Age Spots – by Ruth Dockins
More Fraud Warnings
It seems as if every time there is an improvement developed to make life simpler for us there are a bunch of people who figure a way to use the development to scam us.
This first warning is for people with computers: If you get a phone call from someone saying they are with Windows and that they had noticed that you have errors on your computer, it is a SCAM. Do not talk to them simply hang up. DO NOT give them any information. Windows will NEVER call you. They do NOT have your information. This scam happened to a friend of mine recently, she spent several hours on the phone with the caller who was pretending to work on her computer problem. Finally the caller said they could not fix the problem and would refund $250 onto her pay-pal account and then asked for her financial information to do so. Thankfully she stopped the process at that point but there is still a possibility that the caller got enough information to do damage to her financially.
Another scam reported: Check your receipt. This information came from Australia but it could easily happen here in the United States. When you check out at a store and use your credit card be sure that there is no charge listed as “cash back” unless you had asked for cash back.
Here’s how it works: You make purchases and use your credit card to pay, an item stating “cash back” is listed but if you only look at the total you may miss that. If you miss it, you may not get the cash back…if you catch it and did not request it, the store may want to give you the cash back BUT if you take the money it goes on your credit card as a cash advance and you pay interest on it. If this happens to you it would be best to ask them to delete the order and re-run the entire transaction so you are not charged interest for cash that you did not request, or even worse that you are charged interest for cash that you did not receive.A scam that has been around for awhile but is still being perpetrated is: you receive a phone call and the caller identifies himself as an officer of the court. He says you failed to report for jury duty and that a warrant is out for your arrest. You say you didn’t receive a notice for jury duty. To clear it up the caller says he’ll need some information for “verification purposes” – your birth date, social security number and sometimes even a credit card number. Facing the unexpected threat of arrest you may be quick to part with some information to defuse the situation.
“They get you scared first” says a special agent in the Minneapolis field office who has heard the complaints. “They get people saying ‘Oh my gosh, I’m not a criminal. What’s going on?”” That’s when the scammer dangles a solution – a fine, payable by credit card will clear this problem up.
Your caller ID on your phone may even show a legitimate looking number but NEVER, NEVER give your personal information to an unsolicited caller. The thing to do in this case would be to hang up and call the Circuit Clerk in your county, if they are not the office who sends out the jury duty notices they can tell you which office to call.
So please remember there are unscrupulous people out there just waiting to take advantage of you, be careful!
