How This Fraud Works And What You Can Do About It

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by: Odesi Desko
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Word Count: 623
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 Time: 7:03 AM
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Since the 16th century scam artists have employed a highly profitable swindle that has impoverished unnumbered targets. It is labeled the Spanish Prisoner because it originated in Spain. Other nations became suspicious of Spain at that time because of its continuous menace. A "mark" (the prey) is told that an aristocrat has been imprisoned in Spain and is relying on the con artist to raise bribes needed to secure his release. If the mark would supply some of the money, he was promised that he would be rewarded generously upon the release of the prisoner, and furthermore could wed the prisoner's beautiful daughter.

As with any con it required some research in order to only contact "soft" yet financially solid targets, as well as a demeanor that's hard to duplicate. This type of conman can sell anything to anyone and get away with not only the money, but with the mark not initially realizing they've been duped.

There are many different types of this con, but they still exist today. The con man preys on the secrecy and urgency of the matter to speed things along before the mark can consider their actions. People want to not only help people out, they want to be made rich for their effort, and it's that opinion that scammers prey upon. Additional amounts of money are taken from these marks. The mark keeps putting in more money, because they still hold on to the idea that they'll get their money back, but they won't.

One of the most common forms today is called the advanced fee fraud, also known as the 419 fraud. With the Internet this has become easier than ever. Not only can names be pulled from email headers, but the last name can often be determined from that information. The result is a conman often claims they are a relative and has the name to prove it.

An Internet contact often results in a follow-up call where an elaborate, intricate story is woven and the plan is designed. That's why it's important to use telephone look-up services such as info-trace.com/area-code-256.jsp in order to be able to verify if the caller is really whom he or she says they are. Most modern-day cons are modeled after this earlier version and can include any number of variations.

From the advanced fee fraud, where administrative costs are requested from the mark in order to release funds or valuable items, many variations have appeared. The romance, overpayment, employment, and reshipping scams and, in today's Internet world, lottery email scams and work from home scams also have come on the scene to cause much difficulty for those who are too trusting.

Besides using telephone look-up services, there are several other safeguards available to guard against being scammed. The easiest is simply to delete any e-mails sent by unfamiliar people. If the e-mail is even opened, the sender can access the opener's address book with a single click of a button. They are assured of ultimately finding a patsy when someone opens their e-mail.

If an email is inadvertently opened, scanning it quickly for poor spelling and grammar as well as any "hook" or free things a person might get just by sending a miniscule amount or opening a checking account that contains no money at all, should be questioned. Unfortunately, there are no international Internet police, however, agencies in many countries are trying to identify these groups and shut them down with the help of those who are tired of being fleeced. With everyone's help hopefully this epidemic will end soon.

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To find out more about reverse phone look up services that allow to track scammers, visit info-trace.com/area-code-256.jsp

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