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Millie Benger, 73, of Toledo, Ohio, needed to take out installment loans to help her stranded granddaughter. She received a call in the middle of the night. The caller claimed to be her granddaughter and said her car broke down in Montreal. The solution? She requested that Benger Western Union her $4,000 so she could get home safe.

Benger used a combination of quick loans to come up with the funds. When she went to her local Western Union office, she luckily ran into some opposition. A particularly shrewd Western Union agent started asking questions. First of all, Montreal is known to have a reputation for fraud. When the agent asked if her granddaughter had any credit cards, Benger recalled that the woman on the phone said her card wasn’t accepted in Montreal. The agent asked more questions and Benger realized she had most likely been duped.

Using Western Union to Wire money

More and more thieves are using Western Union and an elderly target to make money. In fact, it’s estimated that the “grandparents scam” has already taken the elderly for more than $3.5 million nationwide. It’s a scam where a fake grandson or daughter calls an unsuspecting and concerned grandparent and asks for emergency money. The amount could be small, or it could be a large chunk of money. The scammers normally say that their credit cards aren’t accepted in the country they are visiting, and they usually fail to give their name. A worried grandparent does everything they can to find the money quickly.

The “grandparents scam” is a routine

The way thieves dupe the elderly with the “grandparents scam” is pretty routine. Here are the warning signs:

• A distressed young person calls in the middle of the night
• He/she has an emergency that needs immediate funds
• They rarely are forthcoming with their name, but rely on the elderly, who out of hasty concern, divulge their relative’s name first
• They suggest Western Union for immediate funds — they have an “emergency” after all!
• The grandparent looks for immediate solutions like installment loans, savings or credit to provide the cash

If you or a loved one are the victim, be smart. Ask questions. Sergeant Carl Pouley, detective for the Middleton, Ariz., police department, said, “It’s pretty easy to take a thief off guard because they have a routine. If their scam is up, they quickly move to another person. …Asking for the name of a pet or childhood toy is not unheard of. Most likely your crook will give up.” Pouley added that most of these scammers have “hundreds of names” to get through daily and if they think you are onto them, they will end the call pretty quickly.

Protect yourself against thievery

People need to be wise. Rather than getting emotional and distressed when a loved one calls, the elderly are cautioned to be calm and think rationally. Would loved ones really turn to their grandparents for emergency funding via savings, credit or installment loans? Most likely a grandchild in distress would first turn to parents and friends for aid. Sergeant Pouley added, “Grandparents these days are on fixed incomes so the likelihood of asking them for cash just isn’t that great.”

Apply here for Installment Loans

Haven’t we been through this before, with MySpace? There are ads out there begging people to click on them and download FacebookAgent. Supposedly FacebookAgent is free software that allows you to view people’s private Facebook pages.

Of course, we all know better than this. FacebookAgent is just another scam. By now, all of us have learned that “It can’t hurt just to click on it and see what it is” is a fallacy. It can hurt, and it will. I don’t know whether FacebookAgent is trying to steal your identity or give your computer a virus, but I do know that I’m not falling for it. Just like the need for mortgage loan restructuring spawned all kinds of financing scams, Facebook has been at the root of a lot of online scams.

Facebook pros and cons

Clearly, millions of people love Facebook, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a fast, easy form of communication for many. Finding friends from way back, staying in touch with people all over the world and playing games are just a few of the reasons people think Facebook is fabulous.

Unfortunately, there’s always someone out there who wants to ruin everyone’s good time. Facebook phishing scams try to steal people’s login information, and I’ve known a lot of people who have fallen prey to these. Usually it results in spam messages being sent out from their Facebook pages. However, the consequences can be much worse if you use the same password for your Facebook account and, say, your bank account.

Is FacebookAgent a blessing in disguise?

You know, I am a big fan of finding silver linings, and I suppose some good could come of this FacebookAgent business. The idea is to con people into downloading malware by offering them software that lets them look at people’s Facebook pages even if the owners of those Facebook pages don’t want them to. So probably a lot of online stalkers and other such creepy types have gotten their computers infected, which teaches us an important lesson: Don’t be an online stalker.

Sure, there are probably plenty of people out there who had innocent intentions when clicking on FacebookAgent. After all, we’ve all run into the scenario when we think we might know someone on Facebook but can’t tell by the picture and name alone. However, for those who wanted to use Facebook to pry into people’s lives without permission, FacebookAgent might give them what they deserve.

Always good advice

Of course, this FacebookAgent issue brings up an excellent point that can’t be reiterated enough: Don’t put anything on Facebook that you don’t want the whole world to see. Sure, you can control who you are friends with, you can set your page to private and hope that your boss doesn’t see you complaining about your job online, but why risk it?

A good rule of thumb is to assume that nothing online is private or anonymous. We’ve all read stories in the newspaper about why we shouldn’t put anything we don’t want potential employers, teachers or our parents to read. If you want to keep your private life private, just setting your Facebook page to “private” isn’t enough. Take a lesson from FacebookAgent and don’t put private information online.

Trista Joy Lathern: one bad apple.

People have all kinds of excuses for not donating to charity. Most of the people I know and I don’t hand out money to people asking for change on the streets because we all agree that unless we know what they’re going to use it for, we might be hurting instead of helping. We don’t have money to lend for furthering someone’s drug habit.

When it comes to charity organizations, people often have reservations because they worry that they’re being scammed or that the organization won’t use the money responsibly. How do thought patterns like this arise? Because of people like Trista Joy Lathern. For every legitimate charity organization and individual seeking much-needed help, there are despicable scammers like Trista Joy Lathern who ruin things for everybody.

What did Trista Joy Lathern do?

According to Texas authorities, Trista Joy Lathern held benefits in her home state of Texas to raise money to help pay for her medical bills, saying she had breast cancer and had lost her insurance. Her bald head made it appear as though she was going through chemotherapy. The benefits in her honor raised more than $10,000.

Turns out she shaved her head. She even lied to her husband about having cancer. She took the money from donations at the benefit and spent $6,800 on, drumroll please … breast implants for her perfectly healthy breasts.

Why fake breast cancer?

A police affidavit says that “Trista said she and her husband had been (having) marital problems and she thought telling him she had cancer would bring them closer together.” A lot of others are reporting that Trista thought the breast implants themselves would save her marriage.

Trista Joy Lathern is 24 years old and had been married for seven months. In case you’re wondering whether it is illegal to lie about having cancer and collect money from people for said case of fake cancer, yes it is. Trista Joy Lathern has been arrested for doing this. It is called fraud. Also, in case you are wondering whether lying about having cancer and getting breast implants saved her marriage, Zimbio reports that “Lathern’s husband filed for an annulment on the day of her arrest.”

I know, shocking, right?

The plight of the giver

Trista Joy Lathern and all of the other scammers out there who dupe people into donating their hard-earned money to fake causes should be very ashamed of themselves. Because of people like Trista Joy Lathern, there are individuals out there who are really in need of help and can’t get it because others are rightfully untrusting.

What would you do if you donated money to someone in your community and later found out that person used it for totally unnecessary cosmetic surgery? Bearing in mind that two wrongs don’t make a right, I would probably not seek revenge on that person. However, it would take a lot to get me to donate money to a cause again. I have had people lie to me about why they wanted money and refuse food before, and that has caused me to never give handouts to strangers.

People like Trista Joy Lathern don’t just stop at lying about why they want the money. They take it a step further and spend it on things that the donaters could very well be vehemently opposed to. Trista Joy Lathern is no better than a street person who spends his handouts on meth. How can people be generous and giving when they can’t trust others?

IRS building. Image from Flikr.com.

If you have gotten a “notice of unreported income e-mail,” delete it and do nothing else. And if you do get a notice of unreported income e-mail or any e-mail from the IRS that asks for a response in the future, do not respond.

Don’t panic if you’ve gotten a notice of unreported income e-mail and opened it. Replying is the part that will get you in trouble. It’s a phishing scam from someone who is trying to get your IRS login ID and password, so just don’t respond. Giving out your password online is the first step toward identity theft, and you don’t want some scammer taking out online cash loans in your name and running off with the money.

IRS does not use e-mail

OK, so the IRS does use e-mail, but not for getting personal information from you. Any transfer of personal information between you and the IRS online will happen via your online IRS account, which you must log in to, using your password.

Don’t e-mail your IRS login information and password to anyone. The IRS will never ask you to do this. In fact, this is a good rule of thumb for any password you want to keep a secret: don’t put it in an e-mail.

Why would someone do this?

If the phishers are successful at getting your IRS login information, they will be able to attempt to change your tax filing to show that you are owed a tax refund. Of course, they will arrange for the tax return to be sent to them, not you.

Once the IRS catches the mistake, you will have to pay back the money. Even though it was the person who stole your identity and not you who ended up with the cash, you will be held responsible. And you don’t want to be on the IRS’s bad side.

Same old story

This “notice of unreported income e-mail” isn’t the first time scammers have tried to get people’s tax information. Back in 2005 some scammers started an e-mail campaign, saying they were the IRS, asking for taxpayers to give their social security number and credit card information.

The IRS will never need your credit card information. If you choose to put taxes owed on a credit card, you can do so. But the IRS will never solicit your credit card information from you. Also, never give out your social security number unless you are absolutely positively certain you know where it’s going and who you’re giving it to. Don’t e-mail your social security number to someone you don’t know.

Avoid IRS e-mail scams

The most important thing to remember is that the IRS does not send unsolicited e-mails. That means that the only time the IRS will ever e-mail you is when you e-mail them first and they respond. If you are going to get an e-mail alert informing you that your taxes have been filed or that your refund has been deposited into your account, you will be warned in advance when you file your taxes.

In the case of e-mail alerts, the IRS will not ask you to respond, and in fact you can’t respond. The IRS won’t ever ask you for personal information in an e-mail, and they will not communicate with you by e-mail unless you request it. So don’t get scammed by the “notice of unreported income e-mail” or any other IRS scams!