Would You Believe a Scam Aimed Based on Letters To Santa?

Taking advantage of children’s wishes at Christmas is a pretty miserable thing to do, but there are scammers intent on doing exactly that.

There are assorted new services on the Internet to do with Christmas and the festive season and APPS that let children speak to Santa Claus, make wish lists, watch Santa travel across the skies etc.

Most of these are honest of course.

One that’s been recently turned into a scam is the Santa letter.

You get emails selling you the idea of buying a personalised Santa Letter package for your child or children.

You are promised

A personalised letter signed by Santa
A certificate
Santa’s map
Santa’s nice list
All sent from the North Pole

Sounds good, but it’s fake – you may get something worth only a fraction of the payment you make but more likely is you get nothing for your payment and probably your credit card details etc. are sold on to other scammers.

Be very careful what you pay for online and preferably use well-known brands.

It’s not always easy to recognise such a scam, but you can do the following

Ignore any spam emails you receive – search online for what you want instead and look for reviews to check
Ask friends and relatives – if they have had a good experience buying from specific websites then try those first
Check the email sender’s address. If it’s a nonsensical one such as thermosphere or dehypnotised then steer clear.
Check the sender’s domain. If the address is “.date” or “.bid” or anything else that makes no sense for someone claiming to offer Santa Letters then steer clear

Don’t be caught out this Christmas

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December 12, 2021

You Won’t Believe The Stupidity Of This Scam About a Magic Substance

Some scammers go to a lot of trouble to present a story, however ridiculous it is, in the hope you will believe it and want to know more.

Some others go for the opposite approach of starting a story but with no contents – leaving the reader to make up perhaps what they would like it to be about.

This latest one is titled “joke’s on them. The elite thought they had destroyed all of the evidence of this device”.

The sender’s email address is ‘Orgone Motor’ so perhaps the sender read about Wilhelm Reich and his theories of orgone energy or more likely the sender just thought it was a good word to use regardless of any historical meaning it might have.

Any theories about orgone have long since been discredited as ravings as Reich mixed up all sorts of ideas prevalent in the early 20th century.

The point of the email is to get people to click to watch a video – as that will be how the scammer makes money.

The message does not say anything about what the machine does or how it works, just that the inventor once tried to send a piece of it out of state and was immediately sentenced to 2 years in jail.

Everyone knows there’s nothing immediate about the legal system, so that’s as made up as the rest of the story.

All rubbish, to be ignored. Never click to watch videos unless you know wat they are and who sent you the link.

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December 11, 2021

More of Those Terrible Time-Wasters

The email asks me to book my hearing health check and seems to be from Boots the Chemist who do a lot of hearing checks, so that makes sense. The advert reads as if legitimate – the right logo, correct grammar and it is a service provided by Boots the Chemist. But the message is from rurehe.com which doesn’t sound like Boots the Chemist so it will get binned.

Ali Fashil wants to tell me about the financing program he is working on internationally. He’s only interested in projects worth more than $1 million but can completely finance any such project. So, if I have such a project he will arrange the money. I just need to get in touch and provide my details. The thought that anyone wanting to make serious investments would send out emails by the millions to names on a spam list is ludicrous. It’s just a simple phishing email after your confidential details.

A new mysterious liquid lets you dissolve fat instantly, so claims the scammer. It makes your metabolism work like it did when you were twenty. The liquid can dissolve up to 56 pounds of fat in 3 months and it will end obesity. The picture in the email looks like wallpaper glue but makes no difference as it’s all fake rubbish. There is no mysterious liquid – just an evil scammer.

Yet more emails arrive warning that various email addresses at the radio station will expire within hours and we need to login to confirm their passwords. It seems that everyone gets these stupid messages nowadays. All lies of course.

Some people go to ridiculous lengths to get people to watch their YouTube video. One latest one is called “2-finger trick that resets blood sugar”. It claims that over 190,000 people use a simple trick to reset their blood sugar almost instantly. This is an obvious lie and the point of the email is to get you to click to watch the scammer’s video from which presumably he or she will make some money. The email also claims that this is the end of the $370 billion diabetes industry in America. In fact the diabetes device, testing and medication market is about $25 billion per year in USA so the $370 billion figure is made-up. But then the whole thing is made-up rubbish.

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December 10, 2021

How to Report a Scam

There are endless scams, but they typically fall into a set of categories which determine how and who you can report them to.

Below is the information relating to the UK, but you will need to seek out the relevant contacts if you are in another country.

If you have transferred money to the scammer in the last 24 hours, tell the police immediately by calling 101 or report online at www.police.uk/pu/contact-the-police/report-a-crime-incident/.

Generally, the Police prefer non immediate scams to be reported to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or online at https://reporting.actionfraud.police.uk

1. Report an online scam

This is any scam that uses social media, email or websites.

To report a scam email – forward the message to [email protected].

You should report an online scam advert to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) at www.asa.org.uk/make-a-complaint/report-an-online-scam-ad.html

You can also report a scam advert to the website where you saw it.

If the scam involves financial services – cryptocurrency, investments, insurance or pensions, report it to the Financial Conduct Authority at www.fca.org.uk/consumers/report-scam-unauthorised-firm

If you think you’ve been scammed into transferring your pension, contact your pension provider immediately. Then get in touch with The Pensions Advisory Service at www.pensionsadvisoryservice.org.uk/contacting-us

Identity Theft – contact the real company or person to let them know their name is being falsely used.

Any scam using the name HMRC should be reported to them at www.gov.uk/report-suspicious-emails-websites-phishing/report-hmrc-phishing-emails-texts-and-phone-call-scams

2. Reporting an offline scam

This is usually postal or door-to-door scams and can include telephone and text message scams.

You can report these scams to Citizens Advice Bureau at

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/get-more-help/report-to-trading-standards/

Trading Standards gathers information about scams so they can take legal action against scammers.

3. Royal Mail

Royal Mail investigates postal scams. If you’ve received something in the post you think is a scam, download the scam mail report form at https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/303

Then send the scam mail and the report to ‘Freepost Scam Mail’ or you can call Royal Mail and ask for a pre-paid envelope and the form. You can just email Royal Mail if appropriate.

Email: [email protected]
Telephone: 0800 011 3466

4 Action Fraud

Action Fraud collect scam reports and collate the data and where relevant give the information to the Police or other authorities to follow-up on criminal behaviour.

They can get the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau to investigate some scams. They’ll also give you a crime reference number, which can be helpful if you need to tell your bank you’ve been scammed.

It’s quickest to report a scam to Action Fraud online at www.actionfraud.police.uk/reporting-fraud-and-cyber-crime but you can also report the scam by phone on 0300 123 2040

December 9, 2021

HMRC Warning of Tax Threat Calls

Scammers target vulnerable and elderly in cold call tax voucher fraud, warns HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

HMRC say that scammers call the victims and impersonate an HMRC member of staff.

“They tell them that they owe large amounts of tax which they can only pay off through digital vouchers and gift cards, including those used for Apple’s iTunes Store”.

Victims are then told to go to a local shop, buy these vouchers and then read out the redemption code to the scammer who has kept them on the phone the whole time.

The conmen then sell on the codes or purchase high-value products, at the victim’s expense. The scammers use vouchers because they are easy to sell on and hard to trace once used. The idea that HMRC demand people pay by vouchers is quite ludicrous and should show the caller to be a scammer.

HMRC says the scammers frequently use intimidation to get what they want, threatening to seize the victim’s property or involve the police.

The vast majority of the victims are aged over 65 and of those who fell for the scam, the financial loss averaged £1,150 each.

As these scammers often prey on vulnerable people. HMRC urge people with elderly relatives to warn them about this scam and remind them that they should never trust anyone who phones them out of the blue and demands they pay a tax bill.

If you suspect that you or a vulnerable or elderly relative has been the victim of this scam or a similar one, you should report it immediately to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040.

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December 8, 2021

What Do the Scamwatch Stats Tell Us?

The graph below shows the most common scams being reported in Australia according to Scamwatch.

These scams are common across the world although the relative percentage of claims for each does vary between countries. The exact definition of, for example, investment scam also affects how the figures are reported in each country.

Investment scams shows the highest figure but in this case it includes any situation where the scammer offers something of high value in return for a small payment – not always what you would call an ‘investment’.

These percentages are relatively stable year to year except for scammers reacting to evens such as the Coronavirus pandemic, giving room for new scams and typically major catastrophes that scammers jump on.

If you have suffered any of these scams do let me know, by email.