Eideard

In a new variation on the “brick in a box” scam, a South Carolina woman who thought she purchased an iPad from two men in a McDonald’s parking lot discovered yesterday that the purported tablet was actually “a piece of wood painted black with an Apple logo.”

According to a Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office report, Ashley McDowell, 22, told deputies that she was approached by two black males who claimed to have purchased iPads in bulk and were selling them for $300 apiece. After McDowell explained that she only had $180, the duo agreed to sell her the device at a cut rate.

But when McDowell drove home and opened the FedEx box containing the iPad, she instead discovered the wood with the Apple logo. The “screen”–which was framed with black tape–included replicas of iPad icons for Safari, mail, photos, and an iPod. It also had what cops described as a “Best Buy sales ticket…”

Deputies have dusted the phony iPad for fingerprints. McDowell told probers that the swindlers were driving “a white Impala with no rims and no tint.” One of the men, she noted, “had a gold tooth.”

Har.

Here’s a link to the original police report. How did they keep a straight face?

Coppers still searching for Davis [L] – Ortiz [R] sits in the slammer

Police arrested a suspect in an arsonist-for-hire in Titusville after they said he made a critical mistake — he left the tip of his finger at the scene of the crime.

Meanwhile, detectives are seeking the public’s help in finding the man they say was trying to pull off an insurance scam by burning down his house.

Police were called to a fire at a home on North Dixie Avenue about 11:15 a.m. Saturday. While they were investigating, police said, they discovered evidence of accelerants, leading them to determine that the fire was likely an arson.

Then, while sifting through evidence, officers got a tip — literally. They found a piece of a latex glove with the tip of a finger inside.

Police said they found their suspect at a local hospital. They matched the tip to 24-year-old Ismael Ortiz, who detectives said quickly confessed. But how did the suspect clip his tip? Detective Jessica Edens explained: Trying to flee after setting the fire, “he slammed his finger in the door,” Edens said, “and it cut the tip of his finger off.”

Police said Ortiz told detectives he was hired by a resident of the home, Samuel “Sammy” Davis. Investigators said Davis hired Ortiz to burn down the house so he could collect on a renters insurance policy…

Edens said Ortiz was arrested and booked into the Brevard County Jail.

I guess you get what you pay for – even when hiring a crook.

A glamorous young Russian woman alleged to have assisted a gang of computer hackers who stole $3 million (£1.9 million) in an internet banking fraud is now in court.

Kristina Svechinskaya, who was arrested in New York earlier this month, is one of 37 people charged over the alleged fraud, in which hackers allegedly broke into people’s computers to steal their money.

It is alleged that they sent victims emails containing Trojan horses, pieces of software which, when clicked, allowed the sender access to the recipients files and passwords.

Miss Svechinskaya, who drew comparisons with the Russian spy Anna Chapman after pictures of her were found online, is charged with conspiracy to commit bank fraud and the false use of a passport. She has been dubbed the “world’s sexiest computer hacker”.

She is accused of helping to provide bank accounts for the hackers, into which $35,000 was fraudulently deposited and $11,000 withdrawn, in return for a ten per cent cut of the stolen money. It is claimed she opened at least five accounts…

Of course, she is not a hacker. She’s a “mule” – the appropriate term in the world of fraud for the service she provided. Not unlike the mules who smuggle heroin or cocaine to a destination in balloons in their stomachs.

The woman who Jennifer Aniston, Cher, Melanie Griffith and other stars have trusted with their skin allegedly couldn’t be trusted with their credit cards.

Federal agents arrested Beverly Hills spa owner Gabriella Perez on charges of using her celebrity clients’ credit card information to make fraudulent purchases totaling at least $280,000, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles…

Chez Gabriela Studio is “the temple of beauty” for Beverly Hills, its website said.

“Gabriela is my favorite ass kicking facialist,” the website quoted Cher saying. “She is the Michelangelo of skin care!”

The criminal complaint named actress Liv Tyler as a major victim, with $214,000 in allegedly fraudulent charges made by Perez on her American Express card last year.

High-end jewelry designer Loree Rodkin was the first client to alert federal investigators, the complaint said.

The complaint alleges Perez “fraudulently charged numerous times on her (Rodkin’s) Visa credit card from the studio.”

When Rodkin’s lawyer tried to resolve the charges with Perez, she allegedly offered her $25,000 in services in exchange for the $68,000 in allegedly fraudulent charges, the complaint said.

How do you negotiate your way out of credit card fraud?

OTOH, how do you let a couple hundred thousand dollars be added to your credit card account – without noticing? Sheesh!

The number of victims in a credit card scam involving El Chico Café customers – in Melbourne, Florida – has more than quadrupled during the course of the month long or so investigation, police said.

Authorities said the number of victims uncovered by their investigation into fraudulent purchases made on the credit and debit cards of customers at the Melbourne eatery has climbed from 70 in late March to at least 300 last week. No arrests have been made.

Authorities said they first began receiving complaints in late March from the Evans Road restaurant and customers who noticed the bogus purchases on their credit card statements or whose banks notified them of suspicious activity.

According to about a dozen people who contacted FLORIDA TODAY, the scam involves patrons who ate at the restaurant as far back as mid-February and includes credit and debit transactions from retail stores and other businesses across the United States and in other countries, including Canada, Japan, Mexico and Spain.

Detectives last month said they had uncovered fraudulent transactions totaling “well over” $100,000.

A great reason to pay with cash or use a debit card. And using that debit card, check your purchases online on a daily basis.

I only had a crooked waiter pull this on me once and being genetically frugal, I checked the credit card statement – and caught a double-billing from month to month. Run through the system the evening I ate at the restaurant in question. And again the following month – when I wasn’t even in the same state.

“Rub your body with an egg to cure ovarian cancer!”

Time was short, the psychic told her client. To keep her father from suffering a fatal heart attack, the client had to act fast.

So she did. The client went to the Aventura Mall and opened accounts in several stores, using the credit to buy thousands of dollars in gift cards, which she then turned over to the psychic.

It worked. The heart attack never came.

But the arrest did. Professed psychic Gina Marie Marks is in trouble with the law again, this time facing charges she swindled a former Coconut Grove woman out of nearly $300,000 in cash, gift cards, jewelry and other merchandise, the Broward Sheriff’s Office said…

According to the arrest warrant, Marks duped her victim into forking over large amounts of cash and performing strange rituals that made the gift card spending spree seem reasonable.

At one point, the client was allegedly asked to rub gel over her body, wrap herself in cellophane and go for a six-mile jog. That was in September 2008, according to a private detective later hired by the victim’s family. The woman went for the jog while wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants, said the detective, Bob Nygaard.

The Sheriff’s Office described the victim as being in a “fragile mental state,” but Nygaard said that was the result of her interaction with Marks. Nygaard, who has investigated allegations against Marks before, said the victim was manipulated and conned into giving Marks money so that Marks could “cleanse” it and return it to her.

The money was never returned, the Sheriff’s Office said.

Oh, and Marks is also busted for violating probation.

The balancing act between lifetime sentences and execution for poor and non-white [or both] offenders and “thoughtful” rehabilitating probation for some blonde bimbo is symptomatic of a “justice system” not worthy of either word.

The dangers of the Internet struck home for a Massachusetts mother when she found her own child for sale on Craigslist as part of what appears to be an international adoption scam.

Seven-month old Jacob Brennan was busy playing with toys when his mother, Jenni, got what she called a shocking e-mail, WCVB-TV reported.

“Out of the blue, some girl e-mailed us and said, ‘I think you should know someone’s using Jake’s picture in an adoption scam’,” said Brennan, who said she found the message hard to believe.

Brennan followed the link included in the e-mail and found an ad on the Craigslist Web site. The ad promised that a “cute baby boy” was available for adoption, but did not include a picture.

Brennan decided to play detective and sent an e-mail to the address listed. She quickly received a picture in her inbox.

“The picture he sends you is a picture of Jake,” Brennan said. “It was horrifying. I never would have thought in a million years that I would have the emotional reaction that I did.”

The e-mail claimed her son is Canadian born and living at an orphanage in Cameroon and said that for $300 she could begin the adoption process…

At least they didn’t Hot Link to the photo. Har!

I appreciate truly simple hustles. And I learned long ago that The Religious were always the easiest to dazzle with footwork.

Worried about how well off you will be in the next life? Just deposit money on a regular basis into an account you establish in the Reincarnation Bank – in Gibraltar [chuckle] – and it will be waiting for you when you return with your authorized spirit in a new persona – after reincarnation.

“As in this life, in the next you will have memories of previous lives. One of these recollections will be of your arrangement with Reincarnation Bank. Whatever version of the internet or data retrieval mechanisms in use at the time of your return, you will renew your contact with Reincarnation Bank and through regression you will recall the details/instructions that you left at the time of making your deposit. A custodian of Reincarnation Bank will open your letter privately in your presence and will ask you to repeat the details contained therein (whilst in regression). Once this has been satisfactorily achieved, funds/property will be handed back to you and the account closed.”

Got that?

Thanks, Helen

A former Scotland Yard royal protection officer was found guilty of a £3m property investment scam. Paul Page, 38, defrauded colleagues, friends and others out of life savings, redundancy cash, pension payouts, retirement money and loans.

Many of his “innocent dupes”, including police officers guarding the Queen, lost five- and six-figure fortunes. Some were pushed to the brink of financial ruin by “rampant deceit”, and several saw their marriages crumble under the stress. All thought they were investing in a thriving property development company. In fact its assets were “so much moonshine” and as real as “fairies at the bottom of the garden”, Southwark crown court was told.

Their money funded Page’s expensive lifestyle and gambling addiction, paid debts and kept afloat a spread-betting scheme which he ran from Buckingham Palace…

He began working as a royal protection officer in 1998 and set up a number of sidelines, including a spread-betting venture called The Currency Club, in which up to 100 colleagues took part. When he and other officers lost more than £250,000, Page set up a fake property company, United Land and Property Development, in 2003 and persuaded his colleagues to invest hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The glossy brochure he used to lure them in was a fake. Page, who drove a Porsche and lived the life of a high-flying executive, owned none of the properties that his victims bought into. He conned 20 colleagues out of £1.3m and other victims out of a further £1.7m…

In a notepad found at his home, investigators found a drawing of a house, underneath which Page had written: “United Piss your savings up against the wall Ltd.”

As the saying always goes, “If it sounds too good to be true – the odds are it isn’t!”

Meanwhile, who was supposed to be checking up on the royal watchers and defenders?

www.makinghomeaffordable.gov
Daylife/Reuters Pictures

A multiagency federal-state effort will crack down on scam artists targeting people seeking help to avoid foreclosure, three U.S. departments said Monday.

The new effort will match up responses from federal law enforcement agencies, state investigators and prosecutors, civil enforcement entities and the private sector to protect homeowners seeking help under the Obama’s administration’s Making Home Affordable program from predators, the Justice Department said in a news release filed jointly with the Treasury Department, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Trade Commission…

Exploitative behavior by lenders has jeopardized homeownership for millions of Americans, Attorney General Eric Holder said.

“The Department of Justice’s message is simple: If you discriminate against borrowers or prey on vulnerable homeowners with fraudulent mortgage schemes, we will find you and we will punish you,” Holder said.

“We’re enforcing the law against these scam artists who are deceiving consumers while they’re down,” said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, “and we’re working with other government agencies, non-profits and mortgage servicers to reach out to our neighbors in distress with the details of how and where to get help.”

There’s a link under that photo of Leibowitz, Geithner and Holder. It takes you the government website designed first-of-all to help you qualify yourself for assistance in sorting mortgage loan problems. Within that site is a special link to help you fight against scam artists trying to rip you off.