Scam

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. - In Afghanistan, Tonya Long, a 13-year Army veteran, approved military cash payments to Afghan drivers of "jingle trucks," the colorful transport trucks that carry supplies to U.S. bases. Last week, Staff Sgt. Long stood in the dock in a federal courtroom here and read aloud from a statement she had written on notebook paper: "I cannot express how sorry I am … I chose to betray my country and my family. " She did not ask for mercy, she told a judge, "because I don't deserve it. " Long, 30, had pleaded guilty to stealing at least $1 million and shipping the cash in hundred-dollar bills to the U.S. in the guts of hollowed-out VCR players.

Jean Crump made up fabulous fictional deaths. She wasn't a best-selling author or a fabled storyteller, but a mastermind of an elaborate life insurance scam, federal prosecutors say. For the fictional "Jim Davis," Crump created a bogus death certificate, purchased a grave plot and loaded the casket with items to simulate the weight of a corpse. On Tuesday, her tales got her 18 months in federal prison. Even when confronted during her trial with a secret FBI video of a meeting in July 2006 with a doctor, who unbeknownst to her was a federal informant, she continued to lie about her actions, federal prosecutors said.

If you get a suspicious email that appears to be from American Airlines, it could be part of a scam to pilfer personal information. The airline suspects that hackers have sent out, as recently as November, what are known as "phishing" emails intended to mislead people into giving up information such as their passwords to the airline's reward program. To warn customers, American Airlines has posted several examples of the phony emails on its website. One such email says the recipient has paid $278 for a flight to New York and should download the ticket.

Jianwei Li and two other wealthy Chinese businessmen thought they had a sure thing when they wired $1 million each to a California firm that had promised to build a fine Chinese restaurant in the Bay Area city of San Bruno. The project had an alluring budget with multiple lucky 8s - $5,888,888 - and the three investors were assured it would create enough jobs to obtain the real prize: a U.S. green card. Months passed and nothing happened. When Li's friends cornered the project developer one evening at a karaoke bar, the man, identified in court papers as Sammy Lee, apparently devised a fantastic escape.

The e-mail said it came from CareerBuilder and offered a job opportunity as a "trading assistant," which it described as an easy part-time job with "considerable" compensation. There's just one hitch: It was not an e-mail from CareerBuilder.com, the No. 1 online job website partly owned by Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times, and it was not a job. It was part of a cynical scam that's becoming widespread in the waning days of the recession. This scam is just part of an evolving cacophony of employment frauds that prey on the millions of Americans who are out of work.

So, you have a time-share to unload and a friendly salesperson calls to say he has a buyer. In fact, the caller can handle everything for you, including the Federal Trade Commission approval of the sale. All you have to do is pay a $3,000 deposit, to be refunded when the transaction is complete. Except that you never hear from the salesperson again. And by the way, the FTC does not review or approve time-share transactions. But the FTC did take action against the operators of a company it accused of pulling off that scam, taking in millions of dollars.

The pitch: Fire-affected customers can get their power back. The scam: It'll cost you. The charges: Southern California Edison has warned that con artists posing as utility employees or contractors may be working the wildfire areas, offering to restore power for a fee or to collect money to avoid having power turned off. The advice: Always ask for identification, especially if asked for money or personal information. Get as much information as possible, including name, department and a business phone number.

Regarding "Scouts to Do Survey of Business Licenses" (Focus, July 30): What's going on here? Are the Boy Scouts now working for the government in Tustin as tax collectors? If so, why? Business licenses are nothing but a scam. They are just another scheme to shake down businesses. They don't prove skills or abilities or honesty. Business licenses should be abolished. I can't believe the Boy Scouts of America, of all people, would be a part of a shakedown.

Here is a roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for. Beauty queen - Prosecutors in Santa Clara County have accused the former Mrs. Pakistan World of using her good looks to entice desperate homeowners into paying her tens of thousands of dollars in a loan-modification scam. The Santa Clara County district attorney's office charged Saman Hasnain and her husband, Jawad, with 17 counts of grand theft for allegedly bilking 17 homeowners, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

A Laguna Niguel man admitted defrauding online auction giant EBay Inc. out of potentially millions of dollars in a scheme of “cookie stuffing,” which is a lot less savory than it sounds. Brian Andrew Dunning, 47, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in federal court this week, U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag said. Dunning faces a fine and a possible jail sentence. Dunning admitted that between May 2006 and June 2007, he engaged in a scheme that caused EBay to pay him commissions for generating Web traffic to EBay that was achieved through fraudulent means.

SACRAMENTO - The most courageous politician in California - probably the nation - is a Berkeley city councilman, Gordon Wozniak. His gutsy act: proposing that the government tax email. Yes, sacrosanct, time-gobbling, out-of-control email. "I got a lot of nasty emails nationally," he says. "You are making Berkeley look really silly," one person wrote. Another called him "the epitome of a communist - you and all your commy liberal idiots. " Wozniak, however, is certified brainy - a retired nuclear scientist, a futurist who, he admits, may be ahead of his time about taxing email.

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. - In Afghanistan, Tonya Long, a 13-year Army veteran, approved military cash payments to Afghan drivers of "jingle trucks," the colorful transport trucks that carry supplies to U.S. bases. Last week, Staff Sgt. Long stood in the dock in a federal courtroom here and read aloud from a statement she had written on notebook paper: "I cannot express how sorry I am … I chose to betray my country and my family. " She did not ask for mercy, she told a judge, "because I don't deserve it. " Long, 30, had pleaded guilty to stealing at least $1 million and shipping the cash in hundred-dollar bills to the U.S. in the guts of hollowed-out VCR players.

Not since an outbreak of mad cow disease a dozen years ago have Europe's food industries been embroiled in a crisis the likes of this past month's discovery of horse meat masquerading as beef in prepared-food entrees sold across the continent. The controversy over mislabeled meat in millions of frozen dinners, pastas, stews, goulashes and chilis took a turn for the worse this week when Nestle, the world's largest food company, found horse DNA in some of its products.  And testing of meals yanked from store shelves and freezers in Britain and Germany has turned up  traces of phenylbutazone, commonly known as bute, a powerful equine painkiller deemed harmful to humans.

A sportswriter here at the paper responded to a tweet from basketball star Lamar Odom to enter an online sweepstakes for a free trip to Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. And guess what? She won. "I turned it down," my colleague told me. "It was a scam, right?" It's something I get asked a lot. And usually, there's no question about the scamminess of online sweepstakes. The Federal Trade Commission says it gets thousands of complaints every year about bogus contests and lotteries.

If researchers at the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending are on target when they say the country is only halfway through the foreclosure crisis, many more people are going to be conned out of a great deal of money trying to save their homes. But it doesn't have to be like that. And it won't be if Uncle Sam has his way. The government is coming down hard on swindlers who cheat owners willing to try almost anything to avoid foreclosure. In December, for example, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau took steps to shut down two alleged loan-modification mills that the agency says bilked people out of more than $10 million.

So, you have a time-share to unload and a friendly salesperson calls to say he has a buyer. In fact, the caller can handle everything for you, including the Federal Trade Commission approval of the sale. All you have to do is pay a $3,000 deposit, to be refunded when the transaction is complete. Except that you never hear from the salesperson again. And by the way, the FTC does not review or approve time-share transactions. But the FTC did take action against the operators of a company it accused of pulling off that scam, taking in millions of dollars.

Phone bill cramming -- by which scammers arrange to add small charges to phone bills and then collect the money -- has been going on for years. But it still can be highly lucrative, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC has asked a federal court to shut down a Montana-based operation that the agency alleges reaped more than $70 million by adding charges ranging from about $10 to $25 to phone bills across the nation. According to court documents, the group named in the case went by several company names -- including American eVoice and FoneRight -- and allegedly placed bogus charges for "voice mail services, electronic fax services or other noncall-related services" on the bills of unsuspecting consumers.