The Shreveport Times

The Shreveport Times: "BATON ROUGE � Many unscrupulous scam artists are preying on the elderly and uninformed people of Louisiana, says Attorney General Charles Foti, so he and several organizations are teaming up for an information tour.

Dollar Defense workshops sponsored by the attorney general�s office, AARP, Entergy the Governor�s Office of Elderly Affairs, the LSU Ag Center and others will be conducted Wednesday in Shreveport, Thursday in Lake Charles and Saturday in Metairie.

Besides the usual identity theft, credit card, bank account and home repair scams, Foti said a new one cropped up this week.

�If you give them money, they�ll jump you to the front of the line� to get federal assistance to rebuild after last year�s hurricanes through the Road Home program, Foti said. �Or they say if you pay them to help you fill out an application, you�ll get more money. We don�t want people taken in.�

The new offer from a supposedly New York firm is particularly interesting, he said, because the Louisiana Recovery Authority hasn�t issued final forms for claiming the money."

Westport Police Warn of Wire Transfer Scams - WestportNow.com - Westport, Connecticut

Westport Police Warn of Wire Transfer Scams - WestportNow.com - Westport, Connecticut: "By Joanna Pliner
The Westport Police Department said today it has received three complaints this week from residents about prank callers asking residents to wire money.
According to Lt. Dale Call, two of the calls requested money to be wired to Canada and the third claimed to be calling from a sweepstakes and asked the resident to wire money to the West Indies.
Call said this kind of ploy is nothing new, but residents need to be aware of the danger such scams can cause.
�If [the caller] asks to have money wired, [the residents] need to make sure they know the person they are wiring money to,� Call said.
The caller will usually wait for the resident to offer a name before identifying themselves.
These callers try to take advantage of services that many businesses such as Western Union and Moneygram offer to allow transmitting money quickly to close friends and relatives.
According to the Westport Police Department, a caller should be considered suspicious if they ask you to wire money, ask for your Social Security or check routing numbers, imply they need a confirmation code or money transfer control number before they can withdraw your money, or are contacting you from overseas. "

KELOLAND.COM: News for Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa

KELOLAND.COM: News for Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa: "The letters promise to deliver big money, but are leaving South Dakotans holding the bill. Another cashier�s check scam has found its way into KELOLAND mail boxes.

The letter comes from a company called Prudential Locators. It claims you've won more than $250,000 dollars from a contest held in 2003. The letter says a technical setback caused a delay, but now the sweepstakes company is ready to pay up.

But to get the money, you need to cash a $2,900 cashier's check that's included with the letter, and send a personal check for the same amount back to the sweepstakes company to cover processing fees. After that, the letter promises you will receive a lump sum of nearly $200,000.

If it sounds too good to be true�it probably is.

But when we called the phone number listed on the letter only to get a message saying the cell phone we were trying to call is no longer in service. So, we called the Attorney General's office to check on the validity of this letter and they confirmed for us the letter is a scam, and the check is fake.

They say if someone would try to cash the check, and then send the money to the sweepstake company to claim their winnings, chances are they'd never get any money in return and would later be held accountable for cashing the fake check.

The Attorney General's Office receives several calls each week from South Dakotans who receive these fake letters and cashier's checks. And they say the best thing you can do if you receive one, is simply throw it away. "

Sun Herald - 07/07/06

Sun Herald - 07/07/06: "Man accused in post-Wilma scams charged with 56 additional counts
Naples Daily News
A man accused of scamming Collier County residents out of more than $60,000 after Hurricane Wilma hit South Florida in October has been charged with an additional 56 felony counts.
Brian Buck, 33, of Venice, was arrested in mid-June and accused of passing himself off as the owner of a screen repair business called 'Screen Enclosures by Brian,' between Oct. 26, 2005, and Feb. 14, 2006.
Buck would sign contracts with residents promising to repair or replace screen enclosures damaged in the storm, ask for a 30 percent to 50 percent deposit to purchase materials, then disappear, the Collier County Sheriff's Office reported.
Buck took a total of $63,842 from 14 victims, investigator Tom Muscato said.
On Tuesday, while he was in custody at the Naples Jail Center, members of the Collier County Economic Crimes Unit charged Buck with an additional 56 felony counts discovered during the investigation, said Kristin Adams of the Collier County Sheriff's Office."

Magic City Morning Star: IRS Renews E-mail Alert Following New Scams

Magic City Morning Star: IRS Renews E-mail Alert Following New Scams: "AUGUSTA -- Following a recent increase in scam e-mails, the Internal Revenue Service reminded taxpayers to be on the lookout for bogus e-mails claiming to be from the tax agency.
The IRS saw an increase in complaints in recent weeks about these e-mails, which are designed to trick the recipients into disclosing personal and financial information that could be used to steal the recipients� identity and financial assets.
�The IRS does not send out unsolicited e-mails asking for personal information,� said IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson. �Don�t be taken in by these criminals.�
The IRS has seen a recent increase in these scams. Since November, 99 different scams have been identified, with 20 of those coming in June � the most since 40 were identified in March during the height of the filing season.
Many of these schemes originate outside the United States. To date, investigations by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration have identified sites hosting more than two dozen IRS-related phishing scams. These scam Web sites have been located in many different countries, including Argentina, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Canada, Chile, China, England, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Singapore and Slovakia, as well as the United States."

Eyewitness News Memphis - BBB Warning: Work At Home Scams

Eyewitness News Memphis - BBB Warning: Work At Home Scams: "The Better Business Bureau of the Mid-South has a warning for people looking for jobs online. Watch out for work at home scams.
The BBB received a call from a woman about work home opportunities she was contacted about after she posted her resume on an internet career site. The job descriptions she received were very similar.
The positions required the woman to receive phone calls from their customers that were in her region, collect their payments in the form of a money order, process them using her personal bank account, keep 10% of the charge as her payment, deduct the charges associated with the particular transaction and transfer the remaining funds to the company�s account. One company even included a multi-page representative agreement. The purpose of including such an agreement is to lend an air of legitimacy to the offer. "

Spammers cashing in on pump-and-dump stock scams - Security Strategy - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com

Spammers cashing in on pump-and-dump stock scams - Security Strategy - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com: "Spam that contains fraudulent stock information has been proven to influence the financial markets, German researchers have found.
So-called 'pump-and-dump' scams, where spammers send out false stock information to encourage people to buy shares, were found to both increase the traded volume and artificially boost the share price, said researchers from Technische Universitat Dresden this week.
In a typical case, share prices increase by around 500 per cent, the researchers claimed.
Three groups of people are involved in the trading. The spammers themselves benefit by quickly selling pre-bought shares, once 'naive traders' have pushed up the share price by buying on the advice of the spam. The third group, dubbed 'smart' traders, recognise that a scam is being attempted and 'jump on the bandwagon' before also quickly disposing of shares, according to researcher Rainer B�hme.
Speaking at the Workshop on the Economics of Information Security in Cambridge, B�hme said: 'Stocks increase in value relative to the short term trend. Pump-and-dump seems to work. People apparently make investment decisions based on incredible sources such as email spam.'"