Saturday, June 26, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
A Two-Way Street Crime
(c) Jeffrey Robinson, 2010
Fraud is a two-way street crime.That means, if a conman is going to steal your money, he needs you to help him get it.
Unlike theft by force or violence, fraud is theft by stealth and trust. It is a crime of persuasion. The scammers job, duping you into parting with your money, begins by somehow making you susceptible to being duped.
Playing on your emotions, he needs to make you believe a very basic lie—that he has the power to make you richer, sexier, happier and that all you have to do to become richer, sexier, happier is to let him into your life. That, by giving him your money, your wishes will come true.
While most of us would never open the door to a stranger who has come to steal our wallet, thousands of people willingly let fraudsters into their lives every day, only to find out the hard way the meaning of betrayal.
One of the most basic human emotions that conmen rely on—heavily!—is greed. Who wouldn't turn down a get-rich-quick scheme if he or she was 100% convinced that it is 1000% foolproof? So, the fraudster goes about convincing you that, beyond any shadow of doubt, you can't possibly lose.
Once he ignites your greed, he knows that carelessness will automatically follow, and that's the slippery-slope to stupidity. Successful fraudsters not only understand this, they play off it with devastating effect. After all, this is how they make their living.
Later, when a scam is dissected, almost all victims invariably ask, "How could I have fallen for that?"
That's never a simple question for a victim to answer, because the victim played a role in his or her own demise. Being hoodwinked by a criminal truly hurts. Yet, in the cold light of day, how it happened and why it happened becomes obvious—it happened because common sense took the day off.
And there-in lies the best protection anyone can have when it comes to preventing fraud—a healthy dose of common sense.
If the deal someone is offering you strikes you as too good to be true, if your gut feeling is driving you to ask, how come I got so lucky, then the best advice ever is, when in doubt, don't.
Don't let the fraudster in your front door.
Don't believe that you have been singled out from all the other people on the planet to win at whatever game your new friend is playing at.
In our complex, globalized, hi-tech world, fraudsters, scammers and conmen of all shapes and sizes are more skilled in their craft, more elusive through their use of technology and more erudite in their understanding of our desires than ever before. And, like animals in the jungle, there is a natural culling of the herd. Bad fraudsters get arrested. The good ones just get better.
It's common sense that levels the playing field.
That's why the old caveat is still the best: If it is too good to be true, it ain't true!
Nothing could be more common sense than that.
Fraud is a two-way street crime.That means, if a conman is going to steal your money, he needs you to help him get it.
Unlike theft by force or violence, fraud is theft by stealth and trust. It is a crime of persuasion. The scammers job, duping you into parting with your money, begins by somehow making you susceptible to being duped.
Playing on your emotions, he needs to make you believe a very basic lie—that he has the power to make you richer, sexier, happier and that all you have to do to become richer, sexier, happier is to let him into your life. That, by giving him your money, your wishes will come true.
While most of us would never open the door to a stranger who has come to steal our wallet, thousands of people willingly let fraudsters into their lives every day, only to find out the hard way the meaning of betrayal.
One of the most basic human emotions that conmen rely on—heavily!—is greed. Who wouldn't turn down a get-rich-quick scheme if he or she was 100% convinced that it is 1000% foolproof? So, the fraudster goes about convincing you that, beyond any shadow of doubt, you can't possibly lose.
Once he ignites your greed, he knows that carelessness will automatically follow, and that's the slippery-slope to stupidity. Successful fraudsters not only understand this, they play off it with devastating effect. After all, this is how they make their living.
Later, when a scam is dissected, almost all victims invariably ask, "How could I have fallen for that?"
That's never a simple question for a victim to answer, because the victim played a role in his or her own demise. Being hoodwinked by a criminal truly hurts. Yet, in the cold light of day, how it happened and why it happened becomes obvious—it happened because common sense took the day off.
And there-in lies the best protection anyone can have when it comes to preventing fraud—a healthy dose of common sense.
If the deal someone is offering you strikes you as too good to be true, if your gut feeling is driving you to ask, how come I got so lucky, then the best advice ever is, when in doubt, don't.
Don't let the fraudster in your front door.
Don't believe that you have been singled out from all the other people on the planet to win at whatever game your new friend is playing at.
In our complex, globalized, hi-tech world, fraudsters, scammers and conmen of all shapes and sizes are more skilled in their craft, more elusive through their use of technology and more erudite in their understanding of our desires than ever before. And, like animals in the jungle, there is a natural culling of the herd. Bad fraudsters get arrested. The good ones just get better.
It's common sense that levels the playing field.
That's why the old caveat is still the best: If it is too good to be true, it ain't true!
Nothing could be more common sense than that.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Is This the Party To Whom I’m Currently Stealing
(c) Jeffrey Robinson, 2010
The phone rings and a friendly voice on the other end offers you a once-in-a-lifetime golden investment opportunity. But, he warns, once-in-a-lifetime means right now, this instant, you have to say yes pronto or it's gone, forever.
It's like the old joke:
Day 1: I have private, hush-hush access to these shares that are going onto the market tomorrow morning for a penny and are worth at least 1000 times that.
I'll take 1000 shares.
Day 2: We're up to two-cents a share, you've doubled your money.
I'll take 5000 shares.
Day 3: They've just his ten-cents a share and they're still climbing.
I'll take 10,000 shares.
Day 4: We're going beyond 50-cents a share. I'm telling you, this is the bargain of the century.
I'll take 20,000 shares.
Day 5: We just this minute hit a dollar a share.
Sell.
To who?
Sound apocryphal? Sadly, it's not. Despite all the technological advancements of the past 10 years, telemarketing fraud is still a huge industry and the bogus investment side of it works just like that.
Using high-pressure techniques—talking so fast that victims don't have time to think is one of the most common techniques—fraudsters purposely pump prices then disappear, leaving "investors" clinging to the wreckage.
It might be stocks and shares. This is a foolproof, no risk, perfect investment that you've got to make right now because my boss is pressuring me to sell this and if you don't say yes right away, I'll have to offer it to someone else.
It might be a free vacation. You can have one week in the Bahamas for two, air fare included... so are meals, taxes, tips, sightseeing, everything... absolutely free... no strings attached. Except there are strings. You have to subscribe to something, or buy something, or register for something, and to do that, they need your credit card number, expiry date, mother's maiden name and the three digit code on the back of the card. A week later, your card shows thousands of dollars worth of charges in Hong Kong, Prague, Marrakech and Punte del Este.
Or it might be a survey. We're a non-profit organization trying to get information for a major university that will use it to help (choose one) a) doctors prescribe to senior citizens; b) banks better understand the mortgage market; c) the Red Cross get much needed aid money to the victims of some recent disaster. It sounds innocent enough, until you find out that the nice person doing the survey has just signed you up for a) prescription medicines from some questionable third world country; b) a new mortgage or c) a huge donation to a charity you've never heard of which, surprise, turns out to be the crooks.
Given the fact that the bad guys are so good at being bad guys, and have absolutely no qualms or conscience when it comes to irreparably harming people by pretending to be their phone friend, the best way to protect yourself is to hang up.
Next, you can put yourself on the national "Do Not Call" registry. It's free. (Tel: 888-382-1222). Or register online. That should screen out legitimate telemarketers. And while it won't necessarily stop the boiler room crooks, once the legitimate guys have stopped calling, you can pretty much assume any telemarketer who phones you now is a scammer.
In the end, the best advice is the same advice our parents tried to drill through our heads when we were kids: NEVER TALK TO STRANGERS!
The phone rings and a friendly voice on the other end offers you a once-in-a-lifetime golden investment opportunity. But, he warns, once-in-a-lifetime means right now, this instant, you have to say yes pronto or it's gone, forever.
It's like the old joke:
Day 1: I have private, hush-hush access to these shares that are going onto the market tomorrow morning for a penny and are worth at least 1000 times that.
I'll take 1000 shares.
Day 2: We're up to two-cents a share, you've doubled your money.
I'll take 5000 shares.
Day 3: They've just his ten-cents a share and they're still climbing.
I'll take 10,000 shares.
Day 4: We're going beyond 50-cents a share. I'm telling you, this is the bargain of the century.
I'll take 20,000 shares.
Day 5: We just this minute hit a dollar a share.
Sell.
To who?
Sound apocryphal? Sadly, it's not. Despite all the technological advancements of the past 10 years, telemarketing fraud is still a huge industry and the bogus investment side of it works just like that.
Using high-pressure techniques—talking so fast that victims don't have time to think is one of the most common techniques—fraudsters purposely pump prices then disappear, leaving "investors" clinging to the wreckage.
It might be stocks and shares. This is a foolproof, no risk, perfect investment that you've got to make right now because my boss is pressuring me to sell this and if you don't say yes right away, I'll have to offer it to someone else.
It might be a free vacation. You can have one week in the Bahamas for two, air fare included... so are meals, taxes, tips, sightseeing, everything... absolutely free... no strings attached. Except there are strings. You have to subscribe to something, or buy something, or register for something, and to do that, they need your credit card number, expiry date, mother's maiden name and the three digit code on the back of the card. A week later, your card shows thousands of dollars worth of charges in Hong Kong, Prague, Marrakech and Punte del Este.
Or it might be a survey. We're a non-profit organization trying to get information for a major university that will use it to help (choose one) a) doctors prescribe to senior citizens; b) banks better understand the mortgage market; c) the Red Cross get much needed aid money to the victims of some recent disaster. It sounds innocent enough, until you find out that the nice person doing the survey has just signed you up for a) prescription medicines from some questionable third world country; b) a new mortgage or c) a huge donation to a charity you've never heard of which, surprise, turns out to be the crooks.
Given the fact that the bad guys are so good at being bad guys, and have absolutely no qualms or conscience when it comes to irreparably harming people by pretending to be their phone friend, the best way to protect yourself is to hang up.
Next, you can put yourself on the national "Do Not Call" registry. It's free. (Tel: 888-382-1222). Or register online. That should screen out legitimate telemarketers. And while it won't necessarily stop the boiler room crooks, once the legitimate guys have stopped calling, you can pretty much assume any telemarketer who phones you now is a scammer.
In the end, the best advice is the same advice our parents tried to drill through our heads when we were kids: NEVER TALK TO STRANGERS!
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Long Live 7th Grade English
(c) Jeffrey Robinson, 2010
Remember Mrs. Dribblenose, the craggy white-haired English teacher back in 7th grade who made you write compositions about really boring subjects such as, "Why Wheat Matters To Me," then scribbled red ink all over your pages, correcting your sentence structure, spelling and grammar?
She's the one who tried to drum into your head stuff like: don't end sentences with prepositions; declension is the noun analog to conjugation; and, the complete predicate is everything in the sentence that the complete subject isn't. (Huh?)
When you're educated in the United States and Canada or, in fact, anywhere throughout the native English-speaking world, there is always a Mrs. Dribblenose. Thanks to her, the language as we speak it and write it is familiar.
Then along comes this:
"Dear Trusted Friend - This is to officially inform you that it has come to our notice, the Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI), that the sum of $8.3 Million U.S Dollars contained is here in the United State Of America in your name. That is why we have decided to contact you directly to acquire the proper verifications and proof from you to show that you are the rightful person to receive this fund, because the above mentioned amount is a huge amount of money, that is why we want to make sure that money you are about to receive is legal and we need to verify that you are not involved in any terrorist movement and money laundry. It has already been confirmed in your name, but funds are right now in our custody waiting to be released to you, we have verified and investigated that you are the right beneficiary to claim the funds, all we need from you is verification and proof due to the huge amount of money involved. As a matter of national security, we are to serve and to protect the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA."
What's wrong with that? To begin with, whoever wrote such gibberish never had to face Mrs. Dribblenose. How, then, could this possibly be from someone working for the FBI?
Granted, not all email scammers are so outrageously illiterate. But that's a genuine email, and it's surprising how many scammers — pretending to be native English speakers — don't seem to know the basic rules of English grammar. Or, how to spell. Or, that when you write a sentence which is too long, and contains all sorts of sub-clauses, even when those sub-clauses are supposed to be helping to make a point but fails because the sub-clauses don't make any more sense than the rest of the letter, which means you wind up with a really badly written, run-on sentence—like this one—then something is radically wrong.
Common sense says that anytime you receive an emailed offer of free money from a perfect stranger—and that includes the FBI!—throw it away. Common sense also says that if there's an attachment with an email from a perfect stranger, never open it.
Sadly, sometimes, in the face of greed, common sense can take a holiday. People have been stung with such idiotic, badly written letters.
So how's this for a "golden rule"—if your "English speaking" pen-pal is promising you instant wealth, inordinate fame, better sex, more hair or lasting friendship, and couldn't pass Mrs. Dribblenose's 7th Grade English Class... guaranteed, it's a scam.
Remember Mrs. Dribblenose, the craggy white-haired English teacher back in 7th grade who made you write compositions about really boring subjects such as, "Why Wheat Matters To Me," then scribbled red ink all over your pages, correcting your sentence structure, spelling and grammar?
She's the one who tried to drum into your head stuff like: don't end sentences with prepositions; declension is the noun analog to conjugation; and, the complete predicate is everything in the sentence that the complete subject isn't. (Huh?)
When you're educated in the United States and Canada or, in fact, anywhere throughout the native English-speaking world, there is always a Mrs. Dribblenose. Thanks to her, the language as we speak it and write it is familiar.
Then along comes this:
"Dear Trusted Friend - This is to officially inform you that it has come to our notice, the Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI), that the sum of $8.3 Million U.S Dollars contained is here in the United State Of America in your name. That is why we have decided to contact you directly to acquire the proper verifications and proof from you to show that you are the rightful person to receive this fund, because the above mentioned amount is a huge amount of money, that is why we want to make sure that money you are about to receive is legal and we need to verify that you are not involved in any terrorist movement and money laundry. It has already been confirmed in your name, but funds are right now in our custody waiting to be released to you, we have verified and investigated that you are the right beneficiary to claim the funds, all we need from you is verification and proof due to the huge amount of money involved. As a matter of national security, we are to serve and to protect the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA."
What's wrong with that? To begin with, whoever wrote such gibberish never had to face Mrs. Dribblenose. How, then, could this possibly be from someone working for the FBI?
Granted, not all email scammers are so outrageously illiterate. But that's a genuine email, and it's surprising how many scammers — pretending to be native English speakers — don't seem to know the basic rules of English grammar. Or, how to spell. Or, that when you write a sentence which is too long, and contains all sorts of sub-clauses, even when those sub-clauses are supposed to be helping to make a point but fails because the sub-clauses don't make any more sense than the rest of the letter, which means you wind up with a really badly written, run-on sentence—like this one—then something is radically wrong.
Common sense says that anytime you receive an emailed offer of free money from a perfect stranger—and that includes the FBI!—throw it away. Common sense also says that if there's an attachment with an email from a perfect stranger, never open it.
Sadly, sometimes, in the face of greed, common sense can take a holiday. People have been stung with such idiotic, badly written letters.
So how's this for a "golden rule"—if your "English speaking" pen-pal is promising you instant wealth, inordinate fame, better sex, more hair or lasting friendship, and couldn't pass Mrs. Dribblenose's 7th Grade English Class... guaranteed, it's a scam.
There's A Sucker Born Every Minute
Where The Money Is, by Jeffrey Robinson (c) 2010
Wed, 06/02/2010
Funny thing about your bank account—it's yours.
Back in the 1930s and the 1940s there was a bank robber named Willie Sutton who made a career out of robbing banks, getting thrown in jail, escaping and then robbing more banks. This went on for years, turning him into something of a folk legend. And, so the story goes, at one point when he was asked by a journalist, "Willie, why do you rob banks," he answered, "Cause that's where the money is."
Today, crooks don't have to walk into a bank with a shotgun and say, "This is a stick up." That's far too risky for what will, inevitably be, a very small reward. Instead, they simply have to find a way into your bank account.
Today, that's where the money is.
And even if you're happy to let your cable company and your credit card company and your cell phone company take what you owe them out of your account automatically every month, why on earth would you ever allow a total stranger in there to help himself?
You get an email, or a phone call, from someone purporting to be from your bank, saying that there have been several suspicious withdrawals from your account and, because they're worried for you, they want to verify the suspicious activity. Hey, that's my money, you insist, I never wrote those checks. That's right, you're told, we're sure there's something wrong, so let's take a look. May we have your account number and pin number.
Or, you receive an email which says much the same thing: "... suspicious activities..." and provides a link to the bank's site where you have to log in with your password and pin. You don't notice, because you're not looking, that the address of that site isn't quite the same as the bank's official online site.
Or, you answer an ad for a work-at-home scheme that requires you to deposit third party checks into your account. We will pay you 10% of the total deposits, comes the promise. What's more, comes the re-assurance, you won't have to send any money out of your account until after the check you've deposited for us, clears. So you put a $4000 check from some company into your account, and three days later, when you see the deposit has been credited to your account, you wire out $3600. And that's the easiest $400 you've ever made.
Unfortunately... three days after that, the bank informs you that the $4000 check was counterfeit. You say, but it cleared. And they say, no, it didn't clear, we merely credited that money to you, and now you owe us $3600.
Put simply:
* Anytime someone you think you know wants information by email or over the phone, ask yourself, would I give this same information to a total stranger if he asked for it on the street?
* Never click on a link sent to you by email, unless it's from friend, and even then, worry about viruses. If you need to check something with your bank, use the link they gave you when you opened the account, or go to the branch and do it face to face. Your bank will never send an email or phone you to verify your account number or pin.
* Anyone who wants to use your bank account, especially if he's willing to pay you for the privilege, is a crook!
Wed, 06/02/2010
Funny thing about your bank account—it's yours.
Back in the 1930s and the 1940s there was a bank robber named Willie Sutton who made a career out of robbing banks, getting thrown in jail, escaping and then robbing more banks. This went on for years, turning him into something of a folk legend. And, so the story goes, at one point when he was asked by a journalist, "Willie, why do you rob banks," he answered, "Cause that's where the money is."
Today, crooks don't have to walk into a bank with a shotgun and say, "This is a stick up." That's far too risky for what will, inevitably be, a very small reward. Instead, they simply have to find a way into your bank account.
Today, that's where the money is.
And even if you're happy to let your cable company and your credit card company and your cell phone company take what you owe them out of your account automatically every month, why on earth would you ever allow a total stranger in there to help himself?
You get an email, or a phone call, from someone purporting to be from your bank, saying that there have been several suspicious withdrawals from your account and, because they're worried for you, they want to verify the suspicious activity. Hey, that's my money, you insist, I never wrote those checks. That's right, you're told, we're sure there's something wrong, so let's take a look. May we have your account number and pin number.
Or, you receive an email which says much the same thing: "... suspicious activities..." and provides a link to the bank's site where you have to log in with your password and pin. You don't notice, because you're not looking, that the address of that site isn't quite the same as the bank's official online site.
Or, you answer an ad for a work-at-home scheme that requires you to deposit third party checks into your account. We will pay you 10% of the total deposits, comes the promise. What's more, comes the re-assurance, you won't have to send any money out of your account until after the check you've deposited for us, clears. So you put a $4000 check from some company into your account, and three days later, when you see the deposit has been credited to your account, you wire out $3600. And that's the easiest $400 you've ever made.
Unfortunately... three days after that, the bank informs you that the $4000 check was counterfeit. You say, but it cleared. And they say, no, it didn't clear, we merely credited that money to you, and now you owe us $3600.
Put simply:
* Anytime someone you think you know wants information by email or over the phone, ask yourself, would I give this same information to a total stranger if he asked for it on the street?
* Never click on a link sent to you by email, unless it's from friend, and even then, worry about viruses. If you need to check something with your bank, use the link they gave you when you opened the account, or go to the branch and do it face to face. Your bank will never send an email or phone you to verify your account number or pin.
* Anyone who wants to use your bank account, especially if he's willing to pay you for the privilege, is a crook!
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Your New Best Friend: The Tooth Fairy
Your New Best Friend: The Tooth Fairy, by Jeffrey Robinson (c) 2010
Tue, 06/01/2010
An email arrives, out of the blue, announcing that you've fortuitously won $9 million in some mysterious foreign lottery.
Isn't life just filled with surprises!
But your new best friend is the Tooth Fairy.
Thanks to the email revolution, which has changed the way the world communicates, conmen and scammers have fast, easy and dirt-cheap access to in-boxes by the hundreds of millions. In the old days, they had to use snail-mail and their success rate was 1-2%. Not bad for any direct mail campaign, but still a costly way of doing business. To make it work, they had to steal phone books from around the world so they knew who to write to. (After the 1966 Atlanta Olympics, for instance, every hotel in town reported dozens of phone books had disappeared from the rooms. Two months later, Atlanta was bombarded with millions of scam letters.) Then, they had to pay hundreds of people to work under sweatshop conditions addressing envelopes. Not willing to pay for postage, the fraudsters printed counterfeit stamps, which meant that hundreds of thousands of scam letters were regularly intercepted by postal authorities and never delivered.
Today, to reach 15 million people, they can buy that many email addresses for as little as $300-$500, then program a bunch of laptops to spew emails out overnight. Granted, many people rely on spam filters to keep junk out of their in-boxes, so the success rate with email is much lower than with snail mail. But email means the crooks can reach 50 or 100 times as many people for no real cost.
Does it really matter that you've never heard of this lottery that you just won? All you have to do to claim your prize is pay a minimal fee so that a certified check can be over-nighted to you, supposedly by Fedex or UPS, from the official lottery prize office in Spain (or Ireland, Nigeria, Canada, Bangkok, Finland, Peru, some place, any place). The cost of the overnight envelope, including handling, is a mere $92.
A small price to pay for life changing money.
But a foolish price to pay for thin air.
Now consider this. If the Tooth Fairy sends out 15 million emails and gets back one positive response for every 10,000, that translates to a return of $1,380,000. Next week, say, only 10 million emails go out. The week after that, perhaps 12 million. And so it goes. Week after week. Because there is always a small percentage of people who will fall for it, this is a full-time, highly lucrative business.
Yes, life is indeed filled with surprises. Like when you put that first lost tooth under your pillow and found 50-cents there the next morning.
But life is also filled with certain indisputable truths, such as (and these three things I know are true):
* Luck and greed are not the same thing.
* No one is going to send you money just because you have an email address.
* If you didn't buy a ticket, you didn't win the lottery!
Tue, 06/01/2010
An email arrives, out of the blue, announcing that you've fortuitously won $9 million in some mysterious foreign lottery.
Isn't life just filled with surprises!
But your new best friend is the Tooth Fairy.
Thanks to the email revolution, which has changed the way the world communicates, conmen and scammers have fast, easy and dirt-cheap access to in-boxes by the hundreds of millions. In the old days, they had to use snail-mail and their success rate was 1-2%. Not bad for any direct mail campaign, but still a costly way of doing business. To make it work, they had to steal phone books from around the world so they knew who to write to. (After the 1966 Atlanta Olympics, for instance, every hotel in town reported dozens of phone books had disappeared from the rooms. Two months later, Atlanta was bombarded with millions of scam letters.) Then, they had to pay hundreds of people to work under sweatshop conditions addressing envelopes. Not willing to pay for postage, the fraudsters printed counterfeit stamps, which meant that hundreds of thousands of scam letters were regularly intercepted by postal authorities and never delivered.
Today, to reach 15 million people, they can buy that many email addresses for as little as $300-$500, then program a bunch of laptops to spew emails out overnight. Granted, many people rely on spam filters to keep junk out of their in-boxes, so the success rate with email is much lower than with snail mail. But email means the crooks can reach 50 or 100 times as many people for no real cost.
Does it really matter that you've never heard of this lottery that you just won? All you have to do to claim your prize is pay a minimal fee so that a certified check can be over-nighted to you, supposedly by Fedex or UPS, from the official lottery prize office in Spain (or Ireland, Nigeria, Canada, Bangkok, Finland, Peru, some place, any place). The cost of the overnight envelope, including handling, is a mere $92.
A small price to pay for life changing money.
But a foolish price to pay for thin air.
Now consider this. If the Tooth Fairy sends out 15 million emails and gets back one positive response for every 10,000, that translates to a return of $1,380,000. Next week, say, only 10 million emails go out. The week after that, perhaps 12 million. And so it goes. Week after week. Because there is always a small percentage of people who will fall for it, this is a full-time, highly lucrative business.
Yes, life is indeed filled with surprises. Like when you put that first lost tooth under your pillow and found 50-cents there the next morning.
But life is also filled with certain indisputable truths, such as (and these three things I know are true):
* Luck and greed are not the same thing.
* No one is going to send you money just because you have an email address.
* If you didn't buy a ticket, you didn't win the lottery!
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
JUST PUBLISHED
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One in nine Americans will lose money as a victim of fraud
• Every man and woman in the country (and every child with an email address) will be targeted by professional fraudsters-multiple times.
• Seven out of every eight frauds go unreported.
• Most fraudsters will get away with their crime.
• Government agencies and crime watchdogs suggest that there could be up to $100 billion worth of fraud in this country in any given year.
A jaw-dropping exposé of fraud in America today-who's doing it, how it's done, and how you can protect yourself-the world of fraud is laid bare: from personal finance and investment schemes to Internet scams and identity theft, to pyramid cons and the infamous Nigerian advance fee frauds.
Jeffrey Robinson gets inside the heads of the most notorious scam artists to uncover the psychological weapons they use to entice victims. With uncanny clarity and insight, he shows how to spot a scam and how to limit your exposure to fraudsters.
There's a Sucker Born Every Minute levels the playing field, arming consumers with the knowledge they need to combat even the most insidious conmen.
• Every man and woman in the country (and every child with an email address) will be targeted by professional fraudsters-multiple times.
• Seven out of every eight frauds go unreported.
• Most fraudsters will get away with their crime.
• Government agencies and crime watchdogs suggest that there could be up to $100 billion worth of fraud in this country in any given year.
A jaw-dropping exposé of fraud in America today-who's doing it, how it's done, and how you can protect yourself-the world of fraud is laid bare: from personal finance and investment schemes to Internet scams and identity theft, to pyramid cons and the infamous Nigerian advance fee frauds.
Jeffrey Robinson gets inside the heads of the most notorious scam artists to uncover the psychological weapons they use to entice victims. With uncanny clarity and insight, he shows how to spot a scam and how to limit your exposure to fraudsters.
There's a Sucker Born Every Minute levels the playing field, arming consumers with the knowledge they need to combat even the most insidious conmen.
Friday, February 19, 2010
THERE'S A SUCKER BORN EVERY MINUTE
Coming Soon
JEFFREY ROBINSON'S
THERE'S A SUCKER BORN EVERY MINUTE
A Revelation Of Audacious Frauds, Scams, And Cons
-- How To Spot Them, How To Stop Them
Perigee/Penguin Books
June 1, 2010
June 1, 2010
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