Fraud

By Eamon Murphy

From insider trading to getting ready for life "on the inside" -- The Wall Street Journal reports that convicted white-collar criminals are increasingly paying for prison prep from former inmates.

Lessons include avoiding physical altercations (instead of raising your fists to a truculent fellow prisoner, curl your body into a ball on the floor) and deciphering jailhouse lingo: '"A 'cheese eater' is an informant. A 'blanket party' is throwing a blanket over an inmate, then beating him. 'Diesel therapy' is when trouble-making inmates are shackled and driven around in the back of a prison bus."

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Here are some of the tell-tale signs someone's going to trick you out of your mind.

When in doubt, check it out. If someone calls you and says they're from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), or if you get a letter that looks like it came from the tax office but you have suspicions, call their toll-free number (1-800-959-8281) immediately.

Here's some information, courtesy the agency:

• No one, including family members and spouses, can have access to your information on CRA records without your written authorization. In addition, the CRA never sells your personal information to third parties.
• The CRA will not request information of any kind from you through e-mail or by texting your cell phone.
• The CRA will not leave a message containing any of your confidential personal or tax information on your voice mail.
• Benefit payments are always issued on specific dates, and the CRA will not send you information about your benefits or payments by e-mail. More details about benefits can be found at www.cra.gc.ca/benefits.
• Sign up for direct deposit and be assured that your payments will reach you no matter what. Get information at www.cra.gc.ca/directdeposit.
• Sign up for the agency's other secure electronic services, where you can access your tax file and much more. Besides, here's the list of services CRA offers online.
• If you think you've been a victim of fraud or any type of tax or benefit scam, call the agency, toll-free, at 1-800-959-8281. Also, notify your bank and the local police forthwith.

For more information, go to www.cra.gc.ca/fraudpreventionor call the agency at 1-800-959-8281.

Also:Tax time's upon us, and so are tax-fraud schemes

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Walletpop has been talking about the ways to prevent fraud and how to keep your information safe. Here are some of our recent articles:

• How Phishing Works
• How to Make Your Passwords Tougher to Hack
• Spontaneous Donor When There's a Disaster? Make Sure the Charity is Legit
• Online Banking? Beware Fraudulent Mobile Apps

One question always comes up when talking about fraud - why do people commit fraud? The simple answer is often because they can but Pamela Murphy, Assistant Professor at Queen's School of Business says, "Fraud is much more likely to occur when three factors are in place: opportunity, motive and attitude or rationalization. Together, these factors are known as the fraud triangle."

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Why is it that scammers use the same kind of hoaxes again and again and again? Perhaps it's because so many people keep falling for them again and again and again.

Here's the newest one: people all over the world have been getting e-mail messages recently that said they were coming from a United Kingdom-based internet and telecommunications company TalkTalk. The messages claimed that the recipient's TalkTalk service will be cancelled unless account details are verified.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, right?

No. It seems way too many people did as they were told, bringing the issue to the attention of the Hoax Slayer investigators.

Here's what they found:

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Would you believe it? If you tell Costco what you think of it, the warehouse giant will give you a gift card worth anywhere between $100 and $1,000.

At least, that's what a would-be Costco posting on Facebook says, and if it's on Facebook, it's got to be right. Right? RIGHT?

Wrong.

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Did you know that Facebook's 840 million members' data is freely available to all and sundry, so long as they pay for the information? Just check your Facebook profile, yes, the thing that you've filled out yourself: if THAT, in and of itself, isn't a valuable set of data, and if you don't recognize it as such, you have a problem.

Did you know that Google has introduced a new privacy policy that, as of March 1, 2012, allows the corporation, originally just a better search engine, to share everything that it knows about you, with all and sundry who pay for the information? Again, in return for access to all kinds of services Google offers, you have created your own profile. Besides, being a search engine, Google can track every activity you perform while online, from browsing habits to shopping habits, and much more.

Now, Facebook and Google aren't the only culprits here. But theyre the best-known culprits, and that should count for something. If their extracurricular meant only that you would be getting offers and coupons and whatnot aimed at you, based on your shopping habits and personal circumstances, that would be one thing. Becoming targets to online fraudsters is quite another. And that's what these (and similar) brazenly open breaches of privacy lead to.

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These offers usually come early in a year. It's logical: having tried to make everybody's Christmas, many of us overextend ourselves and are close to fainting when it comes to opening our credit card statements.

And that's when we see ads and commercials saying this or that company will help us become debt-free in no time, give or take a couple of minutes. Some go so far as to suggest they perform impossible tasks within three business days, miracles within a week.

So, here's the deal: more often than not it's perfect rubbish, and there are some easy ways how to figure it out.

"Debt reduction," "debt settlement," "debt relief" or "debt negotiation," fancy names, all of them.

Here's the spiel: we can work out a deal with your creditors, they'll tell you, that will allow you to pay back just a fraction of the money you owe.

Ouch!

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March is Fraud Awareness Month, yet millions of people are caught by fraudsters and their schemes. Why does this happen and how can we recognize scams and frauds?

Neil Bearse, the Associate Director, Marketing at Queen's University says, "Phishing scams focus on delivering a dose of unexpected emotion, wrapped in enough "authenticity" to make us take a very simple action.

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What's in a password? A lot, actually. Your bank account, its safety and security, for example.

Way too many users still haven't answered the call by security experts to implement more robust passwords. A U.S. security firm compiled a list of passwords that are the easiest to hack. Yes, all passwords are "hackable" sooner or later, given enough skills and effort on the hacker's part, but typing simply '123456' takes the cake.

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Negative option business practices are a trick that can bilk hundreds, if not thousands, if not millions, out of their savings.

The principle is simple: you get something from a company, whether you asked for it or not, and if you don't say loud enough that you didn't want the product, you're out of luck (and money).

An Alberta-based entrepreneur has been doing just that, using the Internet to trick gullible would-be consumers to share their banking information with him, and making almost half a billion dollars in the process between 2007 and now.

Now, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has put a stop to it and made Jesse Willms, 24, of Sherwood Park, pay for it.

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