Don’t buy diamonds in a Wal-Mart parking lot
Status: Scam
Here's one for the
"If you're this stupid, you deserve to be conned" file: The victim encounters two people in a Wal-Mart parking lot who are engaging in a transaction involving a diamond. The buyer (a man) offers the seller (a woman) $20,000 for the diamond. A normal person would think, "This is an odd location to be having this kind of transaction." Instead, the victim asks if she can buy a diamond also, and gets $1900 from the bank to pay for it. Surprise! She later discovers the diamond is fake. Link:
Recordnet.comPosted By: Alex | Date:
Fri Nov 21, 2008 |
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Comments (2)
Category:
Con Artists,
Scams
Magic Power System
Status: Technology scam

We've seen quite a few dubious devices that claim to enhance the performance and mileage of automobiles. The
BioPerformance pills come to mind. However, the Magic Power System (aka MPS Power Shift Bar) is something special because it's a product that's not even vaguely plausible. It's on sale on
eBay UK for the low buy-it-now price of £34.99 (about $52). All you do is plug it into the lighter socket of your car, and here's the improvements you will see:
- enhance fuel efficiency - saves gasoline (10-30%)
- increase engine torque - increase power (2-5ps)
- reduce car emissions - contribute to the environment unconsciously
- improve car audio sounds
- the small device cleans the entire car electrically including its body
- battery level check function: LED blue light for normal, LED red light for caution
- silent, no more noise
What a bargain! (via
jalopnik)
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Tue Nov 18, 2008 |
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Comments (9)
Category:
Scams,
Technology
Buy it for my son…
Status: scam
Sleazy scam artist trick: Find a picture of a dead soldier. Post the picture in a craiglist ad for a used car. Say the soldier is your dead son. "All I want is to find the right person... who'll love and take care of this car in the same way he did. I'd like to make a person very happy and to light a candle for my son once in a while." From
cbc.ca:
It is common for scam artists to pair photos of real soldiers, police and firefighters with fake stories, said Larry Gamache, communications director for CARFAX, a company that collects vehicle histories.
"The story is what pulls you in," Gamache said.
The ads are designed to try to get people to blindly send money to the supposed seller, he said.
"They combine motivators for two different things — our desire to get a great deal and our desire to help somebody out."
But in many cases, the alleged vehicle doesn't even exist, he said. "The car is just the bait."
An ad like this showing a picture of "Sgt. Anderson Shipway Bruce" is currently popping up throughout Canada and New York State. The soldier in the photo is really Sgt. Prescott Shipway who was killed in Afghanistan.
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Mon Nov 10, 2008 |
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Comments (2)
Category:
Scams
The Museum of Fakes
Status: Museum con
The
BBC reports that a 60-year-old Korean man has been arrested for running "a private museum stuffed with fakes." He bought cheap artifacts from flea markets and then displayed them as ancient treasures. He claimed one of his fakes was a "Koryo Dynasty celadon." All in all, he managed to earn $443,000 from this scam through ticket sales.
Two things occur to me:
1) So people are assuming that most museums aren't full of fakes? The dirty little secret of the worlds of art and archaeology is that they're awash in fakes. And even when a museum owns the genuine artifact, it might not display the real thing for security reasons.
2) To play devil's advocate, what difference does it make if people see the real thing or a fake? The vast majority of audience members are unable to tell the difference. My theory is that when people visit museums to gawk at artifacts they don't understand, they're actually engaging in a form relic worship. And the power of the relic lies not in its authenticity, but in the belief in its authenticity.
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Wed Oct 01, 2008 |
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Comments (16)
Category:
History,
Scams
Caps for Charity
Status: Charity hoax
Another case of the
Collecting Junk for Charity hoax. Aleta Brace of Parkersburg, West Virginia collected 20,000 bottle caps, believing that the caps could be redeemed for money which would aid cancer patients. And she wasn't alone. Churches, schools, businesses, and individuals throughout West Virginia have been collecting the bottle caps all summer.
The caps would all have gone to waste, but now the Aveda skin care company
has announced it'll take the caps and recycle them into new caps for its products.
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Wed Sep 03, 2008 |
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Comments (6)
Category:
Health/Medicine,
Scams,
Urban Legends
$1000 iPhone App Does Nothing
Status: Either a prank or a scam
Customers at Apple's online iPhone store
recently had the opportunity to buy a program called "I Am Rich." True to its name, it cost $999.99.
The program, created by Armin Heinrich, a German software developer, displayed a large red ruby on the iPhone's screen. And that's it. Nothing else. The product description read:
"The red icon on your iPhone always reminds you (and others when you show it to them) that you were able to afford this. It's a work of art with no hidden function at all."
Eight people actually purchased the program before Apple removed it from the site. One of them complained that he bought it thinking it was a joke, only to discover a charge for $999.99 on his credit card.
This program walks the fine line between a prank and a scam. The concept is kind of funny, but Heinrich is apparently keeping the money that people paid. I wouldn't find that funny if it was my money.
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Mon Aug 11, 2008 |
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Comments (13)
Category:
Pranks,
Scams,
Technology
Fake Patients
Status: Insurance scam
The
Associated Press reports that the FBI has started cracking down on a widespread insurance scam in which hospitals fill up their beds with homeless people posing as patients, and then charge government programs for the costs.
Hospitals in Los Angeles and Orange counties submitted phony Medicare and Medi-Cal bills for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of homeless patients — including drug addicts and the mentally ill — recruited from downtown's Skid Row, state and federal authorities allege.
While treating minor problems that did not require hospitalization, such as dehydration, exhaustion or yeast infections, the hospitals allegedly kept homeless patients in beds for as long as three days and charged the government for the stays.
Put that together with
this report from Jan 2008 which described how hospitals frequently employ fake patients in order to spy on doctors and check out whether they're doing what they should be. The problem is that sometimes the real patients in the emergency room are stuck in line behind the fake patients.
And let's not forget the
2006 case of the Norwegian doctor who invented case studies of 900 fake patients to pad out his study of whether aspirin could reduce the risk of oral cancer.
The conclusion: Fake patients are obviously an important, under-appreciated part of the modern health-care industry. (Thanks, Joe)
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Fri Aug 08, 2008 |
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Comments (2)
Category:
Health/Medicine,
Scams
Horse Theft Scam
Status: Scam
Horse thievery used to be a huge problem. After the American Civil War it became so rampant in the West that it inspired the creation of a vigilante group that called itself the
Anti Horse Thief Association. This group had, at one point, 30,000 members.
But horse theft is something I thought became obsolete with the widespread adoption of automobiles. Apparently not. Authorities in Tennessee are warning of a modern-day
horse theft scam. People are showing up at farms claiming to be from Horse Haven (a humane organization for horses). They say they're there to take away the horses. Horse Haven does occasionally seize horses, if the horses are being neglected or harmed, but a Horse Haven spokesman says, "Horse Haven representatives always have ID, we operate within the law, and we never try to seize horses without law enforcement present."
If you have a horse, be on the lookout for these guys.
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Tue Jul 15, 2008 |
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Comments (4)
Category:
Animals,
Con Artists,
Scams
Santa Claus Currency
Status: Scam
The
Daily Record reports on a stupid counterfeit scheme that almost worked:
A FORGER convinced a cashier a £20 note was real - despite Santa Claus and his reindeer being on it. Stacey Rice's self-made Santa Christmas Bank note promised to pay the bearer nothing and listed Santa as the bank's "chief operating officer" with his address as the North Pole. But Rice, 27, was still able to pass it off as genuine in an "astonishing" scam, a court heard. She duped a gullible cashier at a gym and the woman gave Rice change of the £20 in smaller denominations.
It reminds me of the
phony $200 George Bush bills that people often try to pass off. Here's a question to ponder: Is it dumber to accept a bill with George Bush on it, or Santa Claus?
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Tue Jun 17, 2008 |
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Comments (7)
Category:
Business/Finance,
Scams
Money-Sniffing Scam
Status: Scam
A man posing as a deputy stole nearly $1000 from an Ohio couple by telling them they had to hand over the money so that his dog could sniff it for drug residue. From
AP News:
the fake deputy knocked on the Waverly, Ohio, couple's motel room door last week. The man told the couple a drug raid just happened next door and a police dog needed to sniff all of their money. Kuzinsky says the couple handed over the money and the fake deputy got into a small gray car and drove off. Kuzinsky says the man flashed some sort of identification and pretended to talk into a handheld radio during the robbery.
The guy got lucky that the couple had $1000 in cash on them.
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Tue Jun 10, 2008 |
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Comments (1)
Category:
Scams