Five ways to lose your cash

AS IF consumers don't have enough to contend with, fending off cold calls from boiler rooms and protecting their identity from cyber criminals, they must also stay on high alert for a multitude of other scams favoured by today's cunning con artists.

We take a look at five common hustles now doing the rounds:

Pharming:   This is a particularly dangerous strain of phishing where hackers direct people to legitimate websites, but then subtly redirect them to a fake website and steal their details. The European Consumer Centre (ECC) in Dublin encountered a particularly bad case where a woman had lost about €20,000. She "bought" a car on a website that appeared to be eBay, but turned out to be an imitation site set up by a fraudster based in the Czech Republic.

Distraction Distraction theft usually occurs at ATMs. The "mark" is distracted just as they enter their pin number and another person pockets the money from the machine. Last week a gang of 12 people were arrested as part of Operation Hawkeye, a Garda investigation into distraction thefts in Dublin city centre.

Over-payment cheque fraud  Many unsuspecting people who place an advertisement online or in a paper to sell an item (often a car) fall foul of this particular scam. They are contacted by a "buyer" who agrees to pay their asking price. A cheque arrives made out for a substantially higher amount and the "buyer" asks them to refund the extra money, often explaining the discrepancy away as an accounting error. The seller obligingly does so, but later discovers that the cheque was forged or counterfeit and therefore worthless.

Inertia selling According to John Shine of the National Consumer Agency, elderly and vulnerable people are being targeted by a new form of so-called "inertia selling". A package of greeting cards is delivered to the person's home, with an invitation to place an order. If the individual ignores the package, a letter arrives requesting payment. If this is ignored, it is followed up by another letter purporting to be from a debt collection agency, threatening to bring the person to court or publish their name in Stubbs Gazette, which often intimidates the person into paying. Shine stresses that people are under no obligation to pay for unsolicited material.

Lottery scam The well-worn lottery hoax remains a perennial favourite with fraudsters. Of the 500 scam complaints received by the National Consumer Agency in the past year, the vast bulk related to lottery scams. Typically, an individual receives a letter or e-mail congratulating them on scooping millions in lottery prize money and either asks for their bank-account details so the money can be lodged or tells the person to ring a premium-rate number to claim their prize.

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times