How not to be a victim of a scam or crime

Fraudsters, scammers and thieves seem to be out in full force this time of year.   Here are a few I came across this week along with  preventative tips:

Nicole of The Budgeting Babe was pickpursed (similar to being pickpocketed only her wallet was removed from her purse instead of her pocket) See My Wallet Was Stolen Last Night:
As Nicole dined at a Chicago restaurant two men came in and without waiting to be seated sat at the table directly behind her.  At one point the man behind her got uncomfortably close. Then five minutes later they both got up and left the restaurant without ordering anything. It wasn't until an hour later when Nicole searching for her wallet to pay her bill noticed it was missing.   In the meantime, the thieves had used her credit cards to charge items at a nearby Target.

This story comes a few weeks after this article appeared in our local paper. Elderly women were the target of purse thieves while shopping.  Two men distract a woman by asking her questions, while another man takes the wallet from her purse. 

The article recommends shoppers protect themselves by paying attention to where they keep their valuables.

Don’t walk away from carts with your purse in it and don’t leave valuables on the seats of your car in parking lots. You are a target.

If Nicole could turn back the clock I am sure she wouldn’t hang her purse on the back of her chair hidden behind her coat - she has been doing this for years and feeling falsely protected.  Nicole’s thieves seem to have been only interested in her credit cards and cash, but she can’t be completely certain they will not sell or use her personal information.  In her post Wallet Status, she provides preventative tips that would have helped minimize her loss:

- Clean her wallet after running errands.

- Keep only the credit cards she needs on a daily basis in her wallet. I would also remove checkbooks, medical cards and other IDs such as social security cards.

- Keep her wallet in a zipped compartment.

- Don’t take her full wallet with her when she goes out.  Just take the basics.

Stephanie of Graduated Learning was falsely accused of denting a car:
This is a weird one.  Earlier this week Stephanie tweeted, “Someone at work left a note on my windshield telling me I caused $1k in damage to their car citing dents I’ve had on my car for several years.” 

Initially, I thought this was a random scammer looking to harass and intimidate Stephanie until she gave him money or personal information to make him go away.  This is what professional con artists do – they search for an easy target (a female driving a car with dents) then harass them until they get what they want.  In this case Stephanie’s note guy ended up working at her company, though she didn’t know him personally.  After receiving a second note and leaving him a voicemail letting him know it wasn’t her, he texted her saying he would follow up the next day to better understand the fresh looking damage on her passenger fender and bumper that matched the damage on his car.

Tweeters concerned about Stephanie’s safety advised her not to meet or talk to this guy alone. They recommended she go straight to her company’s HR department and report the incident. She followed their advice and HR/Security ended up telling the guy to stop bothering her.  Hopefully he doesn't contact her again, but what an exhausting experience for Stephanie.

If someone you don’t know falsely accuses or harasses you, don’t hesitate to report them to authorities.  You do not need take this.

Mileage odometer on used car was rolled back:
An acquaintance recently traded-in his Pontiac Bonneville for a vehicle he purchased from an out-of-state dealership he found on Craigslist.  A few days later he spotted his former Bonneville (identified by a scratch he recognized on the advertisement's photo) also listed for sale on Craigslist.  There was just one little problem, his vehicle had had 175,000 miles on it.  This vehicle was advertised as having only 69,000 miles. He was sure it was his former vehicle.  The ad was from a dealership a few miles from the one he had worked with.   

He did not report the illegal odometer reading to Craigslist out of fear of retaliation. He also didn't think the odometer on the vehicle he purchased had been tampered with since he had verified the mileage on free CARFAX Odometer Check.  

The Carfax website provides the following tips to help used car buyers detect odometer fraud:

• Ask to see the title and compare the mileage listed on the title with the vehicle's odometer. Examine the title closely if the mileage notation seems obscured or is hard to read.
• Compare the mileage on the odometer with the mileage indicated on the vehicle's maintenance or inspection records. You may also want to examine the mileage listed on oil-change and maintenance stickers. You may find these stickers on windows or door frames, in the glove box, or under the hood.
• Get a free CARFAX Odometer Check to help uncover potential odometer rollback.
• If the vehicle has a traditional mechanical odometer, check that the numbers on the odometer gauge are aligned correctly. If the gauge's numbers are crooked, contain gaps, or jiggle when you hit the dash with your hand, the vehicle may have been involved in odometer tampering.
• Examine the tires. If the odometer reads 20,000 or less miles, the vehicle should have the original tires.
• Look at the wear and tear on the vehicle – especially the gas, brake and clutch pedals – to see if the wear seems consistent with and appropriate for the number of miles displayed on the odometer.

A company is charged $2500 in late fees and interest on credit card payments made prior to the due date two months in a row:
This company mailed the credit card payments seven days prior to the due date, but their checks did not clear the bank until the day after the due date.  The first month the credit card company refused to reverse the charges and as a consolation offered a higher rebate on future purchases for the next two months. According to the company's next statement this additional rebate had not been put in place and the company was again charged $2,500 in interest and fees.  The company complained and the customer service rep again refused to reverse fees and offered an additional rebate.  Emails threatening to cancel the corporate account have been ignored. 

I came across this informative post from a former customer service rep with a leading national credit card company. The rep provides the following secret to getting fees waived:

If all else fails, RAISE HELL!! Customer service reps are NOT ALLOWED to disconnect (we were diligently & secretly monitored and scored on our performance) a call unless the customer is being verbally abusive and using lots of profanity. So get mad and go on-and-on, the rep will just get sick of hearing you that they'll waive the fee just to shut you up!! Keep in mind that I got 200 calls a day with approx. 80% of them being IRRATE customers. I was starved for satisfied customers that didn't yell or get aggressive.

Tomorrow I am informing the employee in charge of company credit cards to call the credit card company one more time, to be courteous yet persistent. This employee should go on and on and on about how much the company purchases from the credit card company's gas stations each month, how the payments are always made at least seven days prior to the due dates.  She should list every payment made this year giving amounts, due dates and payment dates.  She should inform the rep how upset the company’s owners are and that they want her to cancel the account and most importantly she should talk about the additional rebate the company never received.  All the while repeatedly asking for the fees to be reversed, for $5,000 it is worth a try.

If the company continues to use this credit card company, all future payments should be made on-line.

Have you been the victim of a scam or crime similar to those I've listed above? Do you have any additional preventative tips?

If you enjoyed this post you may also like:
How to Avoid Business Scams
Exposing Unethical Marketing Tactics
How to Avoid Being Conned on a Dating Site

 

Manager accuses me of falsifying my “Travel Expenses”

I received the following question from a reader:

I recently resigned from a role in a very male dominated environment. I had been on the fast track to promotion, but as my knowledge and confidence grew my boss/mentor seemed to use every opportunity to undermine and belittle me in front of my male counterparts. On numerous occasions he stated "Oh you're just a woman what do you know.” This even became the Friday sport.

Bullying is a common occurrence. I was sent interstate to work and thrown into a role I had no experience in. I worked directly with hostile customers and internal management. I tried discussing it with my boss on numerous occasions. After one incident, I called him to report the bullying. He responded by telling me to modify my behavior when dealing with this particular manager. Fed up I accepted a job in another industry.

Upon receiving my resignation, my manager accused me of not performing (which was a complete contradiction to the performance appraisal given to me two weeks prior.)

The following weeks have been difficult ones with my manager isolating and ignoring me. Now I wish he would have continued this behavior. With one week remaining, I submitted my expense claim and Amex reconciliation which turned out to have errors. He brought it to my attention and I offered to fix it immediately. He refused, involved HR and launched a massive investigation into my claims. I spent 3/4 of last year interstate with no support or guidance in what the travel reimbursement or reconciliation process was. So I did the best I could. With one day left working there, I will be presented with further 'evidence'. I admitted to making the mistake, I offered to rectify the issue and even repay monies owed however he insists on digging further.


I spent the afternoon in the doctor's office having an anxiety attack (never had one of these before) and await another interrogation tomorrow which is meant to be my last day. I have worked there 4.5 years and have achieved a great deal. To have my reputation tainted by a mistake made due to lack of education, support and guidance upsets me a great deal.

I have owned the mistakes and will continue to do so, I have offered solutions to avoid this sort of error happening again, but I'm afraid he's not going to stop. He even suggested not letting me leave after the four week notice period expires.

Can anyone offer any advice?

First, I want to congratulate you on finding a new job. Your current company sounds at the very least mismanaged. Lucky for you, you only have to work there one more day. Your manager under no circumstances can require you to work past your notice period. So you are done, finished, out-of-there.

As to your expense reports, I question that there is truly no policy or guidance on this. How do other similarly situated employees handle their reimbursements? It’s unfortunate that you “guessed” rather than researching further first. Did someone approve your reports, if so why didn’t they question your expenses at that time? What about accounting? The accounting group at my company audits every expense report and returns them to the manager if there is a question.

What happens next most likely depends on what you submitted incorrectly (was it obvious you submitted things you shouldn’t have – i.e., did you purchase clothing or personal items and expense them?) Or were your expenses all work-related (you spent $25 on dinner while traveling when your company didn’t want you to spend over $20, but you didn’t realize that?). If there’s truly no policy, I think they will have to pay you for work-related expenses. If you charged anything personal, it’s a problem and will likely be viewed as intentional. You will at the very least be required to reimburse the company for these items. Depending on the dollar amount they consider personal I think they could even press charges.

Does anyone else have any additional advice? Did I miss anything?

How to Avoid Being Conned on a Dating Site

Okay, all of you single ladies out there—listen up! We live in a scary world…and if you’re looking for love online, it can be even scarier. As great as those couples in the Match.com commercials make online dating out to be, the marketers behind those ads forget to tell us about the side of online dating that isn’t so great…

Because the internet provides such anonymity, it also unfortunately provides a breeding ground for some serious creeps—many of whom use online dating sites to prey on innocent women looking for love. So that your online dating escapades aren’t marred by such an experience, be sure to learn how to spot romance scams, married men, and then arm yourself with tips for safe online dating:

Watch out for romance scams. More and more online singles are falling into the traps of romance scammers—don’t fall yourself! These scammers are infamous for tricking their victims into believing that there is a true romantic connection in order to fraudulently access their money, bank accounts, credit cards, and more. So that you aren’t left with a broken heart as well as broken bank, ask yourself the following questions to help determine if your new cyber romance is legit or not:

• Does the guy seem too good to be true?

• Does he have an online dating profile picture that looks like it fell out of the pages of a magazine?

• Is he working overseas? Possibly in Nigeria?

• Does he profess his love and undying devotion to you almost immediately?

• Is his spelling/grammar atrocious and not aligned with his alleged education or life status?

• Is there a dire situation related to family troubles, business affairs, medical problems, etc. for which he requests money from you?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may just have a romance scammer on your hands. Cease all communications immediately, alert the dating site on which you met, and if you have already given money to this person, contact the police.

Watch out for married men. Sadly, the internet is full of men subscribed to online dating sites who just happen to have wedding bands around their left ring fingers. These men tend to seek out online women who are trusting, naïve and can be easily manipulated so that an affair can be carried through. To make sure that you don’t become the target of a lying, cheating, no-good man with a wife, keep an eye out for the following red flags:

• He has no profile picture. This is so his face isn’t out there heightening the chances of him getting caught.

• He asks for your number but won’t give you his. If the guy is married, he can’t have you calling in case his wife answers.

• He won’t share information with you such as his last name, where he works, where he lives, etc.

• He contacts on an irregular basis. This is because married men usually have schedules filled up with other things—like marriages!

• He won’t invite you over or introduce you to his friends and family. A married man obviously can’t have you blowing his cover—if you meet the people close to him, the jig is sure to be up.

Follow online dating safety tips. A great way to safeguard yourself from encountering con-artists like scammers and married men is of course to educate yourself about them. But for further protection and to ensure that you don’t ever find yourself in a dangerous situation on your quest for online love, check out the general online dating safety tips below:

• Never give out personal information. Until you are confident that the guy you are mingling with online is worthy of your trust, never disclose your last name, home address, place of business, phone number, financial info, or any other identifying details.

• Don’t rush into things. No matter how excited you may be to meet an online match in person, it is imperative to take things slowly. Reputable online dating services offer tools such as email, chat rooms and voice chat through their websites to allow singles to get to know each other before meeting—utilize these!

• Plan a safe first date. If your online relationship has reached the point of a face-to-face meeting, that is great—just as long as you hold safety as your number one priority. For the first couple of dates use your own transportation to meet your match in a public place, let a friend know where you’re going, be aware of your surroundings, forgo alcoholic drinks and listen to your intuition!

Guest post author, Ellie Stevens, shares with us her tips on how to avoid being conned when dating online. In addition, Ellie also owns Free Senior Dating Sites where she offers more safe online dating advice for single seniors.

Searching for the truth

According to Wikipedia a lie (also called prevarication, falsehood) is a type of deception in the form of an untruthful statement, especially with the intention to deceive others.

Why am I writing about this?
Last week, liars or those who lie seemed to be the theme of my week:

First, I was filling out an amended form with one of my company’s salesmen when he told me to lie about the reason for the amendment. Our conversation went like this:

“Why would I write that? It isn’t true.”

“It is easier. I tend to do things the easy way.”

Naturally, I refused and we ended up compromising with me just stating the facts: previous form was submitted in error.

Later that day, another salesman asked me why he hadn’t been paid a commission for one of his sales. I spent thirty minutes researching the deal, eventually coming across an email I had sent his manager. (The sale had cost more than the salesman had predicted and I had asked his manager to approve my commission calculation based on the revised cost.) He had done so and I had paid the salesman his commission last month. When I told the salesman he had been paid he admitted he knew that, but wasn’t happy with the amount he’d received. Then why did he tell me he hadn’t been paid? What was his intention? Did he think I would accidentally pay him again?

Both of these scenarios infuriated me. These salesmen have lied to me in the past and I can guarantee I will think twice before I believe anything they say in the future. As my boss says:

When working with a salesman assume they are lying until proven otherwise.*

Which brings me to the story of the week: 60 Minutes and author Jon Krakauer reported Greg Mortenson the co-author of Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time lied about events in his book and may have benefited from donations to his charity to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

My first thought upon hearing about Mortenson was thank goodness I had read Citizen Reader's review of the book and had taken it off my TBR list.  My second thought was that lying scum.  One of the reasons I read non-fiction is to learn the truth. If I can't believe a non-fiction author who can I believe? Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness discussed this topic in her post No, Lies Do Really Matter (Especially in Nonfiction)

Kim gives us her thoughts:

What is not inspirational is nonfiction that plays fast and loose with what has actually happened. It’s laziness to the supreme. Not only has the author been too lazy to research a true story enough to tell it accurately and well, he/she has also not been brave enough to write fiction from what is in his/her heart. Both of those types of writing take more effort than nonfiction filled with lies and distortions, and I don’t want to waste my time as a reader with writing that is lazy.

She asks:

How do you view truth in nonfiction — is alteration of the facts permissible if the story is “inspirational,” if the author admits and explains why, or never at all?

I love Kim’s take:

Nonfiction that plays fast and loose with what has actually happened. It’s laziness to the supreme.

My week culminated with me finishing Matt Taibbi’s book Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America which may be the most eye-opening book about what is going on in this country I've ever read. Griftopia begins with

But in a country where every Joe the Plumber thinks he is one clogged toilet away from being rich himself, we’re all invested in rigging the system for the rich and ends with an expose of Goldman Sachs, perhaps the most unscrupulous player behind the Great Recession, walking away pretty much unscathed and intact.

To answer Kim's question non-fiction needs to be true. In this country where more people can rattle off how many times Lindsay Lohan has been in jail than realize they are being conned by fast talking swindlers and bureaucrats pushing the latest bubble (or charity in Mortenson's case) we don’t need “inspirational” alteration of non-fiction. I can accept some alteration of facts for privacy's sake, but if a story is changed to make it more "inspirational" it is fiction.

*Which reminds me of my golden rule. If we (co-workers) think our salesmen are rude, incompetent, liars, etc., so do our customers.

How to Avoid Business Scams

My friend Sally retired from her job a couple of years ago. She has enough money to pay her bills each month, but has little left over for extras. She would like to find some sort of part-time work to supplement her retirement income. She was approached by a gentleman from her church offering to help set her up with an on-line store. He has his own store that generates a couple hundred dollars each month with almost no effort by him. She asked if I thought this would be a good idea. She did not know the name of the company she’d be working with, but did know they charged a nominal set-up fee. Here are the tips I gave her:

1. Just because you heard about this from someone who goes to your church doesn’t mean the business is legitimate. Either the gentleman who told you about it is being scammed himself or he may know it is a scam and plans on scamming you as well. Pat Kiley one of the master-minds behind the Ponzi scheme Jacquelyn Mitchard and hundreds of others fell for presented himself as a Christian. Also, it is a known fact many scammers type the words “God Bless” on the bottom of their phishing emails in an attempt to appear legitimate.

2. Do your homework. Find out the name of the company you will be working with. Type the name of this company into a web search engine with the word scam behind it. Type the name again with the word sucks behind it. How many web results come up? For example I typed in “Monavie scam” (which I wrote about here) 413,000 results came up. “Monavie sucks” brought 444,000 results. Read what these posters have to say. This will give you a good idea of the experiences others had working with this company.

3. Find out all the costs involved. I imagine the nominal fee presented to you is a teaser charge and more fees are to come. Also, think about how you are going to market this site. A new website doesn’t magically attract customers. You will be competing with both EBAY and Amazon. What will differentiate your site?

4. Remember my rule of thumb when you are presented with a business idea. If the idea is so good why are they pitching it to you? If the idea really generates hundreds of dollars each month the presenters would be off making gobs of money not selling their idea to you.

5. On a side note, any business venture that instructs you to cash a check and wire a portion of the money via western union is a scam. THIS CHECK IS A COUNTERFEIT AND WILL BOUNCE. The money from the fraudulent check will be removed from your account; you will be charged a penalty plus be out the money you wired.

Earlier this year, my company’s bank account and routing number were stolen. The scammers forged this information along with our company name onto fake checks as part of a mystery shopping scam. Shoppers signing up for this job received a check for $2,500.00. They were instructed to cash the check, use $50 of the money to make a purchase at any local Wal-Mart store and wire $2000 via Western Union. They would then answer a couple of questions about their experience and keep the remaining $200 for their trouble.

Luckily for my company, none of these fake checks cleared our account. We received a call from our bank when the first check was presented alerting us to the scam. Our bank put a stop on all checks being presented on this account. Approximately fifteen checks were presented and cashed. I received a handful of desperate callers who pleaded with me to cover the bounced check. They really needed the money. Sorry, but that's not how it works.  One even threatened a lawsuit against our company.

6. Finally, any business idea that sounds to good to be true probably is. Be careful Sally. You can not afford to be scammed.