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Minnesota Attorney General issues fraud alert
The state's Attorney General says technology is opening up new ways to rip off Minnesotans and she wants them to know. A year ago, Mike and Joan Hebert thought their financial troubles were over. "We received a letter that we had won a Canadian lottery," Mike says. They also received what looked like a cashier's check, made out for more than $2,900. The letter told them to deposit the money. But there were more instructions. In order to collect the rest of their winnings, the Heberts would have to pay more than $2,600 in taxes. So they put the check in their account, wired the so-called tax money to the lottery, and then got the bad news. "We found out five days later that the check was no good," Mike says. And the Heberts were now responsible for the money they wired. "It was devastating because here we are living on a limited income, social security," Joan says. The Heberts are not alone. Minnesota's Attorney General says the foreign lottery and cashier's check scam is costing Minnesotans hundreds of thousands of dollars. The moment people deposit the fake checks, and then send money to collect money, their cash is gone. "Up to a week or ten days you learn from the bank that your cashier's check has bounced, that it's no good, but by that point your money has left this country," Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson explains. And the scam is growing because it's easy. All the con artist needs is a computer, a printer, some check paper and a mailing list. Victim 'hit lists' are readily available for sale over the Internet. "Cashiers checks are not real just because they look real," Swanson says. And the swindlers are hard to catch. They're based in other countries and always on the run. ?These scam artists operate with pre-paid cell phones, post office boxes, and throw-away e-mail addresses. The con artists are slippery and on-the-move, making them hard to catch,? Swanson says. Accordingly, Swanson encouraged Minnesotans to be vigilant of such scams, saying: ?An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.? Swanson also encouraged Minnesotans to look out for elderly friends and relatives who are often targets for such scams. According to the United States Postal Inspection Service, U.S. citizens lose over $120 million per year to the foreign lottery scam and over $100 million per year to the Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud. According to the Federal Trace Commission, identity theft, which may include forms of phishing, fake check scams, foreign lottery scams, and advance fee fraud, costs Americans over $50 billion per year. The Minnesota Attorney General's Office has issued a fraud alert about the following scams: 1. Foreign Lottery/Cashier's Check Scam -. In this scam, the victim is told they won a foreign lottery. They are typically sent a cashier?s check in the amount of $2,000 - $5,000 as advancement on their winnings. They are told to deposit the cashier?s check into their bank account and then wire a portion of it to pay the taxes necessary to collect their winnings. The cashier?s check, however, is a counterfeit check that appears so authentic that the bank teller allows the money to be deposited and the funds to be made available to the depositor. By the time the check is identified by the bank up to a week or more later as counterfeit, the consumer has already wired the money to a foreign country. 2. Excess Cashier?s Check/Purchase Scams - Another popular scam is for con artists to identify people who have items for sale on the internet, such as boats, cars or snowmobiles, or who are renting out an apartment. The scam artist then agrees to purchase the item, sending the seller a counterfeit cashier?s check in an amount in excess of the purchase price. The scam artist tells the seller simply to return the overage by personal check or wire transfer rather than having to get a new check issued. After the seller does so, the counterfeit check bounces, and the consumer?s money is lost. 3. Advanced Fee Loan Scams - In an advanced fee loan scam, a scam artist purporting to be a legitimate company offers the consumer a loan at reasonable terms. The consumer is asked to pay a ?deposit,? typically representing about ten percent of the loan amount. Once the scam artist receives the ?deposit,? they are never heard from again. 4. The ?Nigerian? Scam - The ?Nigerian? scam has been around for many years. In the typical scam, a victim is told that a Nigerian official needs to get money out of the country and offers to pay the victim a percentage for serving as intermediary. In the more modern variation of the scam, the scam artist poses as an American soldier who is serving in Iraq who is attempting to transfer money out of the country and offers to pay the victim to help facilitate the transaction. 5. Phishing Scams - In this scam, the scam artist poses as a legitimate company with which the victim has a relationship in order to dupe the victim into supplying Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, and other information, which is then used to commit identity theft.
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