Online Investment fraud 1

 

In this case, a woman in Florida reported that she sent $225,000 to a Bozeman man who claimed he had a stockpile of unrefined gold and was looking for investors to finance refineries. He promised big returns. When that didn’t materialize, the investor got suspicious. She became angry over the investment. When he followed the money and confirmed their suspect, Carl Estep, wasn’t putting his investors’ money where he’d promised, Rice set up a sting. Only this time, he would play the patsy. Working with a female FBI agent from the Billings resident agency, Rice staged a ruse to pose as husband-and-wife investors who wanted a piece of Estep’s venture. They set up a meeting at the airport in Bozeman to make it seem as though they had just arrived from Chicago.

Epilogue

When investors didn’t see their promised returns, Carl Estep made elaborate excuses as to why they could not be paid. In reality, Estep did not own any refineries. He did not own the barrels of rock and sand. He did not make any expenditure to develop refineries, and he did not invest money overseas. He simply used the money for numerous personal expenditures, including cars, overseas travel, daily expenses, and unreasonably large expenses on his hunting dogs.In speaking with FBI agents, Estep acknowledged that he spent investor money on personal items and his that statements to investors were not 100 percent true since they did not know their money was used for his personal gain.

- Press release

“We came off the plane, we met him, and we sat down in the coffee shop,” Rice says. “I wore a camera and a wire—and he pitched the whole deal to me, the exact same deal that he pitched to the victim.”

It didn’t end there, though. Estep then escorted the would-be investors to a warehouse where he showed them stacks of barrels that he claimed each contained about 1,200 ounces of unrefined gold.

“It was the exact same pattern as what he did with these other people,” Rice says. “He flew them out here. He took them to the warehouse. He showed them the barrels stacked up. All he’d done was get his hands on a bunch of barrels with gravel in them. The rest was easy for him.”

The FBI tested samples from the barrels—which didn’t contain gold—and identified more victims, including the provider of the warehouse. Confronted with the evidence, Estep pleaded guilty in January and is now serving a four-year sentence.

“It’s not a small world for us anymore,” says Rice, an Idaho native, describing how even this once-remote area is no longer so, due in part to the Internet.

Comments:The Internet offers a global marketplace for consumers and businesses, but crooks also recognize the potentials of cyberspace. You can protect yourself by learning how to recognize the danger signs of fraud. If you are a victim or attempted victim of Internet fraud, it's important to report the scam quickly so that law enforcement agencies can shut the fraudulent operations down.

Online Investment fraud 2

In the morning of April 7, 1999, users of Internet bulletin boards hosted by Yahoo! Finance and other companies devoted to the discussion of a company named PairGain saw a message from an individual identifying herself as Stacey Lawson of Knoxville Tennessee. The message reported that PairGain, a telecommunications Equipment Company located in California, would be purchased for 1.35 billion dollars by an Israeli company. The message contained a link to what it stated was the Bloomberg News story reporting the impending merger. Other messages, purportedly from other individuals, also discussed the news in excited terms advocating that readers purchase the stock immediately. When users clicked on the link in the first message they were taken to what appeared to be a legitimate Bloomberg News web page containing a detailed story on the merger. Although the page looked exactly like a real Bloomberg page, even to the point of including other links that took the reader back to the real Bloomberg service, it was, in fact, bogus and the story of the merger was false. Because the message was reported early east coast time, no one could reach PairGain for comment because of the time difference. No one could reach the Israeli company because it was an Israeli holiday. In just two hours, the false news triggered a buying spree -- PairGain stock rose over 31% on NASDAQ with ten times its normal volume. When the hoax was exposed the stock fell causing thousands of victims to lose substantial amounts of money.

The cyber investigation focused on messages posted to Yahoo! and on the bogus Bloomberg web page. The Yahoo! messages were unrevealing, containing screen names such as Stacey LTN that were clearly false. Examination of the bogus web page revealed it was hosted on an Internet web hosting service named Angelfire. Angelfire is a free service that allows users to create their own web pages asking only that they provide subscriber information and an email account so that a password can be emailed to the user.
Comments:The Internet serves as an excellent tool for investors, allowing them to easily and inexpensively research investment opportunities. But the Internet is also an excellent tool for fraudsters.The same scams that have been conducted by mail and phone can now be found on the World Wide Web and in email, and new cyber scams are emerging. It's sometimes hard to tell the difference between reputable online sellers and criminals who use the Internet to rob people. In order to protect ourselves ,we should learn how to recognize the cyber scams.

Internet marketing and retail fraud

This case talks about Internet marketing and retail fraud. This a fast-growing area of internet fraud perpetrated by dishonest internet marketing and retail sites. A variety of products and services are involved. The customer is tricked by a legitimate-looking site and effective marketing into giving their credit card information and CVV number, or sending cash by other means, in exchange for what they believe to be the goods or services. The goods are never arrive, turn out to be fake, or are products worth less than those advertised. Where a credit card is involved, the perpetrators may also aim to use the customer's credit card information to obtain cash or to make purchases of their own.

 A common example of this type of fraud is pornographic websites that advertise free access. Upon further inspection, however, a credit card is required "for age verification purposes only." The scammers then use your credit card information to make large charges to the credit card.

In cases involving fake or worthless goods, many are health products, related to health fraud. These products might advertise anything from a quick way to lose weight to a cure for a serious disease, and may: promise a lot, claiming they can "do it all" claim to be a "scientific breakthrough", featuring fake doctors or scientists making claims for the product, with technical jargon that only experts in the field know is used falsely feature a long list of "personal testimonials", with no way to check if they are true or fake.

Comments: Once your credit card information is given to these types of scam companies, they usually will charge you no matter what type of cancellation you attempt to go through. This can often be overcome by contacting the credit card company. Credit and consumer protection laws in many countries hold the credit card company liable to refund their customers' money for goods or services purchased with the card but not delivered. The loss is then suffered by the card company, but ultimately passed on to customers in higher interest and fees.

Internet ticket fraud

This is a talk about Internet ticket fraud case. A variation of internet marketing fraud is offering tickets to sought-after events such as concerts, shows and sports events. The tickets turn out to be fake or are simply never delivered. The proliferation of online ticket agencies and the existence of experienced and dishonest ticket touts have fuelled this kind of fraud in recent years. Many such scams are run by British ticket touts, though they may base their operations in other countries.

A prime example was the global Beijing Olympic Games ticket fraud run by US-registered Xclusive Leisure and Hospitality, sold through a professionally-designed website, www.beijingticketing.com with the name "Beijing 2008 Ticketing". On 4 August it was reported that more than $50 million worth of fake tickets had been sold through the website. On 6 August is was reported that the person behind the scam, which was wholly based outside China, was a British ticket tout, Terance Shepherd.

My personal options:Internet bring us some convenience, however it is also dangerous for us. Internet also provides a tool for fraudsters. Whenever we buy something we must be careful.