How to Spot and Avoid Equity Scams

Most lenders on the equity loan marketplace are legitimate lenders; however, a few lenders are taking the less fortunate for a ride. These unscrupulus lenders offer appealing loans, yet fail to tell the borrower about hidden charges or "balloon" charges. Hidden charges are often stripped from loans, since the APR is a supposed security to borrower that weeds out hidden fees.

"Equity Stripping" is one of the leading scams on the loan marketplace. The lenders engaging in "equity stripping" will often present to borrowers (too good to be real) deals, leading them to believe that they are saving money. Thus, once the borrower agrees to the contract, the lender will pose new charges, high interest, and other fees that puts weight on the borrower, until he or she breaks and fails to make payments on the mortgage. The lender then repossesses the home, selling the house for profit while the borrower is standing on the corner, wondering where he will live next.

Thus, the Federal Government has provided information to help borrowers avoid losing. Since equity stripping is becoming a huge industry, the Fed’s advise homeowners to watch out for equity stripping, including paying attention to lenders that are offering loans that reach above your wages.

The feds also advise borrowers to stay alert to "loan flipping", which is the process of switching loans regularly and requesting larger amounts of cash on each refinance applied. If a lender is pressuring you to sign an agreement, you will need to find another lender, since pressuring borrowers is a surefire tip that the lender is out to take you for a ride. You will also want to consider PMI, which is personal mortgage insurance, which is a requirement; however, few lenders attempt to charge for additional coverage that is not needed. Thus, homeowners, especially the less fortunate, should adhere to advice and read details of any loan offered thoroughly.

Low Cost Advertising and Scams on the Internet

"A business without a sign is a sign of no business". This is an advertising banner or quotation that can be seen in large billboards along the roads and on the side or top of buildings that is vacant. Television and radio would say, "This program would not be shown or be heard without advertisement". It is true since most of us are watching the free television channel and programs are produced by payments of advertisements.

Business owners understand how important an advertisement is. It is in this manner that they would tell to everybody that they are selling products and offering services. They would not have sales, which in turn give them profit, if people would not notice and buy their products and avail of their services.

However, it is not happy to note that there are people who would try to steal money from advertisers and business owners by offering cheap advertisement packages and not delivering the agreed service. Business owners and advertisers should be informed of this because they would become victims of a scam.

The scam here is when the advertiser paid for these different kinds of services but none or some of them are not really even performed. The main point to consider here is to whom is the advertiser transacting with. To avoid being ripped off doing a background check by knowing the following will help.

* past successful projects as evident on customers comments

* a good reputation that will be confirmed by his references, (people that he's had past transaction with and that are also reputable)

The pay-per-click ad campaign is when an advertiser would pay a certain agreed amount by the search engine developers every time a user clicks on that banner. This was a good idea before it was not touched by hackers who developed a certain program to automatically click on that banner which increases the amount to be paid by the advertiser. The next paying scheme was the “pay per action”, which is harder to hack since the advertiser would only pay the search engine developers an agreed amount every time a sale would be done on that customer.

One thing is for sure, advertising in the Internet is not easy but it is fun, especially when one understands fully the power of the Internet. It is not a unidirectional means of advertising like the television or radio, but it is an interactive avenue for both the advertiser and the prospective clients.

eBay Users: What You Need to Know About Phishing Scams

Are you an eBay user? Whether you use eBay to do your online shopping or if you use eBay to generate extra income for yourself, as an eBay seller, there is something that you need to be aware of. As an eBay user, whether you are a seller or a buyer, you need to be on the lookout for phishing scams. Phishing scams are rapidly increasing in popularity and many are using eBay as a front. To protect your identity, as well as you finances, you need to be on the lookout for them.

If you are relatively new to eBay or online shopping in general, you may not know exactly what phishing scams are. Do you? If not, you should know that phishing scams are actually complex online scams. A shady individual or a scammer makes a fake website that is similar to eBay or at least a fake eBay sign in page. You are then sent an email that appears as if it was from eBay. The only thing is that it wasn't. The goal of a phishing scam is to get you to visit the fake page and enter in your eBay sign in information, including your eBay screen name and your eBay password. Once a scammer has your information, they get access to you personal information stored on eBay, as well as free use of your eBay account.

One of the reasons why phishing scams are so easy to fall victim to is because they give you the impression that is something is wrong with you eBay account or that you did something wrong yourself. For instance, many phishing scams contain a message asking why you didn't pay for an item that you ordered or outline the fact that your eBay account has been suspended. The goal is to get you so worried that you will automatically click on the link to get the problem solved; however, as previously mentioned, the link takes you to a site that looks just like eBay, but it isn't. There is where the trouble comes in.

If you get an eBay phishing scam email, you will want to do a little bit of detective work, before actually clicking on the link. In fact, you shouldn't even click on the link. The first thing that you will want to do is look at your name, as most eBay phishing emails start with “Dear eBay Member,” or something along those lines. Real eBay messages will refer to you by your eBay screen name or even your real name. You can also roll your mouse over the link provided to you and see where it will actually take you. In most cases, you will find that you are being directed to another site, not eBay.com. All eBay messages should appear in your “My eBay,” message box. To see if eBay really sent you an email, you can log into your eBay account, from a brand new window that you open up, and check your messages, if you even have any at all.

If you do receive an eBay phishing scam email, you are advised to contact eBay or examine eBay's help center. There you will find instructions on how to report the email or send a copy of it to eBay. Although your first thought may be to delete the eBay phishing scam email, you will actually want to follow eBay's reporting instructions. You may know that you are being scammed, but other may not. Reporting an eBay phishing scam to eBay allows them to take care of the problem; thus likely reducing the number of eBay users who fall victim to similar scams.

Now that you know exactly what eBay phishing scams are, you are urged to be on the lookout for them. Keeping an open eye is your best line of defensive against eBay phishing scams or any phishing scams for that matter.

Senior Citizen Scams

If you have a senior citizen in the family, there really is nothing more heartbreaking than to discover than to find out that your loved one has been the victim of a senior citizen scam which robbed them out of their precious retirement savings and puts their retirement at risk. When you come to the realization that this wholesale robbery has occurred, you don't know who to be angry at. It's easy to want to be angry at your parent or grandparent but its they who are the victim here. They need your love and help more than ever now, not guilt and anger.

But its you who feels victimized as much as your loved one. By robbing your parent or grandparent of their savings, they could be come a liability to the family which will be costly to you and your siblings. You are not going to let your own flesh and blood go hungry or go with out medical care or a good place to live.

These are good motivations to know what can be done about senior citizen scams so you can have a plan of attack. Now, once the scam has been executed, there may be some resources to track down the crooks and recover the lost funds. Scams come in all shapes and sizes. They may come in the form of an internet scam that steals thousands from your parent or grandparents credit cards. They may come from home repair scams that cost them big bucks and deliver nothing. They may be "get rich quick" schemes that targeted your loved ones because they were concerned about retirement savings.

If you can locate who scammed your loved one, be relentless in pursuit of them. Don't be afraid to enlist the aid of local media. Local television news teams often have groups trained to go out and target these scam artists and expose them to public scrutiny and distain. Scam artists are like cockroaches. They don't like attention and they don't want to be noticed. If you can get your scam artist under that kind of microscope, they will often crack and return the stolen funds rather than face further attention.

But there is a limit to what you can do legally and it's not a good idea to go after them personally. Not only do you not need to commit a crime yourself but these people are criminals so they may not be the kind of people you want to tangle with. So be smart but if the funds cannot be recovered, just get control over the situation, stop payment on any checks and cut off the funds quickly to stem the hemorrhaging of funds from your senior citizen loved one's accounts.

The real defense against senior citizen scams is prevention. Even if it is just this article that raised the red flag for you, start now finding out how your retired parents or grandparents are using their funds. One way to do this is to offer taking over the management of their money. They may love to see you handle paying their bills and worrying about their taxes so they can relax and enjoy their retirement. Then you can be sure that any money that goes out through those accounts goes to proper and worthwhile uses.

But talk to your senior citizen to inform them of the dangers of scams. Many times people of the previous generation are too trusting and easily convinced of the validity of a scam. They need to have that high level of distrust so they become virtually scam proof. One rule you may put in place might be that they have to review any investment or new expenditure with you so by talking about it, proper questions can be asked. Convince your senior citizen that anything that cannot stand up under scrutiny is probably a scam. Make sure you emphasize to them that any offer that must be done now or could be lost if you require documentation is not a worthwhile business no matter how enticing their offer is.

By instilling a measure of caution and skepticism in your senior citizen and by becoming a watchdog of their resources yourself, perhaps you can spare your senior parent or grandparent from the heart ache of a senior citizen scam and deny access of crooks to the ones you love.

What is accounting fraud?

Accounting fraud is a deliberate and improper manipulation of the recording of sales revenue and/or expenses in order to make a company's profit performance appear better than it actually is. Some things that companies do that can constitute fraud are:

* Not listing prepaid expenses or other incidental assets

* Not showing certain classifications of current assets and/or liabilities

* Collapsing short- and long-term debt into one amount.

Over-recording sales revenue is the most common technique of accounting fraud. A business may ship products to customers that they haven't ordered, knowing that those customers will return the products after the end of the year. Until the returns are made, the business records the shipments as if they were actual sales. Or a business may engage in channel stuffing. It delivers products to dealers or final customers that they really don't want, but business makes deals on the side that provide incentives and special privileges if the dealers or customers don't object to taking premature delivery of the products. A business may also delay recording products that have been returned by customers to avoid recognizing these offsets against sales revenue in the current year.

The other way a business commits accounting fraud is by under-recording expenses, such as not recording depreciation expense. Or a business may choose not to record all of its cost of goods sold expense fore the sales made during a period. This would make the gross margin higher, but the business's inventory asset would include products that actually are not in inventory because they've been delivered to customers.

A business might also choose not to record asset losses that should be recognized, such as uncollectible accounts receivable, or it might not write down inventory under the lower of cost or market rule. A business might also not record the full amount of the liability for an expense, making that liability understated in the company's balance sheet. Its profit, therefore, would be overstated.

Scam Domain Names

Do you think buying something as simple as a domain name means that industry is free from scams? If you do think again, since everyday hundreds of people get milked out of their money thinking they are going to get a perfect domain name. Granted, fraudulent domain name companies haven't received as much press as 'work-at-home' companies or other businesses of that nature, but they are still just as deviant. The two main ways a domain name company goes about scamming its customers involves either selling the domain name at a ridiculously high price and/or not delivering the domain name as promised.

The typical price of a domain name ranges from being 0 dollars to around $35. However, if a domain name company is shady they could charge a price that is much higher. This fee could range from $300 to over $2,000. And, unlike legitimate web hosting companies that might charge such a fee, domain name companies of a shady vein do not offer other services such as web hosting or marketing assistance. Their sole sale is of the domain name.

The second way fraudulent domain name companies scam people is by not providing a domain name at all. This happens a lot with so-called 'free' domain names, but can also happen with paid ones of any price. The normal turnaround time for domain name forwarding ranges from 1 to 7 days. If this timeframe has passed and a customer has not received a domain name, they probably won't receive one.

What does a person do if they discovered they've been scammed? Well, if they fall for the first scam where they pay hundreds for a domain name, they may not be able to do much, if the company does indeed deliver the domain name. At most they could try to get a refund, but this is a long shot since companies that shady probably won't allow for such things.

On the other hand, if a domain name hasn't been delivered at all, a person can first file a complaint with the Internet Crime Center, (also known as IC3). This organization has a partnership with the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center. So, if they think a domain name company has acted in a fraudulent manner, they could use these entities to help conduct criminal investigations against them.

Next, the jilted party needs to consider filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. Although this organization doesn't have as many legal/governmental ties as the Internet Crime Center, it still has a lot of power. This is because many people turn to the BBB before they decide to do business with a company. By filing a complaint with them, a person that has been scammed could protect others from undergoing these same difficulties.

Finally, there's the option of reporting the fraud to the credit card company or payment processor. If a credit card company determines fraud has occurred, webmasters will at least get their money back. If payment processors such as Paypal think fraud has occurred, they will proceed with freezing the account of the domain name company. When this happens they cannot do further business until they clear up the discrepancy.

Avoiding Online Gambling Scams Before they Happen

Gambling scams were never as recognized and as widespread as when it finally came in contact with cyber space. Online gambling, although beneficiary for those gambling aficionados, allowing them to gamble and avail of the enjoyment at home, also has some of its downsides more specifically the existence of online gambling scams.

Online scams usually include the refusal of a certain game company to "give you" your winnings. Some gambling scams may even go as far as totally refusing to let you win with absurd probabilities, and then refusing to let you cash out the remaining money you’ve got left.

One way to avoid these scams is to know what they are. Here are two most prevailing online gambling scams that you should be aware of, and should be able to detect easily.

Illegitimate Bonuses

Some gambling companies even go as far as inviting their former scammed customers under the ruse of “bonuses” telling them how sympathetic they are about you being scammed, and offering a bonus if you play with them instead. Just think, where did they get your contact details? Well they got it from that short form you filled out when you joined the first scam casino, and they’re actually looking to rip you off again.

What do they do? When it’s actually time for you to claim your bonus, they say that you are ineligible to receive the bonus.

To avoid being re-scammed, never fall for these types of offers. Even if you haven’t been scammed yet, they’d still send you a bonus offer then refuse to give it to you once you’ve deposited your money. A good rule of thumb with online gambling, if it’s too good to be true, then it probably is.

Piracy

One way to know a legitimate online casino is its affiliations and memberships; one such is the Interactive Gaming Council (ICG). However, logos provided by such organizations can easily be copied on the net, and what scammers do, is they imitate, sometimes, go as far as duplicating the design of a legitimate casino to pass off theirs. It is a good measure to look up the name of the online casino on the members list of the certain organization. ICG and others usually provide an easy to browse and search members list on their web sites.

To make sure that the casino you’re subscribing to is legit, type the company name and the word review in the search engine and read about them, you’ll more or less get an idea of how they work.