cc` !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> My Dragon's Lair Sharing is the reason for my being...

My Dragon's Lair Sharing is the reason for my being...

Altered and added new content 10-4-07 Important 5-4-07 No longer Child safe because of the links inside sites included here. Adult Humor is posted here. Template errors still. E shows wrong, and Netscape shows mostly correct. Activly learning HTML to correct and improve. Be it fun or serious I hope you enjoy and take away with you what I find to share. LI

Friday, November 02, 2007

IRS warns of wildfire e-mail scam

Warning on Scam E-Mails Fri Nov 2, 12:20 PM ET
Members of the public are receiving phony e-mails falsely claiming to come from the IRS. http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=170894,00.html

WASHINGTON - People should be on the lookout for a new e-mail scam soliciting donations to California wildfire victims in the name of the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. government, the IRS said Friday.

The tax agency said the bogus e-mails appear to be a "phishing scheme" that tries to trick recipients into revealing personal and financial information that can be used to steal a person's assets.
The IRS said it does not send e-mails soliciting charitable donations and never asks people for the PIN numbers, passwords or other secret information for credit card, bank or other financial accounts.
People "should avoid opening any attachments or clicking on any links until they can verify the e-mail's legitimacy," IRS Deputy Commissioner for Operations Support Richard Spires said in a statement.
The agency said the scam e-mail urges recipients to click on a link which opens on a fake IRS Web site. That site includes a link to a donation form which requests the recipient's personal and financial information.
The IRS said it also believes that clicking on the link downloads malware, or malicious software, onto the recipient's computer. That software will steal passwords and other account information it finds on the victim's computer system.
It urged those who received the scam e-mail to help the IRS shut down the operation by forwarding it to phishing@irs.gov, using instructions found in "how to protect yourself from suspicious e-mails or phishing schemes" on the genuine IRS Web site, http://www.irs.gov.
Since the mail box was established last year, the IRS has received more than 30,000 e-mails from taxpayers reporting almost 600 separate phishing incidents.

Suspicious e-Mails and Identity Theft http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=155682,00.html

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posted by LadyIrene @ 11/02/2007 10:39:00 PM 0 comments

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Don't cash that check before it clears

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Post Office Cracks Down on Fake Check Scam: Fake Checks, Real Victims

The U.S. government is cracking down on overseas scammers who send fake checks to Americans in exchange for real money. Bob Orr reports.

Answers.com

(CBS/AP) The e-mails arrive out of the blue, from Nigeria or other exotic countries. They tell of inheritances, political problems, other reasons someone needs to get money out of the country. If you help, they promise to let you share the money.

Unfortunately, thousands of people fall for the scam, losing an average of $3,000 to $4,000 each.

So far this year, an average of more than 800 people a month have filed complaints about such scams.

Hoping to stem the losses, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service announced an international crackdown Wednesday in which more than 540,000 fake checks with a face value of $2.1 billion have been seized.

Not all of the scams are as esoteric as the Nigerian wire transfer or rely on greed, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Orr.

Jill Parker, for example, lost thousands to an overseas con artist posing as a potential tenant. She listed her Chicago apartment for rent on the Internet and got an immediate offer from a businessman overseas.

"He agreed to take the apartment, and he said he said it would send us a check for $25,000," she said.

Parker was told to deposit that check, keep $3,600 to cover the rent, and wire the balance -- more than $21,000 -- to an account that the tenant claimed would be used for furniture. When the check initially cleared, she forwarded the cash. But, a week later, the renter's bank said it was fake, leaving Parker out of $21,000 of her own money.

"We would have never sent any money had we known that the money wasn't in our bank,” she said.

So far there have been 60 arrests in the Netherlands, 16 in Nigeria and one in Canada, the Postal Inspection Service said, and the effort is continuing.

"There is no room in the mail for any of these phony come-ons," Postmaster General John Potter said.

Most of the cons start with e-mails telling of an inheritance or lottery win and ask the victim to help bring the money to the United States. The victim is asked to cash a check that comes in the mail and to send part of the money back to the person sending it, said Greg Campbell, inspector in charge of global security and investigations for the Postal Inspection Service.

Then that person disappears with the money and the original check bounces, leaving the victim with a loss.

Retired people have lost their nest eggs and young families have been defrauded of their savings for a home, Potter said.

Many of the cases originate in the Netherlands, where West African con artists operate from Internet cafes, said Johan Van Hartskamp, commissioner of the Amsterdam police.

In what he called "Operation Dutch Treat," police have arrested 60 people there, with three extradited to the United States and four more facing extradition. The rest are being prosecuted in the Netherlands, he said.

Ibrahim Lamorde, director of the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said the problem is monumental and "will only be surmounted through global efforts."

U.S. Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher said: "There is no lottery. There is no inheritance. The checks are not real. But there are real victims. The crime knows no borders, and our coordinated law enforcement knows no borders." WASHINGTON Oct 3n

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posted by LadyIrene @ 10/04/2007 06:14:00 PM 0 comments

Hundreds of Unopened Rebate Slips Found in Trash

Wondering why you didn't get the $3.50 rebate for your Vastech USB hub you bought in May? Well, it's because Vastech took all the rebate slips and threw them in the garbage, unopened.

As Dean Takahashi writes, "In all of my years of reporting, I have never encountered such outrageous behavior against consumers," and while the amount of money at stake here is small, the principle is a large one. 1,300 people went to the trouble of sending in their mail-in rebate forms to this small Silicon Valley firm, and in response Vastech simply chose to ignore them. Possibly worse, all of those rebates contained at least some personal information: Names, addresses, and probably portions of credit card numbers on any receipts included in the envelope.

Takahashi tracked down the CEO of the company and he offered both excuses and an apology. If you've been waiting for your rebate, feel free to send a complaint to support@vastechinc.com and demand your money directly.

Vastech isn't the first company to completely blow it when it comes to rebates. In fact, many consumers have been burned so often by not getting the money they've been promised that they simply ignore any offered rebates or refuse to buy from companies that offer them. A few retailers have listened. Two years ago, Best Buy announced it would phase out its internal rebate system, though it still seems to offer them in some capacity and via third-party sellers. Still, rebates show no sign of slowing down. They're just too profitable for the vendors who use them to sell their gear.

Got a gripe about the rebate process? Feel free to air your dirty laundry here.

LINK: Unopened rebate requests found in San Jose dumpster

Thu Sep 6, 2007 6:54PM EDT 29 Comments
Here are the 1,300 rebate applications that were thrown in the... (Thu Hoang Ly / Mercury News)

False advertising

The Federal Trade Commission has taken action for false advertising against a number of companies that have abused the rebate system, said Matthew Gold, a staff attorney for the FTC in San Francisco. The companies must pay the consumers. Retailers can be held liable if the manufacturers don't pay as promised. In some cases, states have brought criminal fraud actions against companies.

The Better Business Bureau of Silicon Valley reports that it has processed 51 complaints about Vastech since February 2006. Of those, 49 went unanswered by the company in the past year. The BBB considers that an unsatisfactory record.

"We tried contacting Vastech a few times with no success," said BBB spokesman Zach Vander Meeden.

This is a ridiculous system that invites abuse. All the discarded letters I looked at were postmarked around May and were found in the garbage just days after being sent. It makes you wonder how often this happens.

I certainly don't trust Vastech at this point, even though Tan offered to sign rebate checks in front of me and requested the unprocessed rebate forms, which I plan to return to him. And I think Fry's Electronics should take care of their customers if Vastech doesn't. Imagine the surprise that Shu Wong got when I called and said he wasn't likely to get his rebate check. "It's only $3.50," he said. "But that's wrong." Comments

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posted by LadyIrene @ 10/04/2007 05:37:00 PM 0 comments