HERNDON, Va. — P.T. Barnum would have done well as an Internet entrepreneur because of his ideas the gullibility of many folks. Of course, he said, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” and a spate of recent e-mails I have received shows that while my friends and loved ones are not suckers in the true sense, they should take what they read on the ‘Net with a box or two of sodium chloride (salt, for the non-geek.)
So it went recently when I started receiving dire warnings that the “staff of” Dulles-based America Online had made an arbitrary decision to begin charging $15 per month to use their popular “Instant Messenger” service. Yep, later this month millions of users were going to lose access to this almost utility service.
But I was told in the chain letter to send a copy along to “everyone I knew” and encourage him or her to do the same and to also send a copy of it to AOL. Each copy of the chain letter would count as a petition “vote” and if the received 100,000 or more of these letters the AIM service would receive a reprieve.
First: Dear readers, AOL would not do business that way.
Second: ALWAYS be suspicious of an e-mail asking you to send a copy of it along to others. That’s spamming.
Third: Ask yourself does this make sense?
Fourth: You would have seen lots of stories in the press about the proposed action long before it was supposed to have occurred.
What will make this particular letter seem like a success is that on May 9 when AOL was scheduled to take down the AIM service, nothing happened, the service continues uninterrupted and no one has to cough up $15 a month to use it.
So every one who participated in the chain letter would congratulate themselves for a job well done and be prime Barnum material for the next scam coming down the digital highway.
While this particular scam on the ‘Net is relatively harmless, there are scores of others that are not. Law enforcement authorities across the world have reported that a variation of the “dropped money sack” used by itinerant drifters today and in the past is alive and well on the Internet.
The classic con involves someone, usually a man or woman presenting themselves as well-dressed, erudite individuals, tells the mark that they have found some money on the street or elsewhere, but because of their position the money can not be associated with them in any way. An offer is made to share the wealth if the sucker would just put up some “earnest money” of his or her own. Many times there is a lot of money, or what looks like money in a bag and greed takes over.
A meeting planned to transfer your earnest money for what’s in the bag, but when the bag is finally open all that’s inside is disappointment.
The Internet version of this digital slight of hand is a “confidential and secret” e-mail sent to folks from someone claiming to be a high governmental or banking official in possession of a king’s ransom that he/she needs to stash in a U.S. bank somewhere that can not be traced back to them.
An offer is made to the e-mail recipient to share a high percentage of the money in exchange for the bank transit and account number of that person. Allegedly, the money would be transferred into that person’s account and both ends of the transaction would settle up later. Yep, you guessed it: When the hapless account holder checked their balance at the bank it was a big old goose egg; not a centavo left.
Let’s just say the e-mail had been authentic. The U.S. government tracks bank transfers exceeding $10,000, so any thoughts of escaping taxes are futile, plus, being a part of any such deal could end up with a long jail term in some country’s idea of a prison.
A mounting type of scam is on several Internet auction sites. Items are offered at well below fire sale prices and it’s tough to get a handle on the persons offering the items. One Virginia gentleman found parts of is stolen car being sold on e-Bay and others have paid for merchandise they never received.
The best way to handle this type of transaction is to check the history of the seller. Of course, that is not foolproof. One long-time seller of porcelain figurines had a spotless record, but suddenly decided to sell lots of inventory he no longer had and skipped town with tens of thousands of dollars and no shipped merchandise. The old admonition of “caveat emptor” when it comes to funky e-mails and good deals on the Internet. Prove Mr. Barnum wrong.
