Saturday, May 7, 2011

Internet Fraud: More Scams Than Quaker's Got Oats!


[Photo from savingeveryday.com]
No one needs to educate you about the fact that the internet is overrun with countless con artists whose sole desire is to lure your money away from you with countless types of fraudulent schemes!  You already know that!  Indeed, there are more investment fraud scams, telemarketing schemes, fake sweepstakes scams, and bogus lotteries -- more fraudulent internet scams of all kinds -- than Quaker's got oats!  And that's a lot of oats!

But did you know that lawyers, like the elderly, are also frequent targets of internet con artists on the prowl?  While I haven't seen any statistics, I can attest that, quite often, we at The Goolsby Law Firm, LLC, located in Augusta, Georgia, receive email containing offers that are "too good to be true" from  criminals around the world.  For example, today, I received an urgent inquiry from a man, (who claimed to be from Malaysia), who alleged he desperately needs an American law firm to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars owed to his company.  On other occasions, we have received similar email requests to help collect large sums supposedly owed to parties who have divorced and whose husbands remain in this country.  In each case, the hook might be a little bit different, but the goal is the same.  Of course, in each case, the con artist simply wants to obtain our bank account information -- that is, if we ever bite down on their tempting hook!

How should we respond?  Part of me wants to respond by telling them what I really think of them!  I also want to scare them about the fact that I am a former federal prosecutor and that I have turned them in to the F.B.I.  But then, I realize that the best course of action, in this situation, is probably to simply ignore and delete the fraudulent emails.  I realize that the F.B.I. is too busy to investigate so many internet fraud scams.  After all, as I have concluded, there are more internet scams "out there" than Quaker's got oats!

What do you think?


2 comments:

  1. First of all, congratulations on your children's achievements. I used to be a legal secretary and studied law, so I know how difficult a subject it is. Well done to them all.

    Re: Quaker oats posting - When I was a legal sec, we used to get a lot of "dodgy" clients as well, we were warned about them. You can usually spot them a mile off.

    Visiting from no rules blog hop.

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  2. Thank you for your visit and kind comments!

    ReplyDelete