Goodizen :: Scams

The doctored image from Facebook that was shared among social media users. Facebook A HOAX that fools people into thinking it is the same day that Marty McFly travels to in Back to the Future has struck for a second time. Social media was abuzz with news that June 27 was the day that Christopher Lloyd's Doc Brown and Michael J Fox's Marty McFly set their time machine car the Delorean to travel to in the hit 1985 film. But the real date, revealed by Mashable.com, is October 21, 2015. The rumours were gold for Facebook and Twitter users, where thousands of people shared a doctored image from the car's time machine showing the June 27 date. 'Back to the Future' even began trending on Twitter, NME.com reported. The same prank fooled people a couple of years ago, but the new prankster told Mashable his hoax was "an accident". Social media manager Steve Berry said it was done to promote the release of the Back to the Future trilogy on...

28 June 2012 Last updated at 13:36 ET A dance instructor involved in a scam that promised children a role in the Olympic closing ceremony has pleaded guilty to fraud. Steve Moonesamy, 35, of Lowlands Close, Northampton, pleaded guilty to eight counts of fraud at Northampton Crown Court. He had been involved in a company that approached dancers to perform in the ceremony and companies for sponsorship. He will be sentenced later this year following reports. About 75 pupils, aged between nine and 19, are thought to have been duped by the scam and had been practising for the event. Detectives from Operation Podium investigated reports of the sponsorship offers after a referral by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Locog). Locog has confirmed that RWB Project, Midlands, is not associated with the Olympic or Paralympic Games. Read More @ Source Fraudulent Stories Here

Residents of Bethel, Alaska, know from cable TV ads what the major fast-food chains offer: chicken at KFC, burgers at McDonald's and tacos at Taco Bell. They just haven't been able to get any of it. The city of 6,200 people is about 40 miles inland from the Bering Sea in far western Alaska, and the closest fast food other than a Subway sandwich shop is in Anchorage, 400 miles and a $ 500 round-trip plane ticket away. So they were elated to learn that Taco Bell was soon going to open a restaurant. The joy, however, turned into disappointment. The flyers announcing the chain's arrival were a hoax — the result, police say, of a feud between two residents. But all was not lost. Taco Bell executives learned of the mix-up and arranged an enormous feast for Sunday. They plan to fly enough ingredients in from Anchorage to make 10,000 tacos. "It'll be a big event for our community," Mayor Joe Klejka said. Taco Bell will offer its fare for fre...

Other Twitter users expressed their frustration: The man behind the hoax has said that the image was "just an accident". This is not the first time the hoax has fooled Back to the Future fans. In 2010 another image circulated with the date as July 5 2010. Steve Berry, a social media manager for Simply Tap designed image to promote the Back to the Future box set on DVD: "We promoted the image fully confident in the knowledge that everyone was familiar with the original hoax from a couple of years ago...we figured that no one would fall for the same joke twice." The original hoax was started by Total Film. Read More @ Source Bewitched: The Joker Is A Card 2.5 Original Air Date: October 14 1965 Samantha's prank-loving Uncle Arthur visits for the first time. He offers to teach Darrin a spell that will make Endora disappear, but it is all a big hoax at Darrin's expense. Video Rating: 4 / 5 ...

You can stop watching for Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd and their DeLorean. The picture circulating on Facebook and Twitter that shows the "flux capacitor" set to June 27, 2012 is a hoax. That didn't stop a lot of people from falling for it, including Facebook geek favorite, George Takei. The fake picture was trending all over Facebook yesterday and today. But the actual date chosen by Lloyd's character Doc in the classic 1985 sci-fi film Back to the Future was October 21, 2015. The hoax caused a lot of funny reaction online, including this witty tweet from comedian Richard Herring: "Didn't this Back to the Future hoax happen once before? I am getting a sense of deja vu. But maybe that was on a different timeline." Yeah, it did. Back in June, 2010. The website Total Film admitted to the original hoax. Don't miss: The Internet Hasn't Finished Changing Your Life. Five More Changes Are Coming Soon More From Business Insider...

The man behind the Back to the Future hoax that circulated the web on Wednesday said the viral incident was "just an accident." If you're like us, you fell for that Photoshopped image that claimed today was the "future date" Doc set the DeLorean to in the film Back to the Future . Although the photo says characters such as Doc and Marty McFly traveled from June 27, 2012 from Oct. 26, 1985, the actual date used in the film is Oct. 21, 2015. Not only was the picture shared thousands of times and became a viral hit in just a few hours, it wasn't the first time the same hoax happened. So how did we fall for this again? Here's what happened. Steve Berry, a social media manager for mobile checkout company Simply Tap, designed the image to promote the Back to the Future trilogy Blu-ray box set for his client. The photo — which used Wednesday's date as "the future" — was a deliberate reference to the same hoax that was accidentally...

WASHINGTON — As baby boomers edge toward retirement, they are beginning to transform yet another slice of the financial industry: the market for reverse mortgages, a type of loan in which older homeowners borrow against the value of their house. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in a report to be released Thursday, said that the number of consumers taking out a reverse mortgage at their first opportunity — age 62, under federal law — has jumped drastically. In 2011, 9 percent of reverse-mortgage borrowers were age 62, up from 2 percent during the 1990s. Nearly half of recent borrowers are under 70. The number of reverse-mortgage originations has fallen since it peaked at 115,000 before the financial crisis; last year, 72,000 loans were issued. But the bureau said it had begun to see renewed interest in the loans, 582,000 of which are currently outstanding, representing $ 136 billion of home value. A growing portion of reverse-mortgage consumers are taking the proce...

By Alyssa Newcomb | ABC News  –  1 hr 9 mins ago An Oregon father was angered to find an image of his son, a fallen soldier, had been posted on Craigslist as part of a scam to collect money for a fictitious wounded soldier. "It's disheartening. This just seems to be really low to take someone's reputation and memory and tarnish it to make money," said Dr. Craig Fennerty . His son, Sgt. Sean Fennerty , died in Iraq in 2007 after being hit by a roadside bomb. A photo from Fennerty's obituary was lifted and used in the posting on the Pensacola, Fla., Craigslist website. The ad, which Fennerty said was removed Monday, claimed the man pictured smiling in a helmet and fatigues was Chris Fennery , a soldier who had lost both legs and needed help paying his medical bills. A link was provided to a donation site and readers were encouraged to share the posting on Facebook and Twitter. Fennerty said he was made aware of the photograph ...

NEW YORK—The Coast Guard believes there could be a link between a hoax distress call reporting a yacht explosion off New Jersey earlier this month and a mayday call in Texas last month, an official said Wednesday. There's no guarantee it was the same man making the calls, but "enough similarities" in the voice and phrasings have led the Coast Guard to investigate the possibility, Capt. Gregory Hitchen said. A voice expert has been analyzing the calls. "The voices are indeed similar," the captain told a news conference. The New Jersey hoax call came in around 4:20 p.m. on June 11. The caller claimed there were three dead, nine injured and 20 in the water off Sandy Hook, N.J. Nothing was found, and authorities later determined the call came from land. On May 20, the Coast Guard searched for six people reported missing after a mayday call saying they were abandoning their sinking fishing boat in the waters off Galveston, Texas. Hitchen said simil...

The claimed demise of Phil Collins is the latest celebrity death hoax to hit the Internet after a website that falsely reported the death of Vanilla Ice last week wrote the Genesis frontman died in a one-car accident Tuesday, misleading readers before saying in effect: "Had you fooled, sucker!"  Global Associated News, the same outlet that erroneously killed rapper Vanilla Ice last week, wrote the story, All signs pointed to the report of Phil Collins' death as a hoax. The link used by Global Associated News is the URL phil.collins.swellserver.com and the website cites an outlet called "Local Team News 9" as its source. A photo purportedly showing Phil Collins' overturned car should be viewed with skepticism. If you click on the picture, a larger version of the photo pops up along with the caption "photo of David Guetta Car Flipped," referring to entertainer David Guetta, who is also alive and well. Finally, the whole thing is given...

A reported explosion on a motor yacht off central New Jersey likely was a hoax, the U.S. Coast Guard announced Monday night. It has launched an investigation to determine who was responsible for the extensive search and rescue operation that officials said cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The multiagency mission was launched after authorities received an emergency radio transmission around 4:20 p.m. Monday from a boat identifying itself as the Blind Date. The caller reported the boat was 17 nautical miles east of Sandy Hook and had 21 people aboard and several people were injured. The caller also claimed the vessel sank but everyone aboard had made it to life rafts. But Coast Guard crews and New York City police helicopters found no sign of any people or any distress in the water, and after two hours of searching it became increasingly clear there was no explosion. About three hours on, emergency crews began leaving the mass casualty staging areas that had been se...

KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa., June 22 (UPI) -- Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly said she filed insurance fraud charges against a woman who claimed she lost her mink coat. Samiha Guirguis, 59, was charged with insurance fraud Thursday, marking the third time she has been accused in a fur-related fraud in 11 years, the Philadelphia Daily News reported. In 2005, Guirguis put a mink coat in a storage facility in King of Prussia and was given a receipt indicating the coat was worth $ 1,000. She came back four years later and claimed the coat the company gave to her was not hers although her name was monogrammed inside. She claimed the coat she put in the storage facility was worth $ 10,000 and filed a claim for the coat under her homeowner's policy. Guirguis attempted to run the same alleged scam on a different storage facility in 2001. Guirguis has been charged with forgery, insurance fraud and theft. Read More @ Source Elder Cheat Hurts More Than Just t...

By ALLEN G. BREED AP National Writer RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - With their elderly parents seated across the octagonal oak table, Donna and Jim Parker were back in the kitchen they knew so well - the hutch along one wall crammed with plates, bells and salt-and-pepper shakers picked up during family trips; at the table's corner, the spindly wooden high chair where a 7-year-old Jim had tearfully confessed to setting a neighbor's woods ablaze. It was Christmastime, but this was no holiday gathering. Now, it was the parents who were in deep trouble, and this was an intervention. For the past year, Charles and Miriam Parker, both 81, had been in the thrall of an international sweepstakes scam. The retired educators, with a half-dozen college degrees between them, had lost tens of thousands of dollars. But money wasn't just leaving the Parker house. Strangely, large sums were now coming in, too. Their four children were worried, but had so far been powerless to open their...

David Leroy Huebner (El Paso Police Department) Two days after posting bond, a 73-year-old man arrested for allegedly bringing a hoax bomb across an international bridge early last week found himself behind bars again. Police arrested David Leroy Huebner for allegedly making another bomb threat when he went to pick up his truck about 5 p.m. Friday from the City Vehicle Storage Facility, 11615 Railroad. Huebner's truck was impounded Tuesday after he allegedly brought a hoax bomb from Mexico into the U.S. at the Bridge of the Americas. He was released Wednesday after posting a $ 700 bond. Police said that when Huebner went to pick up his truck at the impound lot, he became upset when a clerk asked him for proof of ownership, threatened the clerk and said he had a gun and a bomb. Huebner placed a bag on the counter and told the clerk how the item worked, officials said. The clerk and other employees called police, who arrested Huebner. Further investigation show...

By CARLOS BOETTCHER | ABC News  –  Wed, Jun 20, 2012 The Coast Guard announced Wednesday that the hoax distress call made on June 11 by a man claiming to be the captain of a yacht that exploded off the coast of Sandy Hook, N.J., was linked to another hoax call made in Texas May 20. The case of the Houston-area vessel, the Skylark, came to the attention of New York area Coast Guard investigators only recently because the incident had been classified as unresolved rather than a hoax. The smaller-scale hoax, a distress call for six people, had many similarities to the Sandy Hook call, which involved more than 20 people. Both calls came from a land-based radio, both specifically contacted a specific Coast Guard radio channel, and both came over a VHF frequency. [Related: 'Forest boy' mystery a hoax] Special Agent Michael Donnelly of the Coast Guard Investigative Service said there were clear linguistic similarities between the calls. The voice...