Fraud in the News

You've been caught cheating!

Fraudsters are getting personal when it comes to extortion, according to a July 17 Los Angeles Times article by David Lazarus, This scam assumes you’re having an affair (so be careful if you really are). Random households are receiving letters in the mail claiming they were seen cheating on their significant others. The anonymous writer promises to keep quiet as long as they’re paid a significant amount of money through bitcoin — an untraceable cryptocurrency that makes it difficult to pinpoint the perpetrator.

According to the article, the scammer makes the cheating allegations appear legitimate by personalizing the letters to specific neighborhoods and providing streets or locations that the recipients might’ve visited.

Lazarus writes that it’s easy to obtain names and addresses for specific ZIP codes to create a mailing campaign. Those who aren’t cheaters, single or can spot a scam a mile away don’t have to worry. Still, as Lazarus writes, “It’s a sad commentary on our society that this isn’t an unreasonable gamble on the scammer’s part.”

Rent-to-own housing scams

When the housing market improves, so do options for purchasing homes. One possibility is rent to own — but the deals aren’t always legitimate. In the July 18 NBC DFW News story by Ken Kalthoff, Tenants Claim Fraud in Rent to Own Housing Deals, dozens of unsuspecting tenants signed ordinary leases they thought would turn into purchase options. According to the article, Pauline Coronado’s real-estate operation catered to many Spanish-speaking clients who thought they were signing papers to eventually become homeowners. However, these leases contained no such agreement.

According to fraud complaints filed against Coronado, she apparently worked under the guise of a licensed realtor. A license holder search of the Texas Real Estate Commission records, according to the article, returned no broker or agent license for “Pauline Coronado” in Irving. The Dallas County, Texas District Attorney urges victims to report any similar incidents of real-estate fraud.

A feel-good end to this fraud

According to a July 13 FBI News article, Sports Memorabilia Fraud Case Yields Unexpected Benefit for Chicago Youth Baseball Leagues, fraud examinations do more than just catch the bad guys.

In 2017, a federal judge sentenced John Rogers to 12 years in prison for forging sports memorabilia worth millions of dollars. Rogers forged the signatures of some of sports’ finest, like Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth, onto baseball bats and sold them to investors. Instead of destroying the equipment after Rogers’ sentencing, Special Agent Brian Busokas and other agents from the FBI’s Chicago Division donated them to inner-city youth leagues sponsored by the Chicago White Sox after they chemically removed the forged signatures.

Busokas said the billion-dollar sports memorabilia industry is, of course, very appealing to scammers.