Author: comptroller

Fake Dating Sites

Dating services are a goldmine for scammers and there many fake dating services online. Some are simply phishing websites designed to get your confidential information and provide nothing. Some are real dating sites but poor quality and designed to con people into paying a lot before they realise it’s a waste of time.

This new batch of fake dating sites with names such as Affairbook, Affairgram and Affairsmeet are very basic – there are no websites as such, just fake pages.

The emails sent out by the million target men interested in women  and are quite  basic such as

“Paula sent you a message. Click to see her photo and read your message.”

Or “Flirt Alert. Kirsty wants to see more of you.”

These even have Unsubscribe options at the bottom of the email – but clicking that just tells the scammer you are interested.

It’s simple to avoid these fake services – if you didn’t sign up for such a service then any emails claiming to be messages from someone interested in you are obviously fake and clicking the links is a really bad idea.

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The Dale Car Scam

This is the strange story of a scammer named Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael.  In 1974, there was an oil crisis and people looked for cars that were cheaper to run than the typical American gas guzzler.

She came up with The Dale. A three wheeler two seater sports car powered by an 850 cc air cooled engine and claimed to manage 70 miles per gallon and to cost only $2000 (cheap even in 1974).

Two additional vehicles were planned by Carmichael, the Revelle and the Vanagen. Both of these had  a three-wheeled design and used the same 2-cylinder engine. None of the vehicles ever saw production and only two prototype vehicles of the Dale were made; only one prototype was able to run under its own power.

Speaking to the Chicago Sun-Times in November 1974, Carmichael said she was on the way to taking on General Motors or any other car manufacturer for that matter. She said she had millions of dollars in backing “from private parties” and also talked of a 150,000 sq ft  assembly plant in Burbank, California and over 100 employees on the rolls.

She claimed to be the widow of a NASA structural engineer but in fact she had been wanted by the police since 1961 for alleged involvement in counterfeiting. She scammed $33 million from investors before running off with the money.

The Dale was marketed as being high-tech, lightweight, yet safer than any existing car at the time. “By eliminating a wheel in the rear, we saved 300 pounds and knocked more than $300 from the car’s price. The Dale  weighs less than 1,000 pounds”, said Carmichael. She claimed that the car’s lightness did not affect its stability or safety. The low centre of gravity always remained inside the triangle of the three wheels, making it nearly impossible for it to tip over. She also went on record to say that she drove it into a wall at 30 miles per hour and there was no structural damage to the car or her. She expected sales of 88,000 cars in the first year and 250,000 in the second year.

When Car & Driver magazine went to investigate the Dale, the prototype lacked a steering wheel, had no accelerator pedal, and had a lawnmower engine in the engine compartment not connected to the wheels..

The clever scammer was caught and jailed but only some of the money was ever recovered.

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Eric and the Fake Job

Eric was a smart guy – retired from working in technology and looking for a part-time job working from home but earning some serious money if possible.

Searching on the Internet he found a website for a Swiss company offering jobs to retired people with a professional background and he took the ‘opportunity’.

The work was straightforward – mostly about buying APPLE devices in Walmarts and sending them on to an address in California.

The Swiss company paid his credit card bill for the first few weeks then the payments stopped and the credit card company told him there was fraud involved and the previous payments to his card were fake and had been cancelled.

Eric now found himself owing tens of thousands of dollars to the credit card company and the scammers had disappeared – the website was gone, the phone lines were no longer answered.

It was a nasty lesson for Eric but it can be a warning to others to beware high paying jobs offered by people you’ve never met.

This is a complex scam as the scammers set-up fake websites and call centres, fake legal documents and more to trap the unwary. They use stolen bank accounts and credit cards to pay bills initially then vanish leaving innocent people in huge debt with no redress and possible legal action against them if they have been shipping stolen goods.

Stay safe.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.

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