Stupidest Spam of the Week The Oil Alliance

You read in the news of complex fraud cases where scammers have set up fake businesses and made deals with large companies and over the course of months swindled them out of millions.

This latest scammer seems to have been reading those stories and thinks she can do the same but without the months of preparation needed – just email some mugs and find some that want in to a shady mega bucks deal.

The email title is “Crude Oil Partnership”.

It starts “ATTN: CEO / Managing Director”. “I have been motivated by your personal status and I have decided to approach you for a profitable partnership in a multi million dollar partnership in crude oil trading”.

There is a long involved story about how her company buys crude oil in Angola but has to buy through a 3^rd party who have a government licence. The deal part is that she will help me to setup a company name and buy a licence at her expense. Then I can be the intermediary and will be paid $12 per barrel of oil purchased by her company.

With millions of barrels of oil involved that makes a big commission for me.

She also has the cheek to state “It is against my work ethics to benefit from my company’s dealings”.

Then goes to explain that she is near retirement so will take the profit for herself anyway.

The entire story is make-believe of course – probably some scammer sitting around, drinking with other criminals and invented this whole charade.

Her email address is @consultant.com which may sound impressive but is just a free email service anyone can use.

Pathetic.

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October 10, 2020

Time-Wasters Update

An email claims to be from Amazon and has the title “Attention: This email contain a gift!”. The email is about filling in a shopping survey to get the reward. But it’s from bodbend.com rather than Amazon so it’s from a scammer after your login details.

The radio station gets endless emails offering SEO (search engine optimisation) but this latest one looked interesting. It claims to be from Lilli of retirementcircle.tech which sounds like a group of retired people now working in IT. However, there is no web site retirementcircle.tech and the message sender doesn’t recognise that the station’s email address is a generic address not a person, hence the sender is an automated process and almost certainly from a scammer. No thanks.

An email offers a free numerology reading from the world’s most acclaimed numerologist – an incredibly accurate reading on any subject you wish, just from your name and birth date. The sender’s email address is fake, the unsubscribe button is fake, the whole thing is just fake – trying to get your name and birthdate – obviously two key pieces of information for any identity thief to start with. Never give your name and birth date to someone you don’t know.

A message from ‘Blood Pressure Medication’ warns me that 80 million Americans have high blood pressure because of one vegetable they eat. Of course, the scammer’s message doesn’t say what the vegetable is, just a link to click to find out. Nope. I wont be clicking to find this scammer’s game.

There are huge numbers of scam emails based on how to stop dogs barking. This is strange as most claim to offer ultrasonic devices to stop the barking, but Amazon sell hundreds of different types of such devices so why would anyone turn to scam emails? There are also citronella based sprays on Amazon for the same purpose. Hard to believe they work, but some claim they do. If you have a problem dog – consult an expert or buy products from reputable sources – never from unsolicited emails.

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October 9, 2020

The Fundraising Preference Service

Charities have long been an established part of life, carrying out everything from hospice care to cancer research to caring for orphaned children to seeking responsible treatment of animals etc.

In Britain there are well over 200,000 registered charities and estimated to be a lot more that aren’t registered as they are too small.

Charities have a good name and do a good job but in recent years in the UK, many large charities became too focussed on collecting money and using unscrupulous methods to do so.

From reports of chuggers (the charity collectors in the street who stop you and wont let go till you’ve signed up) to the ones that trade names of donors so they can each cold call more people, to those using boiler room tactics on cold calling. Some people have reported getting hundreds of such calls per week and being frightened to leave their phone connected.

There is now the Fundraising Preference Service.

You can register online at https://public.fundraisingpreference.org.uk/

Or call 0300 303 3517. You register yourself (or another person) so as to not be bothered by the charities you elect to block.

You need to supply your name and address and pick which charities to block. That’s all there is to it.

You can register someone else on the service and they will be sent a message informing them of the registration. This is so that carers and family members and neighbours can register people unable to do so themselves.

Most of the charities have learned to behave better following the bad publicity but this will hopefully make them more responsible as well and stop a lot of the unnecessary bothering of people that still goes on.

In its first days, the FRP was receiving 114 requests per hour so you can see this service is very much needed.

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October 8, 2020

Business Loan Scam

Scammers know that many small businesses are struggling to survive and need cheap loans. Often, such companies don’t trust banks or would be forced to put up assets to secure loans whereas scammers don’t demand such protection because they don’t intend to give out any money.

If a loan or service sounds too good to be true, it’s probably a scam.

If possible, have a trusted 3^rd party finance expert who can advise you on business loans.

Watch out for these danger signs on any proposed business loan: –

Money Up Front

Reputable lenders and brokers should never ask you for money up front – no registration fee or credit check fee or anything similar. An upfront costs means it’s probably a scam.

Lack of a Physical Address

You should always check whether a business has premises – if not then be suspicious. A P.O. box number does not count as a physical address.

“Guaranteed” Loans

Only scammers can offer loans where you are guaranteed to be accepted before you have given them any information on your financial circumstances. Offers of loans even for people with no credit history are bound to be fake.

Cash Advance Lending

These are the lenders of last resort and charge exceptionally high interest levels – usually more than 100% APR and can be more then 1000% APR. To be avoided at all costs.

If you have any experiences with loan scams do let me know, by email.

October 7, 2020

Safe From Scams Website

www.safefromscams.co.uk/

SafeFromScams was created in 2010 to offer information on how to protect yourself against scams.

The sales pitch for the site is:-

“It’s a very dangerous world out there. You might lock your doors.. The scammers are everywhere. They want to part you from your hard-earned money, to steal your identity, or simply take advantage of your honesty to make a profit from others. You might be law-abiding, but they’re not. There are thousands of them, in person, in business, on the phone and online – and they’re growing more ingenious all the time”.

Safe From Scams say that the site is a resource to learn about scams of all types, from the classics that are still being run regularly, like bill-padding, builders, and chain letters – to the new ones that keep appearing, things like phishing, mobile phone scams, or those fake lotteries.

Safe From Scams say that the features and articles are written by experts – who have experience, or a particular interest in this area.

The guy who started Safe From Scams is John Rowlinson – the owner of PtS which has software and property companies and he uses those to fund the Safe From Scams website and a number of similar sites.

The site covers a wide range of scams, including Credit Card Scams, Travel Scams, Fake Goods, Medical Scams and is a great resource for more detailed information on the various kinds of scams.,

There is also an ‘Ask the Expert’ feature.

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October 5, 2020

SEO Pay for Performance

“SEO” stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Anyone with a web site or blog is bombarded with emails from people offering search engine optimisation. This basically means making changes to a website so as to get more visitors from the search engines.

Much of search engine optimisation is quite straightforward – make sure each page has a suitable heading that Google (and other search engines) can find easily, suitable keywords and phrases that people may use when searching, any pictures to have a description of what they are about, page names to be meaningful rather than numbers or acronyms etc.

The provision of search engine optimisation services is a huge industry and millions of people work from home either as independents or working for small companies offering these services. That’s all fine.

Some are good at the job but many are untrained and provide a poor service and many many scammers know this is an easy sell so offer such services, take the money and provide nothing.

One of the latest ways to sell SEO is to offer “pay by performance” meaning that the provider only gets paid when they achieve whatever targets were agreed e.g. to get your business to number one spot on Google searches for specified keywords.

This sounds ideal as in theory you’re not paying until they meet that goal.

But that’s not the case.

There is usually a one-off setup fee (they may take the money and disappear)
They need your bank details for their records (they can sell that information to other scammers)
They need access to your website to make SEO improvements (they can then ransom the site and its contents to you or steal any financial information on the site or add their own adverts or malware to the site).

If you need web site design, SEO, help with social media advertising or any similar online services then research local businesses or independents offering what you want. Do not go with overseas people where you have no idea whether the business is real or scam or you could end up very dearly for that bad decision.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.