Precautions to Help You Avoid Becoming a Victim

Be suspicious of unsolicited phone calls, visits, or email messages from individuals asking about you, your family, your employees, your colleagues or any other internal information.  If an unknown individual claims to be from a legitimate organization, try to verify his or her identity directly with the company.

• Do not provide personal information or information about your organization, including its structure or networks, unless you are certain of a person’s authority to have the information.

• Do not reveal personal or financial information in email, and do not respond to email solicitations for this information. This includes following links sent in email.

Continue reading “Con Artists Look for People Who Have Been Scammed Before” →

For con artists the best list to get is the list of people who have already been taken.  Financial criminals go to great lengths to hunt down and size-up their prey.   They will buy the lists of people who attended investment seminars; they mail postcards and then spam investors with emails and phone calls.  For the con artists nothing can top the “sucker list.”

A “sucker list” is a list of people who have already been scammed.  Attempts have been made to get the list of people who were scammed by Jordan Belfort, the felon depicted in the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street.”  Con artists also have targeted victims of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.  In 2010, a Nigerian website claimed to have found $1.3 billion of Madoff’s assets and would distribute it back to the victims if they supplied their claim numbers from the legal filing and copies of recent account statements.

Continue reading “Con Artists Look for People Who Have Been Scammed Before” →