It’s hard to believe. Suddenly, out of the blue, I’m the recipient of a flurry of money-making propositions that could add nearly $25 million to my bank account. It would be like winning one of those mega-millions lotteries about a half-dozen times.
It all happened last week when I received overseas e-mail offers from four strangers, each offering me a crack at a financial arrangement that could net me a total of $24.5 million. All I had to do was to provide financial help to arrange for the transfer of the funds (a total of $39.1 million), some of which would be parked in my personal banking account, and later I would pay my benefactors a fee.
In some cases, I would have to bend the rules to get access to these funds, like fibbing about the identity of some foreign relatives. But I was assured in the e-mails from my eager financial partners–who were located in the Kingdom of Swaziland, Dubai, Iraq and the Republic of Congo–that there would no problem effecting the transactions and that my identity would be protected.
Yes, you’re right; they’re all Internet scams, the kind of ripoffs that I thought had gone the way of the rotary telephone, given all the publicity and warnings about such phony schemes and the onset of much more investor caution in light of the current financial mess. My last encounter with one of these scams–a supposed $10.5 million killing for me–came last November from a woman who claimed to be Suhu Arafat, the widow of the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. She didn’t fleece me, thank goodness, but I’m told her scheme has raked in millions from an unsuspecting online population.
My latest scam mails, as I call them, conjured up memories of what I thought was an ingenious bit of Internet chicanery involving the annual Academy Awards presentation. Since the next Oscars won’t be awarded until March of 2010, why, you might well wonder, am I writing about this now. Because last August (and it’s now August again) I received a personal invitation–or at least, so I thought–from Mission Impossible star Tom Cruise, who I thought was also dynamite in the Rain Man. He invited me to join him at the following year’s Academy Awards presentation. Since I didn’t know the actor personally and never met him, why me, I wondered?
My online invitation explained it all. “Your name, one of 90, was chosen from a first ever lottery drawing to attend the 2009 Oscars with Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise.” The Oscar ceremonies, it was said, would be followed by “a deluxe Academy Awards dinner hosted by Mr. Cruise and prepared by one of California’s most eminent chefs.” Also attending the dinner, the invitation noted, would be a host of celebrities, including some previous Oscar winners.
The price: only $750 a ticket. Included were one day top-grade accommodations at a centrally located hotel and a limousine to the Academy Award ceremonies. A spouse or a guest, only one, is permitted for an additional $750.
My e-mail invitation was extended by Gerard E. Bekker, who was identified as Cruise’s special consultant for the Academy Awards event and president of GEB Communications. He also requested that checks for either $750 or $1,500 be sent as soon as possible to ensure the invitation, a once in a lifetime opportunity. “Act now and experience one of the greatest nights of your life,” he wrote.
I rang up Mr. Bekker at the phone number on the invitation, which turned out to be a cell number, not an office number. When I told him I might be interested in attending the Oscars and the dinner and wanted more information,, he bellowed, “Don’t wait. The tickets are going fast. The smartest thing you can do is write out a check as soon as you get off the phone and send it out today first class mail.”
But what happens if for some reason I can’t make it and at the last moment I’m sitting with two tickets that cost me $1,500?, I asked. “Don’t worry about it,” he replied. “At worst, you can probably sell the pair to some friends for $10,000.”
It all sounded too good to be true. For starters, the price seemed unusually low, given the exclusivity of the event. Further, since Cruise reportedly earns more than $25 million a year, it seemed illogical he would seek to pocket a few extra bucks by sponsoring dinners. Likewise, I had always thought the Oscar ceremonies were not open to the public, but only to members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
I was right. The supposed invitation from Cruise was fraudulent, just another in the latest and more creative Internet scams aimed at ripping off the online population. A spokeswoman at the Academy of Arts and Sciences suggested the idea of obtaining 90 tickets for public consumption of the Oscar ceremonies at Hollywood’s Kodak theater was truly the mission impossible since the public is not invited. I also checked the Los Angeles phone directory and there was no record of a company called GEB Communications.
Internet scams, which are a dime a dozen, easily bilked the online population out of more than $300 million last year, according to a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He notes these money-making schemes are becoming bolder, more diversified and increasingly are using well known names, hoping that the unsuspecting mark will never check. “You can’t imagine how naïve some supposedly sophisticated people can be,” the spokesman said, pointing in particular to physicians and business executives.
Meanwhile, American Internet users should continue to be wary since growing numbers of online frauds are being concocted overseas. They involve, among others, multi-million-dollar inheritance schemes that frequently use the names of large London and Scottish financial institutions to give them credibility. Other red lights are Asian real estate deals, guaranteed money-making currency transactions and an announcement that you were one of the winners in a huge foreign lottery. Also, watch out, I’m told, for a scam artist who claims to be a cousin of former French president Jacques Chirac.
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