91 episodes
Scams & Cons Jim Grinstead
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- True Crime
Scammers don't steal your money, they create a world where it makes perfect sense to hand your cash over to them. Three-card-monte, the longest running show on Broadway, seems easy. You're watching the tosser and you always see the queen. What you don't see is a group of shills working you into the gate where you'll lose everything you have.
Sometimes a large sum of money is accidentally sent to you and the sender asks for the additional cash to be sent back. In the meantime, they empty your bank account.
We'll tell you all about the scams, how they work and why people fall for them. Don't become a sucker. Listen in.
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Clean and green -- washing your checks
When you write a check, you expect it to be secure, after all, you did write it in ink.
That means bupkus unless you used a secure check and security pen. These days, scammers can use household chemicals to eliminate what you have written and fill in the blanks with whatever they want to whomever they want. They will even trace your signature so the banks won't notice.
In this episode, we'll tell you about the rising crime of check washing and how you can protect yourself from it.
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A scam leaves a man in a coma and a woman's home is stolen
An East Tennessee woman stops a scam by people posing as a representatives of Publishers Clearing House and a Wisconsin woman must pay taxes on $200,000 she lost to a scammer. A federal law once protected such victims from taxes. The law was cut.
We also tell the story of a Toronto man who encountered a scammer that left him physically broken and unable to walk.
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Why steal your identity when all scammers need is a synthetic you?
Identity theft was once fairly easy. Watch someone's mailbox for a credit card offer, then send it in with a new address; discover something like your Social Security number, then route that money to their bank account. There were lots of ways.
But now there's a new one -- a fabricated synthetic identity. It's you without really being you. It can take your money in a quick hit or drain your money slowly.
In this episode, we'll tell you how it's done and what -- if anything -- you can do about it.
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A boy amputates his legs to get insurance month and "ghost hacking" sends messages to the deceased family
In separate incidents, a man and a woman are arrested for romance scams. A boy in Taiwan agrees to have both legs amputated to gain insurance money and a woman who wanted a puppy pays the money, only to be told it's a scam.
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How to vanish by faking your death
It sounds exotic to fake your death, then just walk away, expect it almost never works. One woman was found in her home closet. Another was found by just pinging her phone.
Then there is the woman who researched how to fake her death and took it so far as to hold her own death certificate in her hands.
There are many ways to fake your death, but we don't advise that you try them ... unless your willing to sacrifice your own body.
Frank Ahern
Books by Frank Ahern
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Scams & Cons News
News: A Nebraska woman is conned out of a gold bar and a woman buys the wrong kind of gift card, frustrating a scammer, but still losing her money
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