Be aware that if this happens to you, it is likely that the whole thing was caught on video tape, especially if it happens at an airport.
http://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/200404260036773.php
Dr Ibrahim Abdullah
2:41pm Monday Apr 26th, 2004
I just heard a few days ago that a new type of crime has surfaced in town. It goes something like this.
Somebody slips a handphone into your pocket. Sometimes it could be just a wallet with an identity card and a few ringgit. A few minutes later, the ‘owner’ comes up and confronts you, the ‘thief ’.
He makes a big commotion that you stole his stuff. You, caught unawares, are then pulled aside by the ‘owner’ for a settlement. You are intimidated and threatened that if you do not pay up the police will be brought in.
If you pay up, this ‘owner’ lets you go. If not, the police are brought in. Another strange thing is that there always seems to be a ‘witness’ to the your ‘theft’.
A fraudster used stolen credit cards to rack up about $60,000 on international flights booked through Christchurch travel agents.
The man – who had not been caught by police – was generous with his victims' money, as he seemingly gave the flights to other people to use.
Police could not confirm where the passengers travelled to.
Two travel agents complained to police about the scam when the real owners of the credit cards discovered the fares on their statements.
The fraudster had struck twice in the past few months, booking flights worth up to $30,000 in both cases.
Christchurch fraud squad head Detective Sergeant David Harvey said the man went to travel agents and booked the flights by credit card number. The tickets were later confirmed and used, but the credit was discovered to be false.
LONDON, England - A former check-in agent working for Air Canada has pleaded guilty to an air miles scam that allowed him and others to fly first-class around the world.
Satbal Singh, 24, pleaded guilty to charges of false accounting, obtaining services by deception and obtaining property by deception in a London court on Monday. A police spokesman could not say Tuesday what punishment Singh faces when he returns to court May 21 for sentencing.
In a news release, Britain's National Crime Squad said Singh credited phoney accounts he set up for himself with the air miles points of passengers he checked in while working for Air Canada at Heathrow Airport.
He fraudulently collected five million air miles in accounts with a variety of airlines.
Here are some tips on how to avoid ticket scammers.
• If they won’t tell you their address or phone number, don’t do business with them.
• Check and see if they have a permanent address.
• See if your ticket broker belongs to the National Association or Ticket Brokers and that they are bonded at www.natb.org
It is very important to check these people out before you make a purchase. If they look legitimate then pay by credit card and if there are any problems you’ll have a better chance of getting the charges reversed to get your money back. However, if they do not look legit, do not give them anything let alone your credit card information. If they are scam artists there is nothing stopping them from using you personal financial information to commit identity theft against you.
There are more tips and advice in the article below, just click the “More >>” button.
]]> Packer Fans Ripped Off in Ticket Scam
By Becky Freemal
With the Packers' 2004 schedule out, the phones are ringing off the hook at Packer Fan Tours, as fans of the green and gold scramble for seats.
"Our response has been quite overwhelming," says Packer Fan Tours' Dennis Garrity. "The schedule came out last Wednesday and the phones have been constant, and our Internet orders have been flowing in."
Unfortunately, this is also the time of year when ticket scams pop up. The Bureau of Consumer Protection is currently investigating several complaints from hundreds of Packer fans who paid big money for tickets...only to have those tickets never materialize.
Last season, Jim and Coleen Nall were finally supposed to be able to go to a regular-season game at Lambeau Field. Jim had looked around on several websites, finally finding a deal: four tickets for $690.
He ended up getting personal and financial information from more that 450 different people. If you need to access and use a password protected account from a rental computer you should cut and paste the password from a word document where the password is in the middle of random or gobbleygook writing. say for example your password is "27bluebird" then in the word document you have a paragraph of stuff like "3445black85the9427marker94world9875baseball8765....." Then you would cut and paste the string of characters that contains "27" and then "black" then "bird". this will give you far greater security than just typing in your password on a computer that might have key capture software hidden on it.
NEW YORK - For more than a year, unbeknown to people who used Internet terminals at Kinko's stores in New York, Juju Jiang was recording what they typed, paying particular attention to their passwords.
Jiang had secretly installed, in at least 14 Kinko's stores, software that logs individual keystrokes. He captured more than 450 user names and passwords, using them to access and even open bank accounts online.
]]>Many pickpockets are tied into Identity Theft scams, so not only do they take your cash and credit cards, they take your good name and your credit and take it for a ride. And if you are on vacation while this is happening, the damage may be far greater when you get back home. Go to the “More” section and check out how to protect yourself from pickpockets.
]]> 06/17/2003Pickpockets may have eye on you
Easy pickings
Detective Cedric Mitchell of the Metro Transit Police Department in Washington, D.C., demonstrates how easy it is to swipe the wallet from the purse of model Ester-Leigh Rawson on a Union Station platform.
Beware, all travelers and shoppers. If you're carrying cash or credit cards, roving bands of pickpockets may be casing you now — whether you realize it or not.
"Picking pockets is one of the oldest crimes in the books," says Detective Cedric Mitchell of the Metro Transit Police Department in Washington, D.C. "It goes on every day, everywhere."
Check out the free travel safety guide for the story of a traveling man who was drugged and robbed while riding on a bus through Latin America. The guide is available at www.mytravelsafety.com/guide.
A simple test kit for checking if food or drink contains one of the four most commonly used date rape drugs is available at www.collegesafe.com
]]> March 21, 2003Date-rape drug eyed in assault
Boulder police on Thursday were looking for a man who may have slipped a date-rape drug into a woman's drink before sexually assaulting her last weekend.
The 22-year-old victim told detectives that she was at Soma dance club, 1915 Broadway, Saturday night when someone gave her water.
After drinking the water, the woman told police she suffered lapses in consciousness and felt dizzy. She remembered then being in the alley with a man, who went by the name of Zimmer.
She remembered being assaulted on the hood of a green car, she told detectives.
]]>Check out the free guide on travel safety at www.mytravelsafety.com/guide.htm for mind blowing tips and information on travel and vacation safety.
]]> Copyright 2002Secure Home Before Vacationing
LANCASTER, Pa. -- While you're planning for a big family trip, a burglar may be making plans to spend a little time at your house while you're away.
"The main thing we want to do is have the house look lived in. We don't want it to look abandoned," Trooper Joe Reeves said.
Timers on lights are a good way to achieve that "lived in" look. You should use several different timers in various parts of your home, and there are now timers you can place on wall-mounted light switches to turn overhead or outdoor lights on and off.
]]>This article lists the cars and the reasons why thieves like them so much.
]]> By Bankrate.com
...Yes, vehicles vanish from street curbs, driveways, parking lots and even car dealership lots. But, says McGoey, the frequency increases when the dishonest can bet you'll be gone for an extended time. Think airports, movie complexes, large apartment complexes at night, shopping centers during business hours, fairgrounds and sporting events. They tend to avoid fee-based parking lots (too much hassle explaining to the old guy sitting in the little booth why they don't have a ticket) as well as stacked parking garages that offer just one escape route.
In this particular case, the main reason the PDX screener was found guilty is because the victim's husband was videotaping her at the check out point.
During heightened security alerts at all airports, frequently travelers are searched with metal detector wands while going through security checkpoints. It is certainly understandable WHY this is needed.
HOWEVER - when you are being wanded, kindly ask the airport screeners to bring your bags into your view WHILE you are being wanded. Last week this happened to me while in Providence Rhode Island. They chose to wand me at the security checkpoint, but when I asked them to bring my carry on bags over to where I was being wanded, they refused and two guards began to yell at me. They finished wanding me, but only after putting my bags through the screening machine a second time, with my carry on bags OUT OF MY VIEW.
Eventually they let me proceed to my gate, but they were not done with me yet.
They then sent three more security guards to then check my carry on bags and shoes minutes before I was to board the plane. They found nothing suspicious in any of my bags or shoes. They could not understand WHY I would insist that my carry on bags were in my view at all times.
This attitude by the security screeners jeopardizes the personal safety of your carry on bags. At the airport, you constantly hear an ongoing message about being responsible for your bags and not letting them out of your sight. I attempted to follow that advice, but was treated as a security risk by the guards.
You have every right to have your carry on bags in FULL VIEW while you are being searched or wanded by security screeners. Insist on this, or you may wind up having items or cash stolen from your carry on bag like this woman in Portland. Imagine if you had a carry on bag with a business laptop containing thousands of dollars of private company data?
PORTLAND - A federal airport screener at Portland International Airport is on unpaid leave after being accused of taking $1,300 in cash from a woman's purse last month at a security checkpoint.
Thirteen crumpled $100 bills were found in a garbage can near the checkpoint after the woman discovered the money was missing.
The passenger, 39-year old Leonora Usi of Aloha, said she has a video her husband took as she passed through airport security.
Think about how many different accounts are tied to your ATM card. Do you have a checking, savings, money market account tied to the card? If that is the case then an identity thief with access to your card information can drain money away from all of those accounts.
STAYING SAFE
Keep your identity protected
Staying Safe - Summer Vacation Perils
You don't want to forget the sunscreen when you go on vacation, but some other things you may want to leave at home.
More than a half-million people will have their personal identities stolen this year, making identity theft the fastest growing crime in the United States, according to Jim Vaules, a LexisNexis fraud consultant who wrote tips to help travelers protect their personal finances when on summer excursions.
When the crime occurs during travel, said A.L. Jackson, an investigator in the fraud unit at the Durham Police Department, they are harder to solve...
]]>High tech thieves have installed tiny card readers at ATMs to record the data off of your card while hidden cameras capture you punching in your PIN number. With this information they can make a duplicate card and drain your account. Take a look at the ATM before you use it. Does everything look like it belongs there? One man found that the ATM that he was about to use had a loose cover around the card slot. He pulled on it and found that it was not original equipment, someone added it to the ATM
Another scam used to drain your account involves a thin sheet of plastic, about the size of an ATM debit or credit card that is put into the card slot before you even get there. You put your card in and the machine can not read your card through the sheet of plastic. The machine doesn’t even know that your card is there. You punch buttons and nothing happens. You push the cancel button and still nothing happens. It looks like the machine has eaten your card. After a while when you walk away in frustration, the scam artist comes up to the machine and pulls out the plastic sheet and recovers your card. In addition they probably saw you enter your PIN number several times as you tried to get the machine to work.
If this happens to you, look for a little plastic tab or plastic edge in the card slot. Take it out and you can get your card back. Be sure to report it as soon as possible. Just watch out for the scam artist, he may be watching.
Consumers, banks clash on ATMs
As fraud claims rise, some financial institutions are taking a tougher stance when it comes to giving money back
LOS ANGELES -- Despite bank promises of "zero liability" for customers victimized by automated teller machine fraud, getting credit for stolen funds isn't always automatic, as Kelly Quick of Studio City learned...
Quick discovered that someone had tapped ATMs to siphon $1,420 from his …checking account. He notified the bank, and the missing funds were credited to his account…
After about three weeks, the bank took the money back, saying it had "determined that the transactions in question were authorized."
But his ATM card had not been lost or stolen, and he had not disclosed his PIN to anyone.
If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, don’t try to fight the power of the ocean by swimming straight towards the shore against the current. This is what your instincts will tell you to do, panic will kick in and you’ll struggle to get back to shore a quickly as possible. This will only wear you out until you are too tired to swim anymore.
Try to control your panic and swim parallel even with the beach until you are past the rip tides. Once you are past the rip tides you can swim to the shore at a diagonal. Try to get the attention of a lifeguard.
If you are with children stay with them and keep a very close eye on them. If you see anyone in trouble in the water don’t try to go after them, get a lifeguard. Far too often, the rescuer gets into trouble in dangerous surf.
]]> Mar 28, 2003Deadly Panhandle Island Claims First Victim of Year
PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. (AP) - A rescue attempt failed and a 19-year-old man apparently became the first person to drown this year off a barrier island where 17 people have died in the past two years.
Rip currents apparently swept Cody Kennedy, of Milton, into the Gulf of Mexico while wading in waist-deep water Thursday in this resort community at the western end of Santa Rosa Island. The narrow island stretches nearly 50 miles along the Florida Panhandle coast.
A close friend of mine was injured by a thrown rock while on the train going through India. The rock sailed through the open window and struck him in the head, causing a bloody mess. He needed to go to the hospital right away after it happened. He was so glad that he made sure that he had traveler's insurance that covered medical while he was away.
Make sure that you are covered for any emergencies while you are away.
STONED: Andrew Hall is nursing a hole in his head after a rock struck
the English tourist after it hurtled through the open passenger side window.
He believes a City of Greater Geelong lawn mower flicked the rock.
Tuesday, February 24
KATE JOHNSTONE
AN ENGLISH tourist yesterday thought he had been shot in the head when blood
spurted from his forehead while enjoying a drive through Geelong.
But what Andrew Hall at first blamed on a bullet was a rock hurtled through
the open passenger side window.
Think about what your home will look like while you are gone. Will it be obvious that you are away? Have the mail delivery held for you at the post office and stop the newspaper delivery. Have someone that you trust check out the place periodically. Make sure that the lawn gets mowed. Put some lights and a radio or TV on a timer so that they come on every once in a while. Make sure all doors and windows are locked and secured. And get an alarm system, one that will make a lot of noise if someone tries to break in.
www.mytravelsafety.com has more information, guides and products for securing your home before you leave.
]]>Desert Hot Springs Police apprehend burglar while owner was on vacation
You may not think about it once you leave your house, but when you're gone police say your home can become a target for burglars and that's what happened to one Desert Hot Springs woman.
Thanks to quick thinking from Desert Hot Springs Police, the burglar didn't get too far.
Call it intuition, but one Desert Hot Springs police officer says he acted on instinct and caught a suspected burglar before the victim could even report the crime. She was on vacation and had no idea that her home had been burglarized.
]]>