Welcome to the world of cyber crimes. If you haven’t been exposed to them, not to worry, you will be. The perpetrators are unrelenting in their pursuit of easy money, the easy mark. In some ways, they’re like the highwaymen of long ago, back when horses, carriages and carts were the carriers of information, goods and people. The bad guys would hide somewhere along the road, armed with pistol, club or knife, ready to jump out and relieve you of your valuables. Go forward in time and todays bandits now hide along the electronic highway leading to your computer. Instead of guns and threats, these highwaymen have developed the gift for cyber gab.

Over the past 10 years I've seen 500+ variations of the same scam, repeated over and over again. They’re getting better at it; you have to look twice at the slew of offers they are hustling these days. Many use spell and grammar check, almost all sound reasonable. Years ago, the “opportunities” were outrageous so you knew it was clearly “too good to be true” but now, they’ve toned it down, making the offer more realistic but still “a good deal.” They keep dressing it up differently, that’s for sure. If you are looking for work at home, want to sell, buy or rent anything, get a new puppy or sell a boat, the modern highwaymen are lurking. They spend a lot of time on Craigslist, or plowing through what’s left of newspaper classified sections or they might send out millions of e-mails to see if anyone will bite. They’ll claim they’re:

relatives of someone in power

ministers

bankers

interested collectors

financial whiz

company owner

oil exec

cancer researchers

Just about You name it, they are it.

But they really aren’t anything more than con artists hoping you will fall for their cyber jive talk. They may dress the deals up differently but it’s the same old fast talk once you lift their skirts. They might be working out of Moscow or Minneapolis, it doesn’t really matter, You’ll never catch them once you send off your money. Neither will the police. The cops don’t have time to take traffic accident reports; you think they’re going to waste time chasing crooks that will never get caught? Forget about it.

You send your money or your property to someone you do not know. WHEN you send your money or property to someone you do not know, you should wave bye-bye. You will never see anything in return.

(FAKE)

Here is what these modern-day highwaymen have in common:

You didn’t approach them, they came to you. Or you contact them after seeing an offer for work, investment or property. Once you begin communicating, they’ll press you to do the deal. The cybercons will use a phone number as well as e-mail. If you check the country code of the phone number you might see they’re in England, Canada, Africa or maybe Russia. But a U.S. phone number is no guarantee the deal is legit, with cell phones it doesn’t really matter. They can be anywhere.

(FAKE)

RIGHT NOW, they’re working victims over using clever counterfeits. They’ve figured out how computers and modern printers can be helpful in convincing cyber-suckers the offer is real. The cyber-cons NOW create monetary instruments that are pretty darn good copies of the originals. They're not good enough to fool the Secret Service but plenty good enough to for the average citizen.

A viewer sent 10News this e-mail regarding a lottery scam.

Here are two more examples of potential roommate scams. 1 and 2

(FAKE)

They’re creating:

Cashier's checks that can appear to be drawn on any bank in the world

Money orders from anywhere—U.S.Postal orders, Wal-Mart, Western Union

Here's a sample of a possible job offer scam that one viewer sent us.

Here is what these deals have in common:

The counterfeit money order, cashier's check, etc. WILL HAVE TO BE CASHED. Which is no big deal because you have your bank account right? You’ll be instructed to forward the cyber-crooks a part of the money. Maybe just a fraction of the amount. BUT THE COUNTERFEIT IS NO GOOD. You will always be told to pull A LESSER AMOUNT OF MONEY out of your account and send it to the cybercrooks. The counterfeit will be coming home to you in a couple weeks, bouncing back all the way to your account. Your money is gone, the counterfeit is useless. And your bank or the police will tell you, sorry, you are out of luck.

(FAKE)

See the I-Team story coming up Thursday night at 11 p.m. when we will show you one of the better counterfeits we’ve come across and HOW TO TELL it’s counterfeit. Thursday, 11 p.m., don’t miss it. And tell your wacky uncle to ignore those e-mails!



Send me an e-mail and let me know what you think or if you have come across something similar.

jwblog@10news.com

Here are some resources to help you if you feel you have been a victim:

SDPD Financial Crimes Unit: 619-531-2545

San Diego FBI Field Office
Telephone: 858-565-1255; E-mail address: san.diego@ic.fbi.gov

Federal Trade Commission: rn.ftc.gov/pls/dod/wsolcq$.startup?Z_ORG_CODE=PU01

Internet Crime Complaint Center (co-sponsored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center): www.ic3.gov/complaint/

Better Business Bureau: odr.bbb.org/odrweb/public/GetStarted.aspx

National Consumers League Fraud Center: www.fraud.org

Here is a San Diego City Council vote where you can see what the council members are REALLY made of. And Mayor Sanders too. It's a proposed ordinance that has bounced around like a punch-drunk fighter called the Lead Hazard and Prevention Ordinance. It came out of a city committee three years ago. Finally, it’s making its way to the council for a vote Tuesday afternoon. Here is what it looks like.

Lead Hazard and Prevention Ordinance

On the surface, it seems like a slam dunk. It's going to put teeth in San Diego's effort to get lead out of homes and apartments. You don't have to be a nuclear scientist to know that lead is something children should not be exposed to.

Everyone will buy into the "easy” element of the ordinance which says landlords can't rent places with lead present until they clean them up. What this really says to me is landlords don't have much juice anymore. This part of the ordinance will fly through. It's the second option that is bringing out the beauty and the beast in our city leaders. This part of the law will require homeowners and real estate agents to arrange to have homes cleaned up and lead free before selling if the residence was built before 1979.

These two options are what the vote is about tomorrow. I can guarantee everyone will be in favor of keeping kids safe. But not everyone will be willing to pay for it, especially when you have remnants of San Diego's OLD BOYS NETWORK, where as any long time local knows, money still talks. And we're talking about San Diego's Association of Realtors which says while deeply concerned about the risks associated with lead hazards" they will oppose mandating the required lead removal during the sale of a home. The Realtors say education of real estate agents and homeowners will be enough to clean things up, without any enforcement of a clean-up requirement. Trust in the homeowners who want to sell, they say, and the Realtors who want to make it happen. Besides, the industry can't afford any more charges tacked onto homes in this down market, they argue. I would argue we really don't need children exposed to lead, no matter what kind of shape the market is in. Here is their letter.

Board of Realtors letter

So what will our strong mayor do? Early in the process, Jerry Sander's staff supported the tougher ordinance. That's according to the main proponents of the measure, the Environmental Health Coalition. A meeting between the mayor and the EHC took place December 19, 2007. Before the meeting, Kris Michell, the city's deputy chief operating officer, told the environmentalists that Mayor Sanders opposes the plan they support. But in the meeting with the mayor that day, Sanders told the EHC he supported the tougher law. Want to guess who wins this one? Check out the mayor's contributions from a certain group of interested individuals and then take a guess where his support will lie.

Mayor's Real Estate Contributors

The story breaks tonight on 10News LIVE AT 11 p.m. with reporter Steve Atkinson and producer Kristen Castillo and photojournalists Christian Cazares and Michael Gonzalez doing excellent work in explaining this important story. The showdown is tomorrow at 2 p.m. in council chambers. Scott Peter’s and Donna Frye are the only council members supporting the tougher measure. Other council members are undecided and Ben Hueso's staff can't seem to find him to get a response. We began calling him last Tuesday.

If you care who I am pulling for, I can tell you in two words.

The children.