A recent investigation has revealed that companies that offer to buy unwanted gold are paying shockingly low prices. Consumers should avoid these gold buyers because they can get a much higher price for their gold elsewhere.
Which? compared four TV gold buyers with three pawnbrokers and three independent jewellers by offering to sell three brand [...]
Scams
Cash My Gold Consumer Warning
Parents Are Brainwashed And You’re Powerless
Criminals maintain lists of suckers who fall for mail scams and sell them on to other criminals for them to exploit too. Your elderly friends and family could be on these lists and you may not even know it.
These criminals generally operate from outside the UK and can be based anywhere in the [...]
London 2012 Scammers Begin Work
With the Olympics just around the corner, online scammers have turned their interests toward selling ‘fake’ tickets to the event. According to a recent study, made by Which? Computing, fake Olympic tickets are becoming all too familiar on the web. With prices starting from £7 it’s not really a surprise!
An increasing number of domain names [...]
Advance Fee Fraud
In this increasingly common scam, you receive an email or letter offering you an enormous sum of money in exchange for your assistance in getting the money out of a foreign country. The fraudsters ask for your bank account information so that they can deposit money into your account, but instead they empty your account. [...]
July 30th, 2009 | Tony | 1 comment | Continued
Psychic Scams
Some unsolicited emails or letters come from fraudulent psychics or clairvoyants. These are particularly distasteful because they prefer to prey specifically on the vulnerable. In many cases these messages have been sent to people who have suffered some type of misfortune such as the death of a loved one, and are quite obviously [...]
July 29th, 2009 | Tony | 0 comments | Continued
Landbankng Scams
Landbanking schemes
Buying a small plot of agricultural land that is guaranteed increase in value after it is developed sounds like an excellent investment opportunity. This enterprise is known as ‘landbanking’. However, like any investment opportunity, you must beware of unscrupulous scam operators that are eager to take your money in return for false promises.
This is [...]
Lottery and Prize Scams
Unexpected prizes or lottery winnings
You receive a letter, telephone call of email announcing that you have won a prize from a foreign lottery that you have never heard of. You are asked to pay a processing fee or supply banking information to collect your winnings.
People all over the UK receive messages such as these [...]
Home Working Scams
Most of us have seen the advertisements offering ‘risk-free’ work-at-home opportunities that claim that you can earn a large income for very little work, all from the comfort of your own home. The ads are usually for jobs such as data entry, envelope stuffing or assembling craft projects. It sounds like a dream come true [...]
July 26th, 2009 | Tony | 1 comment | Continued
Weight Loss Scams
Weight loss products are big business, because so many people want a magic formula that will allow them to lose weight without exercising or changing their diets. These emails or websites all promise to deliver that magic formula, be it in the form of a pill, cream, patch or other product. They usually claim [...]
July 25th, 2009 | Tony | 2 comments | Continued
Miracle Cures
These often come in the form of emails that promote a product as a miraculous cure for various types of medical conditions. They often claim to have ‘the secret that doctors and pharmaceutical companies don’t want you to know’.
They usually claim that the product is available in limited quantities or for only a limited time. [...]
Online Dating Scams
In general this is how it works. A male scammer contacts another man through an online dating service, posing as an attractive young woman, looking for a serious relationship. It all starts out as a harmless virtual friendship but soon enough the pretty young girl will ask the man for financial help. The excuses for [...]
May 16th, 2009 | Tony | 20 comments | Continued
Holiday Scams
Holiday Villa Scam
Scammers offer villas in popular places for holiday rental. They use legitimate websites as well as creating their own websites. This makes it difficult to tell they are scammers. They ask you to pay 50% in advance and 50% two weeks before your stay by wire transfer. They reply to your emails, offer [...]
Nigerian 419 Scam
This scam is one of the oldest and named 419 after the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code dealing with fraud. You receive an email pretending to be a lawyer/official/minister asking for your help to move a large amount of “frozen” money out of a foreign country and offering you a percentage.
They send official-looking documents [...]
Identity Theft Credit Rating Damage to Double
A new report* released by LV= (Liverpool Victoria) shows that the number of Brits whose credit rating has been badly damaged by identity theft is likely to almost double within the next five years, with up to 240 people a day being affected.
The new research by home insurer LV= shows that nearly half of all [...]
Identity Theft
Warning Signs of Identity Theft (more accurately – when someone fraudulently impersonates you in order to obtain credit or steal money).
You noticed one the following things happening:
You go to check your bank balance and money is missing from your account. This can happen if someone impersonates you and persuades the bank to transfer funds, [...]
