DEAR SCAMMERS
If online scammers weren’t so dangerous they’d be funny.
Well, some of them actually are funny. This week I had one that was so funny I suspected Newman might have sent it.
“Hello, I am looking for Good and Honest person for House Cleaning of my House. Let me know Prices per hours. Hope to Ready from you soon.” Alfred.
If online scammers weren’t so dangerous they’d be funny.
Well, some of them actually are funny. This week I had one that was so funny I suspected Newman might have sent it.
“Hello, I am looking for Good and Honest person for House Cleaning of my House. Let me know Prices per hours. Hope to Ready from you soon.” Alfred.
I have omitted Alfred’s last name in case he is just an innocent man with an unclean house and less than perfect English in which case I am sorry I called you a scammer, Alfred.
“Why would she assume he is a scammer?” you might be thinking. “He’s not asking her for any money or asking her to help him get millions of dollars out of the country.”
This is true. All the poor man wants is to get his house cleaned.
So he writes to me. Ha ha. If that’s not a red flag I don’t know what is.
I put it to you that this same email has been sent to thousands of people through some random method on the chance that one or more of them is a good honest cleaner who would be happy for the extra work.
Don’t ask me the details of how this unsuspecting person would be scammed out of his or her hard earned money.
If I knew how to do that, I couldn’t tell you or I’d have to kill you.
In a version of one wellknown scenario, Alfred is “working overseas.” He will pay in advance by cheque and accidentally over-pay. The good honest cleaner will deposit the cheque, return the overpayment to Alfred and a few days later be notified by the bank that cheque has bounced.
In a large city, Alfred may have a residence set up for this very reason.
He may go there after one good honest cleaner has left and dirty it up in time for the next good honest cleaner.
If he lived in the same big apartment building in Toronto, he’d have time to go through at least one good honest cleaner every day.
This is a relatively simple scheme and certainly worth Alfred paying the rent on an empty apartment.
There could be many other ways that this scheme could unfold once a good honest person has been sucked into Alfred’s web because it’s the good honest people who are most vulnerable for being taken advantage of.
This morning I got an email on my Hotmail account that started like this “Dear CEO, UK TDC has recommended you as a good supplier of rubber.”
It was quite detailed about the logistics, contracts and payments for my rubber, but even if I had a backload of rubber that I was dying to get rid of, the CEO part would have made me suspicious because I make it very clear in my Hotmail address that I am an OEO.
When I was running my own little business and setting up my very first email account years ago, all versions of my name and/or initials were taken, so, as the Only Executive Officer in my business I amused myself by adding oeo my name and thus my Hotmail address was created.
So, despite the fact that seniors are the most preyed upon, I didn’t come up the river on a motorcycle (a saying in my family that means I’m no fool and I’d love for someone to tell me if their family used it and where it came from).
The problem is now that I am so suspicious that I didn’t trust my bank’s fraud squad when they called me about a large online banking payment made from my account to a payee they didn’t recognize from my history.
As it happened, it was a legitimate payment, but I wasn’t confirming or denying anything.
Not me, no siree.
We did eventually get it straightened out, and as I’ve had years of beefs with banks and with all the bad PR they’re getting lately, it’s only fair to give CIBC fraud squad a thumbs up for their diligence.
I could say I wasn’t born yesterday, but then, that’s kind of obvious anyway.
“There could be many other ways that this scheme could unfold once a good honest person has been sucked into Alfred’s web because it’s the good honest people who are most vulnerable for being taken advantage of.”