The Nigerian fraud, also better known as 419
This scam involves an extremely rich Nigerian family or individual or organization, as it claims to be, contacting you mostly through an Email and promising you an unbelievable amount of money to be transferred by the means of wire transfer into your own personal bank account. They show grievance by death of their family member or their head, and tell you that they need to take the money that’s remaining with them to some other country, and invest it. In return for some puny favors, they promise you huge sum of cash as commission for helping to get their money out. They will then ask for your bank account details, and then ask to send a said amount to their representative/lawyer in your country, via Western Union, for releasing the money and some documentation. But this never ends. You may keep on paying, but will never receive a penny in return, from the so called rich individual.
Fee for free Credit cards fraud
This scheme mainly consists of spam emails, which claim to offer free credit cards or rather loans maybe, in return for an amount that according to them, is the processing and handling fee for releasing the loan amount or the credit card to the victim. These spam emails come with links that lead to online payment gateways that transfer the funds directly to the fraudster’s bank account. They appear to be some of the major banking firms .This is one of the most common and many innocent victims have fallen as preys to this con, so many of such emails are now being shown with warnings by the email client itself.
Lottery Fraud
This fraud mostly involves the fraudsters contacting you via an email, claiming that you have won a lottery that you may have never participated. The amount that they offer is way too huge and lures many people into it. They do provide some fake information, like ticket number and the company that’s sponsoring the prize, lately very big names like Coca-Cola and Hero are the ones most used. But similar to the credit card/loan fraud, in this scam too, the fraudsters ask you for advance payment of processing fees for the lottery. After you pay the said amount, the scammers are found nowhere to be existent.
Phishing emails fraud
In this scam, the victim receives an email, claiming to be from their bank or any other finance/insurance company. It houses a link that leads to a page that asks for confirmation of your account details by entering your personal bank account details like account number and the PIN, but actually it’s page that submits the information you entered to the scammers, who use the details to make online transactions.
Sale of Items with overpayment fraud
This scam is not so popular, but it mostly strikes the users who have posted ads on classifieds sites for sale of their stuff. Now the scammer finds your ad, contacts you, tells you will pay much more than the listed price because the party is situated overseas, and a lot of import tax and stuff like that, will be applicable for the deal to be done. So what happens next is, you sent your item, say for example your car, in exchange for a fake money order or a cheque, which you can cash at first, but within a few days in which the bank you deposited the money order finds out that it was fake, you will be charged the deposit back the money with interest, but chances are you may already have spent it. So the victim falls into a deep pit, because he loses his car and the interest money as well.
Employment Overpayment fraud
In this scam, the con sends you an email, claiming you are appointed as a financial representative for a company that never existed. You will have to handle the overseas financing/funding for the company, as per the claim. They promise to pay you 10-20 percent of amount per transaction. What happens next? You deposit some fake money orders/cheques and pay 80-90 percent of the same to the scammers. Now when the bank comes to know of your fake money order, you will have to pay back 100 percent and the penalty, back to the bank.
Disaster Relief fraud
This scam is a bit similar to the Nigerian one, only with a different theme. They offer money to people who have been hit by disasters like tsunamis/ storms and plagues. And the same “advance processing fee” thing follows.
Travel trips fraud
This scam offers the victim an overnight stay on some of the best places on earth, or night and days stays in cruises/ hotels and blah blah. They will ask your personal details and your bank account details, which are sold in the international market for sole cheap.
Money making machine fraud
This is the most popular and happening scam till date. The said scammers have websites that offer training to run software that can earn you thousands of dollars in a single month. You just need to run the software, and the best part, it can also be run on autopilot! You are asked to pay some minimal fee for the training but you will never get to make money, no matter how many seminars and training sessions you attend for the same.
Work from home fraud
This one has got the maximum number of victims till date you are offered jobs like copy pasting, typing text from an image file, convert thousands of capatcha, email sending/ marketing jobs, for some fees you need to pay in order to get to work. But the conditions are such that you can’t even earn back the money you paid as the fee. In reality, you never need to pay to get appointed by an employer. So it is advisable to stay away from such offers you get, in return for money to be paid as processing/ training fee.
