Hello All,
This is a scam that is not only happening in chat rooms. Many people on Facebook have been scammed also. Either they capture your screen name and send out Instant Messages to all your friends saying that you are overseas and that you have been mugged and you need money to get home. They instruct you to go to Western Union and send them the money needed. People do send money, and I mean lots of money.
The other scam is they hack into your Facebook Page and they take all the email addresses of your friends and they send out an email using your account with the same type of story.
Be careful, there have been many people that I know recently that have had this happen.
Thanks,
Mindy
WKRN
Posted: Jun 14, 2011 6:53 PM CDT
By Andy Cordan, Reporter - Scammers continue to prey on Internet users
Nashville, Tenn. – Metro police are warning dating Internet chat room users of a scam that can cost users hundreds, even thousands of dollars.
Nita Prather works as a Metro fraud detective.
She told Nashville's News 2 Investigates reports of Nigerian scams continue to remain unresolved.
"It's a continuing problem," she explained, adding, "Many of the victims are elderly or they are not thinking."
According to Prather, the scam artists seem to be preying on chat room users more often and use different tactics to get victims to send money.
For example, the scammer sometimes will claim the victim has inherited a large sum of money or claims the victim needs to cash a check and wire the money.
"They talk to them a while, get them comfortable and ask them about cashing checks," Prather explained. "[It's] a major red flag if someone is wanting to give you money for no reason, if you don't have relatives in another country. Why would someone you don't know contact you and say I want to give you a large sum of money?"
The detective told Nashville's News 2 Investigates in one case she is currently working, the victim was sent a $5,000 check which he was supposed to cash and wire to various people.
Thanks to Prather, he never followed through with cashing the check which was later determined to be bogus, saving him from having to repay the bank thousands of dollars which would have been wired abroad.
"If [the scammers] were able to cash the check, they would. Why send a check to someone they don't know? The only communication they have is over the Internet, because the possibility is they might get caught," Prather said.
Anyone who believes they are a victim of the fraudulent scheme is urged to call their local police department or the Better Business Bureau at 615-242-4222.
The U.S. Secret Service estimates the scams have cost fraud victims hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide.
