>>Scams to look out for

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Just received this email today (below) and am wondering is it a scam.
Can't get the idea of the poor shivering mother out of my head though!

pammiedd

Dear Friends,

Please excuse me for this letter.

My name is Valentin. I'm student and I live with my mother in a small town Kaluga, Russia. My mother is invalid. She cannot see and she receive pension very rare which is not enought even for medications.

I work very hard every day to be able to buy necessities for my mother, but my salary is very small, because my studies still not finished.

Due to deep crisis authorities stoped gas in our district and now we cannot heat our home. I don't know what to do, because the winter is coming and the weather will be very cold. I am very afraid that the temperature inside our home can become very cold and we will not be able to survive.

Therefore I finded several e-mail addresses and thank to the free internet access in our local library I decided to appeal to you with prayer in my heart for small help.

If you have any old sleping bag, warm blanket, electric heater, warm clothes and shoes, electric water-boiler, canned and dried food, vitamins, medicines from cold, any hygiene-products, I will be very grateful to you if you could send it to our postal address which is:

Valentin Michailin,
Rileeva Str, 6-45.
Kaluga. 248030,
Russia.

If you think that it would be better or easier for you to help with some money, please write me back to my e-mail valentinm@eposte.ru and I will write you how to send it safely, if you agree. In this case I will be able to buy a portable stove and heat our home during the winter.

I hope to hear from you very soon and I pray that you can help us. I also hope very much that this hard situation will become better in our region very soon.

From all my heart, I wish you all the best. I wish that all your dreams come true and your life will be full of hapiness.

God Bless You,

Valentin and my mother Elena,
Kaluga. Russia.
E-mail: valentinm@eposte.ru
 
check the receipent's email address. i don't think its for you. they are most likely be Scam. and theres no way they can find an email address from a library.
 
this person with such command of english and couldn't afford a stove?
i know that may make me sound like a jerk, but i am pretty sure this is a scam. i will check out this guy and see what they want from me.
i am gonna send him an email
 
If you think it's a scam then why humour the scammer/spammer? That just encourages them and will probably mean more spam for you from here on in! Just bin stuff like this (preferably without opening it since this can easily confirm your address back to spammers) and move on.
 
yes, that will be a very good advice for most people Clubman.well done
 
Re: Best method of selling a car privately?

larry1 said:
I have a car for sale in Carzone.ie but no takers yet. Would the Evening Herald or other shift it quicker?

Cheers
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Did that crowd in england ring you? The minute there is a car advertised anywhere for the first time they will ring the contact number. They will get a buyer for your car at the asking price, they will also guarantee your car without even seeing it all they need is your bank account details. Another scam.
 
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Three years ago a company phoned me and asked would I be interested in taking out an add in their publication. They claimed to publish a crime prevention magazine each year in association with the Gardai and An Post. They recited a list of descriptions regarding a typical add i.e. size and price etc. He asked if I would be interested in taking a further call from another member of their staff. At that stage I was just happy that the conversation was coming to an end and that the guy had not tried the “hard sell” tactics.

The first guy asked me for some sort of confirmation question/answer for the next caller to identify himself with, so we agreed to use my date of birth. Some time later in that same day the second guy rang and started by asking me if it was OK to record the call. He then asked me was the confirmation code correct. He then asked me to confirm the details of the add that the first caller had described to me. At this stage he finished the call by saying that they would contact me at a later date and just hung up.

The next contact I had with them was a request by phone for payment. I told the girl that I had not agreed to take out the add, she apologised for the misunderstanding and said good bye. The guy from the second call then rang me asking was there a problem. I stated my case to him. He very calmly asked me would I be interested in listening to a recording of the sale. Long story short, he played the recording. I was gob smacked, it did actually sound like I had authorised and confirmed the sale. We had a heated exchange and I hung up. He called back 4 or 5 times in a row telling me that I had to pay for the add because we had a verbal agreement.

Some weeks later I received a legal notice advising me that I was being taken to some county court in England and that if I lost I would have to pay all costs. I must admit at this stage I was very close to sending them a cheque. Having gathered my thoughts I decided to call the Gardai, the fraud section to be exact. The Guard I spoke to was a gentleman, he explained that it was called Advanced Payment Fraud and was very common, that I had nothing to worry about. I left it in their hands.

I reported the company involved to the trading standards people in England. No charges were brought against the company. They have contacted at least 2 other people in my area with the same scam since, luckily they were aware of my experience and ended the calls abruptly.

I am telling you all this now in the hope that it might prevent even one person from the suffering I had to endure. For info you should never pay for any add until you see it in the actual publication i.e. not a mock-up, presuming of course that you did actually want the add.
 
I'm not sure if would be a "scam" or not but a couple of weeks ago, I got a phone call at work, asking if the company would be interested in advertising in a business directory in aid of Barnardos.

I was quoted 2 prices for 1 column ad & for a 2 column ad, I think about €114 and €220 or something along those lines. I then asked how much of the cost was going to Barnardos and the lady on the other end of the line started stuttering and said that she didn't deal with that part of it, she was just selling the ad space.

So presumably most of the cost goes to lining their pockets and maybe a very low token amt to Barnardos. Needless to say, we didn't take the ad, I told her we would rather make a donation direct to Barnardos.
 
Warning: Woman called to my friends house in Clonee the other night saying that her baby needed milk formula and her husband was at work and she had no money and her baby was basically going to die unless he helped her out..etc etc. She said she just lived round the corner and gave the number of a house in the estate. He gave her 20 euro as this is all he had on him. She siad she'd be back with the money later.
Afterwards he found out that she has been in other estates in the area and someone has been handing out warning flyers about her.

Has anyone else in the Clonee area encountered her?
 
Where do your friends live? I need a new MP3 player and will simply die if I don't get the €100 that I'm short.
 

€20 tax free for a 5 minute sob story! Great work if you can get it.

Tell your friend he's an idiot to give it to her. If your that kindhearted (thick) go to the shop with her and buy the formula.
 
what does the woman looks like and sound like? man certainly fell for that trap..dunno if a man turn up at door and do the same will end up to..
 
Yea lads easy to take the piss alright but this does happen. If people are handing out flyers in the clonee area then he mustn't be the only one that being had. Well I'd have to say that 99/100 you'd say that this was a scam but as you slam the door in her face there has to be some part of you thats saying maybe she's not lying!!! or your stone cold / bordering on death!
 
A c. 200/250ml prepared carton of infant formula costs about €2 or less. A small tin of powder costs about €6. If the shops were local then a trip to them with her might've been a better bet. If they were not then how was she going to get there before the baby died? If there was a neighbour with an infant then presumably they could have given her formula (and presumably called her bluff)?
 
<comment regarding the ethnic orign of the scammer has been removed>

The guy has no kids and hence no concept of how much this stuff costs.
This woman has this thing down to a fine art. She probably knows how to create a feeling of emergency and play on the victims emotions.

Personally I would have given her some of the bog standard Avonmore from the fridge.
 
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Easy to see it logically now but I'm a sucker for any sob story involving children so probably would have fallen for it myself. Very low indeed.
 
<comments regarding the ethnic orign of the alleged scammer has been removed>

Slaphead said:
€20 tax free for a 5 minute sob story! Great work if you can get it.

Tell your friend he's an idiot to give it to her. If your that kindhearted (thick) go to the shop with her and buy the formula.
Click to expand...

Well, I am that 'idiot' you refer to above !!! It's all very easy to comment on it after the event and normally I recognise a scam when I see or read one but this was different.

On the night in question, I happened to be on my own in the house, otherwise I would have offered to go to the shop and get the formula for her. The night in question was a cold, wet night and this woman was not your typical 'suspicious' type - she was well dressed, <snip> and obviously a good actress. It did occur to me at the time that this could be a scam but there and then in the cicumstances I chose to take the risk in the event that it was a genuine plea for help. She claimed that her husband was un-reachable, (she had a mobile in her hand) and would not be home until after 10pm and her baby urgently needed milk. She gave a genuine address which was on the next street down from me and told me she would give me back the money once her husband got home. OK - I got mugged and it cost me 20 euro

What annoys me most about it, is that some day, someone will genuinely look for help from me and I will turn them away thinking it's another scam. I detest these people who prey on the decency of some people who genuinely need help. I hope that one day when these frauds really need help - they cry wolf once too often and suffer for it.

anyway - hope this helps some people out there avoid the scam I fell for. The woman is <snip>.
 
Here's another scam to watch out for.
My mother was walking down Talbot St. a couple of weeks ago and was approached by a young guy she said was from eastern Europe. He told her he was starting a new job next week but in the meantime he had nowhere to stay and no money. So my mother, being the very guilable/kind (take your pick) person she is, gave him 20euro. 2 weeks later she was walking down Talbot st. again, and she saw the same guy approaching another woman, obviously with the same sob story.

I told her she should have approached him and asked how the job was going, I know I would have, but she didn't say anything to him, and walked on.
 
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