Latest scamstop

The most recently reported scam sites. If you know or suspect a site to be scamming couriers please let us know.

Couriers seem to be regarded as easy targets for the scam merchants.

They generally pretend to be agencies or 'clearing houses' — they offer to get work from customers and farm it out to owner drivers.

Some of the recent scams have these features:

Reference scamtop

Having a good read about these scams can arm you with the knowledge you need to avoid getting ripped off

How they get you

They set up 2 sites. The first offers work at very high, unlikely rates of pay to tempt people looking for courier work. You register, for free but then before they can give you and of this mountain of work they have you need to be verified first. How handy, they know just the people to do it for you and for only £49.99 (or so) they'll do a background check and before you know it you'll have work coming out of your ears.

What happens is in reality is they bugger off with your cash and there never was any work to start with.

Ways to tell

If a potential employer needs a background check then a CRB will tell them all they need to know. This is operated by the government and Police

To check the date of registration for a domain. Use a whois search engine

General scamstop

General scams to take your cash from you

Techniques

We looked into a few of these and one of the people selling a guide/promising work at £375 per day was actually running a man and van service with a £20 per hour fee. Even ignoring the fact that fuel isn't free and the other costs for the van are to be paid for a 12 hour day would still be well short of the claims they make.

Another tactic on these ads is to make it appeal other than the promised income. There is often a list of requirements. are you male or female aged over 18? Can you drive a car, van or motorcycle? are you reliable and honest? can you work full or part time? Would you like to know how to become your own boss by being a specialist courier? Well, think about it. This covers most of the UK population. Suits you sir.

wall planner scamstop

These will usually phone you claiming to be producing a wall planner type publication that'll be sent to 10,000 businesses in your area etc etc and you can have a 4x4 box on it for £100 or whatever size/price they decide on. You pay up, they send you one or two wall planners as proof. These are usually the only wall planners with your details on that were and ever will be printed. You'll not get any work as the one in your office is unlikely to be seen by potential customers.

Tactics

• They are very persuasive during the call
• They often claim to be supporting some charity or other
• They often call 'confirming' the order which hasn't actually been placed by anyone
• They use carefully selected phrases to trap you into ordering. Make it clear and plain during any call that you will not be placing an order

• more info on wall planner scams
• codforum topics on wall planner scams

Hendon scamstop

'Hendon' scam to take your cash directly from you

What to look out for

• collection or delivery on the street
• one off customer asking you to pay for something on their behalf
• change of delivery address once on route
• only a mobile number for contact
• oddly, people involved in scams like these tend to use surnames. e.g. 'Mr James', rather than 'Stuart'

A courier will receive a call from a person claiming to be from a big company like Marks and spencer, tesco, or similar needing an urgent collection and delivery of a small package. An address will be given for collection and a time agreed. shortly before collection another call will be made saying something like 'We'll have someone meet you on the corner of whatever street name as parking is bad etc and we don't want you getting held up, oh yeah and could you pay the person a sum of money for the item as we're having problems with electronic payment/paypal/ etc and we'll give you the cash as soon as you deliver to us.

Those that have been stung like this think it's ok, they've got the item and can hold it until paid for but on arrival at the destination either the address doesn't exist or nobody there knows anything about it and when the package is opened it would contain junk. The courier loses out on the job and the cash parted with in exchange for a worthless package

• more on the hendon scam

Deception and thefttop

These can get you into a lot of bother if you are not wary.

Tactics

• One off customer needing an expensive item collecting from trade source
• Item being moved an unrealistic distance
• Change of delivery address when near destination
• Delivery to back of a van or roadside

You'll get a call from a Builder, plumber or similar tradesman asking for a part, quite often a central heating boiler to be collected from a trade outlet like plumb centre or travis perkins, the item will have been ordered and awaiting collection by you.

What is really going on is the scammer has picked a tradesmans business name out of a phone book and contacted the nearest trade outlet since it is highly likely the tradesman will have an account at several outlets in their area. They say'hi, this is fred jones, can i order a boiler on my account?' staff check account, all ok and item is ready for collection. you collect it, deliver it 100 miles away and the scammer has a £2000 boiler for the price of delivery. The cctv footage of the crime shows you collecting it so who do the police go after?

Protect yourself, if someone does call you asking for a delivery like this, find the traders number from a directory and call them back to confirm it is a genuine job for who the caller said they were, failing this get the trade outlet to call the customer from their records to confirm it is a legitimate order. It can save you a hell of a lot of trouble.

• read more info on codforum

Virus scamstop

'Virus' or infected PC scams to take over your machine and/or take your cash

What to look out for

• A phone call claiming to be from Microsoft, google or other well known internet entity
• being told there is a fault with your pc or that it is sending out things
• offering a 'free' scan to help trace problems
• charging to fix faults you didn't know you had

You'll get a call from someone, one such number is 02538 020308, claiming to be from a major internet corporation, usually google or microsoft saying your computer is sending things out. Firstly, it isn't. What they are trying to get you to do is go onto the internet, visit their web site for a free scan of your machine. click 'yes' to continue scan when in reality the yes is to confirm you want to install a trojan, a virus or other nasty which they will then pick up in this fake scan and then charge you for the privilege of removing this thing they've just blagged you into installing

If you feel you may have a problem, even if you don't you should always have installed a virus or internet protection package which will keep an eye on your files and internet connections and usually keep your machine and it's contents safe. Personally I use mcafee and am very happy with it but there are many other brands available from as little as a tenner if you shop around.