• Google Buzz

binocularsBeing sucked into a scam can have a demoralizing effect on your life and the lives of your family.  Some of them, however, are pretty sophisticated and you can be drawn into the scam easily.  Here is a list of the top five scams for 2009:

H1N1 Scams
Everyone has taken a moral responsibility to not be apart of the spread of the H1N1virus.  To this end enterprising scammers have preyed on the innocence of people and have contacted them in a variety of ways scaring them to purchase cures.  However, after submitting to sending money no cure is forthcoming and of course the money is lost.

Weight Loss Trials
Who doesn’t want to loose weight?  Products claimed to be endorsed by Oprah and Rachael Ray were at every click of the mouse.  Trail offers for acia or resveratrol weight loss were too good to be true.  They didn’t deliver literally.

Friends or Family in Distress Call
This one is dubbed the “Grandma Scam”.  The so called “Grandma” is contacted by the scammer who claims to be a family member travelling outside the country and requires some dough to pay a lawyer or post bail.  “Grandma’s” are targeted only because scammers will prey on the easiest victim that they can find.  Financially stable seniors are usually forthcoming with money for their grandkids.

Lottery Scam
Imagine getting a call from Publishers Clearing House stating you won their million dollar lottery.  You would be in heaven! Until that is, you had to wire $1,000s of dollars back to a non-descript bank account.  Using the Publishers Clearing House name added credibility to the scam.  Others were not as clever and just made up fictitious information to convince some consumers that they could collect if only they would pay money via a wire transfer into the scammers pocket first.

Job Hunter Scam
Double digit unemployment numbers offered these astute scammers the perfect opportunity to prey on a growing demographic.  Posing as a job placement/recruitment officer, scammers would require all job applicants to pay a fee to be considered for a job.   The only thing is that there were no jobs just fees!  The second part of this is the scammers would try to access personal information such as bank accounts and social insurance numbers for the purposes of evaluating potential employees.

Keep your eyes open, enterprising individuals will try to make the most of your money.



 Related Content: