Are there any 'clever' scams??

I often read in the newspaper or online a story about someone who lost their life savings in an internet scam. the person will be interviewed and they will say something like "I am not a stupid gullible person. their story was completely believable, I never considered for ONE SECOND that it was a scam" and I think that they are in denial cos they seem VERY gullible to me.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... vings.html like in this story about a UK woman who lost her lifesavings to a scammer in Nigeria, she says his story was completely believable. Sorry, but the SECOND an unsolicited person you met over the internet mentions they are in Nigeria you should be very wary and I think she was incredibly gullible!

But I have often read stories online about how "sophisticated" the scams are now and how "anyone" could fall for them! Is this true? I mean I would NEVER send money to a stranger I met online, no ifs, buts or maybes, so regardless of how "sophisticated" they are just DONT SEND MONEY and you will be fine!

so are the scammers really getting better? can someone give me an example of these extremely sophisticated scams??

I actually read an article stating that scammers try to make it SO OBVIOUS it is a scam so that most people ignore them so that when someone does respond back they know they are extremely gullible and very easy to con! this seems to go against the "sophisticated scam" theory!

so are the scammers getting better? or are they the same as always? what are these "sophisticated" scams that "anyone" could fall for?

So you know the mindset of everyone that uses the internet?
Do you know that scammers will call victims so as to appear real?
Do you know that scammers will use stolen credit cards to have things sent to the victim?
Do you know that some scammers will wait a year or two before there is a request for money?
Anyone can be scammed.

Many of the board members here are victims and certainly do not want to hear from you that they were "VERY gullible". It can very well be likened to you showing up on a website dedicated to the prevention of house robberies and telling the home owners how 'VERY gullible' they were for having a house and how stupid they were for being robbed.

While there are many 'clever' scams, I will not go through the way they are designed.
You could very well be a scammer looking for a better format.

The problem is 'ordinary day' that you have a view of victims as being elderly', unintelligent, poor and desperate, but in the UK many of the largest corporate bodies and banks have been hit by scams that I wouldn't consider any more plausible than the average 419 scam and they should not only hire the sharpest financial minds in the country but also operate active and effective anti-fraud policies.

I've read about fraudsters being given back office access to major banks to hack their systems (though I don't personally think that's quite how it worked), local councils losing in excess of £100,000 to fraudsters with scarcely any checks being made, and the news stories of major international stores getting their databases hacked for cc details are now so numerous I don't even report them all.

You can be incredibly smart, and I've known professional people fall for 419 scams, but you cannot control how secure those you deal with are and how confident are you that your bank isn't employing fraudsters or the solicitor or attorney you use ? No one is invulnerable to fraud and I came across a news report recently of a solicitor who had been struck off who had managed to get away with over £1m from victims.

Just this morning I was reading up on an investment fraud with the sum involved totalling £10m - £20m but no charges have been made yet.

If one of your loved ones was stranded overseas, would you do anything in your power to help them out? I'm assuming yes--because if no, then this is not a question of awareness.

I actually read an article stating that scammers try to make it SO OBVIOUS it is a scam so that most people ignore them so that when someone does respond back they know they are extremely gullible and very easy to con! this seems to go against the "sophisticated scam" theory!

I read that too. Total nonsense. A few scams are very poorly written and may only be successful with someone who has mental challenges (e.g. comprehension problems, early stage dementia). But those scammers are generally not deliberately filtering their audience--it's usually that their English is poor and their own knowledge of the world is lacking. But to a recipient who also speaks little English, that poor English will go unnoticed.

Eliminating those "obvious" scams, which make up only a small percentage of successful scams, we see a wide variety of scams, with a varying level of sophistication.

Someone who has recently lost a loved one or ended a long-term relationship (often a bad one) may be trying online dating for the first time. They may not have been exposed to any of these scams before. What they see is a man (or woman) who says all the right things, and makes them feel happy and loved. This person has provided lots of photos, maybe even gotten on webcam. He/she may have sent flowers or other gifts to them at home (some romance scammers do this.) They may have had long conversations on the phone and on chat. If the scammer is playing a male, he may have given her an email address for his "child" and she may have received letters from the child. The scammer may have talked to the victim's children and made promises for the future (yes they will sink that low, without hesitation,) so now the children are invested in the relationship. The victim may be a bit trusting, but in reality, many people simply do not realize how easy it is to steal a whole collection of photos and use them as your own, and to fake webcam from existing video. If he is using the "I sent you a package" scenario, he may very well have a fake shipping website, complete with user login and password, that shows what looks like real tracking. If he has asked for a loan and promised to pay him/her back, he may also be using a fake bank website, where the victim can log in to the scammer's account and see that the money is really there. An experienced scammer takes the time to hook the victim before he ever gets to the money. By the time most victims send money, they are truly convinced they are in a relationship. They are not sending money to a stranger--they are sending it to a loved one that they know and fully trust. Or, they think they are sending the money to the military, a phone company, shipping company, etc. So in their mind their loved one is NOT asking for money. it simply doesn't occur to them that the scammer has multiple aliases and is playing these roles, because they don't know how easy it is (and they wouldn't do it themselves.)

As for other scams we see every day?
-Someone not familiar with how paypal works could easily fall for a fake "payment made but on hold" email complete with logos.
-Someone who has never qualified for a loan has no reason to doubt why they would need to pay insurance in advance of receiving it.
-Someone who has never worked overseas may be very vulnerable to a visa scam--especially if they are desperate for a job and all they see is the answer to their prayers.
-Someone who has never rented an apartment may not realize that it is not normal for landlords to rent their property out without having a local agent--and the scammer has usually given an excuse. Or there might even be a very plausible, professional looking website supporting that scam rental.
-Someone who doesn't know about the banking system and payment systems might easily be convinced that it makes sense to use an intermediate to receive and forward money. (And let me tell you--it is downright scary how many police departments can't spot a check or mule scam that is glaringly obvious to every one of us on the support team here.) Money/shipping mule scams are also frequently supported by professional looking websites.

We see victims in these categories every single day. They are not stupid. They are not unusually gullible. They simply encountered a scammer who found an opening and exploited it.

Edit to add: You mention the Nigeria connection. To those of us who have are involved in fighting these scams or who have read about them, any mention of Nigeria, Ghana, or Malaysia is going to be a big red flag. But there are millions of people in the world who have absolutely no knowledge of the significance of these countries, because they simply have never been exposed to the information.

Woah that's alot of reading on top of me, anyways YES there are alot of scams out there.

Scams that even you may be gullible for and not even notice is being done right in front of your face. As an online business owner for eBay/Amazon, I've seen most of it all for what scams little kids nowadays pull and get away with on a daily basis.

Seriously...you can be buying a game from your son/daughter for Christmas thinking you did the right thing buying it cheap online to only realize it was a counterfeit years down. Now your son/daughter may have had fun on the game and enjoyed it, but you're out of luck in reselling it unless you yourself want to be a scammer.

As an eBayer, there's even the large companies out there that sell counterfeit things mixing it with the real products and getting away with it on the daily. People don't know and sometimes will never.

Now the typical 419 scammer is something I still don't understand how people can fall for...not saying they're not intelligent enough to see it a mile away but some people are sometimes put in places where they just want to believe things are real. As a Nigerian, this is something that hurts my name/business when people think I too am grouped with the baddies.

I had two really skilled scammers recently. Neither used scripts and one had remarkably good English. That said, the most damaging scams are not all purpose but are tailored to the mark. So what is an effective scam on me, might not be on you.

We know very well "Honored' that not all scammers are Nigerian and not all Nigerians are scammers and Nigerians are very often the victims of scams and I, along with others, went up against a scam involving fake soccer agents trying to get victims in Africa to pay for scam play-outs with European and US soccer teams.

I've also gone up against UK scammers born and bred in the UK. With air travel being so much easier now the nationality and location of scammers is much less significant.

Here's a very recent example of a disgraceful scam pulled off by UK scammers. This news report confirms their prosecution.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/man-jailed-for-making-fake-bomb-detectors-in-garden-shed-he-claimed-could-find-madeline-mccann-9773102.html

Married couple guilty of making fake bomb detectors in garden shed ……

Detective Constable Joanne Law, who led the investigation for the City of London Police’s Overseas Ant-Corruption Unit, said the couple “put lives at risk” in their money-making scheme.

“The reality is the devices the husband and wife team created which were later sold around the world to police and security services were absolutely useless and put both the users and the people they were bought to help and protect in grave danger,” she added.

The report states that the the criminal network, of which they were a part, made £80m and the victims were military and security forces around the world. The victims were supposedly sophisticated government departments and the scam was no less daft than the standard 419 trunk box scam.

Anyone can become a victim, and those most at risk are those who believe they can't.