Jun 26, 2007 6:05 AM, PROMO Xtra, By Patricia Odell
The Nebraska Attorney General last week warned consumers about a fraudulent sweepstakes that appears to be sponsored by major companies including Virgin Mobile USA and McDonald’s.
AG Jon Bruning called the mailing “a new type of sweepstakes fraud that lists false sponsorships to deceive consumers into participating.”
In addition to McDonald’s and Virgin Mobile, the notices, which state that consumers have won tens of thousands of dollars, also appeared to be sponsored by Wal-Mart, Pizza Hut, Sears, Budget Rent-A-Car and Gap, the AG said.
However, an inquiry by the AG’s consumer protection division found that these businesses were not involved in the promotion, Bruning said.
The letter tells consumers that they must pay a “clearance fee” to receive the prize because the award money is bonded. A check from one of the “sponsors” is enclosed in the letter to cover the costs of the clearance fee. The consumer is instructed to deposit the check and send the money back to the sweepstakes organizers.
“The check is fraudulent, and consumers lose the money they send,” Bruning said in a statement.
One “sponsor” learned that checks for up to $4,720 were being written from one of its bank accounts and immediately closed it, Bruning said.
“If it seems too good to be true, it probably is,” he said. “Nebraskans work too hard for their money to lose it in a scam. Being skeptical and researching an opportunity is the best way to avoid falling victim.”
Read More...
Summary only...
To use a TV news cliche, it's like a horror movie come true: three families from Fircrest in Washington State are being harassed by a unknown individual, who somehow has the power to turn cellphones on, send messages, and change ringtones. Over the last few months, the families have had calls that threaten death and violence against them, calls that tell the people what they're doing at that time, and calls that originate from the cellphones of other members of the family. In one case, the stalker changed the ringtone of a phone to say "answer your phone." According to one James M. Atkinson, an apparent expert in these matters who used to provide the CIA with advice in counterintelligence, the technical profficiency to pull off this level of stalking isn't that high: if the FBI can do it, why not some anti-social kid, right?
KoolWire is a new and wonderful email based file conversion service to help you convert your Microsoft Word (.doc), Powerpoint (.ppt), Excel Spreadsheets (.xls) or even pictures into Adobe PDF documents. 
Romania for instance has over million subscribers. Smaller countries like Slovenia and Lithuania are only getting started and we should expect to see the add more zip to the growth rate in EU. US remains #1 in terms of total subscribers, but China is nipping on its heels. France is the fifth largest broadband country in terms of subscribers, ahead of South Korea.
Posts
