In the world of confidence tricks, there are short cons and long cons. Short cons are meant to take all the cash and valuables on your person. Long cons are more elaborate ruses designed to take more than what you have on you, they’re designed to take you for everything you have. In this article, we’ll just talk about the long cons because, well, they’re more interesting to talk about!

Spanish Prisoner Con

The Spanish Prisoner con is one in which the victim (”mark”) must secure funds to break someone out of prison. The origins date back to the 1900s and involves the mark springing a wealthy person who has been falsely and wrongly imprisoned in Spain under the wrong identity. The prisoner can’t reveal who they really are but the con man (or woman) has to convince the mark that they will be rewarded as long as they can supply some money to spring the prisoner free.

You can see many variations of this scheme in use today, most notably by Nigerian scammers. You won the lottery, but you have to give up $10,000 to help pay for the fees before you can get your pay day. Or a prince in Africa needs to launder money, he just needs you to front some of the fees. You can see the parallels, instead of someone in prison it’s merely funds that need to be freed. You are promised a huge reward in return for some money, same scam, just a different story around it.

Sweetheart Con

The Sweetheart Con, also known as the Lonely Hearts Scam or the Sweatheart Swindle, is very simple – the con artist gains the affection of their mark, uses that affection to gain access to their money, then steals the money. There are variations of this but the basic premise is the same, the mark falls in love and will do anything for the con and then the con bleeds them dry. It’s sometimes money, sometimes citizenship, sometimes identity, but the end result is still the same.

In the past, cons would have to meet their marks at places where there was a high level of trust, such as church groups. Nowadays, with the internet, many are turning to online dating websites to find their marks. There is even a Yahoo! Group called romancescams dedicated to educating people on these types of scams.

The Big Store Con

If you’ve ever seen The Sting, starring Robert Redford and Paul newman, then you’ve seen The Big Store con. In a Big Store con, the scammer and his associates have to set up an elaborate ruse to trick the mark into believing the “store” is real. In The Sting, they set up an entire OTB to cheat one person; they dismantled it after exacting revenge. In real life, Big Store cons run over and over and over again. The big up front investment, and so many players, requires a big payoff.

There are three versions of the Big Store Con: The Rag, The Payoff, and The Wire. The Rag and The Payoff are versions where the store is a stock exchange and The Wire is when the store is a casino. The basics of each scam are the same, the clever names are just given to the variation. If you’re curious about how a Rag works, you can see it all explained on BlongerBros.com, which explains how the Blonger crew ran their little operation back in the 20s.

Goldbricking, Coin Collector Scams

Goldbricking and the coin collector scam are scams where a gold brick is sold to a mark when it is in fact only partly made of gold. The original story of the goldbrick scam was told in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in 1888, according to World Wide Words. In October of 1879, the president of First National Bank of Ravenna Ohio, N. D. Clark, was approached by five miners when he visited a mine he owned in Colorado. They had a 52-pound gold brick they wanted to sell Mr. Clark. They took the brick to a blacksmith who took off a little corner and saw that it was truly gold, so he advanced them some money. Turns out only the corners were gold, the rest was worthless brick. The coin collector scam version of this involves selling a set of rare coins on the cheap, when in fact most of the coins (except the ones that are verified) are common and worth only face value. The modern day versions are all pretty similar to the more storied ones, show part of something to be valuable when the rest of it is not.

There you have it, some very famous long cons and how they may be seen today. Do you know of any cleverly named cons that I missed? I’d love to add to this list!

My apologies to those who read this earlier and saw only part of the post, I think Wordpress ate the balance of the article but I tried to recreate it as best I could.

Long Confidence Tricks & Scams from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Well, surprise surprise, the FTC released a consumer alert warning consumers about stimulus scams:

But the promise of stimulus money in return for a fee or financial information is always a scam, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the nation’s consumer protection agency.

There’s more than one way to perpetuate a stimulus scam. Some scam artists ask you to send a small processing fee, supposedly to get a much larger check in return. That’s money you’ll never see again. Others skip the fee, and instead, ask for your bank account number so they can “deposit” your check. Then, they use the information to clean out your account or open new ones using your identifying information.

If you are entitled to a check, nothing you do now will make it come faster and nothing you do will risk forfeiture of the payment if you are justly due one. It’s really a wrinkle on the government grant scam, where you pay for a CD teaching you how to apply for and be approved for government grants, but this time it’s preying on folks looking for a check. What should do if you see one of these offers?

Kiplinger’s Kimberly Lankford recommends that you “file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center and the Federal Trade Commission. For warnings about e-mail hoaxes and phishing scams, see the FBI’s Cyber Investigations Web site. You can also check out companies and learn about recent scams at the Better Business Bureau’s Web site. Also see the IRS’s information about phishing and e-mail scams.”

And lastly, if it sounds too good to be true…

(Photo: brapps)

Beware Stimulus Check Scams from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

I hadn’t heard much about Cash4Gold until the commercial but I never liked the idea of pawning gold for cash. Maybe it’s because I’ve always seen those “We Buy Gold!” signs in rougher areas (Atlantic City is a mixture of gentlemen’s clubs, casinos, and “We Buy Gold!” stores) or maybe because the only piece of gold I own is my wedding ring, and I’d have to be in a pretty rough spot to pawn it. I have no similar feelings towards pawn shops though, just ones that exist solely to trade in gold.

Anyway, I started to do a little more digging about Cash4Gold, I even requested a refiner’s kit to learn more, and found a lot of reasons to avoid them.

How You Sell Gold

When you bring your scrap gold to a pawn shop, it’s priced entirely based on the gold. They don’t care about the design, they don’t care about anything else, they simply look up the price per DWT and quote you that. It’s very much a commodity. DWT stands for “Denarius Weight,” Denarius being an old Roman coin. It’s also commonly referred to as a pennyweight, with one DWT equal about 1.555 grams. When you bring in your gold, you’ll be quoted the price based on the gold percentage (so one price for 18K gold, one price for 14K, etc.).

How Cash4Gold Works

They send you a “refiner’s kit” and you send them their gold. They look at your gold, determine it’s value, and send you a check. It turns out that this is how every online gold pawning service works and each one is probably going to hose you.

One First-Hand Experience

The gentlemen at Cockeyed.com decided to run a test to compare how much they could get at their local pawn shop versus how much they’d get from Cash4Gold. The pawn shop took his 11 DWT of 14K gold and 11 DWT of 10K gold and quoted him $198. They requested their refiner’s kit, sent in the scrap gold, and were sent back a check for $60. The pawn shop was going to give them $138 more than what Cash4Gold sent. They called Cash4Gold and demanded their gold back and Cash4Gold offered $178 this time. The article is well worth the read if you’re considering Cash4Gold or other similar services.

One Cash4Gold Insider’s Experience

If one individual’s experience with Cash4Gold isn’t enough, how about this insider’s look at the business practices of Cash4Gold? A former Cash4Gold employee sent a scathing insider’s look of the company’s business practices to complaintsboard.com.

8. For those who do get in touch with us within the allotted time frame, we already know what you are calling about. Customers want their items returned, because there check amount is so insultingly LOW. The first thing a Rep will ask you is “HOW MUCH WERE YOU EXPECTING TO GET BACK?” This way we can know how much to “BONUS” you.

*Definition of a BONUS: We issue low checks just to have you call us back if you are smart enough to realize that you just got scammed. For the smart one’s we are paid to offer u a bonus up to 3x the original amount of your check and you accept. For ex: Sally Smith receives a check for $27.86 for a Rolex watch(which we don’t issue value for), a class ring, a ring with diamond chips, a pair of earrings with emeralds, as well as a few sterling silver pieces, and maybe a few items that were really of no value. Now Sally Smith calls the cust srvc dept, where she speaks to a rep who seems so concerned and will see if she can do better with the amount by speaking to a “SUPERVISOR”. We then place the caller on Mute, and speak to our neighbors or doodle on a sheet, or twiddle with our hair for about 45 seconds, while we are supposedly speaking to our supervisor about Ms. Smith’s complaint. We then come back with an offer to “BUMP UP YOUR MELT DATE or any other lies the cust srvc reps can think of, and offer you a total amount of $53.20 which is a little under double the amount of your original check; in which case if you accept, the cust srvc rep makes a 15.00 bonus off of your transaction. If the customer service rep offers you under triple the amount of your orig check, he/she makes 10.oo in bonuses.

My advice is that you probably don’t want to work with this company, but the Super Bowl commercial was funny if you’re into schadenfreude.

Super Bowl ad after the jump.

Cash4Gold Super Bowl Ad

(Photo: bullionvault)

Cash4Gold: How NOT To Sell Gold from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Multi-Level Marketing / Pyramid Schemes

Only two words are needed to describe Mona Vie, the brand name of the juice: pyramid scheme. Mona Vie is a “standard multi-level marketing program,” commonly referred to as a pyramid scheme, that relies on people marketing their products. Every time you make a sale, you earn a commission. The people who recruited you, and the people who recruited that person (your “upline”) into the program will also earn a commission. If you recruit someone into the program (your “downline”), you will earn a commission on their sales. The classic pyramid scheme.

There’s is nothing inherently illegal or disreputable about multi-level marketing programs. They aren’t illegal in the sense that Ponzi Schemes are illegal , it’s just that most implementations of MLM programs only really benefit the people at the top of the pyramid. This is because many of these programs have quotas that members need to sell and, when they can’t, members often find themselves buying the products themselves just to meet quota. Anyway, enough with the generalities, what’s specifically scammy about Mona Vie?

Mona Vie Scam?

What’s this Açaí berry juice product? It’s supposed to jump all over the antioxidant health craze people have been clamoring all over and Açaí berries are a very good source of antioxidants (most dark colored berries are, like blackberries, raspberries, etc.); that part is legitimate. The drink itself is 19 juices blended together.

There are two parts of Mona Vie that are suspect. First, many agree that antioxidants are beneficial for you but Mona Vie makes some big promises such as improving cardiovascular health, improving joint function, etc. It claims that it can cure many ailments because it contains components that have been shown to address some of them. Nothing they say is a flat-out lie but it’s like saying you can do laps in a kiddie pool. Possible? Yes. Probable? Not really.

The second part that’s suspect is the fact that the stuff is $30-$40 a ~26 oz. bottle and proponents say you have to drink 2 oz. in the morning and 1 oz. in the evening. Simple math shows that each month you’ll have to spend $120-$170 on the juice, or $1,500-$2,000 a year. If you want the benefits of these types of juices, you can get it for much much less. Oh, and any distributor has to buy 4 bottles a month. Sure you can sell them, but what if you don’t? You’re always on the hook.

Other red flags? Their CEO and founder, Dallin Larsen, is a 20 year veteran of the MLM industry and the FDA recently shut down a similar juice product operation, Dynamic Essentials distributed Royal Tongan Limu juice, for illegal business practices. Hmmm…

Finally, check out the MonaVie compensation plan, courtesy of The Fraud Files blog. There are all sorts of crazy exceptions and rules. For example, you have two legs on your “downline,” but are only paid on commissions based on the shorter of the two. It gets really complicated, really quickly, and that certainly doesn’t bode well for people who sell the stuff.

The bottom line is that you’re overpaying for a product and, if you’re a distributor, you have to buy 4 bottles a month. Do you think it’s a scam? (this site, Purple Horror, documents a lot of Mona Vie’s shenanigans)

(Photo: wmode)

Mona Vie Scam? The Magical Acai Berry Juice Product from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

It’s my personal opinion that C-level executives are overpaid by the conventions of mere mortals but the reality is that their salaries and benefits are the result of what the market will and can bear. Goldman Sachs CEO earned $74M last year, Lehman Brothers chief Richard Fuld defended his $71.9M payday (it wasn’t as much as before the bankruptcy though!), and ex-CEO of Bear Stearns James Cayne earned $49.31M over the last two years. It’s an ungodly sum of money, especially for companies that are either dead or on life support, but that’s how the game is played. You take the heat with one hand and the cash with the other.

What AIG did? Spending nearly half a million on a retreat at the St. Regis Report in Monarch Beach? That’s like someone spitting in your face. If I had any business with AIG, I’d seriously reconsider it.

Rock Out With Your Bailout [The Smoking Gun]

AIG’s $443k Party to Celebrate $85B Bailout from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Then, a few days later, I received another phone call from someone telling me I was eligible for a promotion related to my “credit card that ended in…” and then rattled off four numbers (that matched a credit card I actively used). Again, when I asked them for their company name or how they found me, I god the “reception is breaking up *click*” treatment.

Lesson of the Day

If a company calls you out of the blue, be on your toes. Phishing isn’t limited to email, people lose sensitive information all the time because of phone calls like the ones I’ve been receiving. If a company calls you and you’re on the National Do Not Call Registry, get their information and file a complaint.

Whatever you do, don’t give up any information. If it’s really important, you can call them back at a published corporate phone number. Have them annotate your record.

Search

Lastly, if you’re curious, do a search of the number. When I searched for 877-671-1851, I discovered, through 800Notes, that it was Sprint trying to sell me a promotion (which matched what the CSR was trying to do). While you can’t trust everything you see online (anyone can put up a website that says their phone number is legimate), it can give you a good idea.

(Photo by _М и р К о__)

Be Wary of Unsolicited Phone Calls from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

If you’ve ever gone to a mall and seen the tiny stands announcing a sweepstakes giveaway of a car or incredible vacation, then you’d recognize the tell-tale cardboard boxes with the pictures of the vacation or car. Instead of a picture of a fancy new Prius or a beach in Aruba, picture a Target gift card with a big $500 on it. That’s what the table consisted of, about a dozen of these with plenty of people signing up.

Despite the convincing sign, I bet there there is a 0% chance (ok ok, maybe a 0.0001% chance) that you’d win a $500 gift card to Target if you entered. Many of those sweepstakes contests are affordable techniques to capture your name, phone number, and address for a mailing list. The surprisingly thing is that they often tell you right on the box (they are required to). By entering, you are subscribing to the XYZ Product/Timeshare Mailing list and allow XYZ Product/Timeshare to contact you even if you are the Do Not Call list.

The chances of you winning that cardboard box giveaway: 0%.
The chances of you receiving annoying phone calls during dinner offering a fantastic timeshare vacation offer or test trial of some crazy new product: 100%.

There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Chances Of Winning Cardboard Box Giveaway: 0% from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

It turns out—surprise, surprise—that the offer is too good to be true. I called the number listed in the letter and learned that the “free service” is student loan consolidation. The $300 would be handed over only if we consolidated our student loans through the company and then provided a testimonial about it—hardly a 10-minute decision, especially when our student loans are already consolidated at decent interest rates. …

The lesson: Mail offering free money usually belongs in the trash.

What’s especially funny is the explanation and discussion that Kim has with David Tominus, sales manager and part owner of National Collegiate Lending Institute. Kim says its misleading (it is a litte), David says people should read the fine print (people don’t), and what it comes down to is that your average recent graduate is going to see $300 debit card, look at a relatively decent offer, and pull the trigger. NCLI is banking on that (and they do bank on it, 70-80 times a week).

Your recent grad won’t compare and contrast other offers as diligently because $300 right now is a lot of money (who can give a testimonial without actually using the service?). National Collegiate Lending Institute isn’t being misleading or doing anything disingenuous, they’re simply conducting business and consumers have to be smart enough to protect themselves (though if you do a search of National Collegiate Lending Institute in Google, the first few results are all about AG Cuomo’s investigation into their practices).

I’m all about keeping consumers as accountable for their actions as businesses are but why can’t businesses do business without this sort of chicanery?

Nothing Is Free – Including Debit Cards from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Comcast takes the security of our customers personal and account information very seriously. As part of our ongoing effort to ensure the security of our customers information, we have recently enhanced the security of the Comcast.com account management system.

As a result of these recent enhancements, if a Comcast.com account is inactive for 180 days, it is removed from our system.

In order to keep your Comcast.com account active, please log in today with your user name and password: www.comcast.com/login.

First off, anytime someone emails me to log into my account, I never click any links in the email. Never ever. I don’t care if it’s some stupid account on some random free email account that you wouldn’t care gets stolen. The fact of the matter is that thieves know that people use the same username and password on multiple accounts so a free email account could yield a free bank account as well. Lastly, I can just go to Comcast.com directly and login there to confirm whatever.

Secondly, if this is legit, Comcast is ridiculously stupid because they should check to see if the account is connected to an active customer account (it is). If it is, then ignore this stupid little rule because they’re obviously “active” because they’re paying for service! If it’s not connected, then I suppose you can request that someone log in every 180 days (though the chances of a non-Comcast subscriber caring about their Comcast account is exactly zero).

Moral of the story – Companies may be stupid and make legitimate but dumb requests, but don’t be a dummy and get phished.

FYI, the email I received, according to the headers, was legitimately sent from a comcastonline.com’s server but…

• The email was “from” a comcastsupport.com email…
• The link in the email was to to comcast.com…
• And the link itself was to gothere2.comcastonline.com…

Seriously Comcast, you gave me 2034982304938 reasons to think it was a phishing email (all they missed was the link going to thisisacomcastphishingemail.com).

Don’t Be Phished Like An Internet N00b from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Let me give you a real life example of this situation. Back in college one of my friends was dreaming up schemes to make millions of dollars and fell upon a scheme where you could buy twelve XBoxes gaming systems off a seller on eBay and then flip them on the local school message boards for a handsome profit. He had convinced two of our friends to go in on the deal and was searching for a fourth when he asked me. I listened to his plan and everything sounded fine until he told me that the source of his XBoxes gaming systems off eBay and that he was getting a great deal. Immediately my fraud detector went off. It’s not suspicious to find a great deal on eBay, it’s suspicious to find a great deal on twelve $200 gaming systems. I told him that the auction sounded fraudulent and that I didn’t want to become involved financially but I’d do what I could to give them advice on how to protect themselves in case there was a problem. Well, eventually the whole scheme broke down as the three of them came to their senses but I was the fourth opinion (counting his own as one) and the first that sounded off the fraud alarm. Had the deal gone through with only three people (say, if the auction was for six XBoxes instead of twelve), it would’ve gone through and perhaps someone would’ve been defrauded (or not, there are plenty of legitimate bulk auctions on eBay).

There’s a reason why Ponzi schemes and the Nigerian scams are still alive and well today, they work well enough that the folks running them still turn a profit. Ponzi schemes are now called HYIP or High Yield Investment Plans (oh, 23049823094% return in one day? Sure!) and Nigerians are still getting people to cash fake million dollar checks and sending back legitimate ten thousand dollar checks. So, the next time you think something is way too good to be true, request all the way to a fifth opinion. If it ends up being a scam, you can at least rest with the psychological benefit of knowing four of your friends would’ve been duped too.

(Incidentally, some folks are turning the tables on the scammers in a hilarious way)

Don’t Think It’s A Scam? Request A Fifth Opinion from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Do not give you bank account information to someone you don’t know or trust. Don’t give your personal information, such as your social security number, to someone you don’t know or trust. Don’t enter it in online, don’t give it to someone who calls and claims to be your bank, don’t give it to your neighbor. Don’t give it to the random guy giving out t-shirts in return for a credit card application.

EdebitPay could’ve been an operation out of [enter non-US country here] that was just collecting information and using it to steal your identity. Then the FTC wouldn’t be able ot shut them down and you’d be screwed out of more than $160. Seriously people… don’t make it that easy for a thief to steal your money.

Don’t Ever Give Out Your Bank Account Information from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Scam #1: It costs $28,000
It doesn’t have to cost $28,000 but the industry keeps pounding into the minds of brides and grooms to the point where people believe that’s how much you have to spend. I think our wedding is going to cost around that much because we’ll be inviting approximately 200 people and food (including the incidentals like tables, chairs, tablecloths, servers, cooks, etc) will be nearly $20,000 alone. Is that necessary? No. Is it nice to have? Yes, but not 100% necessary which is the point.

Scam #2-#0394820934: All those institutions you thought were cultural, they’re actually commercial.

“The engagement ring was invented by [diamond producer] De Beers in the 1930s and 1940s,” she says. “The so-called traditional bridesmaid luncheon, rehearsal dinner, pre-wedding barbecue, and post-wedding brunch don’t have a basis in history. It’s easier to say no to things like that if you understand that it’s not wrong to not do them.”

Amazing huh? I think I’m going to get that book.

Ha! Weddings Are Scams! I Knew It! from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Back in the day, when I was in college, I used to call up Sprint when I was bored (in the car, waiting in line) for the lucrative “dropped call credit” refund. Basically you just called in, talked to the automated CSR and said “dropped call credit.” Your account would be refunded whatever it cost for the average call, I forget the amount, but you’d be limited to X number a day or billing period or something. Yeah it was unethical and something I wouldn’t do now, but not illegal. Well, after a while that adds up, but it doesn’t come close to the numbers the insider was quoting. People had balances of thousands and hadn’t paid a bill in years? That’s pretty ridiculous.

What’s even better was that those account holders with thousands in credits were asking for a check!

Sprint “Dropped Call Credit” Ninjas Get Axed from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Basically, a Western Union money order is no different than any other money order, there is basically absolutely no reason why you would buy a money order from Western Union in the first place! In fact, the use of Western Union as a means of ripping people off, through no fault of Western Union themselves, has gotten so widespread that it’s practically a flashing red light that a scam is going on. In fact, here’s a page from a site that collects readers stories about being ripped off via a Western Union money order. In those situations, those were people desperate for a loan who paid a fee in advance (bad idea) and were ripped off.

Don’t ever send a money order (Western Union or otherwise) to anyone you don’t know… you’re begging to get burned.

Western Union Is A Scammers Best Friend from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

The true moral of the story is that you should always shop around for the best price. Let’s take some other industry, say auto insurance, and look at the sales practices there. The agent you speak to will always get you the deal that is good enough to induce a sale. If they give you too low of a price, they cut into their commissions. If they give you too high a price, they will risk losing the sale. What you do by getting multiple quotes is force these people into playing a reverse prisoner’s dilemma.

In addition to the fun of seeing multiple offers, you also may learn information by accident. For example, when I was buying my windows I was given a “one day offer” price that was big percentage points lower than the regular offer. I flatly told the guy that I was getting multiple quotes and whether that was truly a one day offer or more like a three day to one week offer (I knew it was more like an “offer that’s as long as I want it to be”). He had to have known that once I talked to another window company that I’d realize their regular offer was a rip and that it was only the one day offer that was competitive (read about my thoughts on salesman created urgency, which is a popular selling tactic), so he told me that it was good for a week. If you didn’t know that the one day offer was actually good for a week, you might have buckled and bought a deal that wasn’t really all that good.

That’s the sort of crap the mortgage lenders were pulling on people and only underscores the importance of shopping around. The buyer is responsible for the sale, not the seller (though they should have acted ethically), so as a buyer you have to do your homework. I don’t blame the lenders, they did their job, it was the borrowers that dropped the ball.

(As for the contention that lenders may have taken advantage of language barriers to pressure people to do things they didn’t understand, I understand that and sympathize but I still think that people are responsible for their own decisions and the decision making process isn’t different if you can only speak [insert non-English language here]).

Sub-Prime Teaches Us: Always Shop Around from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.