Colusa County Sheriff’s office warns of Internet scams

Technology may be the wave of the future, but it is also a tool used to steal money.

In the past two years, Colusa County sheriff’s investigators estimate that local residents have been scammed out of $50,000 or more after falling prey to sophisticated e-mails designed to siphon money from their bank accounts.

“People need to be very cautious about answering an e-mail, especially if it is unsolicited,” Det. Tony Garofalo said.

Garofalo is particularly warning consumers about e-mails that circulate claims that the recipient will receive money in exchange for their assistance in cashing checks, claiming inheritances or handling investment or banking transactions.

The allure of a big payout can be hard to resist, Garofalo said, as evident by yet another Colusa County victim who lost $2,000 last week in an e-mail scam that promised a huge return on a small investment.

“People keep falling for these scams because they think they are real,” Garofalo said. “They’re not.”

Internet scams that promise a bucket load of cash are nothing new. In fact, the so-called “Nigerian scam” is one of the longest running scams, and even predates the Internet by using surface mail and faxes. The scams are also known as “419 scams” after the appropriate part of the Nigerian criminal code, even though they can originate from any country or any part of the United States.

In spite of the longevity of this type of scam and the large amounts of publicity that it has received, Garofalo said people in Colusa County are still being conned out of substantial sums of money.

“We only know what’s been reported,” Garofalo. “There may be a lot more people being scammed that we don’t know about.”

Basically, the scam works like this. A person receives an unsolicited message that masquerades as some manner of business proposition, request for assistance, notice of a potential inheritance or opportunity to help a charity. In fact, there is a seemingly endless array of cover stories that the scammers use in order to draw potential victims into the con. In spite of this diversity, virtually all of the scam messages share a common theme. The messages all claim that help is needed to access a large sum of money, sometimes many millions of dollars, but only after payment of fees to facilitate the “deal.”

Other scams include check scams, phishing scams, auction scams and lottery scams. Every day, people are notified, usually by email, that they are big winners in international sweepstakes. Like Nigerian scams, victims who do actually pay the requested fees will probably find that they receive continuing payment demands to cover “unexpected expenses.” The requests for money will go on until the victim realizes what is happening or has no further money to send.

Phishing scammers send e-mails that try to lure people into disclosing personal information. If the victims fall for it, someone is ready to steal their identity and start opening credit card accounts in their name.

The American research firm Gartner estimates that online fraudsters hit nearly 10 million Americans last year, largely due to a wave of phishing e-mails seeking to steal people’s identities.

To avoid being a victim of Internet scams, Garofalo advises consumers to never give out personal bank account information, never pay any money up front, never respond to unsolicited e-mails, don’t believe promises of easy money and never let your hopes get in the way of good judgment.

“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” Garofalo said.

The latest scam to circulate the Internet the past few weeks is the “pay or die” scam. In the e-mail, scammers claim to be assassins hired to kill recipients, but will graciously drop the contract if recipients send them money.

Authorities say the easiest way to deal with the scam is to simply hit the delete button and not worry about it.