Security News This Week: How to Not Get Scammed Out of $50,000
Plus: State-backed hackers test out generative AI, the US takes down a major Russian military botnet, and 100 hospitals in Romania go offline amid a major ransomware attack.
Tag Archive for: scammed
Woman scammed out of $24,500
By Jon Johnson
GRAHAM COUNTY – In an all-too-common theme, an elderly woman was a victim of an online scam that ended up costing her $24,500.
According to a Graham County Sheriff’s Office report, the victim said she initially received an e-mail stating it was from McAfee and that her computer security was on auto payment for renewal at $499 for three years of service. The email also advised of a phone number to call if the customer had any questions or complaints.
The email was not really from the software company, however, and no bill would’ve been charged. Scammers want you to call the phone number to complain. That is how they get to move a mark onto the next step.
Once the victim called the “helpline” a person informed her that to fix the problem she would have to download a program called “My Desk” so he could work remotely on her computer. The person said once that was complete he would be able to refund the victim’s money in two $250 payments. Afterward, he said a mistake had been made and he accidentally transferred $25,000 into her account.
The con man then instructed the victim to withdraw $24,500 in small bills and sent it to an address in Houston, Texas. The victim did as instructed and withdrew the money and sent it overnight by UPS.
When the victim later pulled up her checking account, she realized the transfer never went through and her bank advised it never saw any pending transfer to her account.
The victim told the officer that she was going to close her bank accounts and open new ones and have someone “clean” her computer for viruses so the scammers no longer have access to it.
Four Signs That It’s a Scam
1. Scammers PRETEND to be from an organization you know.
Scammers often pretend to be contacting you on behalf of the government. They might use a real name, like the Social Security Administration, the IRS, or Medicare, or make up a name that sounds official. Some pretend to be from a business you know, like a utility company, a tech company, or even a charity asking for donations.
They use technology to change the phone number that…
Amazon textbook rental service scammed for $1.5m • The Register
A 36-year-old man from Portage, Michigan, was arrested on Thursday for allegedly renting thousands of textbooks from Amazon and selling them rather than returning them.
Andrew Birge, US Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, said Geoffrey Mark Hays Talsma has been indicted on charges of mail and wire fraud, transporting stolen property across state lines, aggravated identity theft, and lying to the FBI.
Also indicted were three alleged co-conspirators: Gregory Mark Gleesing, 43, and Lovedeep Singh Dhanoa, 25, both from Portage, Michigan, and Paul Steven Larson, 32, from Kalamazoo, Michigan
From January 2016 through March 2021, according to the indictment, Talsma rented textbooks from the Amazon Rental program in order to sell them for a profit. The indictment describes what occurred as “a sophisticated fraud scheme.”
Talsma allegedly disguised his identity by creating multiple customer accounts with different names, mailing addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers. He supposedly did so to bypass the 15 book limit Amazon placed on textbook rentals.
His alleged fraud scheme involved using Amazon gift cards to rent the textbooks and prepaid MyVanilla Visa cards with minimal credit balances to cover the buyout price charged for books not returned.
“These gift cards and MyVanilla Visa cards did not contain names or other means of identifying him as the person renting the textbooks,” the indictment says. “Geoffrey Mark Talsma made sure that the MyVanilla Visa cards did not have sufficient credit balances, or any balance at all, when the textbook rentals were past due so that Amazon could not collect the book buyout price from those cards.”
As the scheme progressed, the indictment says, Talsma “recruited individuals, including defendants Gregory Mark Gleesing, Lovedeep Singh Dhanoa, and Paul Steven Larson, and other…
Google and Facebook scammed out of $123 million by man posing as hardware vendor
Even the most tech savvy companies in the world can fall for business email compromise.
A Lithuanian man has this week pleaded guilty to tricking Google and Facebook into transferring over $ 100 million into a bank account under his control after posing as a company that provided the internet giants with hardware for their data centers.
Read more in my article on the Tripwire State of Security blog.