If you recently received a “payment request” out of the blue from Oracle Corporation, or Crazy Eddie, or any other place, and it left you scratching your head and wondering just why Crazy Eddie or whomever is asking you for money, well, you’re not alone. Perhaps even more bizarre is the email addresses from which these requests for payment are allegedly coming – email addresses like “admin@treasury.gov” and “noreply@federalreserve.gov”.

This particular Craigslist housing scam offers a house for a rent that is so low that it is too good to be true – you just have to first fill out a request for a “free credit report” at cbireport.com. The response to inquiries is canned and, in fact, has been around for a while – in our region the scam was listed under the heading “$850 / 3br – Beautiful 3 Bed, 2 Bath House”. Our sample came from “gipepazalih@hotmail.com”, but it has come from other email addresses too.

A new batch of scam emails purporting to confirm your order with Yes Asia (YesAsia.com) and Play.com went out this week. The scam relies on your freaking out when you see confirmation for an order you did not place, so that you will click the link to see “the order”, but of course, the link really goes somewhere else – in this case to some bad stuff being hosted on the iafrica.com website (in the case of our sample, it goes to “http://newsletters.iafrica.com/servlet/link/33/1082/140693/41003”).

Countless people have opened their email this week to be told that “The person described above is charged as follows” in what claims to be a traffic ticket with the “violation” of “Speed Over 55 Zone” Examples we’ve seen have supposedly come from the New York State Polic (such as from automailer.-093@nyc.gov), but it doesn’t matter where it comes from, it’s not real, and the included file is not your ticket – it’s a virus. Don’t open it!

The only way that you could have missed the “1 trick of a tiny belly” or “One tip to a tiny belly” ads that have been everywhere – absolutely everywhere – on the Internet would be if you hadn’t been on the Internet yourself. Well it turns out that those “1 tip” ads, some of which tout “Cut down a bit of your belly everyday by following this 1 weird old tip”, are part of a massive network of scams which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has uncovered.

Twitter has been the vector for a flood of work-from-home scam spams this week, as followers of hacked accounts found dozens of copies of the “I snagged $217 in just a few hours online. learned how to do it from {link to scam}” type of spam coming at them via direct message. The link goes to a faked NBC article that touts “How did this stay at home mom make $13900+/Month.. We Investigate..” and that cleverly makes note of the geographic location (geolocation) of your IP address and customizes the article to make it seem as if the single mom is from your own town.

Recently a scam spam has surfaced that claims that your YouTube inbox is full, and that you have to go clear it out (another version of the same scam says that “You have 2 unread personal message”). The email, claiming to be from “service@youtube.com”, has a subject of “Warning: Your inbox is full, message not accepted” (or, again, the “You have X unread personal message”), and advises you that “You can reply to this message by visiting your inbox.” The link to your “inbox” of course, which looks like “http://www.youtube.com/inbox?feature=mhsn”, actually goes to a malicious site – so far we’ve seen it go to https://web.archive.org/web/20110815060535/http://lliamamor.com:80/breakfaster.html, https://web.archive.org/web/20110810150832/http://motolover.50webs.com:80/sykes.html, https://web.archive.org/web/20110616073817/http://mizban-ins.com:80/calculative.html?, and https://www.theinternetpatrol.com/brick-wall/.

Here’s a scam going around Craigslist that is fooling people because it seems so darned believable at first. You reply to a “for sale” or “for free” ad, so far they seem to be for couches and entertainment centers, and the person writes back saying something like ” I already had promised this to the first person who emailed me but she didn’t get back to my email. Are you still interested?” Then when you say you are, they reply saying “the other person replied back again, and it seems her first reply went to my spam folder and I missed it. I feel terrible :(” In fact, they feel so badly that they tell you a way to make $1600 from home, at https://www.theinternetpatrol.com/brick-wall/. Don’t fall for it!

If a link to “activate dislike button” shows up on your Facebook page – do not, Do Not, DO NOT click that link! The scam link, spreading like wildfire, appears as a post on your wall that says “Facebook just added the dislike button! Click on ‘Activate Dislike Button’ below to enable it on your account!” Of course, the FB dislike button is another Facebook scam, carrying with it a Facebook virus and a bonus of malware that it downloads to your computer in the background.

A brand new scam, trying to get you to download malware, has just hit the Internet. “The ACH transaction recently sent from your checking account (by you or any other person), was canceled by the Electronic Payments Association” says the spam in which it is contained. There is a link to a file that you are supposed to download to “see the details of the report”. Don’t download that file! The file name format is “report_FakeTransaction#.pdf.exe” so, for example, report_33047451352379.pdf.exe. So far the scam mail has pretended to come from NACHA.org, although they are actually coming through an ISP in the Ukraine (ukrtel.net). ACH, by the way, stands for Automated Clearing House, which is a system that processes electronic banking transactions.

From our “Why online scams work” department, a woman (if she is indeed a woman) who was in an online relationship with an Illinois man for over two years has managed to scam at least $200,000 from the man. The scam came to light when the 48-year-old man from Naperville, Illinois contacted police because his ‘girlfriend’ had disappeared right after he wired her the last of the $200,000, and he feared she had been kidnapped.

The Tree Octopus has been given a new lease on life, thanks to a study in which 25 Connecticut 7th-graders participated.

A new version of the years-old ‘attempted abduction and rape in Target parking lot’ scam is making the rounds. “NEW  RAPE SCAM!  PLEASE READ!” the headline screams, going on to exhort the readers to “Please  pass on to all your girlfriends, wives, etc. Just  to be on the safe side. Please be aware  and pass  it on to anyone you think this will help.”. This newest version even says that the info checks out on mythbusting website Snopes where, in fact, it absolutely doesn’t check out.

Hot off the email scam presses comes this newest scam, which claims that “Your Federal Tax Payment ID: 010373 has been rejected.” The “ID number” in the subject line may change, but other than that the variationis will be very similar. This sample comes ‘from’ “CandiceOdell15573@gmail.com”, with a reply-to address of “abrown@mediaeng.com”, but these addresses also may change. In our sample, the link they are trying to get you to click claims to be “http://eftps.gov/R21”, but it really goes to https://web.archive.org/web/20111126005747/http://eftpsid3422.com:80/contacts/s3. {Ed. note: The scammers are now following up the initial mailings with follow-up mailings that say “SECOND NOTICE: Your Federal Tax Payment has been failed.” They’re an organized bunch!}

There is a horrific scam going around that uses just about every trick in the book – and effectively at that – to get you to send the scammers some money. It uses social engineering, urgency, Facebook hacking, and email hacking, and looks so genuine that we have no doubt that many have fallen for it. It comes from your friend’s actual account, and starts out by saying “This message may be coming to you as a surprise..” It then goes on to say that “we were mugged” and that the muggers stole “all our cash, credit cards and cellphone but thank God we still have our lives”, and then begs “I need you to help me out with a loan to settle our bills here…” It sounds so real – and after all it comes right from your friend’s account – how can you refuse? But refuse you must, because it is a scam.