Several Red Flags for Spotting a Phony or ScamWritten by Terry Mitchell
The world is full of phonies and scammers these days. They use various mediums such as phone solicitation, spam email, magazine and newspapers ads, TV infomercials, and plain old snail mail. They are constantly searching for their next victim. Like P.T. Barnum once said, "there's a sucker born every minute", so there's a plenteous pool. To all of those potential victims, I offer some tips for spotting phonies and scams. There are several red flags you need to watch out for. Any of following is almost always a dead giveaway that you have encountered a potential phony or scammer: 1) Someone claims to possess "secret" information. In today's world there are very few true secrets left. The news media is all over just about everything that goes on. Any information that someone tries to keep secret quickly gets exposed and reported to world. Also, ask yourself, "why isn't mainstream media interested in that 'secret'?" 2) A person repeatedly states that his/her extraordinary claims are "absolutely true", "not a joke", "completely accurate", or something else along those lines. If their claims are genuine, then those claims should stand on their own merit. Constant repetition of statements meant to reinforce validity of their claims would not be necessary. 3) Someone's claim is not realistic and doesn't make sense. Remember what they say about things being too good to be true? Someone once showed me an ad in which a "home developer" was looking for people to build homes for and only wanted $500 up front. Curiously, he said he preferred those with bad credit over those with good credit. Obviously, he knew that people with bad credit are often most desperate and gullible. He was eventually prosecuted for running away with more than $ 1 million in stolen "down payments." 4) Someone is spouting conspiracy theories. First, take a look at those people who believe in conspiracy theories. They are same ones who believe pro wrestling is real. Do you want to be grouped with them? Second, as is case with so-called secrets, any real conspiracies would be exposed by media in a very short time. Major conspiracies such as those that some people are constantly alleging could never be kept secret for very long. At a minimum, media would be interested in following up on that person's conspiracy claim, if it indeed it had some semblance of validity.
| | Walmart Scammers CaughtWritten by dDawg
We found this quite interesting, how anyone would be able to pull this off.Four charged over $1.5m Wal-Mart price switch scam Two US couples have been arrested on suspicion of masterminding a price switching scam involving counterfeit bar codes estimated to have cost Wal-Mart stores across 19 US states a total of $1.5m over last decade. Sisters Julie Marie Simmons (AKA Julie Poore), 35, and Laura Simmons Howerton, 39, and their husbands Michael Poore, 29, and Dewey Howerton, 39 were arrested in Nashville, Tennessee and charged with theft of $60,000 in connection with scam, AP reports. Investigators suspect two couples and up to 30 accomplices systematically plundered Wal-Mart and two other unnamed retail chains for years and stole much more than this. The gang allegedly used a home PC to duplicate bar codes for cheap products which were placed over genuine bar codes of more expensive items. Merchandise bought "on cheap" was either returned for refunds, exchanged for vouchers or sold on at a profit. Police reckon ring escaped detection for years partly by visiting shops at their busiest times.
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