Have you ever received an email from an acquaintance or relative who claims to be stuck overseas and asks for $2,000 to settle up his hotel bill because he’s been robbed?
Or maybe you’ve received a text message from a customer-service agent, congratulating you because you’ve just won a free cruise to Jamaica. All you have to do is pay a $200 processing fee to claim your prize.
While you might think you’re way too smart to ever fall for these and other internet scams out there, the crooks think otherwise. Swindling you out of your hard-earned cash is very lucrative for cybercriminals, which is why such scams continue to proliferate.
Here are the most common internet and telephone scams and how to avoid them. If you think you’ve fallen for any of these, contact the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
1. Advance-fee fraud
A criminal who perpetrates an advance-fee fraud promises you money, products or services if you’ll only pay a small fee. The crook then offers you a chance to benefit from a special opportunity, tells you that you’ve got lottery winnings you didn’t know about, asks you to help them get money out of a country experiencing unrest or, ironically, even helps the authorities catch thieves.
But no matter what the crook calls this fee, they and your money will be long gone before you even know you’ve been scammed.
The best-known such scheme is the “Nigerian prince” con, also known as the “419 scam” because of the corresponding section in the Nigerian criminal code….
