ScamsOnline

New lottery scam

The Better Business Bureau wants to warn you about foreign lottery scams that are being run in many areas.

The BBB said there's a new twist to the scam. Con artists are now sending out checks with lottery offers. The folks who receive them are told they have to cash the checks and then wire the money back, in order to collect their winnings. The problem is, the checks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

Rich pickings for Nigerian scammers

Police are staggered by the amount of money gullible Australians are losing to Nigerian investment scammers. The long-running internet-based rort has netted more than $7 million from Queenslanders alone, and the loss Australia-wide is likely to be far higher, police say.

Among those being duped are financial advisers, lawyers and university professors, and one person had put $2.2 million into the hands of scammers over the past two years.

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Some people never learn

Sometimes if you don't succeed, you really shouldn't try again.

Lincoln, Nebraska Police Chief Tom Casady said police arrested 40-year-old Edward Lee Shearer after he allegedly deposited a fraudulent $47,000 check he'd been sent in the mail.

New email scam in the pipeline

An anti-virus company has blocked thousands of spam emails that claim people are in line to receive money from a jailed Russian oil tycoon.

The emails, which claim to come from the personal secretary of billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, offer roughly $10 milion if the email recipient will assist in the transfer of approximately $50 million of Khodorkovsky's fortune.

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