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Unclaimed Property Scam: Most or all states (U.S.) will hold onto money that you may be due from some transaction that you never claimed. More or less indefinitely, as far as I can tell. An example would be a home sale - there may be things like closing of an escrow account where there is some money left over, maybe you didn't get or cash the check, it was mailed to your old address, etc. Settlement of an insurance claim is another example. The state will usually maintain a publicly accessible database of such unclaimed funds, if you google "unclaimed property" along with the name of your state you can find the state's website for this. You can look up under your name, if you've ever sold a house or received an insurance claim payout you may be surprised to find you have some unclaimed funds. The scam is that certain companies, and there are a few well known ones that tend to change their names around a theme like "RS Clark Associates", will find people who have funds on the database, and if they can get a current address or phone number they will cold call you and offer to recover the funds for you. The scam is that they will charge you like ten percent of the funds whereas you could easily claim the funds yourself for a tiny administrative fee. The state websites with the database will usually have PDFs that you can print out from their site where you apply for the funds yourself, you will usually need some ID verification like copy of driver's license, your social etc. All the scam companies do is mail you the forms that you could have printed out yourself, you still have to fill out and sign the forms and send it back to them, all they really do is mail it in for you. They make you feel as if they are doing you a service and you couldn't have claimed the funds without their help. The key is that they have you sign a form at the start of the process agreeing to contract their services to claim the funds in return for their fat cut, so if you figure out the scam and claim the money yourself they try to come after you for their cut anyway. Now, can someone tell me whether the stuff below are scams? Again sorry if I missed it being covered. Facebook "type the word 'YES' below, or repost this on your own timeline instead of like, to show you are really my friend/care about me, are paying attention etc.": These sure feel like scams, like someone is identifying the accounts belonging to passive idiotic loving dupes so they can target them for other bullshit. On principle I have never responded to any of these because why the gently caress would you insist on some kind of Simon Says condition of proving anything, gently caress you, you loving gently caress. Can anyone elaborate? Thread is long so I may have missed it in the middle. Franchising Opportunities: In the last few years it seems I hear a ton of advertising on the radio relating to great franchises to get in on the ground floor. None of these things sound particularly promising at all, the immediate examples that come to mind are -some generic gym, I think Crunch or Krunch Fitness -some kind of math tutoring businesses -barbershop catering to men with a sports theme, watch sports on TV while getting your hair cut etc. All these things sound so generic that it immediately raises my suspicions that it's an MLM type phenomenon where the actual product being peddled is irrelevant but you get seduced by the idea of becoming a big wheel in the system subleasing your own franchises to lower level marks and so on and so on. Are they a variant of MLM? For that matter what about stuff like Crossfit? That's a little different in that it's a product that a lot of people are in fact actually interested in, but do the franchises spread with the same pyramid mechanism as a MLM?
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Feb 25, 2018 00:58
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Oh, and sort of related to the Unclaimed Property scam, there is a similar thing for boat documentation. In the U.S., boats are required to be documented either through a state DMV like you would do with an automobile, or through the U.S. Coast Guard. USCG documentation has to be renewed annually and has a fee of around 25 bucks or so. There are scam sites with official sounding names that do the same type of thing that the unclaimed property scammers do in that they send you mail and essentially file the renewal for you, but for like three times the normal cost. Then, I assume, if you fall for it they will keep you in their database and send you the renewal stuff every year to keep getting their bite of the apple.
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Feb 25, 2018 01:38
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:It's a thin line between providing a legitimate service, and a scam in this case. I guess it depends on the size on their fee? I mean, they are providing an actual service by notifying you that you have money to claim... If they are claiming or implying that the only way to get the money is through them, that's clearly a scam though. The unclaimed property thing is not illegal. They charge a lot more than the administrative fee to claim your money, typically taking like a ten percent cut or so. Of course if the person had no idea they had unclaimed money then they did receive a service. Here's one that someone just posted on Facebook that's been going around:  Apparently it's quite old: http://houston.cbslocal.com/2011/09/02/dont-forward-new-rape-tactic-email/ Reads very similar to the old email FWD about headlights.
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Mar 2, 2018 11:26
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With Paypal (and I get a lot of periodic emails from them too), I suspect the issue is there's a lot of people like me who really never use it but got an account that one time to make that one purchase that didn't take credit cards or other payment. So yeah, the main purpose is likely to remind you that you have an account, and wouldn't you like to use it?
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Mar 9, 2018 05:57
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My dad just got this email. Phishing scam? Context: He does have an account paying Google like 1.99 a month for cloud storage. His credit card info is up to date and Google has been properly billing and collecting for the cloud storage including very recently (like a week ago). An account number has been redacted out of the email. But hovering over the links, the addresses do not correspond to the blue text in the link (both links are notifications.google.blahblahblah) He did click I believe on the second link but according to him did not enter any credit card info. I'm assuming it's a phishing scam and told him so given that his credit card is not expired, Google has and has had that information and is still functionally billing him through it. He's considering canceling his cloud storage account and/or getting a new credit card issued.
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Sep 23, 2021 05:52
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