Scammers using prepaid phones as decoy

You’ve surely gotten hundreds of junk e-mails telling you to send your social security number and other vital information to some dude in Nigeria who wants to give you $2 million. They’re mostly unprofessionally written and reek of “scam,” so you just delete them, right? Sure, most of us do. But what if you got something like that in the mail. And instead of mailing someone in Nigeria, you just had to call someone in the US?

Scams like this occur all the time. But because of warnings on the Internet, the success rate is dropping (thankfully). Most people are wary enough that they won’t even consider wiring anyone money, for any purpose, unless they have an intimate relationship with the recipient.

Now, though, scammers are using prepaid cell phones to act as a “contest hotline.” So instead of soliciting the money from you through the mail, the mail simply acts as a landing page. The call to action there is to dial a simple number where you will receive further information. Once you call, a live person sets you up with the account information where you need to wire the money. This leads to a greater sense of authenticity. Once they have someone scammed, they toss the phone and get a new one. This keeps the cost of “business” cheap.

Of course, it’s still a scam. In fact, never believe any kind of lottery claim except one you expressly entered, and through the state. Says Norma Messer, president of the Asheville (NC) Better Business Bureay: “People must remember that there are no lotteries except the ones run by the state. We receive hundreds if not thousands of calls about these type of scams.”

[Times-News Online]

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