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Phone Scam targeting Chinese Nationals in Australia by pretending to be from the Embassy RAKES IN MILLIONS $$$

Posted by :Henry On : May 31, 2018
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Category: Australia, BIG LARGE HUGE, China, DEATH THREATS, FRAUDS SCAMS THEFT, ID THEFT, PAYMENT DEMANDS, SCAMMERS, SMISHING SCAMS, STUDENTS, TRANSFERS OF MONEY, VICTIMS

Tags:chinese nationals scams, chinese students scammed, fine threats on chinese nationals

IN RECENT months, you may have been confused by a voicemail left on your phone in Mandarin.

Whether you understand it or not, authorities have warned smartphone users to hang up immediately.

Police have warned of a phone scam targeting Chinese nationals in Australia by pretending to be from the embassy and demanding a large sum of money.

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“We have offenders contacting victims on the phone purporting to be from the Chinese Embassy, and saying victims either committed an offence or had their identity stolen. As a result, victims are asked to pay fines or a debt,” Financial Crimes Squad Commander Detective Superintendent Linda Howlett told a conference Wednesday afternoon.

“I want to stress that the Chinese Embassy would never contact a person to pay money over the phone.

“We’ve had incidents where the victim is threatened, or their family back in China is threatened.”

She said there have been cases where the victim didn’t have any money. In these cases, the victim was instructed to stage a kidnapping so they could get money overseas from their parents.

The scam has reaped in millions of dollars, targeting victims across Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. One victim alone in NSW had $1.9 million stolen.

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According to Det Supt Howlett, there have been at least 50 reports of this scam across NSW, with three calls this week alone.

But she said a lot of the victims still aren’t coming forward, urging people receiving the calls to hang up and notify the authorities.

Variations of this scam have been reported recently. In another one, an automated voice in Mandarin claiming to be calling on behalf of the Chinese Embassy tells the listener they had an important parcel to collect.

They are encouraged to press 9, at which point they are transferred to a scammer who tries to take their personal details.

China’s Deputy Consul-General in Sydney Tong Xuejun said more than 1000 cases had been reported since August last year.

“We have confirmed about 40 cases that caused a loss. The total amount of money involved is about $10 million,” he said, adding that the money lost ranged from $2000 to one case of $3.5 million.

In another fraud, the scammer tells the victim they are involved in a crime like money-laundering or embezzlement, and threatens them with jail or deportation unless they pay a hefty sum to get a “priority investigation” to clear their name.

They also try to extract sensitive information like passport numbers, bank details and addresses.

According to Scamwatch, if the money is sent to the scammer, it is likely lost and extremely difficult to recover.

Many non-Chinese people have reported getting the calls too, and being left confused.

The Chinese Consulate-General has urged Chinese citizens in Australia to be aware of fraudulent calls.

www.crimefiles.net

www.intelagencies.com

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Henry Sapiecha

He discovered amounts of $800 & $10,000 of his money had been transferred to another bank account via his phone

Posted by :Henry On : May 29, 2018
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Category: ASSAULT, Australia, COURTS LEGAL POLICE, FRAUDS SCAMS THEFT, PEOPLE, SENDING MONEY, STEAL THEFT, TRANSFERS OF MONEY

Tags:illegal money transfer via mobile phone, stealing money via persons phone, transfer of money via phone deception, trial of phone thief

 $10,000 transfer theft via borrowed phone

A TEENAGER has been refused bail and committed to stand trial in Gladstone’s District Court Qld Australia over the alleged assault of a taxi driver and the attempted theft of more than $10,000 from his bank account.

The 18-year-old appeared in Gladstone Magistrates Court via video link from Capricornia Correctional Centre yesterday.

He wore an olive-green prisoner’s jumper and at times held his head in his hands as Sergeant Barry Stevens read out the allegations made against him

The court was told that shortly after 3am on January 20, the man and two co-accused – an 18-year-old and a 17-year-old – called a taxi driver to a house at Barney Point.

Police allege that the man, who knew the taxi driver, asked to borrow his phone as they waited to leave the house.

One of the co-accused then left saying he was going to the bathroom, according to police, and the phone was not returned to the driver until the teenager came back.

When the driver checked his phone, Sgt Stevens said he discovered amounts of $800 and $10,000 had been transferred deceptively to an unfamiliar bank account.

He challenged the teenagers over the money transfers before he was “set upon by all three”, Sgt Stevens told the court.

The teenagers allegedly repeatedly punched the man in the face and torso and bashed him with a brick, before stealing his mobile phone and a gold chain.

When the driver managed to escape the house and get to his car, police said the teens continued to attack the car, damaging it. The taxi driver suffered a fractured jaw.

The three teenagers were later found by the police dog squad at a nearby house.

Acting magistrate Neil Lavaring noted the man had already spent 125 days in custody and it could be months until he faced trial.

But he refused to allow bail on the basis the man posed an unacceptable risk of re-offending.

He did not enter a plea before the committal.

www.crimefiles.net

www.intelagencies.com

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Henry Sapiecha

This one simple thing you can do to avoid being scammed for up to hundreds of thousands $$$ in property transactions

Posted by :Henry On : May 25, 2018
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Category: BUYING SELLING, CONVEYANCING SCAMS, INVOICE SCAMS, LISTS, PROPERTY SCAMS, REAL ESTATE SCAMS, SCAM TEXT & EMAIL MESSAGE EXAMPLES

Tags:CEO Peter Maloney says re scams, conveyancin lawyers take note of this scam, Conveyancing scams, Conveyancing technology experts GlobalX & scams, email property deal scams, fix the scam just pick up the phone, fraudulent accounts real estate, hacking conveyancy lists scams, rort involves scammers hacking conveyancers’ client lists, transfer property purchase funds into a fraudulent account.

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Do one very simple thing to avoid losing thousands when you buy property.

MILLIONS of dollars have been lost to scammers intercepting property transactions already this year, but there is some simple thing you can do to protect yourself.

Conveyancing technology experts GlobalX has revealed that many who operate within the industry are unaware that scammers are successfully ripping off buyers already in Australia.

CEO Peter Maloney said millions had been lost in a number of transactions.

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The common rort involves scammers hacking conveyancers’ client lists, impersonating them and emailing their clients to advise them the property trust account details had changed so clients would transfer property purchase funds into a fraudulent account.

Mr Maloney said he was aware of certain instances of money being scammed this way in both South Australia and Western Australia where eight buyers were targeted and lost millions of dollars.

Mr Maloney said if you were paying a $200,000 deposit to buy and house and put it into a scammers account unknowingly it would be almost impossible to trace and or retrieve it.

He said the buyer was not the only one affected as transactions could then fall through and the seller would have to market their home again.

It’s easy to avoid being scammed according to GlobalX CEO Peter Maloney.

But he said there was one very simple thing buyers could do to avoid being caught – make a phone call.

All emails asking for funds to be transferred should be verified with a phone call before any money was released.

“Pick up the phone and ask them,’’ he said.

“It really is that simple’’.

Australian Institute of Conveyancers President Shane Jacob echoed the call for all involved in the property purchase process to be diligent.

“It is critical that buyers and conveyancers become more aware & informed. If you receive an email that you think is suspicious, buyers should be calling their conveyancer to confirm it is legitimate,” Mr Jacob said.It is that simple.

“Scammers are getting smarter, so property buyers and their legal rpeople need to be vigilent in order to protect themselves.”

www.crimefiles.net

www.australianmortgageloans.com.au

www.money-au.com

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Henry Sapiecha

Blessing scams in New York’s Chinatowns – Victims see their life savings spirited away

Posted by :Henry On : May 23, 2018
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Category: BLESSING SCAMS, China, USA

Tags:blessing scams usa chinese, chinese blessing scams, chinese immigrants & blessing scams usa

Organised groups of fraudsters are terrifying elderly victims with tales of superstitious horrors in order to gain access to their worldly possessions

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Wang Jing is so ashamed of what happened to her that, for the first hour of our conversation, at the Brooklyn district attorney’s office in New York, she makes no eye contact, as if doing so will break some spell and prevent her from completing her story.

She speaks haltingly in Mandarin, the only language we share; she would seem more comfortable in Cantonese or Taishanese, the dialect of the small city in China’s Guangdong province on whose rural outskirts she was born.

But, more than that, she seems unused to being listened to in any language. She asks me not to use her proper name and has brought along her son, who is in his late 20s. He sits impassive but watchful, accustomed – like many children of immigrants – to making sure that his mother is not taken advantage of.

Wang, who works as a health aide for elderly Chinese, is 61 and careworn. Since coming to the United States 32 years ago, she has been obeyond New York just once, and the only places she has lived in are the Manhattan Chinatown and the Brooklyn one, in Bensonhurst.

Mainland Chinese woman who duped senior citizen in Hong Kong with promise of ‘spiritual blessing’ gets longer jail term

One afternoon in late April of 2016, she was exiting a store in Bensonhurst when an agitated woman in her early 40s rushed up to her. “I’m looking for a doctor called Xu,” the woman said, in rapid-fire Cantonese. “It’s very urgent – for my daughter.”

Wang had been to plenty of traditional Chinese-medicine practitioners in the neighbourhood, but she had never heard of a Dr Xu. “He is very well known here,” the woman went continued. “I think he’s my daughter’s only chance.”

She said that the girl had begun her first menstrual bleeding two weeks earlier and nothing would staunch the flow. Friends spoke of Dr Xu as a miracle worker, but no one seems to know where to to find him.

A woman passing by overheard and interjected, “Are you talking about the Dr Xu? He’s a treasure. I have him to thank for my mother-in-law’s amazing recovery.”

When the first woman asked for more details, the newcomer shrugged. “He’s become a real recluse in recent years,” she said. “I don’t even know if he sees patients any more.”

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People striding past a shop on Eighth Avenue in Brooklyn’s Chinatown.

Wang was curious. She’d had her own share of ailments. A decade earlier, she had surgery to remove a tumour in one of her ovaries, and, several years before that, her husband had suffered a back injury that left him unable to work. She became responsible for supporting their two young children. “I would tell the kids, ‘Mama is not hungry today – you guys hurry up and eat,’” she told me. At the time, she made about US$130 a week, at a garment factory, and the physical demands of the work had ravaged her body.

As Wang and her new acquaintances talked, it turned out that the woman who had met Dr Xu was from a village not far from where Wang had grown up. She introduced herself as Liu, asked about Wang’s husband and children, and extended an open invitation to have tea at a bakery she owned with her husband.

Wang was touched by her solicitude. It reminded her of life back in Taishan, where one would constantly cross paths with acquaintances and there was a web of trust, woven over generations, from the reciprocal exchange of favours. If you had a not so familiar problem, you would seek out a shu ren, a “familiar person”, to help. In the US, however, Chinese people shared less about themselves. “Everything is business,” Wang says.

Wang was talking about her children when Liu called out to a woman with large sunglasses and a backpack who was walking towards them. “We were just looking for your grandfather,” Liu exclaimed. Dr Xu’s granddaughter said that he had been very sick and had stopped taking patients. He now devoted himself to good deeds, to build karma as his end neared.

Liu begged the granddaughter to make an exception, and she agreed to try to talk him round. “He will refuse your money,” she warned, as she left. “If he agrees to see you, it will be strictly as friends.”

“I’ve never had terribly good fortune,” Wang tells me. “It’s always been endurance – life lived on a boiling kettle.” But, for the first time in a long while, she felt as if her luck was about to change. She had heard about doctors who had amazing powers, but she had never encountered one. Now it seemed that she might get a free consultation.

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My grandfather sees a great white tiger, a very ill omen. If the spirit wants him, she can make the most harmless actions fatal, your son may choke on his next sip of water

The women waited on the street, and when the granddaughter returned, her face had darkened. She addressed Wang by name, although Wang could not recall having given her name. “It’s about your unmarried son,” the granddaughter said. Wang had not told her about her son, either.

The granddaughter said that Dr Xu had lit three sticks of incense at an altar, one for each woman. Liu’s stick burned brightly, because of the good deed she had done by referring the others, but the other two sticks immediately blew out.

The mother of the girl with menstrual problems was told that an offended spirit in the underworld was responsible. The news for Wang was even more dire: her son was in mortal danger. Because she had recently crossed a street in the exact spot where a pregnant woman had been killed two decades earlier, the spirit of the unborn child, a girl, had latched on to Wang, intent upon claiming her son for a husband.

“My grandfather sees a great white tiger, a very ill omen,” the woman warned. Wang asked if she could not just keep her son safe at home. The woman shook her head. “If the spirit wants him, she can make the most harmless actions fatal,” she said. “Your son might choke on his next sip of water.”

Wang was terrified. Everyone in China knew about ming hun, or ghost marriages. The mother of one of Wang’s classmates had lost a son at a young age and was plagued with ill health for years, until a local shaman found a suitable wife in the underworld, a girl in the village who had died in infancy. Now Wang listened, as Dr Xu’s granddaughter told her that, to avoid the curse, her valuables must be blessed immediately. She added a caveat: “You can’t contact anyone. You will spook the spirit into taking action faster.”

“It was my son’s life,” Wang tells me. “How could I have taken a chance?”

300 victims of ‘living Buddha’ scam seek help from Hong Kong police after HK$80 million in losses

Liu accompanied Wang to her apartment, to fetch her valuables. “Everything will be OK, sister,” she said. She had endured difficulties herself, she confided, and Dr Xu had always seen her through them. “He doesn’t take a cent,” she said. “And, of course, no funny business with your valuables.” She held up her hand to show Wang a gold band set with carved jade. “How else would I still have this ring?”

As they reached Wang’s apartment building, Liu offered a last admonition. “Just be careful. Dr Xu’s eyes are omnipresent,” she said. “If you try to collect only a portion of your valuables, the blessings won’t work and your son will remain in danger.”

Like many immigrants, Wang had never had much use for banks. Her life savings – about US$150,000 – were hidden in a box and in other places around her bedroom. Not even her family knew how much was in it.

She took the money and some wedding jewellery that she almost never wore, put everything into plastic bags and placed the bundle in a shopping bag.

The granddaughter was waiting for them on the street corner where they had met. She held out a large bag and told Wang to put her package inside. Then she spun Wang around and told her to join her palms together in prayer, bow and recite a chant: “Peace and safety to my child, may the bodhisattva protect him.”

Wang vaguely remembers the granddaughter tracing her fingers through the air, as if drawing calligraphy, and at one point holding both hands up to the grey sky. But, almost as soon as the ceremony had begun, it was over.

The bag was returned to Wang, along with two bottles of spring water. One was to be used to cook rice, and the other was for drinking: everyone in the family must take a sip. The bag should not be opened for 49 days or the blessing would be undone.

Liu took Wang’s hands. “It’s fate that we met,” she said, by way of farewell.

As Wang walked home, she felt that the bag had become oddly lighter than she remembered. She broke into a run, clutching the bag, and tore it open as soon as she was home. Inside, all she found was boxes of cornstarch and laundry detergent. That evening, her son took her to the police.

[My loss] sits, every second, like a cold stone in my chest, so much so that I can’t breathe
Wang Jing, blessing scam victim

The first reports of what have become known as blessing scams appeared in Chinese media at about the turn of the century. In 2002, there were more than 800 incidents in Hong Kong, leading police to establish a dedicated task force.

Investigators determined that the suspects were middle-aged women, working in crews of three or four, and that almost all of them came from coastal provinces of southern China, whose proximity to the wealth of Hong Kong and Taiwan creates tempting opportunities for criminals.

The scammers travelled first to Taiwan and other cities across Asia, and then to Chinese communities in the US, Canada and Australia. In the summer of 2012, in San Francisco, there were more than 50 incidents, which netted an estimated US$1.5 million in cash and goods.

Nine people have since stood trial and received prison sentences of up to four years. The prosecution said that the defendants were professionals who had been conning elderly Chinese women around the globe. The countries stamped on their passports included Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Brunei and Cambodia.

In New York currently, there are about 10 reported cases each year. Kevin Hui, a detective in the organised-crime unit of the New York Police Department (NYPD), worked on Wang’s case. He tells me that, after a spike in the number of cases in 2012, he and his colleagues contacted police in Hong Kong in an effort to better understand the phenomenon.

In 2014, after tracking the scammers intensively, the NYPD lodged sealed indictments against a number of suspects, but, before arrests could be made, they all disappeared, presumably escaping to China.

Cheated hearts, empty pockets: online dating scams in Hong Kong and abroad

In early 2016, police managed to arrest three scammers, who took felony pleas and served prison time. Hui says that his department is in the process of following two gangs at work in New York.

Policing blessing scams is made harder by the fact that victims are frequently too scared or humiliated to report the crimes. Last year, I spoke to the late Eddie Chiu, a Hong Kong native who for many years headed the Lin Sing Association in New York, one of the oldest Chinatown community organisations, and often advised elderly victims who were reluctant to involve authorities. Some feared that doing so would expose irregularities in their immigration or tax status.

“They are also afraid of losing face,” Chiu told me. “They are saving that money for their burial arrangements or to give to their grandchildren, but sometimes their own children don’t even know about it.”

The victims worried that their children would berate them for being credulous and for having kept the money secret in the first place. “They are fearful and embarrassed,” he said. “The scammers know it, and they exploit it.”

In 2014, the vulnerability of such communities led Kenneth P. Thompson, Brooklyn’s district attorney at the time, to set up the Immigrant Fraud Unit. Its work has since been expanded by his successor, Eric Gonzalez.

“One-third of the population here in Brooklyn are immigrants, and the Chinese community is the fastest-growing one,” Gonzalez tells me one afternoon in his office. A second-generation Puerto Rican, he spoke of witnessing the process of assimilation within his own family.

“There are many factors at work – cultural barriers, social isolation – that make these immigrants easy targets.”

In the months after Wang was defrauded, police received reports of several similar incidents across New York, and they closed in on eight suspects. One day, Hui, driving through Chinatown while off duty, saw a group of scammers in action. He called for backup, and another officer filmed everything and then made arrests. Officers caught four of the eight people they had been tracking.

As police and prosecutors reviewed the evidence, it became clear that one of the scammers had been involved in a number of incidents. It was the woman who had introduced herself to Wang as Liu. Her real name was Su Xuekun.

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Su Xuekun arrives at Brooklyn Supreme Court for her arraign­ment on charges relating to a Chinese blessing scam, on October 20, 2016. Picture: Alamy

At the district attorney’s office, I meet two prosecutors who were assigned to the case – Kin Ng, who was born in Hong Kong and speaks Cantonese, and José Interiano, who is Honduran-American. They tell me that although Su had been in the country for only a few months, she had been extremely active. Two months after defrauding Wang, Su – this time playing the part of the mother with the menstruating daughter – was part of a group that conned a 54-year-old woman in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park out of US$19,000.

Su had also been implicated in operations in Manhattan and in Queens, which netted more than US$$400,000. Ng tells me, “We have video footage of her in the act, and line-up identification.”

Su was indicted on four counts of grand larceny, relating to two separate incidents. Because there was more than one offence, prosecutors were able to indict her under a hate-crime statute and seek a stiffer sentence. It is rare for someone to be prosecuted for a hate crime against people of their own ethnicity, but Interiano says he believes the case warranted it.

“The term ‘hate crime’ is poorly worded,” he says, and suggests that “bias crime” better represents the intent of the statute. “If you look at the statute itself, the word ‘hate’ is actually omitted. The fact is, all our victims shared several characteristics: they were all female, they were older, they were all Chinese.”

By the time that the victim is given a way of solving all these problems, they just want to get out of it: ‘OK, fine, I’ll do whatever it takes to save my family member.’
José Interiano, prosecutor

All but one of the cases that the Immigrant Fraud Unit has handled involved perpetrators who share the ethnic background of their victims. Ng says: “It’s only natural, whether it’s the West Indian or the Latino or the East Asian community.” He laughs as he recalls, when he was a child, seeing his parents get swindled by a Chinese car salesman. “You speak the language, and you feel like you have an instant understanding and bond. Scammers prey upon that.”

Interiano and Ng, like the police, think the scammers were part of a well-organised crime ring. Different crews all used the same stories, and, whereas most Chinese immigrants depend on family connections to establish themselves, the suspects arrived knowing no one, but had no problem instantly finding accommodation and employment.

Interiano says he does not consider the victims to be unusually gullible. Rather, the scam has been perfectly devised to take advantage of people with few sources of information.

The initial conversation with the victim is a way of harvesting personal information. Using a mobile phone, the first two scammers can have the third listen in, or they can send texts of the pertinent points. The third scammer will then seem to have supernatural insight into the victim’s life, making the warning about the family member in danger more credible.

At every stage, the gang will hurry things along, to heighten panic. Interiano says, “By the time that the victim is given a way of solving all these problems, they just want to get out of it: ‘OK, fine, I’ll do whatever it takes to save my family member.’”

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Hong Kong-born Kin Ng, from the district attorney’s office, is one of the prosecutors assigned to Su’s case. Picture: Alamy

I had met Su Xuekun on a bright morning at Kings County Supreme Court in Brooklyn. Her court-appointed lawyer, Morris Shamuil, a gentle, harried man in his 40s, greeted me on the benches outside the courtroom where she was being arraigned. He had seen his client only twice since her arrest, both times in court, and could not communicate with her unless a translator was present.

Su, handcuffed and wearing a khaki sweatsuit, was led into the courtroom. During the arraignment, she bowed and smiled deferentially at the judge, Danny Chun. Su pleaded not guilty, and, to Shamuil’s disappointment, Chun upheld the hate-crime charges.

Afterwards, Shamuil took me downstairs to a visiting area where Su was waiting for a van to take her back to prison on Rikers Island. She was tanned, with thick brown hair that was frizzy and blond at the edges – the vestiges of a dye-and-perm job. We sat down to talk, separated by a Plexiglas window. She apologised for her poor Mandarin and, whenever a word or a phrase eluded her, repeated the Cantonese equivalent to herself in increasingly agitated tones, sighing with frustration.

Su told me that she had grown up in the Guangdong countryside and began working in the fields at the age of 10. She longed to move to the city, a place where she imagined she “would not be sharing the same bed with three other siblings”. She saw how hard her parents worked, and how the work would always leave you poor, “no matter how much sweat it wrung out of you”.

Journey to the past: why overseas Chinese are finally embracing their roots

Eventually, she made her way to a town, about 250km down the coast from where Wang grew up, and got married. She and her husband had three teenage children and both worked in her in-laws’ family business, a glove factory. She said that it had been nearly 10 months since she had spoken to her family. She did not want people at home to know what had happened to her, or for her children to be ashamed.

Some nine months earlier, Su had travelled to Toronto on a tourist visa, her first time outside China. She had recently discovered that her husband was having an affair with one of her colleagues, and felt that she had to get away. She also thought that, if she could find out about Western universities, her children might be able to study at one.

For a week, she stayed at a hostel in Toronto’s Chinatown. At a local bakery, she met a well-dressed, “rich-looking” woman, her hair in “a fancy, movie-star bun”, who also turned out to be from Guangdong.

The woman, who called herself Sister Ping (coincidentally, the name of a famous human trafficker) said that there would be better opportunities for Su’s children in America. She offered to help her get there, set her up with a cleaning job, and sort out her accommodation and her immigration status.

It seemed that Su had stumbled on the ideal shu ren – the kind of familiar person you rarely encountered outside China. The arrangement was that Ping would charge US$3,000, which Su could pay once she was earning money. They drove in an estate car from Toronto to New York, but the cleaning job did not materialise. “Sister Ping said that I owed her this sum and there was only one way to pay it back,” Su said.

She was evasive when I asked about the scam. “They just told us it would be OK,” she kept saying. I asked why she did not turn in Sister Ping in exchange for a lighter sentence, and she said that she did not know Ping’s true identity or those of the other accomplices. It seemed that no one – neither victims nor perpetrators – really knew one another.

She went on, “I know, I know, it’s a terrible thing that I did to those aunties. I have elderly folks back at home, too, so I know their pain. I wish I could take it back.”

There are many factors at work – cultural barriers, social isolation – that make these immigrants easy targets
Eric Gonzalez, Immigration Fraud Unit

Later, when I run the details by Kevin Hui, of the NYPD, he says that the entire story is a fabrication, and that Su arrived in Canada with a group of scammers. “We knew they were looking for hits,” he says. “It’s a crew. That’s what they do.” The DA’s office, likewise, doubts that any family Su has in China will be ignorant of what she was doing.

Still, I wonder if Su’s fabrications might contain some fragments of truth. Shen Anqi, a legal scholar at Britain’s Teesside University who has made a study of female Chinese criminals, tells me that the upbringing Su described was typical of the women she has encountered.

For her recent book, Offending Women in Contemporary China, Shen interviewed dozens of child traffickers and leaders of prostitution rings. The vast majority were born in the countryside to large families – China’s one-child policy never penetrated the rural hinterland.

With only poor education, which left them unqualified for anything beyond manual labour, they were confronted with China’s rapid social change, rising inequality and burgeoning materialism. “The criminal market is easy to enter, requires no diploma and provides a quick way for them to aspire to something much more than what they currently have,” Shen says. “I’m not justifying it, but the incentives are certainly there.”

Shen notes that criminals like Su tend to prey on people like themselves. “They know what it’s like to be desperate and to fervently want something more through a quick fix, like a blessing,” she says. “It’s desperation chasing desperation.”

It occurs to me that, when Su told Wang that they had been fated to meet, she was right, although not in the sense that she intended. The country’s vertiginous change, incomprehensible to both, had sparked in each a kind of magical thinking, a frantic hope that life could be transformed by a lucky break, and it was this that had brought them together.

Su had told me that she was almost relieved to have been caught. “I don’t have to lie any more. The pressure’s off,” she said. And, to an indigent Chinese immigrant, the facilities at Rikers did not seem such a hardship. “We live 50 women to a room,” she said. “There’s time and space to exercise. Life is orderly. The food is not bad at all.”

There was one officer in particular, a white woman, who checked in on her regularly. “In all my months here, the lady prison guard, she was the first real American I get to know who’s almost like a friend,” Su said. She raised her hand to brush a stray hair out of her eyes. On her middle finger, she wore a ring of gold and jade.

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Su, who is now serving her sentence in prison on Rikers Island, expressed something close to relief at being caught.

I am curious about the elements of the story that the scammers told Wang, and of the ritual that they performed. A little research reveals that they were likely patched together from various strands of traditional Chinese belief.

The white tiger has been a staple of Chinese astrology since antiquity; it represents a thirst for blood and is thought to bring mortal danger to infants and pregnant women. The 49 days that Wang was told to wait before opening the package echoes the 49 days that spirits of the recently dead must wait to be allocated their place in the afterlife – a belief that entered Chinese tradition, from India, in the fourth century BC. The chant that she was told to recite was plausibly Buddhist, and the granddaughter’s gesture during the blessing, arms raised heavenwards, evoked Taoist ritual.

When I ask Wang about the symbols, she is vague about their meaning and their origins. “The white tiger is an ill omen – everyone knows this,” she says. The exact significance of the symbols is less clear to her than the fact that they carry significance.

Jonathan HX Lee, an associate professor of Asian-American studies at San Francisco State University, tells me that this is common among contemporary Chinese. “It’s the ritual and symbol that have been passed down,” he says. “They carry import, even if their historical origins have been lost.”

Lee says that this is due, in part, to the syncretism of Chinese belief – the way that the indigenous religion of prehistoric China gradually blended with later traditions.

Traditional Chinese religion revolved around veneration of the spirits of one’s ancestors. Taoism, which originated in China around the fourth century BC, introduced practices of occult medicine and exorcism.

Buddhism, which was brought to China by Indian missionaries sometime about the first century AD, added the idea of continuous rebirth and the retributive effects of karma. Meanwhile, Confucianism’s emphasis on filial piety formalised ancestor worship as part of everyday life: ancestors who did not receive offerings of food and incense would become hungry and irritated in the netherworld.

If you are of a certain generation and grew up in the Communist state, you don’t really know what real religion is in China
Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China

“Gods, ghosts, and ancestors are all connected in this world view,” Lee says. “Gods are exceptional historical human beings or ancestors who have become deified. Hungry ghosts are ancestors who have not been properly venerated.” (Many Chinese communities annually celebrate the Hungry Ghost Festival, to feed and placate these disruptive spirits.)

In China, ghosts have been particularly integrated into social and administrative life. By the early 12th century, Taoist exorcism rites used judicial language to interrogate and sentence troublesome ghosts.

The founder of the Ming dynasty, the Hongwu emperor, issued a proclamation, in 1375, stipulating that “every county and village” must have an altar for appeasing wandering ghosts, and that there should be one for every 100 households.

As late as 1896, in a town in Fujian, city bureaucrats presided over a ritual to drive out the hungry ghosts of people who had been killed while fighting Japanese invaders in Manchuria.

In the early 20th century, after the fall of the last imperial dynasty, traditional Chinese religion came under attack from patriotic intellectuals like Sun Yat-sen, who thought it had impeded the country’s progress toward modernity. Temples were demolished and statues smashed. In 1949, the Communists established an atheist state and sought to purge the country of its superstitious ways.

“It is as if a raging tidal wave has swept away all the demons and ghosts,” Mao Zedong said in 1955. By this time, “ghost” had been repurposed as a word for any malign influence, especially a counter-revolutionary one.

Nonetheless, in rural areas, private rituals to venerate ancestors or ward off ghosts were often tolerated. And in 1982, the liberal reforms of China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping permitted religious gatherings to take place again.

“The idea was that it was just for old people, and, with time, it would die out,” Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China, a recent book on the resurgence of religious belief in the country, tells me. Religion did not die out, but, as Johnson explained, the decades of prohibition had eroded most people’s understanding of spiritual traditions.

“If you are of a certain generation and grew up in the Communist state, you don’t really know what real religion is in China,” he says.

Honouring the dead: how cultures around the world pay their respects

Lee, however, cautions against viewing Chinese religion as inherently vulnerable to blessing scams. He cites scandals involving Christian televangelists and mentions a case, earlier this year, in which a Jamaican-American retiree was defrauded of her life savings by two people at a Brooklyn church, one of whom had posed as a pastor.

Ultimately, it seems, it is faith itself, rather than a specific cosmology, that makes people susceptible to fraud.

barend-ter-haar-a-scholar-of-chinese-religion-at-britains-oxford-university-image-www-scamsfakes-com

I speak to Barend Ter Haar, a scholar of Chinese religion at Britain’s Oxford University, who makes a further point: although, from a Western perspective, some of these religious practices might seem exotic, they often fulfil functions that are easily recognisable.

Bereaved parents visiting a village shaman to arrange a ghost marriage for a deceased child might well experience relief similar to that provided by grief counselling or psychoanalysis. “The point is that it gives the sufferer a sense of agency and an explanation that can be empowering,” Ter Haar says.

In the spring of last year, Su returned to court a number of times, and astonished everyone by refusing to take a plea deal, of between two-and-a-half and four years in prison, that the prosecutors were offering.

Interiano, who was acting as counsel for the prosecution, wondered if she realised how slim her chances would be if she insisted on fighting her case. “We’ve got video recordings, pictures,” he said. “This would be pretty close to a slam dunk.”

Shamuil was exasperated with his client. “This is the best deal she’s going to get from the judge,” he said. He speculated that Su thought she could get less jail time by driving a hard bargain.

“Probably in prison she heard about other Chinese people in similar circumstances who got less time,” he said, shrugging. “Rikers is a small place. All the Chinese people know each other and talk.”

Honey, I’m home! 1,300 Chinese prisoners granted 5 days’ freedom over Lunar New Year holiday

Talking to Su, I’d got the impression that she did not fully understand the severity of her situation. It was as if the American judicial system were merely a nuisance that could be worked around, given enough perseverance. At one point, she said that, once her case was resolved, she wanted to return to the US to resume the college search for her children.

Finally, in mid-May, judge Chun told Shamuil, “If the defendant doesn’t take the plea, her sentence will certainly go up. I will be withdrawing the offer after today.”

After consulting an interpreter, Su took the deal, brows furrowed and eyes downcast. “Do you have anything to say?” the judge asked her. “I’m sorry,” she said softly through the interpreter. “I won’t do it again.”

I went downstairs to talk to Su, in the visiting area. She looked tired, with faintly bloodshot eyes and hair hastily tied in a ponytail. I asked her why it had taken her so long to plead. She did not answer, but massaged her throat and swallowed with some difficulty.

Eventually, she said that the prison doctor had diagnosed a thyroid condition that required surgery. She had hoped to return to China for the operation. I told her that when many rich Chinese people need surgery, they pay to come to America.

“I would be too scared,” she said. “To be lying immobilised in a bed at a hospital, deaf and mute, without knowing a single person?” She used Wang’s term for a helpful contact: shu ren. Su was now experiencing the same immigrant loneliness that had made Wang susceptible to the scam.

US student speaks out about time in jail in China

It’s a warm Sunday morning when I meet Wang and her son at a Cantonese restaurant in Bensonhurst. The spacious dining hall, a popular venue for Chinese wedding banquets, is bustling with families, strollers and walkers wedged against the tables.

Wang’s son asks me to act like a friend of the family rather than like a journalist, explaining that his mother has kept her loss secret from all her friends.

Steaming dim sum carts roll by, but Wang is anxious that we not order too much. “Enough, enough,” she says, as soon as there are half a dozen items on the table. “We won’t be able to finish it all.”

She turns to me and smiles. “The food here is authentic, not like in Manhattan, where they are just cheating the foreigners,” she says.

I ask Wang how she has managed since losing her money, and she shakes her head. She continues work as a health aide, but she has not increased her hours. “If you work more, you risk losing Medicaid benefits,” she says. “And there are not many employment options for someone my age.”

She does not mind the work, finding it almost leisurely compared with the 12-hour shifts she once endured in the garment factory.

Wang puts down her chopsticks and reminisces about her early years in New York. She met her husband in Guangdong; he was already working in the US but had returned to find a wife.

“You don’t know how poor China was then, especially in the countryside,” she says. “America was this golden dream. Everyone wanted to go, but very few people could. That I was to marry a man who could take me to America was a rare piece of good fortune, which everyone envied.”

She smiles wryly and says: “I had this sense that coming to the ‘beautiful country’” – the literal translation of meiguo, meaning “America” – “was my blessing. I had no idea how I got so lucky.”

America was this golden dream. Everyone wanted to go, but very few people could. That I was to marry a man who could take me to America was a rare piece of good fortune, which everyone envied
Wang Jing

Once she arrived, however, Wang learned that she would see her husband only once a week. “There weren’t so many restaurant jobs back then, so he had to go out of state to work,” she says. “There were no options. For men, it was the back kitchen of restaurants. For women, it was the garment factories.” She hoped to learn English, but never had the time. “Living and working around East Broadway, it wasn’t so different from living in China,” she says. “You heard no English and you spoke no English.”

Her husband advised her to avoid dwelling on her loss. “He tells me to think of myself as a newly arrived immigrant, fresh off the plane, with just the clothes on my back and without a cent in my pocket,” she says. “But how can I erase 30 years?”

I ask if she has any kind of belief that will sustain her. She shakes her head vigorously, and for the first time I see anger in her face. “Nothing,” she says. “I refuse to believe in anything any more – no gods, no ghosts.”

As the lunch crowd begins to disperse, a family stops by to say hello. Wang’s face rearranges itself into a sunny smile, and she exchanges pleasantries. After her friends have gone, she tells me that, even with her closest family, she no longer discusses what happened; it unleashes too much pain.

“But it sits, every second, like a cold stone in my chest, so much so that I can’t breathe,” she tells me. Wang smooths a wrinkle in the tablecloth and does not look up. After some moments, she speaks again: “In the evenings sometimes, I take a walk. There is a park not too far from my home.”

She says that there is a particular bench, under a leafy oak, where she likes to sit. “I scream, just open my lungs and scream,” she says, in a whisper. “People stare, but in the dark, everyone is a stranger.”

Text: The New Yorker (c) Condé Nast

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Henry Sapiecha

Con artists strike it rich in Hong Kong with job fraud and ID theft totalling HK$7.82 million in 2018, or seven times more than all of 2017

Posted by :Henry On : May 22, 2018
0

Category: EMPLOYMENT SCAMS, Hong Kong, SCAM TEXT & EMAIL MESSAGE EXAMPLES, SCAMMERS, SENDING MONEY, SOCIAL SITES, VICTIMS

Tags:employment scams in hong kong, how to spot an employment scam, job scammers in hong kong

Desperate jobseekers persuaded to hand over personal details and bank information in fake employment scammers

Hong Kong’s con artists have scammed ­job seekers out of seven times more cash in the first four months of 2018 than they did in the entire year of 2017, police revealed on Monday.

Identity theft and fake job offers drove the rise, with the latest police figures showing 78 Hongkongers losing HK$7.82 million (US$996,000) in 48 reported scams.

That is compared to the HK$1.13 million that 43 vunerable victims lost last year to con artists in 33 cases, covering a variety of scams. Of the HK$7.82 million, HK$7.1 million was lost in loan-related employment fraud, a figure that dwarfs the HK$480,000 con artists raked in using similar schemes in 2017

This year’s biggest loser to date is a 26-year-old woman who was duped of HK$800,000 in a loan-related job scam. She replied to an online job advert in March.

“To secure the position, she provided the interviewer with a copy of her identity card, together with other personal data,” chief inspector Jackie Tam Wing-sze of the force’s commercial crime bureau said.

Why Hongkongers are easy prey for a new breed of con artist

The victim was later told HK$780,000 had been paid into her bank account. She was requested to help withdraw the money, with the promise of a HK$13,000 payday afterwards.

Some weeks later, she received a formal request of debt recovery from a bank, and realised the fraudster had stolen her identity to apply for a personal loan amounting to HK$800,000.

Hong Kong woman tricked out of HK$20,000 in online love scam

A 25-year-old woman was conned out of HK$640,000 after she responded to a job advert on the internet in January.

She was lured into applying for loans, and to use her credit cards to buy gold, and was promised HK$74,000 in commission if she did so. According to police, she was told the “company would be responsible for repaying any & all the debts”.

The woman only realised it was a scam after she gave all the money and gold to the conman and then lost contact with him.

Police said they had also observed criminals were more & more using the lure of attractive job offers, such as working as a flight attendant for overseas airlines, to swindle jobseekers.

In November, a 24-year-old woman fell victim when she answered an advert for a supposed vacancy with an overseas airline on a social media platform. In due course she was eventually convinced to part with a total of HK$170,000 as part of the fake recruitment process.

The victim only discovered the scam the following month when she tried to verify her job application.

The woman is the biggest loser of such fraud in recent years, police stated.

Officials attributed the increase in the reports of employment fraud, and the amount of losses this year, to their investigations into a loan-related job scam in which 10 victims lost HK$3.4 million.

Scammers cheat jobseekers out of HK$3 million as cases jump

“Any person could be the victim of employment fraud,” Tam said, adding that con artists would always invent different ways to steal other people’s money.

Increasingly, Tam said, fraudsters were using various scams online and on social media.

A history of Hong Kong scams … and how to avoid becoming another victim

With the approach of the summer holidays, Tam said school leavers and summer jobseekers should be “cautious and on vigilant alert at all times”.

Senior labour officer Yeung chi-kit of the Labour Department said jobseekers should be wary of adverts for well-paid jobs that do not require work experience, or any academic qualifications.

US company duped into sending US$3 million to Hong Kong account

He said all persons should be cautious if asked to pay deposits, training fees, for goods and services, or asked to provide personal data or credit card, identity card, and bank account details.

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Henry Sapiecha

Manager at Hong Kong finance firm loses HK$14 million to man she never met in eight-year online love scam relationship

Posted by :Henry On : May 22, 2018
0

Category: BIG LARGE HUGE, FRAUDS SCAMS THEFT, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, ROMANCE SCAMS

Tags:bigtime dating scams hong kong, dating scams in hong kong, hong kong scammers

This Con artist pretended to be British movie director as police reveal city’s residents lost HK$75.9 million in similar scams in first three months alone of this year

A financial professional person has become Hong Kong’s biggest victim of internet romance scams, losing HK$14 million (US$1.8 million) to a con artist she only had an online relationship with for eight years, police sources revealed, amid an upswing in such cases just this year.

Online romance scammers duped 119 Hongkongers to the tune of HK$75.9 million in total in the first three months of this year, five times more than the amount scammed for the same period last year.

A police source described the eight-year con as the longest-lasting online love scam in the city, and the HK$14 million lost as the largest in a solitary case.

The victim, a woman in her 40s who works as a manager in a financial institution, met her purported lover on an online dating website and transfered the money to bank accounts in Malaysia and Hong Kong in over 200 transactions starting in 2010, sources told the Post.

She did not meet him face-to-face throughout their entire eight-year online relationship.

After using up all her own savings, the woman applied for loans and borrowed money from family and friends before eventually realising last month that she had been swindled by her online lover, who pretended to be a British film director and only ever made contact with her via email and WhatsApp messaging.

According to police, the woman first became acquainted with the swindler, who used a photograph of a white man in his online dating profile, in August 2010. The con artist spent three months befriending his victim, before he first requested money from her.

“He claimed he was detained by Malaysian authorities after being found carrying about £300,000 in breach of the country’s laws,” another police source said.

“In the beginning, the victim was asked to transfer more than HK$10,000 to pay the administration fee for his release. The scammer then invented different excuses, and duped the victim into transferring yet again more money.”

Another source said the victim had made between 200 and 300 transactions in total, with amounts ranging from HK$10,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars at a single time. The last transaction was made in March.

The case only became tevident after the victim talked to her family when she tried to borrow more money, and realised she had been cheated. She called police in mid-April.

Investigators could not find any British film director with the name used by the con artist. Sources said they were trying to trace the holders of the bank accounts used in the scam, and interchanging intelligence with their Malaysian counterparts.

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Official police figures show nearly 93 per cent of the victims in the first quarter were women, and almost 12 per cent of them were professionals. More than 80 per cent of them were aged between 31 and 60.

Police said 113 of the victims were Hongkongers, and the remaining six were women from mainland China and Taiwan living in the city.

In 2017, 235 people were swindled out of HK$108 million in such scams, more than double the 114 cases in 2016, which involved HK$95 million.

Another police source said the money lost in online scams in the first five months of this year was likely to be more than the amount lost over the whole of last year.

In addition to the HK$14 million case in April, two other women were cheated out of a total of HK$8 million in May.

Why Hongkongers are easy prey for a new breed of con artist

The rampant online love scams have prompted the police force’s Anti-Deception Coordination Centre to issue a scam alert on its website.

Scammers are typically disguised as “Caucasian” European or American men, claim to be professionals working in fields such as engineering, banking, business or the military, and befriend victims online.

It usually takes them at least one or two months to win the trust and sympathy of their victims, before inventing different reasons to get them to part with their money.

According to police, the swindlers are constantly changing their tactics, and police are urging the public to be wary of who they talk to online.

“Beware of online romance scammers who want MONEY, not LOVE!” a message on the website warns.

www.mylove-au.com

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Henry Sapiecha

Foreign students are arrested after they are caught forging signatures and taking out money from Australian banks in multi-million dollar RIPOFF

Posted by :Henry On : May 21, 2018
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Category: BANKS MONEY LENDERS, FRAUDS SCAMS THEFT, HOW TO DIY, ID THEFT, IMPERSONATIONS, IMPOSTERS, PEOPLE, STEAL THEFT, STUDENTS

Tags:how to get free money from banks, stealing from banks, stealing money from banks has a down side, visas & free bank money

Strike Force police have caught out international students scamming millions from banks as part of an overseas criminal syndicate group.

Those involved have been using forged signatures and documents to convince bank staff they are the the legitimate bank account holders, and then withdrawing the cash.

Twenty-four people have been arrested so far with more to follow, and 288 charges have been laid by police over $2.5 million stolen from banks, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Mostof the perpetrators were in Australia on student visas.

In some cases, the syndicate has been bypassing the banks verification systems by taking over mobile phone numbers of victims, the publication declared.

strike-force-police-have-caught-out-international-students-scamming-millions-from-banks-as-part-of-an-overseas-criminal-syndicate-image-www-scamsfakes-com

© Provided by Associated Newspapers Limited Twenty-four people have been arrested, and 288 charges have been laid by police over $2.5 million stolen from banks Many of those who have been caught have been already sentenced to jail since Strike Force Wilmot was established in 2013.  

One man was sentenced to a minimum of 20 months prison in January, while another was jailed in February.

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NSW Police cyber crime chief Detective Superintendent Arthur Katsogiannis told the Daily Telegraph Strike Force Wilmot did an awesome job catching those persons involved.

‘We have worked very closely with the financial institutions in order to identify those responsible,’ Det Katsogiannis said.

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Henry Sapiecha

ACCC: Australians were duped over AU$2.1m to Cryptocurrency-related scams in 2017

Posted by :Henry On : May 21, 2018
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Category: ACCC ASIC ATO, Australia, BITCOIN, DIGITAL MONEY, EMAIL FRAUDS, FRAUDS SCAMS THEFT, ID THEFT, IMPERSONATIONS, IMPOSTERS, LIARS, ONLINE FRAUDS & SCAMS, PAYMENT DEMANDS, SCAM TEXT & EMAIL MESSAGE EXAMPLES, STEAL THEFT, VICTIMS

Tags:bit coin scams online, bitcoin payments on line for tax claims, cryptocurrency fraud online

A detailed report from Australia’s consumer watchdog found many locals got caught up in ‘pyramid’ cryptocurrency schemes last year, hoping to capitalise on the ‘success’ of bitcoin.

mobile-cryptocurrency-image-www-scamsfakes-net

“As the value of actual cryptocurrencies increased, so too did the scam losses in what people thought were real investments,” the report continued. “By the end of the year, reports of losses related to cryptocurrencies exceeded AU$2.1 million but as with other scams, this is likely the very tip of the iceberg.”

According to the ACCC, examples of cryptocurrency scams in 2017 included fake initial coin offerings (ICOs), which purport to be the launch of a new cryptocurrency.

Other scams, the ACCC said, capitalised on the general confusion about how cryptocurrency works and instead of people discovering how to directly buy cryptocurrencies, many found themselves caught up in what were essentially pyramid schemes.

“A number of reports showed that victims entered into cryptocurrency-based scams through friends and family who convinced them they were onto a good thing, a classic element of pyramid schemes,” the watchdog wrote.

“Not all cryptocurrency-related scams involved victims attempting to invest in stocks or initial coin offerings. Many scammers also ask for payment through cryptocurrencies for a variety of scams because it is easier to remain anonymous while receiving payment.”

An example is paying ransomware through bitcoin.

In total, the ACCC reported Australians lost AU$340 million to scammers in 2017, the highest loss since stats were put on record.

More than 200,000 scam reports were submitted to the ACCC, the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN), and other federal and state-based government agencies in 2017.

Investment scams topped the losses at AU$64 million; while dating and romance scams caused the second greatest losses at AU$42 million.

“Some scams are becoming very sophisticated and hard to spot. Scammers use modern technology like social media to contact and deceive their victims. In the past few years, reports indicate scammers are using aggressive techniques both over the phone and online,” ACCC Deputy Chair Delia Rickard said.

According to the ACCC, Scamwatch received almost 33,000 reports of threat-based impersonation scams in 2017. It said over AU$4.7 million was reported lost and more than 2,800 people gave their personal information to these scammers.

“The ATO will never threaten you with immediate arrest; Telstra will never need to access your computer to ‘fix’ a problem; and Centrelink will never require a fee to pay money it owes you,” Rickard continued. “Finally, none of these organisations will ask you to pay using iTunes gift cards.”

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Watch out: ATO warns against ‘malicious’ new email tax refund scam

Posted by :Henry On : May 21, 2018
0

Category: Australia, FRAUDS SCAMS THEFT, IMPOSTERS, LIARS, ONLINE FRAUDS & SCAMS, REFUNDS, SCAM TEXT & EMAIL MESSAGE EXAMPLES, TAX SCAMS

Tags:ato refunds scams, fake tax email scams, tax fraudulent return scams

Scammers are sending fake ATO emails.
ato-tax-scam-email-image-www-scamsfakes-com
SCAM ALERT! This tax refund phishing scam came through our email today. Don’t click the link. Delete immediately.

The Australian Tax Office (ATO) has warned there’s a new scam on the loose and it’s wrecking havoc on people’s computers.

The tax authority says the email scam is disguised as a Tax Refund Notification and aims to trick taxpayers into handing over their bank details by clicking a dodgy link.

“Scammers are sending fake ATO emails asking completion of a ‘tax refund review’ form to receive a refund,” the ATO wrote on its website.

“The form requests online banking credentials, credit card numbers and limits, and personal address information.”

The ATO is advising clients to not click on any links in the email nor save the attachment as it may “download malicious malware onto your computer”.

“Do not disclose the personal information the form is asking for,” they added.

Read more: New missed-call scam is hitting Australia right now

New South Wales police also warned social media users to beware of the scam, with a message on its Facebook page telling people to “delete straight away” if they see the email in their inbox.

The dodgy email isn’t the only ATO scam currently making the rounds. Crafty scammers claiming to be from the ATO are leaving voicemail messages on phones, threatening recipients with arrest if they don’t call back and correct a tax issue.

The ATO issued a recording of the voicemail so people know to be on alert for the fake message.

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Henry Sapiecha

“This call is just to inform you that there has been a lawsuit filed against your name concerning a tax evasion and this case is about to get registered in the Commonwealth Courthouse of your territory,” the scammers say in the call. “So before the things go wrong against you or before the police officer from the local police department will approach you and issue a warrant for your arrest, kindly give us a call back on 0283173564. I repeat my telephone number again which is 0283173564. Again this is Jason O’Connor from the Australian Taxation Office. Thank you and you have a wonderful day.”

The ATO is warning recipients to “not return the call” if they receive a voicemail like this.

This scam costing Australians $22m more than the dating scams

Posted by :Henry On : May 21, 2018
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Category: ACCC ASIC ATO, INVESTMENT FRAUDS, ROMANCE SCAMS, TAX SCAMS

Tags:australian investment scams, investment scams in australia, what is acorn in australia

Investment scams cost Australians more money than dating scams last year, with losses of more than $60 million, an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report has discovered.

Combined data from the ACCC and the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN) found investment scams cost Australian consumers $64 million in 2017. The average reported loss was $53,827, with 20 reports of losses of $400,000 or more.

aussie-banknotes-pocket-thief-image-www-scamsfakes-com

ACCC deputy chair Delia Rickard said there had been both an increase in the amount of money people were losing to investment scams and an increase in people reporting them.

“Until recently, it’s usually been dating and romance scams that have had the highest losses but they have been overtaken by investment scams in the last year, and people are losing significant amounts of money to them,” she said.

Investment scams offer a range of fake financial opportunities with the promise of quick returns, often using smooth talking, glossy brochures or professional-looking websites to lure victims.

“They’re not particularly new scams,” Ms Rickard said. “However, I think in low inflation times, at low interest rate returns, it makes investments more attractive to people who are concerned about things like their retirement income.”

Dating and relationship scams were still second for sheer cost, with Australians losing just over $42 million to those scams last year, equal with the year before.

Ms Rickard, who is also chair of the Scams Awareness Network, said while the number of reported dating and relationship scams had dropped, the platforms used by scammers have started to change.

“Scams are increasingly being delivered by social media, places like Facebook, so it’s important to be vigilant,” she said.

“Certainly romance scams particularly have shifted to social media – they used to all be once through dating sites.”

Across scams reported to the ACCC’s Scamwatch, ACORN and other government agencies, Australians lost a whopping $340 million to scams in 2017, the report concluded.

That figure is $40 million more than in 2016, and the first time reported losses have risen above $300 million, the ACCC deputy chair said.

“I think even that over-$340 million figure … significantly understates the extent of losses to scams,” she said.

Older people are more vulnerable to all types of cons, with people aged 55 to 64 losing the most money, followed by those aged over 65.

More women reported falling victim to scams than men, but “men tend to lose more money, and that’s probably because men tend to have more money than women,” Ms Rickard said.

“In terms of the scams where you lose a great deal of money, women are more likely to be the victims of romance scams, men are more likely to be the victims of investment scams.”

From reports to the ACCC alone, men reported losses of $22.8 million to investment scams, while women lost $12.7 million to dating and romance scams.

The most common scams reported to the ACCC and ACORN were false billing scams, identity theft and phishing. The ACCC’s report found the real cost of those types of scams was difficult to quantify as the primary aim of the scammer is to gather information for future use.

“The ACCC received over 55,000 reports of these kinds of scams in 2017 and there is little doubt that many more were encountered but not reported,” the report said.

Ms Rickard said there was also an increase in scams involving cryptocurrencies.

“Whether it’s fake exchanges – so you’re not really investing in the real thing – or people asking to be paid by cryptocurrency, that would be another new trend for this year,” she said.

For people worried about scams, Ms Rickard said the Scamwatch website has much helpful information.

“You really will find all the information about scams that are going around, how to identify them, how to avoid them, and what to do if you’ve been scammed,” she said.

The ACCC also has a hard-copy publication, The Little Black Book of Scams, which Ms Rickard said is especially helpful for older people.

A scammer’s trick which involved posing as an officer from the ATO duped many Australians in late 2017. Would you have been wiser? The author here was almost the victim of an attempted scam as per above only just days ago. May 2018. I gave the caller both barrels through the phone. The recorded mesage was in great English.Calling back the number a male Indian voice responded & said he was with the Australian Tax Office. That 02..number is now silent..

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