Internet Dating -Personal Ads Scams-How to avoid getting scammed

Since the 1980’s one scam has raked in billions of dollars from it’s victims.

It goes by many names but is most widely known as the Nigerian Scam.
This scam has moved from postal mail to faxes, unto today’s incarnation using email.

The basic premise of this scam is you are contacted by someone who needs money advanced to them, but the hook is, you will get a huge return back, since it is only temporary until their millions are freed up. This scam always plays out to be a large convoluted story involving lawyers, family and some catastrophic situation like death of a family member who somehow seemed to have left a large fortune they just cannot access at this time..

Common Names for this scam are:

• 4-1-9 (former name of penal code for this scam in Nigeria)
• Advance Fee Fraud
• Nigerian Letter
• Romance/Dating Scam

There are so many variations on this scam it is impossible to keep track.

The latest twist, is targeting Internet Dating Sites where they prey on innocent people  looking for companionship online.

A typical Internet dating scam goes like this:

Someone contacts you through the dating site you are registered on.

They have a profile with photos (not real) and you respond.

You have a few emails back and forth and they gain your trust a bit.

At some point they will ask you for money.

The con artist may claim to be interested in meeting you, but needs cash to book a plane, hotel room, or other expenses.

You send the money , always using either Western Union or a Money Order.

The victim keeps getting strung along and eventually realizes they have been had when the con artist never shows up or just stops communication..

Here are some of the typical things you will hear from the con artist.

“My parent, (Dad or Mum) is sick in the hospital”
“ I just need some money or plane fare to fly out and see you.”

“ I need an operation.”

“My family had millions of dollars, they will get it released soon, I need money to use now and will pay you back.”

“My whole family died, and I am alone and want to move to the United States and be with you, send money.”

“I have a daughter/son and sick parent, must leave the country fast, need money.”
“I need money to buy a phone and phone you.”

How to tell if you are being scammed.

NEVER pay anything up front for ANY reason.
NEVER send money.

• Any request for money
• Anything that involves sending money to Nigeria.
• Wants money sent using Western Union –Never send anyone money using Western Union.
• Asks for Money Orders
• Overdone flowery words: Dear I be loving you, you are sweet ,precious dear, etc..
  Usually lots of “dears” in there.
• Wants any bank information from you of any kind.
• Bad spelling
• Bad Grammar
• To much sickly sweet talk, and over the top romantic ideas
• Will not answer your direct questions
• Does not have any more photos of themselves for you to see.
• Will not give you a phone number, (though beware, some people have gotten phone numbers and talked to someone, but were still ripped off.)
• Insist on talking to you through email or IM, not the phone
• Uses bad grammar, spelling and speaks like a British Baron from the 19th Century. Uses British words like Mum, and odd formal language.
• They ALWAYS have a dead person in their story, dead parent, wife, child, you name it.

One easy way to find out if you are in a scam is to do an Internet Search.

Internet dating scammers often used the same names, family details and cover stories in multiple dating scams. Therefore, you may be able to expose a scam by conducting Internet searches on the names used by the scammers or key phrases from their emails an even the email address itself..

There is no one single Internet Dating site being targeted.

Yahoo Personals

Match.com

All faith based dating sites seem to be getting hit heavily due to a higher level of trust
that the participants will show a fellow single.

To read recent stories by people who have fallen prey to this dating scam go to

SmartWomenStupidComputers.com/blog

What to do if you have been scammed.

You will not get your money back.

I am very sorry to tell you this, but there is nothing the police or FBI can do.

You should still report it to both places.

If you sent money using Western Union, report it to them.

They cannot get your money back, but they need to know.

Warn other people, share your story, share it online and help educate others so they won’t fall prey to these scams and scammers.

The best prevention in the case of any of the Advance Fee, or Nigeria Scam is to already know about them and how they operate

As long as people keep falling for these scams they will be around.

Spread the word and help those you know not to fall for this scam.

any of these scams. There are many variations on the basic scam and the one thing you need to know is they all involve sending money to someone.

Never send money to a stranger.

Resources to report fraud and learn more.

Secret Service

Secret Service Nigeria Scam Page

FBI

Internet Fraud and Scams

Fraud Aid

http://www.fraudaid.com/

List of Internet Scams –Justice Department

Justice Department actually catches some scammers

and they go to jail.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2009/April/09-crm-304.html

Excellent Article by Salon.com

419Scams

Fake Door to Door Magazine Sales- Don’t get scammed!

Scam Mentoring Programs, Work Programs, Training Programs that bus people from town to town.

I live in a small town in California and on a quiet court where all the neighbors know each other for decades and we look out for each other too.
We all have dogs that bark and no set schedules either so it feels fairly safe. That said we still get the occasional magazine scammers that are brought in from other towns to make illegal bucks off of you!
In my case two blonde girls came up to the door and started pitching some program for “Urban Development Solutions” while they were talking,  I saw the web address on this piece of paper they were holding, urbans.com and made a note of it.

They said this is a mentoring program and that “we be from a bad background”, ( they both looked perfectly fine and actually attractive, well fed and not poor old girls from a bad background) It reeked of BS to me, and they would not shut up, the older one (looked around early 20’s and the other one looked 19 or so) was aggressive and a real scammer type.
She would not let you get a word in edgewise and kept asking me my name, (I hate it when scammers do that-it is so fake and creepy)
They told me they could not take any money or donations. They needed real work they said, and showed me this big block sentence on the form that said “no donations accepted”.
I finally shut the door on them, but I had a bad feeling in my gut about these two, so I looked up the website and it looked pretty rinky dink, so I called the cops.
People are not suppose to solicit around here anyway.

In the meantime they went next door and my neighbor gave them 20.00 just to go away! He said they would not shut up and he did not know what to do.
So there went the supposed “we don’t take donations  line.”
He said they were asking for 120.00 for magazine subscriptions!! ( he was so funny, he said please don’t tell my wife.)

So now I was really mad.
They had my other neighbors trapped in the doorway, so I went over and interrupted them and told them I had called the cops and they were scammers.
I asked them why they took money from my neighbor.

Of course they got really pissed. ( I moved my cars into the garage to avoid damages later)
I googled the name of the company and found a complaint website that had the supposed owners name of the business, who they had also mentioned was their boss, ,when I told them I was going to look up the website.  His name is
Rodney Rankins  and he can be reached at 313-320-3335. I found that number on a complaint website here.
Rodney actually answered the phone with just a hello and I told him my story and then the line went dead.
I wasn’t really surprised. I was surprised I even reached someone who admitted they ran the company.
I thought he had hung up on me because it was definitely on his end, but then he did call me back, (checking on me?)

He asked me if the girls were African American or Caucasian, I told him Caucasian and he said they have no Caucasians working for them at all. (hmmm, really, the website says people are independent contractors in each town so they could hire whomever they want, how would he know?)
Then I asked him if they had anyone in my town and he said no.
I don’t know if that is true, but he said he was glad I called the cops.
By this point the police had arrived and I gave them all this info.
Do not fall victim to these types of scams and people.
Please people beware and be careful.
Update: This is great, the cops caught up with the girls and they came back in a white van being driven by somebody and they gave my neighbor his $20.00 back!
She still claimed to be working with Rodney and said he is her boss. That is what she told my neighbor so that is a bit dicey.
My neighbor was very grateful that I pursued this. He was embarrassed that he gave them money, but they were very aggressive verbally and so pushy.
I dread to think how many people are just like my wonderful sweet neighbor and will  just pay them to go away!
Please people get pro-active, don’t just let people get away with this kind of stuff.
You can make a difference in your neighborhood by being careful and busting people like this.

I did a little more research and here is the whois info on that domain.

Registrant:
Urban Development Solutions

18530 Mack Ave #530
Grosse Pointe, Michigan 48236
United States

Registered through: Tell Vision Networks
Domain Name: URBANDS.COM
Created on: 09-Sep-04
Expires on: 09-Sep-15
Last Updated on: 24-Sep-09

Administrative Contact:
McClain, Maurice jlkyles@gmail.com
Urban Development Solutions
18530 Mack Ave #530
Grosse Pointe, Michigan 48236
United States
+1.3135952360 Fax — +1.5865329207

Technical Contact:
McClain, Maurice jlkyles@gmail.com
Urban Development Solutions
18530 Mack Ave #530
Grosse Pointe, Michigan 48236
United States
+1.3135952360 Fax — +1.5865329207

How to not get ripped off by so called online “experts”, don’t get scammed online!

I have been working online since 1999. I got started by doing public speaking on how to not get “scammed” online.
I have a special loathing for online scammers.
Online anyone can say they are an “expert”, they can make all kinds of claims of what they have done, and what they earn, and how do you know the difference?

I am going to give you a few tips and tools you can use to find out if the person you are considering hiring to help you is for real.
Recently I have had several clients who paid for SEO services from so called “experts” and they got burned.
If they had just done a little checking first, this would not have happened.

The first thing to check with any SEO expert or anyone promising you high traffic and instant profits, is to check their websites page ranking.
If they are a ZERO, then you just saved yourself from being scammed. If the site is a zero-3 and they say they are an expert, they obviously are not.

Here is a page rank checker you can bookmark and use.
http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

Next find out what other websites they run.
Here you will often discover much interesting information about your potential scammer.
Things like fake testimonials and the same faces and same lies on all their scammy sites.
To find this information out,
All you need to do is go to Yahoo search and enter this:

linkdomain:abc.com -site:abc.com

of course changing the abc.com to whatever persons website you are researching.
This will show you all the domains associated with that persons business and IP, and you will also pull up any comments they left on blogs using that IP, and it really gives you a overview of the person you are considering investing your money with. They may have some things on a different IP, but you will still learn a huge amount about the person by doing this.

Be sure to start clicking on websites that you see listed, and you will soon spot the fakes and the scammers as you will start to see the same sales pitch and the same fake testimonials on various websites. You may see the same website design used over and over for various sites.

As you do this be sure to check the page ranking for some of the sites the so called SEO or Web Expert has worked on, and you will see if they can deliver the goods for you. Especially check out their own domain and page ranking that they have given you as their main business website. Also check their traffic, if it is a ZERO, you know they are scamming.

Don’t forget to Google their name! I suggest when you Google you add the words ,scam, rip off , fake, fraud after their name, why?, because anyone who has complained about them online will pop up for you in the results.
This itself can be a real eye opener.

I learned this the hard way after I bought a scooter online,(X-Treme Scooters) I checked out reviews, I checked out the manufacturer, and I thought I did due diligence, then when the scooter fell apart in the box and the company refused to refund me, I did a new search using the words “scam, fake, rip off and fraud” with the scooter name and there were hundreds of people who got ripped of just like me! I learned my lesson.

Look for the negative words first when checking something out online.
I actually helped other people not get ripped off by writing about this long and horrible scooter story ( it turned into a 4 month battle with the company.)
I wrote about it on eBay guides and a few other places online. Finally my credit card refunded me under the fraud category for this purchase.
Lesson learned.

Taking 30 minutes to do some checking can save you lots of heartache and the loss of your money down the road.

Finally I suggest you download a great tool I use called SEO toolbar. It has all the things built in I have mentioned above and you can just click the various things like page rank, traffic and whois and the yahoo link domain and see it all there.
You can download this tool here
http://tools.seobook.com/seo-toolbar/

Also SEOBOOK is a great blog, packed with very helpful information.

Don’t forget to ask for “proof” from the experts.

Honest people have honest testimonials with people you can actually contact, not made up people or friends that you will see on all thier scammy websites over and over.

Honest people have real websites with real numbers and proof that you can check out for yourself.

These days everyone and their brother has decided to become an “Internet” expert, either Seo or Social Media or something else. Buyer beware, don’t get scammed and taken in by the rip off artists and frauds.

I hope I have stopped some of you from getting burned online.

Please share your stories and leave a comment!