Consumer News » online scams

Bogus jobs scammer gets three years and has to pay £70,000

Alan — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 02:43:52 +0000

More than £70,000 has to be paid back by a serial fraudster who bilked more than tens of thousands of pounds through scams. Mark Shortland, of Sheffield, received three years in jail in 2010 when he ripped off students and girlfriends and taking advantage of the unemployed. One scam was where he offered bogus jobs to chauffeurs that had been desperate for employment.

He tricked his women victims into believing that he had been at one time a commercial airline pilot. In the Crime Act hearing the in Sheffield Court found that his benefit in the scams was in the area of £70,000 thus he was ordered to repay the amount within six months or face up to a possible 21 more months in jail.

He has been labeled a serial fraudster where he made his living defrauding others and he needs to have his ill-gotten monies taken away from him to compensate the victims in any way possible.

His scam with chauffeurs was to place an advertisement for employment for drivers. He interviewed people in Luton, the East Midlands, Manchester and Liverpool and offered over 100 people employment. His scam was to ask all of them for £100 deposit for keys to the car he said he would be giving them to drive. Of the 100 or so only 30 paid but of course they were never given a car to drive.

He also advertised goods for sale on eBay when people sent the money he did not send the goods. He received money from all over the country. He made most of his money by saying he would help organize an advance of £75,000 of his mortgage and when the money came through and deposited into his account, it was never seen again.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Online phishing fraud continues to mushroom

Alan — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:53:03 +0000

Every seven seconds someone is defrauded, which comes out to be an average of £285 per person in the UK. The study from CPP, the life assistance company, estimated that just within the UK about 3.7b phishing emails were received over the last year.

More than half of all emails are phishing emails were fraudulent emails created to look like legitimate correspondence from banks on high street. According to industry figures, banking fraud increased by 132% over the last year.

Almost half of all those surveyed were worried that their card details may be used to make online purchases illegally.

Con artists have also started to use social networking sites taking advantage of defaults within the privacy settings of these websites in order to exploit and target victims.

Almost a fifth of all Britons have received fake Facebook messages that claim to have been sent from friends of their family and a third of all Britons are worried about their social networking accounts getting hacked.

Identity fraud expert at CPP, Nicole Sanders, stated that it seems as if a day does not pass without another case of fraud online taking top billing on the news. However, the more concerning part about this is that consumers are still being victimized due to the fact fraudsters are becoming much more skilled at their trade making it hard to discern a legitimate email from a scam email.

She added that as social networking becomes more popular people need to be careful about what type of information they post online.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Web detective shuts down Haiti scam charity

Alan — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 02:36:11 +0000

One internet detective acting alone was able to shut down a fake charity that was scamming people for cash under the guise of sending the money to children in need in Haiti.

Charles Conway, age 36, discovered an email fraud that looked like a real charity but instead of sending the money to children in Haiti diverted the funds to an Eastern European account.

He was able to expose the fake charity after performing some basic checks and was able to get it closed down on Tuesday.

Conway stated that this case in particular really got under his skin because he hates when people play on other’s heartstrings just to scam them.

The internet sleuth runs an agency on his own called Scam Detectives after a friend was ripped off during the holiday season. He said his wife’s friend purchased a plethora of Christmas presents online but never came leaving her without a clue about how to shop online in the future or how to spot a scam online.

The online detective agency is set up as an aside to his web design firm Clear as Crystal and was launched in January. The purpose of the site is to educate internet browsers on how to protect themselves from online fraud and email scams. The website has already attracted over 78,000 people from around the globe.

Conway offers two rules to protect browsers from being the victim of a scam, never donate to any charity that finds you via email, and never donate to a charity that you have never heard of.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.