An interesting incident happened this past week to a friend – he had his identity stolen. More specifically, someone got a hold of his social security number (SSN), his date of birth (apparently) and his address. What the scammers or their “mules” (a term used to describe criminals who act on behalf of the actual criminal at their behest) did was that they went to the bank and requested to wire a huge sum of money to an account. The neat trick they played was before actually going to the bank they called the Verizon helpdesk and suspended my friend’s phone service. When they reached the bank and showed the bank agent the ID (some sort of a non-standard / fake ID) and gave the SSN to the bank agent, he/she grew suspicious and tried to contact my friend. However, due to Verizon suspending his phone service, the bank agent couldn’t get a hold of my friend. Luckily, the bank agent also sent my friend an email to which he responded promptly. The culprits were arrested and the investigation is still on.
What was quite interesting was, the modus operandi where the criminals know that banks rely on calling the customers if they suspect fraud and they had this covered. Quite intelligent.
So, you know what you need to do if your phone suddenly stops working – check if ID thieves have had a run on you, change all your passwords including email, change your credit card accounts and bank accounts and PINs and place a hold on your credit history with the credit reporting agencies such as Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.

One of my acquaintances told me today of an innovative scam.
So this friend of mine posted an advertisement for renting her apartment out on craigslist. As soon as she posted the ad, an email response came that looked absolutely legitimate.
The respondent claimed that he was a professor in the UK and would be visiting the US on a sabbatical. He even listed a phone number for contact as well as gave some very legitimate looking references. The respondent also said that he wanted to rent the apartment in about 1 months’ time. So far all good. My friend contacted the respondent over the phone and there was nothing odd about the conversation.
In the subsequent conversations, the respondent requested my friend to collect delivery of the furniture for his apartment (which he had indicated that he was going to rent). The respondent said that he would send a check to her and she should then collect the delivery of the furniture and pay the furniture company out of her own pocket. The respondent even sent in a personal check to my friend in advance. She deposited it and sure enough, the amount showed up in the bank account. But what had her spooked out, was how could someone give away a check to some one just like that. For some reason, due to a weird hunch, she decided that she was not going to engage in any financial transactions on the behalf of someone who was sitting hundreds of miles away who she barely knew. In the end, it was this hunch that saved her from losing the money.
So the respondent (thinking that my friend had agreed to undertake the transaction on his behalf) gave her the phone number and information of the furniture company. My friend googled the furniture company but could not find anything. Moreover, the furniture company would not even pick up the phone. This put my friend in doubt over the dubiousness of the potential renter. As it turned out, that the check bounced a couple of days later and if she’d paid the furniture company it might have been used as a way to steal money from my unsuspecting friend.
I guess what could be interesting to know here is that if there was a legitimate phone number (say from Google voice) and a legitimate website (which costs a few dollars for a month now), then my friend could have possibly been duped.
This serves as a reminder to us of the reality of the world we’re living in where scammers are looking for an opportunity to dupe us.

Dell had this program called Dell Vista Express Upgrade as a part of which once you pay for your XP Pro you become eligible for a Vista upgrade. The interesting thing was it was an introductory offer and they would ship the DVDs upon Vista’s release if we activated the upgrade. I did activate the upgrade but I did not receive my DVDs until a few days but when I eventually did it was a “Dell Vista Upgrade Assistant DVD”. What was even more interesting was that this DVD was not even an installation DVD (with no warnings on it that it was not the OS installation itself which I assumed all along). It was just a DVD because Dell likes sending DVDs to users! So I contacted Dell about the OS when I couldn’t boot up the OS and they said that no wonder…this is not the OS. So I asked them where’s the OS and the customer care went “you should have it”! Now if they didn’t ship it and I didn’t receive it (although I paid Dell for it), who should have it! They tell me Microsoft has it. It just seems illogical that the person who I pay for the software would not be the one to ship it out to me. The Dell Resolution specialist called today and said there’s nothing he could do. They have my money, they didn’t ship out the DVD…and so be it! Do what you can! That’s just the worst ever case of customer care I’ve ever seen!