# Scamming Scammers



## sags (May 15, 2010)

Many years ago, I was a fan of the Phil Donohue daily talk show.

One day he had a guest on with an unusual and controversial idea, not to mention questionable moral standards.

He appeared on the show to discuss his "plan".

This happened back in the day before there were a lot of "credit cards" or "lines of credit" around..........in fact, they are a fairly recent phenomena.
This was also before everything was inter-connected by computer.

He had what was available, department store and gas cards, in abundance.

Hundreds of them, from big stores, little stores......all kinds of stores.

His plan was to keep the cards for the "big score".

His plans were to max the individual cards out buying something that he could keep or sell for cash. He would go on a spending rampage and when he was done.....nobody would particularly care.

His reasoning was that each of the cards would be a relatively small balance, and other than passing the debt on to collections.......nothing would happen.

I don't know how this guy made out........but it causes me to wonder how much scamming has gone on over the past years, since credit cards and lines of credit became so accessible.

At one time, only a few years ago, we had credit cards with a 25,000 limit. Unsecured lines of credit with 40,000 limit and 25,000 limit. Our total "limit" was well over 100,000, and the cards just kept coming in the mail. It was all unsecured credit. Heck, they even sent blank cheques in the mail........just fill in the amount.

One time I took my son and 3 of his friends to a Toronto Raptors game. There were young people posted in the arena who were giving away free Raptor t-shirts just for filling out an application. I filled out 4 different applications and got 4 t-shirts for them. As I recall.....it was sponsored by Capital One.

A few weeks later, I got 4 separate credit cards in the mail, in different envelopes, all delivered in the same day, to the same house, to the same person.....me. My wife freaked out and cancelled them all..........lol.

I wonder..........as it was THAT easy to get as much credit as they could give you.........they literally begged us to take money................how many people loaded up on credit....turned it into cash.......and then didn't pay.

I doubt the lenders would ever admit it......but I am sure more than we would think.

And I guess........that is why I don't feel a lot of empathy for those lenders financial problems.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

Scammers are everywhere these days. Had to tell them apart 
from us "normal" people. 

Just heard on the CHCH tv news channel about some guy calling people
(seniors?) about this wonderful electricity conserving device that can
cut your power consumption by as much as 50%...only $150!

On line there are sellers claiming they have devices (100% money
back guaranteed) to cut your electricity usage bill in half. 
They claim "times are rough so we want you to live in ease"
...more like they want to live off YOUR money in ease.

Starting price for these power saving boxes are $549 (sale price $399)
High quality no salt water softner ($589 for $499)
Electricity saver for larger homes (2500sq ft) for $599
Electricity saver for larger (still) homes 3000 +sq ft $799
Electricity saver for businesses ..$1199. 

Now these units are hooked up to your distribution panel to affect the
power factor. see wiki explanation of power factor...and on inductive loads
such as fridge or a/c compressors, furnace fans it can make *some* negligible difference, but so slight you won't be able to figure out how
much it is saving you. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor

BC Hydro has investigated these and concluded..

Claim: Capacitors in residential power quality conditioners make motors operate more efficiently by improving power factor. 

Fact: Power factor is rarely an issue in a residential setting, but it is true that capacitors can improve power factor, and that doing so will save an extremely small amount of energy by reducing the reactive current that the upstream circuit must supply to a motor.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

*More Scams continued...*

Every see these "Q ray" bracelets advertised, where people provide testimonies that they feel so much better after buying one and wearing it..

Penn and Teller: Placebo effect on Youtube, 
take this to a new level in their expose on the powers of
suggestion/placebo effect..magnet therapy, snail mucus mask...

I can't believe how many gullible people there are out there... 
or this is simply a staged "put on" for their show on HBO.


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## fraser (May 15, 2010)

These small time scams have nothing on the sharks out there who are focussed on taking your retirment nest eggs, or getting you to mortgage your home or cash in your RRSP's, etc. for some Ponzi scheme that promises above average returns and complete safety of principal. 

Problem is that the latter are well dressed, well spoken thieves who often operate through 'affinity fraud', ie service clubs, church groups, etc. They end up paying 5 percent finder's fees to people that you would normally trust and respect for influencing you to invest.

They are not interested in a five hundred or a two thousand dollar hit. They are after tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands-and get it with surprising regularity. These people are among us so be watchful.


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## Spidey (May 11, 2009)

Here's someone who pulled a pretty good scam on a telephone scammer. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7OgWcwgB50&playnext=1&list=PL466089D71380B282


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

fraser said:


> These small time scams have nothing on the sharks out there who are focussed on taking your retirment nest eggs, or getting you to mortgage your home or cash in your RRSP's, etc. for some Ponzi scheme that promises above average returns and complete safety of principal.
> 
> These people are among us so be watchful.


Yes, it seems that Quebec has had their full share of them, but they have scammed a lot of people in Ontario. I remember one sad case on tv, a few years ago, where a husband died and his life insurance had to be paid out to his widow and kids. 

The life insurance man came to the widow's home to hand her the check and then convince her to invest in a special investment he knew about, where she could get "a lot more interest", for her money than just sitting in the bank.

In the end, she lost every penny of that life insurance settlement (over $100k), because the rogue insurance agent..invested in some other scheme which
had nothing to do with the same insurance company that he was working for and paid out the life insurance.

Authorities tried to trace where the money went, (not sure if forensic investigation was used), but he managed to hide it somewhere in offshore accounts. 
I hope these guys rot in H**!


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## fraser (May 15, 2010)

Yes, Quebec has a few but the West and Ontario have more than their fair share. In BC, there have been a few ministers of the cloth and senior church members who have disappeared with millions. So much so, that a local Catholic priest and Presbyterian minister got together and formed a group called something like 'God's Fraud Squad." They travel around to warn church members of the dangers.

Here in Alberta we have lots of those hucksters. One is accused of stealing over $300M. and was finally arrested when he tried to cash a phony $71K cheque. A few others were on the radio promoting their own scams have also been silenced/charged. In Ontario, Peter(?) Lech from Peterborough fleeced millions from unsuspecting church goers and hockey dads/moms....and got caught doing it again while he was on parole for the offense.

The story is always the same,,,people are promised above average returns on rock solid safe investments, they are told that there is a way to get their money out of RRSP's without paying tax, or the are encouraged by someone they admire to invest blindly in something that promises unrealistic returns.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

fraser said:


> above average returns on rock solid safe investments, they are told that there is a way to get their money out of RRSP's without paying tax, or the are encouraged by someone they admire to invest blindly in something that promises unrealistic returns.


And these scammers are generally "people of trust", ministers of the cloth convincing their church goers to invest in a surefire scheme, because pretty much most
people going to church believe in God, so they are conditioned to take the minister's "word", because they
have no reason to suspect or investigate the scheme first. The early "investors" are usually completely caught off guard.

Lawyers are another group, although there isn't as many of those as the others, that have mismanaged
trust accounts. 

Investment brokers are the most common, insurance sales schemes, questionable gold mine stock (Bre-X), oil exploration that doesn't pan out...and more.

Then there is the email/phone scams where you may get an email of a long lost relative that you didn't know you had,(from a phony lawyer), leaving you a "sizeable sum", but first you need to send some money for the legal process of releasing the sum in the "offshore" country..another twist on the Nigerian scam. 

These are still small potatoes to the big investment scams, but surprisingly there are still a quite a few gullible people that fall for these...more money for
retirement..again a comfort thing that people seem to desire. Usually, these are people that feel comfortable with their life styles at the moment, so have no reason to suspect. 

These sound so convincing at first that , if it's too good to be true..it must be true!..so people pull out their life's savings from the bank and put their trust in people they don't know. As the old sayings go.."a fool and his money
are soon parted..and there is no fool like an old fool..etc.


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