Fraud Prevention Unit by REGIONAL federal credit union

If it wasn’t part of my job, I’d completely ignore online banner advertisements like these, but here we are…

Example #1:

This one showed up on Weather.com today (without the arrows and giant NO, obviously; those are my additions).

Now, that’s a pretty reputable website. I mean, generally you look at your city’s weather page and it says SNOW, and you look out the window and hey presto, it’s actually snowing. But the site is just littered with ads like this. You’re not getting a gigantic TV for 60 bucks, and you’re not getting car insurance for $9, unless they mean per day. Don’t click.

Example #2:

This one came from CNN.com, another reputable website. Nobody is selling an iPad for $14. Nobody. Apple doesn’t discount. Know why? They don’t have to. They could come out with a $7,500 Macbook tomorrow, in this economy, and it would be a hit with their core users.

Once again, just ignore these ads. Do what I would do if I wasn’t paying attention to this junk for the purpose of writing about it. (I’d also ignore that noise about “penny stock rockets” and “Royal Caribbean whatever”, too.)

I’m a big advocate for crosscut paper shredders. When it comes to disposing of old bills, credit card offers and other documents, a shredder is your best friend. Even the most dedicated identity thief isn’t going to bother trying to reassemble a bag of confetti into a credit application.

So…do you have one?

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve talked about lottery scams, secret shopper scams, overpayment scams and advance fee fraud on this site until I’m literally blue in the face.

Yeah, literally!

There isn’t much more to be said about those topics at the moment, so what about some other variations?

Here’s one from our friends in the U.K.: a scam that involves getting people to wire good-faith money in advance of making a used car purchase.

How it works: a used car is advertised by a con artist, and an interested buyer contacts him. The “seller” agrees to make a long-distance trip to sell the car, but only if the buyer wires some money first to show serious interest. After all, he doesn’t want to make the trip only to find out the buyer is going to back out, right?

So, the buyer complies. He wires the money and forwards the receipt to the crook, who is then able to take the cash.

That’s all there is to it. Of course there never was a car.

It’s actually an even simpler scam than the old fraudulent check schemes, because it only requires a telephone and the ability to place a classified ad. No complex setups or realistic-sounding fake company names, no long, convoluted emails about Microsoft Lotteries or the need to come up with a counterfeit cashier’s check. Just a listing for a car that doesn’t exist.

So put this in the “Never Do This” file: don’t wire money to strangers.

Ever.