Can you recognise a fraudster when you meet one?

I’ve pointed out many times that it’s easy to scam people online and defraud them. I even once got a phone call from an elderly gentleman asking me if he had really won £1 million on the Financial Services Club lotto. I had to let him down gently, even though he was convinced that the email made clear he was a winner. There is no such lottery.

Equally, a friend of mine at a big bank tells me that they regularly find people in reception, asking where their long lost relative’s inheritance is and could they speak to Mr. Bentley-Coles-Myer who emailed them to say they could have it ... as long as they shared their bank details. Oh dear. Another loser in the quagmire of online scams and phishing.

Mind you, it’s not just the old and vulnerable who get scammed. Recently, I’ve seen more and more of the work mail scam. This is where funds are requested to be urgently transferred by the CEO of the company to an employee, who doesn’t know much different. According to the FBI, that scam has led to losses of over $12 billion from 78,000 companies in 150 countries between 2013 and 2018. No wonder it’s popular.

In order to give you a little protection from such scams, there’s a useful list of the six most common ones here and, as it’s Friday, here’s two scamsters you might not have encountered.

First, there’s the Ant that’s not.

Source: Ripan Biswas

Alipay users should be aware that Ant Financial has a mimic. This is actually a spider that eats ants and lives in ant colonies. Nasty!

And then, of course, there is the Bean of Wall Street.

Source: Demilked