Who wouldn't want to earn $5,000 to $7,000 per month working part-time from home? Apparently, Patricia Feeney of Yorkton is doing just that according to www.cnbc64news.com.
Only, Patricia Feeney of Yorkton doesn't exist. Why then is CNBC reporting that she does and that she is earning all this money for doing? Actually, the website doesn't say what it is she is doing and it's actually not a CNBC website at all.
The web page, which has been showing up on Yorkton computer screens recently is a front for www.realinconline.com. Conveniently, if you click anywhere on the faux-CNBC page, it takes you directly to the Real Online Income site, where you can sign up "in the next 60 seconds," and "gain access to a work-at-home job paying as much as $87 an hour."
It doesn't say what the job is, though, and the only way you can find out is by entering your personal information.
"It's a variation of a service scam," said Cst. Tyler Buchanan of the RCMP's commercial crimes unit in Saskatoon. "A lot of times what you get for this is identity theft."
He explained this type of fraud pre-dates the Internet. The classic variation was the old secret shopper routine. It goes like this: You receive a letter in the mail from someone claiming to be a company that conducts evaluations of retailers saying you have been "selected." All you have to do is send them a cheque for your training materials and shopping "certification."
"They can make it look like a legitimate business," Buchanan said.
There are some clever aspects to "Patty's" story designed to lend legitimacy to the scam.
The web page is a perfect replication of the home page of the real CNBC site.
Colleen Kane, who is an actual journalist with the real CNBC News, supposedly wrote the piece.
The fake Patty tells the fake Colleen, "I was not interested in those "get rich quick" scams you see all over the Internet." Surely it can't be a con if they're alerting you to the dangers of being taken in Internet scams.
Finally, the article downplays the fact they want to take money from you. "There is a small shipping and handling fee," Patty says. "It's not really free, but it was under $10."
Buchanan says it is extremely difficult for authorities to do anything but warn Internet users to be wary.
"It's so global," he said. "Someone could be scamming you from their basement in Baghdad."
A quick "WhoisRecord" search by Yorkton This Week revealed just how tricky it can be. The registrant of the website is Jake Andy of HomeSys Inc. with an address that appears to be on Niue Island, a small nation state in the south Pacific. The company's hosting service is out of Great Britain running on a Dutch network its name servers are in the Russian Federation and Poland.
Jake Andy is a notorious scammer who has been blacklisted by virtually every scam-busting website there is.
Buchanan said the best defence against this type of fraud is awareness. Resources abound including the Government of Canada's Anti-Fraud Centre (www.antifraudcentre.ca). And, always remain skeptical because, as the RCMP Scams and Fraud website states: "If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is!"
