Category: Story

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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How Did 419 Scams Begin

Fifty Scams and Hoaxes is a new book by Martin Fone and is described as a light-hearted investigation into some of the worst examples of financial skulduggery, medical quackery and ingenious hoaxing from history. Along the way he came across a Pope advocating a drink based on cocaine, a pill to avoid hangovers, a woman who gave birth to rabbits, the man who broke the bank twice and the first examples of insurance fraud and scam emails.

It’s an easy book to read and is entertaining.

One story that surprised the Fightback Ninja is an early version of the 419 scam, also known as the advance fee scam where the scammer offers a fortune in return for carrying out a simple task.

The fortune might be a lock box of gold left by a diplomat that only you can access, or it may be the legacy of a dead relative and you’re the next of kin supposedly or any one of hundreds of such stories.

There is no fortune of course and the scammer progressively gets the victim to make a series of small payments for customs clearance or security checks or any other reason until the victim realises it’s a scam and stops paying.

Eugene Francois Vidocq in revolutionary France late 18th century specialised in using prison guards to send letters to carefully chosen very wealthy people.

The letters claimed he and his master were intending to escape revolutionary France and had a casket containing 1600 francs in gold and diamonds. They had been attacked en route and ditched the casket but now they were safe and had sent a servant to collect the casket but he had ended up in jail.

So, if you (the recipient) could send the money to have the servant released then the fortune can be shared with you.

The story is quite long and convoluted to add authenticity and is cleverly designed to lure the unsuspecting victim into believing about the fortune. This long ago scam shares many features with the modern day advance fee scams based upon it.

Vidocq reckoned that 20% of the letters he sent out ended up with money in his pocket so he became a wealthy man before retiring from the scamming game.  Modern day scammers need to send out millions of such messages to make any money from their fraudulent schemes.

Martin Fone’s blog is at https://martinfone.wordpress.com/

You can buy the book at www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/fifty-scams-and-hoaxes

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

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The Shed That Wasn’t a Top Restaurant

This is the story of how a back garden shed became the number one rated restaurant in London according to TripAdvisor.

The guy who did this did lots of jobs including writing fake reviews on TripAdvisor for restaurant owners who paid him £10 a time.  One day, sitting in his shed, he wondered if it was possible to create a fake restaurant on Trip Advisor and push it up the rankings to number one.

Setting Up the Shed – April 2017

To get your restaurant on Trip Advisor you just fill in the details online and give a phone number, address, description etc. – all easily done. He didn’t give the proper address – just the street where he lived and described The Shed as an appointment-only restaurant.

Next he bought a suitable Internet domain name and setup a website for the non-existent restaurant called The Shed.

He knew that to create interest he needed something original and pretentious – such as naming all of the dishes after moods. So, he created pretentious descriptions of the restaurant and the food with ridiculous photos of these mood dishes using shaving foam and anything to hand. One photo is of a fried egg on his bare foot. Clipped so you cannot tell it’s a foot. Crazy stuff.

Getting the Shed to Number One

At first on Trip Advisor it was ranked at 18,149 i.e. the bottom of the list.

He got friends to start adding rave reviews of The Shed and that’s how Trip Adviser works so The Shed started to rise up the ranks despite the fact that no-one had ever eaten a meal there – it was just his garden shed.

People started to phone to make bookings – and were told it was fully booked for months ahead.  People were attracted by the fact it was brand new, little was known about it and it seemed to be difficult to get a table there.

People in his street would stop him and ask for directions to The Shed and the phone kept ringing with people keen to make bookings.

Six months after he started his fake restaurant, The Shed achieved number one status on Trip Advisor.

He did tell TripAdvisor of his ‘experiment’ and their response by email was:- “Generally, the only people who create fake restaurant listings are journalists in misguided attempts to test us. As there is no incentive for anyone in the real world to create a fake restaurant it is not a problem we experience with our regular community – therefore this ‘test’ is not a real world example.”

Fair enough. But do beware of reviews that may have been written for less than honest reasons.

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Councillor Pothole

Councillor Roy Owen got tired of just attending council meetings and decided to tackle some of the council’s problems by hand – potholes, litter, rubbish dumping etc.

Roy lives in Caernafon and the streets have a serious pothole problem but the council is short of money and the complaints from the residents pour in.

So, Roy armed with his van, asphalt, a blow torch and some tools started filling the holes.

Now, he does this for much of the week and also helps to get rid of rubbish piling up and other jobs as the residents need. He does have to skip some council meetings – what a shame.

Roy, who is 60, has been carrying out repairs for the last two years in his Seiont ward in Caernarfon and it’s all due to the number of complaints he receives from residents about potholes and that the council cannot deal with them in a timely manner.

Roy’s only cost apart from his own time is about £26-a-week spent on asphalt, paid from his councillor’s allowance.

He is trained in road repairs but the council is not so pleased with his actions and says that the work should always be carried out by a highway authority.

“I go out and deal with the problem head on,” he has said.

Unsurprisingly, his residents love him and he wins his council ward election by a huge margin each time.

Roy is what a councilor should be – someone who gets the job done and makes a difference.

Nice one Roy. You are an honorary Ninja.

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Hacktivism

Hacktivism (a portmanteau of hack and activism) is the subversive use of computers and computer networks to promote a political agenda or a social change. Its ends are often related to the free speech, human rights and freedom of information movements.

Opinions differ as some people believe hacktivism is a growing force and will become more active and take on bigger challenges. But, others believe it is a spent force and will die away slowly over the coming years.

Mr. Robot

“Mr. Robot” is a TV series that tells the story of hacker Elliot Alderson  and his role in an anarchist collective called “fsociety,” whose followers wear masks that resemble “Rich Uncle Pennybags” from the Monopoly board game. Mr Robot is now making its fourth series.

The series was inspired by a notorious computer hacker named H who has gone from trying to bring down the authorities — to working for them.

As a key member of the hacking group known as Anonymous and a founder of its elite “LulzSec” unit, Hector Monsegur helped launch cyber attacks on government and corporate targets including the US Senate, the FBI and major credit-card companies.

But when he was arrested in 2011, Monsegur — known online as “Sabu” — began secretly cooperating with an investigation that led to a wave of arrests across the US, Great Britain and Ireland.

Today, Anonymous still goes by the motto it unveiled in 2009: “We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”

Hector Monsegur

But Monsegur, 35, says society has little to fear from the online anarchists in Guy Fawkes masks as “Anonymous is irrelevant.  “All it is now is a figment of hipsters’ imagination.”

Monsegur pleaded guilty to seven felonies as part of his deal with prosecutors and spent nearly eight months in Lower Manhattan’s infamous Metropolitan Correctional Center before being sentenced to time served in 2014.

The following year, Monsegur, landed a job working remotely as a “white-hat hacker” for Seattle-based Rhino Security Labs, helping companies identify vulnerabilities in their computer systems.

He admits that in comparison to what he used to do before, it’s not the same kind of thrill.

The article at http://www.fightbackonline.org/index.php/guidance/12-explanations/108-is-hacktivism-a-force-for-good has more information on Hacktivism.

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KB and the Police Officer Scammer

A post by K.B. Beaumaarks

I am an educated professional with an upper level income. My scams occurred not with an outsider but a partner…. yep first with my ex-husband who was a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine then to a boyfriend who was a Police Officer. Two professions that were “trustworthy professions” I was blinded by the scammers that they were. My point is to trust your gut no matter who the person is. If it feels wrong…. chances are it is wrong.

When I met my second husband, he was a charming police officer who stated he had made lots of money working for an additional company outside his police job.

He lived in a beautiful expensive home. He was a veteran of the police force for over 23 years and appeared to be well respected. I had made quite a bit of money after my divorce in real estate investments and lived in a nice home. I began to develop a relationship with him and felt very comfortable with him. He was a respected police officer. A law enforcing professional of 23 years.

He had asked to borrow money because he had gotten into a cash flow problem but had a real estate deal worth a million dollars. He presented me with a contract, I showed it to a real estate agent friend of mine and she said it was a legitimate contract. I felt comfortable knowing he paid $200,000.00 for the property and was reselling it to a Physician in the area who was very well known and very financially set.

He had a contract on the land for over a million dollars. He said to write him a check for the paper trail and write in the memo that it was a personal loan to him so I had evidence that it was a loan not a gift. Long story short, the contract fell apart but eventually sold for less but still doubled his money.

The police officer boyfriend basically said he was never going to pay me back and good luck trying to collect because he knew every judge in the county etc.

I sued him and he filed for bankruptcy after blowing every dollar he had made on the land deal. I trusted both my doctor husband and boyfriend police officer. Just because someone appears to be financially set or has a certain title, please research and follow your gut instincts or it could be financially fatal.

Con artists and scammers come in all professions and backgrounds. Do not be naïve and trust your gut!

See https://fightback.ninja/test/kb-married-to-a-scammer/for KBs post about her first husband.

I have written a book called The Preah Secrets and it deals with my veterinary husband and how I discovered his heist and how I followed my gut to eventually discover his intentions of deceit. I prepared and eventually sought justice for myself. I hope the book inspires others to follow their instincts and remember, scams can happen to anyone by anyone.

Go to http://kbbeaumaaks.com/index.php for further insight and to buy the book.

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