Brain Top Off!

From the 1500’s on there has been a scam that has proven very lucrative for thieves and has left thousand of victims destitute. It is labeled the Spanish Prisoner because it originated in Spain. Apparently, the powerful nature of Spain left it with a lot of enemies, leaving suspicions high. A “mark” (the prey) is told that an aristocrat has been imprisoned in Spain and is relying on the con artist to raise bribes needed to secure his release. If the mark would supply some of the money, he was promised that he would be rewarded generously upon the release of the prisoner, and furthermore could wed the prisoner’s beautiful daughter.

As with any con it required some research in order to only contact “soft” yet financially solid targets, as well as a demeanor that’s hard to duplicate. This type of conman can sell anything to anyone and get away with not only the money, but with the mark not initially realizing they’ve been duped.

Similar swindles exist in assorted varieties in modern times. The con man preys on the secrecy and urgency of the matter to speed things along before the mark can consider their actions. They rely on the tendency of people to want to come of the aid of their fellowmen, especially if they can profit monetarily while doing so. Additional amounts of money are taken from these marks. Eventually the mark has invested so much they can’t pull out without risking losing it all, which they do in the end anyway.

The 419 fraud, or the advance fee fraud, is but one form of this extremely popular scam. The rise of the Internet has made this a very popular and easy scam. You can get access to people’s email addresses easily enough, and even find their last name with the right sources. The result is a conman often claims they are a relative and has the name to prove it.

When you contact them over the Internet, you tend to follow up with a call that explains the detailed situation. Since you’ll be using the phone, consult a telephone look-up service like cell-registry.com/802/858/ which can help you to figure out whether or not their claims are legitimate. The Spanish Prisoner con is the basis for the majority of today’s scams, with plenty of alterations.

The advance free fraud is another variation with a lot of offshoots, where the basis is that the mark has to pay the scammer money to theoretically get money. The romance, overpayment, employment, and reshipping scams and, in today’s Internet world, lottery email scams and work from home scams also have come on the scene to cause much difficulty for those who are too trusting.

There are many other ways to protect one self from scammers besides using telephone look-up services like the one previously mentioned. One is to delete any emails which come from unknown parties. Once you open the email, you give the scammer access to all the addresses in your directory, which can be hazardous. All they have to do is keep sending out emails until they find the right person who will open it up.

If such an e-mail is accidentally opened, poor spelling and grammar, or an offer of free gifts or exorbitant sums of cash that can be obtained by sending a small sum of money, or opening an empty checking account, are clues that it is a scam attempt. However, despite the fact that no policing really exists for the Internet, there are government agencies who are attempting to find scam groups like this and put a halt to their operations. If we all work in concert, this plague can be wiped out.

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