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I know, I know: SNIFT is s'posed to be all about food, right? Well, a little different subject this evening.
A lot of y'all know I have a long history of fraud and anti-fraud work. In fact, my current big project is assisting a company with fraudulent personnel issues. You can call me paranoid about this kind of behavior because it's true!
I've noticed two hot fraud trends lately. The first is on Facebook, where somebody will copy a ton of information from one of your friends, and this person will then send out friend requests to you under your real friend's name (errr, got it?). You accept the request, and this fraudulent friend will send you a chat, almost always asking for monetary help of some sort. It'll at times seem like the famous Nigerian 419 scam.
The other are scams based upon veterans, which is just really gross. So, when I got the following call today, every alarm bell went off.
bfMFd: "Yo, this is bfMFd."
Caller: "Hi, may I speak with Penelope?"
bfMFd: "Sorry, but you've got the wrong number."
Caller: "Oh, perhaps you can help me"...and the dude immediately went into a hard pitch to donate to a veteran's organization..."can we count on you for a donation?"
bfMFd: "What's the name of your organization?"
Caller: "We work with a veteran's group."
bfMFd: "You called and asked for a different person, immediately went into a hard sell, and you won't even tell me the name of your group? I'm going to hang up now and block this number (512-600-0881) immediately thereafter. Kthanksbye!" -- I really said that.
If you get a cold call from an organization you've never donated to, I strongly recommend against giving to them. Make sure to use a site like Charity Navigator to verify the veracity of the organization. Always remember: there are terrible people out there ready to deceive you out of your money.
On that happy note, here's tonight's version of SNIFT, so far 100% food free. Consider this an open thread for the evening, so any of the normal topics work. This is, however, a pants free thread, so please be kind to each other.