Some Excerpts from the Forthcoming Book I Was Scammed — All About Different Kinds of Scams
Here are excerpts from the next chapter on I Was Scammed — which deals with email, phone, and Internet scams. It’s a follow-up to the book The Big Con, which was recently published on Amazon and now has 6 5-Star Ratings.
So many of the different kinds of scams begin with an email, phone call, or enticing social media ad. The goal can be your identity information or your money or both; but whatever it is, the scammers have all kinds of ploys to convince you that they and whatever they are pitching is real, and you should act now. At times, the appeal is to getting money, success, fame, or other benefit; at other times, it’s a fear appeal, where you could lose money, your professional license, your job, or even be subject to arrest by the police or FBI, and sometimes it’s an appeal for you to help a family member in trouble.
But no matter the reason they give, the scammers are not only good at what they do but persistent if their email or phone call evokes any kind of response. And at times, the appeal can be so elaborate and compelling that it can lead to a risk to one’s personal safety or risk. It’s a little like a ship getting too close to pirates. Though such attacks are rare, once the pirates attack and get on, they can create havoc as they invade and cause further damage….
An Example of a Victim Who Became a Hostage
That kind of damage is what happened to Victor, who thought he was helping out a friend Andrew, who had initially responded to an email about being the beneficiary of a large sum of money. Henri, the man who emailed Andrew, had provided enough information about him that Andrew fully believed this distant relative who had just died had bequeathed a large inheritance to him, since no one else was left in the family.
However, in order to claim the money, Henri told Andrew he had to pay $10,000 and personally come to Nigeria to receive the funds. But since Andrew couldn’t go himself, since he was recovering from an injury in a car accident, he asked Victor to go for him.
Then as the story continues, Victor actually became a hostage for 3 days until he was able to escape, and with the help of the U.S. Embassy he returned to the U.S.
That beneficiary scam is only one of the opportunity ploys. Others are beneficiary scams, business and investment opportunity scams, consignment and funds due to you scams, winning a lottery and good news scams, and even scammers who say they want to help protect victims from scams. Plus there are the many types of warning scams, such a relative is in trouble, your account was suspended, there were unauthorized charges on your credit card, there are problems with your email, and you have been a victim of a cyberattack scam.
Virtually any industry you can think of has scams to get your personal identity or get money from you, and law enforcement is unable to do much to help, because there are so many scams for relatively little money from each victim, and the scammers are often in other states or countries and frequently on the move, so it’s hard to catch them. Thus, the best thing you can do is avoid clicking links and responding to suspicious emails, so you avoid being scammed in the first place.
This chapter of the book features a week of examples of emails I received for various types of email scams. Now that I finished the book, I hope to edit and publish it soon, and a film based on the book is being filmed later in November.
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GINI GRAHAM SCOTT, Ph.D., J.D., is a nationally known writer, consultant, speaker, and seminar leader, specializing in business and work relationships, professional and personal development, social trends, and popular culture. She has published 50 books with major publishers. She has worked with dozens of clients on memoirs, self-help, popular business books, and film scripts. Writing samples are at www.changemakerspublishingandwriting.com.
She is the founder of Changemakers Publishing, featuring books on work, business, psychology, social trends, and self-help. The company has published over 150 print, e-books, and audiobooks. She has licensed several dozen books for foreign sales, including the UK, Russia, Korea, Spain, and Japan.
She is also the writer and executive producer of 10 films in distribution, release, or production. Her most recent films that have been released include Driver, The New Age of Aging, and Infidelity.
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