Nigerian scammers have taken Internet scams to a new high (or low): selling your house, without your knowledge, and having the proceeds go to them. All done remotely, primarily via the Internet, with a little fax and phone thrown in. Of course, now that Nigerian scammers have pulled this off successfully (yes, successfully – just ask Roger Mildenhall about the Perth, Australia house that used to be his), we’re sure that other scammers around the world will be trying it.

If you got a confirmation of resetting your password from Facebook today, but you don’t remember asking to reset your password, there’s a reason. It’s a scam. And it’s a particularly tricky scam, because it plays on your fear that someone else is scamming you by trying to guess your password. But the reality is that whomever sent you your version of the scam is the one trying to scam you. The versions we’ve seen claim to come from either Chasity Stahr, letnesa@facebook.com, or Mara Krafft jwaterhouse@facebook.com.

If you get a call from Mary with Financial Freedom (or anybody else with Financial Freedom), telling you to call her at 888-489-2305 because you’ve been approved to consolidate your credit card debt at the amazing low rate of just 1%, and if you’re thinking that it’s too good to be true, well, you’re right. It’s a scam. “Mary” calls from a telephone number in the San Francisco Bay area: (415) 363-5608, but the call could come from anywhere.

So I got this telephone call today – maybe it’s like one that you got too. It came from the phone number 917-793-5694, and it purported to be from Southeast Trust, phone number 800-706-6208, and they claimed to be responding to my online inquiry to consolidate my credit card debt. Only problem is, I don’t have any credit card debt, let alone did I make an inquiry online. But you can be sure that someone who does have credit card debt, and who got this call, might be hooked and reeled in.

We’ve had a lot of visitors recently looking for information about the purported Coca Cola International Mobile Draw 2010, sometimes touted as being “in conjunction with the British American Tobacco Worldwide Promotion”. These people have received either the text message shown below, or the full email below, and are wondering if there is any chance that it is legitimate. It isn’t. Some of the sending addresses include cocacolalotteryhouse@yahoo.co.uk, and numerous live.com addresses, such as cokeclaim09@live.com and cocaa31@live.com. Regardless of who the sender is, if you receive any version of the below, ignore it, it’s a scam.

One of the newest online rages is “cyber begging” or “cyberbegging” (or heck, even “cyber-begging”, for those who are sticklers for proper hyphenation). Whatever you call it, it boils down to cyber panhandling – Internet begging. The way it works is that, instead of standing on a street corner, down and out people do their panhandling online, through a site such as CyberBeg.com. Unfortunately, for those who really are in need, Internet panhandling is more likely to lead them to lose what little they have, and to be scammed for their trouble.

A new phishing scam going around sends you email claiming that you have deactivated your Facebook account. Don’t fall for it. The links in it don’t really go to Facebook at all, although they look as though they do. They actually go to https://www.theinternetpatrol.com/brick-wall/, https://www.theinternetpatrol.com/brick-wall/, and https://www.theinternetpatrol.com/brick-wall/.

There is a series of SMS text message spams going around right now, from TM-GODSGIFT, that has people wondering. The messages from TM GodsGift say that you have won money – usually in the Coca Cola lottery or the Exxon Mobile draw. It’s all spam – it’s all a scam. You can ignore it – or you can report it. But whatever you do, don’t respond to a message from TM GodsGift.

This is very interesting – an advance fee fraud scam aimed specifically at lawyers. In this twist on the classic Nigerian 419 advanced free scam, instead of the scammer being the “widow of a deposed dictator”, the supposed damsel in distress is a woman whose “divorce was finalized here in Japan”, and she “wants to retain your professional service.”

There is a new Western Union money transfer scam spam making the rounds. It thanks you for “using Western Union Money Transfer”, and gives you a fake confirmation receipt transaction number (“control number”) – in our case the Mone Transfer Control number used was 1629752260. The spam includes an attachment that is an HTML file named something like “WU account.html” – don’t open it!

You can do a local job search just by searching for “jobs in my area”, or search for jobs such as for all USA jobs or even international job opportunities by using one of the job search engines such as “Monster Jobs”, or by frequenting job websites or job posting boards. You can use a country-specific job finder, such as Canada’s HRDC Job Bank (it should really be HRSDC, as it stand for “Human Resources and Skills Development Canada”), or a system-specific job site, such as www.usajobs.gov, which lists all U.S. Federal jobs. You can even just search “I need a job” followed by your location, and come up with a job listing of job openings, complete with job descriptions, in your area. The problem is that job search websites and job listings that list jobs online can’t always distinguish a great job opportunity from a scam. There are many job scams on Internet job boards, such as the Yahoo job scam and the Craigslist job scam, and specific job scams such as the home job placement scam (while it’s possible to find a legitimate no fee work at home job, and other paid internet jobs, it’s very hard to tell the legitimate work at home jobs from the scams). Then there are the not-quite-scam jobs, such as the so-called “Primerica job scams”. So, how to tell if a job is a scam? Here’s how.

More than four years ago, we wrote an article about the Nigerian 419 scam and what the scammers think of their victims, in which we concluded that “just in case you weren’t sure about the seriousness of 419 scams …just in case you think that it’s just a few people, and they are going to go away, think again. These scammers are here to stay, they are serious, and their target is…you.” Well, it sure hasn’t gotten any better since then. And here to prove it, from his own lips, a former Nigerian 419 scammer tells all.

If you have been contacted by either of London McFee Investments or Equity Transfer Management and are wondering whether it’s too good to be true, or even a scam, well, read on. It may be that they were offering you a ‘deal’ to sell shares of stock such as General Components, or it may be that they were interested in a stock that you hold other than General Components. But in all cases, in the end, they tell you that you will need to put cash up front – usually called an “equity transfer charge” or “equity transfer fee” owing to U.S. or other stock regulations. Other players in this scam space include Asia Pacific Group and Falcon Group.

Online scams are nothing new, and Craigslist (named after founder Craig Newmark, hence Craig’s list) has always had its fair share. Perhaps the most insidious of the Craigslist scams are those which appear to be legitimate replies to Craigs list postings – after all, while many consumers are wary of what they read online, most can’t imagine that a scammer would take the time to personally reply to them! In this particular scam, the email comes from twanachausse16@aim.com on behalf of TLP Research.

There is a lot of chatter on the Internet today about the search term “Exercise Bike Clearance” and how Target has been gaming Google search results so that no matter what you search for (such as, for instance, “Exercise Bike Clearance”) you will find a link to a Target page in the top of the search results, even though Target doesn’t have the item for which you are searching. In fact, that’s even more the rub – because these Google listings pointing and linking to Target.com are a result from Target telling you that “We could not find matches for {your search term}. Please try your search again.”