Janice L. Friddle

720-947-5305

From The National Consumers League - E-Mail Scams

Recently our Internet Fraud Watch has learned of some new email scams. One is from Africa. The sender contacts people who have advertised their cars for sale, claiming to be in the car brokerage business and that he has a client who wants to buy the car. The broker says he will arrange for the car to be shipped to Africa and for the seller to be paid. The broker claims to have another client to whom he owes a refund for a cancelled order. To save time, the broker proposes to send the car seller a check for the combined amount of the car price and the refund due the other person. The car seller will deduct the price of the car and then wire the rest of the money on to the other person. Of course, the check will be no good, and the broker and client are one and the same, or they might be two people working the scam together. When the check ultimately bounces, the consumer owes the bank the money that was wired.

Another variation of this is a message that purportedly comes from Russia, from someone who says that she is a financial analyst doing work for a U.S. company. She says that there is a problem getting payment sent to her in Russia and she can't open a bank account in the U.S. as a foreigner, so she'd like to find someone in the U.S. who would be willing to let their bank account be used for 10% of her $1,500 weekly wages.

AARP ElderWatch is administered through the AARP Foundation, and is co-sponsored by AARP and the Office of the Colorado Attorney General. We are pleased to join the National Consumers League in issuing this alert.

Our mission is to ensure that no senior is left to suffer, alone and in silence, at the hands of those who exploit them. AARP is a non-profit, non-partisan membership organization with over 572,000 Colorado members.