We had plenty of callers ringing to complain about a scratch card in a major newspaper on the weekend. Everyone who scratches, wins. The catch is you need to text or call a $20 premium number to find out you only won a free ring tone. One caller managed to get his money back by complaining.
An Indian man has been wandering the streets of Melbourne claiming he can read fortunes. He’d write a prediction on a small piece of paper and then ask victims what their favourite flower and number was. He always got it right leading to several women giving him $20 and $50 notes. To find out how he did it, talk to this man or head over to the Melbourne Magic Festival.
Plenty of callers has been infected by a worm attached to a facebook message. The email claimed that their facebook password had been changed. It was also asked “how can you tell what is a real page and what is a hoax page. The key is to look at every between the http:// and the next / . The address reads from right to left. So scam.facebook.com would be a real site as it falls under the facebook.com domain. facebook.scam.com would be a fake site as it falls under the scam.com domain.
Finally, serial swindle Wayne Charters is behind bars after being found guilty of five counts of obtaining money by deception. He married a Rosebud woman and then convinced her to sell all her assets so they could move overseas together. He claimed to be an ASIO spy trying to escape the organisation. He got out of sleeping with her by claiming that he ‘didn’t believe in sex before marriage’ and ‘had a bad back.’
If you’ve got a scam question for the show, email me at sleightofhand@conman.com.au.
Swindling trades people claim to have permission from RACV insurance to repair storm damaged houses. They ask fall (over) payment up for work they often don’t even complete.
I challenge Kathy to figure out the meanings of some old time con man lingo.
This week on statewide drive with Kathy Bedford we discussed:
Casino Conjuring: The Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation spent $25,000 being Las Vegas magician Barron Stringfellow (best. name. ever.) to Australia to teach investigators how to spot a cheat.
A good investment of taxpayer money?
UPS Scam: A caller asked whether an email from UPS was really a scam (it was) and another called wondering why we get more scam emails this time of year. (the answer: we all need to cash after Christmas)
Twitter: We discussed the various frauds associated the social networking site and how to avoid getting swindled while tweeting.
Is the openness and anonymity of tweeter a breeding ground for swindlers?
Climate Change Government: Scamwatch warns us to be on the look out for fake offers of grants to fix climate change.
I’m not a big fan of the Twilight books and movies and even less of a fan of the brooding, emo lite, tweens who obsessed over the stories and dream of being drag off by a pale, cheek boned vampire.
But this new spam scam email is still sad, preying on the weak fans of those who prey on the weak.
This email has been arriving in the in-box of teens around the world looking for extras for the third
This is a nationwide casting and [Portland]-area movie extras are still needed. No experience is necessary, all looks/types are wanted and the pay ranges from $80-$250 per day depending on whether it’s part or full time.”
Once the victims click on the link, they are sent to a website that requires payment before the casting call details can be viewed.
Suckers.
I’ve had several friends here in Melbourne report bad dealings with a company called Dotcom Chrome.
The company rings businesses offering to get them on the front page of Google for a couple of hundred dollars a month.
Because the word ‘Google’ and ‘chrome’ are used near each other, the victim assume the company is somehow related to Google Chrome, the new browser.
This is obviously a little dodgy but not illegal as the owners of companies like “Suny” and ” Palsonic” will tell you.
Several victims also claim that the the company mislead them about how often their ad would appear on the front page of google.
But when the victims tried to cancel their accounts, realising that the company was simply selling them a google adwords account they could simply buy themselves at a lower price, things got tricky.
Most people have found themselves having to jump through hoops, having to send letters to various parts of the world and fill in forms.
Some victims have reported harassing phone calls, emails and, in one case, an ad was created in Google adwords shortly after they started complaining about the company:
Another showed me emails where they were threatened with a smear campaign if they kept up their complaints including the rumour that they were “sued for touching my friends aunties child at a party”.
Others have reported racial abuse and various threats for trying to cancel their account or complain about the group.
When I mentioned the show on the ABC radio show, several people rang and emailed telling me that they had the same phone calls.
Of the Australian victims I have spoken with, several have been told that the AFP, Scamwatch and ACCC will do nothing as the company is based in the UK.
Google refuse to take down the unauthorised ads because, unless the company is trademarked, they are not breaking any laws.
If you want to read more complaints about this Manchester based outfit, click here.
If you have had your own experiences with the company, please let me know.
“Andy Warhol looks a screm
Hang him on my wall
Andy Warhol, silver screen
Can’t tell them apart at all.” - David Bowie
It takes balls to be a swindler.
But sometimes even I am impressed by the braziness of some con artists.
Victor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower. Gregor McGregor sold a country that doesn’t exist. George C Parker sold the Brooklyn Bridge twice a week for ten years.
You can add to that list a pair of Utah con artists who sold paintings by a dead man of a man who does not exist.
The couple sold six Andy Warhol paintings for $100,000 to their victim who ponied up a $25,000 deposit.
Problem is, the paintings were dated 1996 and Warhol died in 1987.
Not only that, the portraits were of Matthew Baldwin, the sixth Baldwin brother. There are only five Baldwins (thank god).
A man received a big surprise when he learned the six Andy Warhol paintings he purchased for $100,000 were fake.
They also tried to sell the man a lithograph of a pink cat that was actually a picture cut out of the newspaper!
I’m never one to blame the victim. We’ve all done stupid things in our lives. But the pay over $25,000 deposit for an artist you obviously know nothing about seems extraordinary stupid. Lindsay Lohen stupid. Sara Palin stupid.
A couple of days ago, a lot of my Australian friends changed their facebook status to:
All I want for Christmas is a Westfield Gift Card!
They’d added an application that is meant to give them a chance to with $10,000 from Westfield.
However, a few hours later, many more of my friends has a new status:
THE WESTFIELD GIFT CARD APPLICATION IS FAKE AND IF YOU ENTER THIS SITE THEY CAN HACK INTO YOUR PROFILE AND USING IT TO LOAD TROJON VIRUSES. FACEBOOK R IN THE PROCESS OF TRYING TO CLOSE THIS APPLICATION DO NOT ADD UNLESS YOU WANT YOUR IDENTITY STOLEN OR A CRASHED COMPUTER……COPY AND PASTE INTO YOUR STATUS.
So what’s the story?
Westfield is indeed running a promotion through facebook. You can find the offical link here.
It’s the latest in a long history of fake virus warnings and phony fear mongering.
Of course, you have little chance of winning and you’ll annoy all your friends when the crass message shows up on their home page probably leading to them ‘hiding’ you as a friend in the future.
In recent years, fictional con artists have taken a slick turn.
Con artists are either depicted as suave and sophisticated characters such as in the TV shows Hustle and White Collar.
Or we have the grim dose of reality in Nine Queens and Matchstick Men.
So it’s nice that a film like Brothers Bloom comes along, bringing back the classic caper con man last seen in films like The Sting or Paper Moon.
Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo play Bloom and Stephen, two brothers and con artists who reunite for ‘one last scam’ enlisting the help of eccentric heiress Penelope (Rachael Weiss) along the way.
Directed by Rian Johnson whose debut, the brooding and stylized teenager noir thriller Brick, is one of my favourites, Brothers Bloom, brings the fun back to the con artist film.
It feels like a Wes Anderson film, with the story packed with kooky characters and odd situations.
Like most con artists films, the swindle itself is overly complex to the point of leaving me a little disinterested but such great characters to watch and fantastic dialouge, I just don’t care.
FACTOID - The film was shot in Romania, the home to more con artists the most swindley country in Europe.
I’ve reached an age where all my friends are getting married. I’ve got half a dozen to attend in the next six months.
And the big problem for most of my friends is how to pay for the damn thing. Their baby boomer parents would rather blow the cash on self indulgent holidays and plasma TVs rather than pay out dowries.
A bride in the UK has figured out how to pay for her big day, by scamming her employer out of half a million pounds.
Joanne Kent of Kent has been charged with allegedly swindling 477,000 pounds from her employer Walsall in 2007
It’s odd that a company with only a 10 million pound turnover could not miss 5% of it’s income for two years.
Half a million dollars spent on the dress, flowers and deep fried mars bars.
Call me stupid but always though the idea of being sent to jail was to learn how to be a law abiding citizen. (and maybe learn a few things about how far your willing to go for a packet of cigarettes.)
Sure, I understand that criminals learn from each other and many people come out of jail with a few extra criminal skills.
But I was always under the impression they wouldn’t use these skills until AFTER THEY GOT OUT OF PRISON.
However, if they hang up the phone and dial *72 and then a long phone number, they’ll be put through to the doctor in charge who can answer all their questions.
In reality, the victim has just activated call forwarding and all ingoing and outgoing calls have been rerouted to a new number. The con artist can then run up expensive calls at the victim’s cost.
When police traced the calls they found that they originated from a nearby prison. Prisoners had been using the prison phones to run the simple scam.
Why can prisoners make phone calls at all? Let alone complicated, extra charges, three way calls?
Surely, the idea is to remove people from society when they do something wrong?
