think Jesica on BBC news

By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics and access other forums reserved for members. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today by clicking here.

Wannabe Baiter Joined: 10 Jul 2008 Posts: 98

I've been watching the BBC news today and theres a segment on 419 scammers and more specifically the Think Jessica campaign.

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 8:04 am

The BBC in particular do some piece or other on the topic at fairly regular intervals. Was there anything new in the story?

Wannabe Baiter Joined: 10 Jul 2008 Posts: 98

not really it was aimed as an awareness program and touched on the issues of the postal service delivering scam letters but there was no mention of the internet side of things.

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 10:35 am

There have been wuite a few articles and programmes recently on the subject of snail mail scams to the elderly. I think that the scammers have realised that there are a lot of vulnerable people without computer access they can target.

I have an 84 year old mother who can be quite innocent about things, though I have made her aware and, I think safe. She is on scammer telephone calling lists and I have even picked one up for her, but it appeared to be an automated system.

These are some links

http://www.allsaintsmarlow.org/bisham/history.htm

Elderly Derbyshire woman loses $50,000 and receives 30 mails a day totalling 30,000

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/Elderly-woman-receives-200-scam.4450032.jp

Eldery woman receives 200 mails in two weeks

http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/content/articles/2008/04/16/west_church_s13_w8_feature.shtml

'Inside Out' TV programme investigating scammer posing as a real UK church to gain money by fraud. By coincidence there is also mention of the NOMA Charity in that article, but just publicising their good works, nothing to do with any scam, though many of us dealth with a scammer who masqueraded as that charity some time back.

WARNING - the link to the NOMA Charity site is on that page, and some of the photos are pretty horrific, but that's what they deal with.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 04 Jun 2008 Posts: 73

There was also something briefly on GMTV (I dont watch it - I swear - the missus turns it over to catch up on "celebrity" news), with someone quoting the same figures as the BBC Breakfast report "people have been known to receive 100 letters a day from scammers", but I didnt see enough of what they were saying - sounded a similar report to the BBC one.

In fact, I just thought, I think Help the Aged put out a release saying 1 in 3 or 2 in 3 elderly people had been targeted by scammers. Must have been related to that

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2968782/Majority-of-pensioners-are-targeted-by-scams-every-month-charity-warns.html

Edit: to include link