How This Fraud Works And What You Can Do About It

By Odesi Desko

From the 1500's on there has been a scam that has proven very lucrative for thieves and has left thousand of victims destitute. It's called the Spanish Prisoner due to its origins. It seems that back then Spain was a constant threat to many countries resulting in much mistrust. "Marks," or victims, would be notified that a royal person was being held prisoner and to set them free would require bribes. In exchange the victim would receive not only a generous reward, but also the hand of the princess in marriage.

This particular brand of scam required quite a bit of charisma, as well as knowing what marks could pay the money, but were sufficiently malleable. The charm that a criminal of this variety can exude is sufficient to get the money out of the victim without even tipping them off to their deceit.

There are many different types of this con, but they still exist today. The con man preys on the secrecy and urgency of the matter to speed things along before the mark can consider their actions. People want to not only help people out, they want to be made rich for their effort, and it's that opinion that scammers prey upon. Additional amounts of money are taken from these marks. The mark keeps putting in more money, because they still hold on to the idea that they'll get their money back, but they won't.

One of the most common forms today is called the advanced fee fraud, also known as the 419 fraud. With the Internet this has become easier than ever. Not only can names be pulled from email headers, but the last name can often be determined from that information. The result is a conman often claims they are a relative and has the name to prove it.

An Internet contact often results in a follow-up call where an elaborate, intricate story is woven and the plan is designed. That's why it's important to use telephone look-up services such as info-trace.com/area-code-239.jsp in order to be able to verify if the caller is really whom he or she says they are. Most modern-day cons are modeled after this earlier version and can include any number of variations.

The advance-fee fraud, where operational fees are required up front to secure the release of far greater wealth, has generated many branches. A wide variety of con games, including the overpayment, reshipping, employment, and romance scams and the more recent Internet email lottery and work-from-home scams have arisen to take advantage of naive individuals.

You can guard yourself from getting scammed in more ways than the telephone look-up services that were recommended before. First, just don't open emails that come from people you don't know. Once you open the email, you give the scammer access to all the addresses in your directory, which can be hazardous. All they have to do is keep sending out emails until they find the right person who will open it up.

If an email is inadvertently opened, scanning it quickly for poor spelling and grammar as well as any "hook" or free things a person might get just by sending a miniscule amount or opening a checking account that contains no money at all, should be questioned. Unfortunately, there are no international Internet police, however, agencies in many countries are trying to identify these groups and shut them down with the help of those who are tired of being fleeced. With everyone's help hopefully this epidemic will end soon. - 29941

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