Money scams sweep area

by Paul Schreiber

SBJ Reporter

pschreiber@sbj.net

From swiping a person's identity and tapping their bank account to offers for earning extra income from home, scam artists are more creative than ever in their approach, their cunning, and their brazenness toward would-be victims.

Phishing

One slick hoax for illegally getting into people's wallets is called phishing, where an e-mail transmission spoofs a legitimate company's Web site.

E-mail notices cleverly disguised as originating from financial institutions are popping up with greater frequency, said Cindy Harding, assistant vice president at Empire Bank, who handles fraud issues. Harding said some of the most common phishing scams appear to originate from CitiBank and U.S. Bank. (See the Federal Reserve's response to phishing scams on page 7.)

These requests mandate immediate account verification and boldly state that if not provided within a certain period of time the person's account will be suspended or closed.

What's noteworthy is the thief's tricky, yet serious, opening, which appears to have the recipient's best interests at heart: "Recently there have been a large number of identity theft attempts targeting CitiBank customers," the e-mails read. "In order to safeguard your account, we require that you confirm your banking details."

For the unsuspecting, that is where the nightmare begins.

People who get these e-mails "who really do bank with them, or have a charge card with them or have a mortgage loan with them, and so they're going to do it without thinking," Harding said.

When the personal identifiers such as name, address, place of employment, telephone number, date of birth, mother's maiden name, Social Security number and credit card numbers are sent, the scam artists go shopping, Harding said.

"They steal your identity. They steal money from your bank account and/or they steal by ordering things," she added.

If items are purchased, the thieves then "have it shipped to somebody in the states, who thinks that they're working part time for somebody doing reshipping," Harding said. The items are received from delivery firms like United Parcel Service or FedEx, and their job is to repackage the items and ship them overseas. Of course, tracing the merchandise is extremely difficult, she said.

Free dough

Area fraud specialists say to beware of too-good-to-be-true offers. The Springfield Better Business Bureau has received four complaints against Javelin Inc., a Canada-based firm, since Aug. 18, said Judy Mills, executive vice president.

Javelin offers an $8,000 grant in exchange for $299 and a checking account number, Mills said. The operator claims they will process the order and get the person the funds.

Instead, armed with a fresh account number, Javelin simply draws funds from the person's account, Mills said.

And if that's not enough, Javelin is expanding its services.

"Now for $349, they're offering people credit cards, and (saying) they can repair their credit," Mills said.

Funny money

Another reported gimmick has people depositing or cashing a cashier's check or money order when they're unsure of its sender. This often occurs when a sale, often an Internet-based transaction, has been made.

Doug Marrs, Great Southern Bank vice president of operations, said he's witnessed such transactions.

"Watch out," said Marrs. "Don't take checks assuming if it says cashier's checks that it's good (or) if it's money orders, that it's good. Don't make that assumption."

Asking when funds will be available won't cut it, either, he said.

"A lot of the banks locally are going to give you availability the next business day. But if you deposit that check (and) if it comes back because of an endorsement problem or because it's not a valid check, it could be a week or two before you know that you've got a bad check, and you've already released that cash back to the perpetrator," Marrs said. "So be slow to give funds back on a cashier's check or a money order. You just need to be skeptical of it."

Great Southern Bank averages more than one bogus check a month, sometimes for as much as $10,000, Marrs said. The success rate is high because banks are not always able to inform their customers of suspicious situations.

Harding has seen her share of bogus checks come across her desk at Empire Bank, as well. A cursory review of worthless paper in her office showed specimens written for $11,900, $12,500 and $15,000, she said.

Iffy invoices

Hoodwinking people out of cash can be achieved through more subtle approaches, too. Joe Jenkins, owner of Jenkins Diesel, said one scheme has a business receiving an invoice for Yellow Pages advertising.

A more thorough examination of the form, however, has "This is just a proposal, not an invoice," written in small print on the lower right-hand corner on the back page.

"They've put a disclaimer on there. But they've put it in such a way that it's very difficult to find, first of all, and, secondly, it's billed like an invoice," he added.

This summer Jenkins received a $4,800 cashier's check that was found to be counterfeit. It was part of a nationwide scam that federal agents investigated.

Easy money

Earning one's keep from the comfort of his or her living room has a seemingly universal appeal, and con artists know this. "Another thing we see all the time is work-at-home opportunities," Mills said.

One typical example is the lure of working as an envelope stuffer, Mills said. For a fee, the person is to receive information on what the home-based business will entail.

The scam is that no information packet is sent and no work-at-home-opportunity exists.

"The only envelope you're going to get to stuff is the one you put your check in," Mills said.