Articles tagged with "scam"

In just over a month's time, Bronwyn and I will be driving up to Auckland to visit New Zealand's second Mormon temple. We're also going to try to visit the Kaimanawa wall on the way, so if anyone's been there and has any advice about driving the gravel road to the nearby camp site, I would love to hear from you. While in Auckland we'll try to organise a Skeptics' get together - maybe brunch somewhere on Sunday the 9th. So, if you're in Auckland, we'd love for you to join us for a chilled out chat.

After 6 weeks of searching, the scammers gave to me… > > One fake bank a calling > One scam centre kidnapping > One recovery scammer > A deep fake doctor > One spear phished deposit > One fake investment > One scary house sitter > A fake holiday home > Several facebook swindlers > 80,000 counterfeit websites > 200 million lost dollars > And $2 billion paid to fake online sites

As I've written before, we occasionally get people emailing the NZ Skeptics committee with their various “theories” about how things work.

I was going to publish an article this week about another of my scam adventures - this time, a “job” I accepted where I was supposedly testing mobile apps and getting paid lots of money to do it. But, with contributions from occasional contributor Tim Atkin, new contributor Tim Price (who is a work colleague of mine, and a new member of our Society), and Bronwyn, I don't dare make this week's issue any longer than it already is! Rest assured, though, that you'll be able to read about my scam soon (as well as another scam I took part in last week, where I was promised a payment of $100,000, and all I needed to do was pay them $1,000 first), and you can probably hear about it on our podcast as well.

This week I've an update on the NZ Skeptics $100K challenge, and take a look at a scam product I've seen advertised via an app I use.

Recently I received an email that purported to be from the anti-virus company Norton that was blatantly a scam, but I decided to follow through as much as I could to see what the scammers were trying to do. There's often a side effect of doing this, which is that I can waste the time of the scammers - the more time they're on the phone to me, the less time they'll have for scamming people who are at risk of falling for the scam. Plus maybe, just maybe, the scammers will start to question their career choice if many of their potential marks end up making their life a frustrating misery. Below is a series of events that, all in, might have taken about an hour from start to end.

The title of this one's a mouthful, and it's an interesting one to pick apart - it includes some of my favourite technologies, one that I think is going to be an important part of our future and the other which I think is a storm in a teacup, and unlikely to disrupt anything of note.

This week's newsletter feels nicely well-rounded, like we've managed to cover several of the core areas that skeptics are interested in. I start with a topical story about a new psychogenic illness that appears to be affecting teens around the world, including here in New Zealand. Bronwyn then delves into the background of one of my most hated MLMs, dōTERRA. (I've talked to company reps for dōTERRA at several events over the years, and each time I've been told some of the most outrageous claims about the medical benefits of their essential oils. I even left one event smelling like a breath mint, after telling someone I had a headache and being treated with a liberal amount of concentrated peppermint oil smeared onto my forehead.) I was contacted on the weekend about a new scam I'd not heard of before, that appears to be an evolution of the classic Nigerian 419 scams, so you get to hear all about that. And finally I talk about a new branch of Satanism - and this one seems to believe in pretty much any nonsense you can think of, as well as being horribly anti-Semitic.

A friend (Gaylene Middleton from the New Zealand Humanists) contacted me on the weekend as she had been messaged by one of her Facebook friends about a Government Grants assistance program she is apparently eligible to receive funds from. She immediately looked up the name of the program - Federal Grant For Family Home And Care Support (FGHS) - and found an article warning that it was a scam, and then she messaged me to double check and because she thought I may be interested in it. Here are the messages she received from her FB friend, which she passed on to me (apologies for the really bad grammar):

For those who use Facebook - you may have seen a video advert recently using Jacinda Ardern as a way to promote a cryptocurrency. Obviously this is fake - Jacinda does not want you to “invest” your money in any crypto currency, and it's very likely that there's not even a real crypto currency or crypto company - just a website that will get you to transfer your hard earned money to scammers. Even if there was a real cryptocurrency involved, you would likely lose most or all of the money you risked. I saw people talking about this scam on Facebook, but I have enough layers of ad blocking at home that it proved too hard to get Facebook to show me any adverts at all, so I don't have a copy of the video.

The ABC News website published a story about a keto pill scam using a famous (in Australia) NZ born TV Doctor (Dr Brad McKay) to promote their nonsense without his knowledge. Dr McKay was not happy with the fact they had stolen his identity to promote their products, but is still struggling to get the posts removed as Facebook has given him the equivalent of a sorry-about-that shrug and taken no action. He has approached multiple authorities and agencies in Australia but (at the time of writing) is still waiting to hear back from them.

I had a phone call this week from "Spark". I spoke to a couple of Indian gentlemen who explained that my private IP address had been made public, and that this meant that my internet connection was compromised.

The Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce has launched a trans-Tasman campaign to inform consumers about the most common types of scams and how to recognise whether an offer is genuine or false. Consumer Affairs Minister Judith Tizard announced in March the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and the Commerce Commission were joining the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce, along with 16 agencies from across Australia.

Claire Le Couteur reports from the 2003 Skeptics' Conference in Wellington.

A Hamilton doctor is facing two charges of professional misconduct and one of disgraceful conduct after one of his patients was left looking "like something out of a horror movie". The Marlborough Express (August 21) reports Yvonne Short had gone to Dr Richard Gorringe in 1998 looking for a cure for her skin problems.

Tarot readings really do work -- for the reader.