds at the moment and I have reproduced just one of them just to show how devious net scammers are and how you should always be super alert when you are online.
This one is a beauty and while you may get some cash in your pocket from this, odds are you will also have a visit from the police shortly afterwards.
1. Make Money from Cash and Product Forwarding
Answering an ad or an email that says you have just the skills needed, this work-at-home scam actually makes you unknowingly become a staging post for stolen cash or goods!
You agree to receive money or items and forward them to your “employer” overseas. What you don’t realise is that these are the proceeds of auction or online purchase frauds.
These normally work in one of two ways:
* The crook sells a non-existent item and the payment from the buyer comes to you; you forward part of it to the scammer, after deducting commission, via an untraceable money-wiring service.
* The crook orders items with a stolen credit card. You receive them and ship them abroad, usually to a PO Box. A recent survey of eight legitimate online retailers showed that 5,000 people were hoodwinked into receiving and forwarding items this way in just three months.
The total annual bill for this crime is said to be about $500 million.
In both cases, the first thing you know about it is when the police arrive on your doorstep after the victim complains.
Warning: Legitimate buyers and sellers don’t operate via intermediaries. All, yes all, of these jobs are crooked.
