by National Consumers League staff We’ve been working with NCL’s Fraud Center staff lately to crunch some data on fraud complaints from consumers in 2007, and what we’ve found is amazing! This week, the Savvy Consumer blog will bring you a series of highlights of what we tracked last year: the top scams in Internet and telemarketing, victim trends, locations of crooks, etc. First things first: the Top 10 Internet Scams of 2007

1. Fake Check Scams. Frauds in which consumers receive a realistic-seeming check from a crook as payment for something with instructions to wire a portion back. The scam has many variations, but the common thread is the wiring of money from a check that appears to be good but ultimately isn’t. We were involved in a massive educational effort on these scams last year.
2. General Merchandise. Scams involving items purchased online that either never show up or aren’t as they were described.
3. Auctions. Problems in online auctions, as reported by buyers, including items never being delivered, being a grossly different product, etc. Online auction fraud has been at or near the top of the list for years.
4. *Nigerian Money Offers. These “419” scams originated as letters but now commonly happen via email.
5. *Lotteries. Congratulations! You’ve won a foreign lottery and millions of fabulous dollars. All you have to do is pay us up-front for some processing fees.
6. *Advance Fee Loans/Credit Arrangers. Con artists target consumers who may have bad credit and are vulnerable to sketchy loan offers.
7. Prizes/Sweepstakes/free gifts. See “lotteries” above.
8. Phishing/Spoofing. We have an entire Web site devoted to this scam, wherein phishers seek personal financial information from consumers in order to perpetrate ID theft.
9. Sweetheart Swindles. We blogged about this one recently. When Cupid strikes consumers in these scams, they end up with a broken heart and empty wallet; criminals pose as lovebirds, cultivate relationships, and make a plea for financial help.
10. *Internet Access Services. Scams surrounding email, Web site building, or Internet connection services.

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.

Future blog: Top Telemarketing Scams of 2007

Did you know that *Black History month started out as a week?

In 1926, Carter G. Woodson, the son of former slaves and a scholar who went on to get a Ph.D. in history from Harvard, created “Negro History Week.” February’s theme honors Woodson, who, along with Jesse E. Moorland, co-founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. ASNLH’s mission was to recognize and raise awareness of the importance of African Americans in history. Woodson’s work with the ASNLH led to the creation of “Negro History Week,” which was extended to the entire month of February in its 50th year of observance, 1976.

Black History Month is a great time for our organization, the National Consumers League, to remember our own historical connections to the Civil Rights Movement. NCL supported racial equality from the beginning, as its first leader, Florence Kelley, was a founding member of the NAACP. During the New Deal, NCL called for including domestic and agricultural workers in labor laws and social security programs, and was alone among women’s groups in demanding racial justice. Lucy Mason, head of the league during the 1930s, also served on the NAACP’s board, and she cautioned against “that tendency to believe that the colored worker needs less than the white worker.”

One of the great watershed events in African American history is the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The Court found that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” The landmark case ended federally-sanctioned racial segregation in public schools. It’s of unique interest to NCL not just for the role it played in the Civil Rights Movement, but because the winning side’s legal arguments had roots in another human rights issue that NCL was closely involved in a few decades earlier.

The brief prepared by Thurgood Marshall (who went on to become a Justice of the Supreme Court) in Brown was a “Brandeis Brief.” This is a brief that’s filled with more sociological data than legal argument. Marshall’s brief demonstrated the corrosive effects of segregated schools on African American students and that separate was not equal. The first Brandeis Brief, written by Louis Brandeis himself (who also went on to become a Supreme Court Justice), came about in the 1908 case of Muller v. Oregon. Brandeis, who successfully represented the interests of women laundry workers, was persuaded to write the brief by NCL’s Kelley and Vice President Josephine Goldmark. Muller upheld workers’ rights to work only 10 hours a day, and laid the groundwork for the *Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

NCL proudly acknowledges Black History Month, and we salute the accomplishments of all of the great historical figures and leaders who have paved the way for justice and equality for us all.

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.

By National Consumers League staff

We were saddened to hear of last week’s passing of longtime friend to NCL and workers’ rights advocates, Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA), who died February 11 at the age of 80. Five years ago, the National Consumers League honored Lantos with a Trumpeter Award for his advocacy for modernizing America’s child labor laws, work which started when he chaired the House Government Reform Employment and Housing Subcommittee hearings on the state of child labor in 1990.

We partnered with Lantos and his legislative staff in 2003 to introduce the Young Worker Protection Act, a bill proposed to eliminate exploitative child labor in the United States. Lantos was a firm believer in the need for updating antiquated child labor laws governing young American workers, and his bill would have made amendments to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act to reflect the realities of the 21st century workplace.

“The exploitation of child labor cannot be tolerated in America. It is not a thing of the past but a very real problem that continues to jeopardize the health, education, and lives of many of our nation’s youth workers. These youth work long, hard hours, often under dangerous conditions. [We seek] to eliminate the all-too-common exploitation of teen workers—working late into the night while school is in session and working under hazardous conditions,” Lantos said at a 2003 press conference on Capitol Hill.

It was a pleasure to have worked with Congressman Lantos. He will be missed.

by NCL staff

A little while back, we blogged about a relatively new scam we’ve been tracking at NCL’s Fraud Center: the Sweetheart Swindle. We’ve been crunching numbers lately to look at the top scams of 2007, and we found something that’s really surprised us: despite the fact that NCL’s Fraud Center has only been tracking this type of scam since July 2007, it gained enough momentum in the second half of the year to move to the top 10 scam list. According to complaints logged at www.fraud.org, the average victim lost more than $3,038 last year to Sweetheart Swindles. However, the full extent of the fraud is unknown, given many victims’ reluctance to admit to being scammed.

Yikes!

Here’s one such sad story:

In April 2007, “Donna” cautiously ventured into the world of online dating. Within a week, she was contacted by a man with whom she began to chat. They chatted multiple times a day for seven months. He said he was a wealthy business man, who lived in a nearby city and was temporarily in Africa on business. In October, he said his contract in Africa would soon be up and that he wanted to meet, but he needed $250 to hold him over until a check cleared. Donna offended her new sweetie when she expressed her hesitancy to give money to a stranger. So she sent him the money, and later another $1,500, never to hear from him again.

Stay tuned for more stories of love – and money – lost through Sweetheart Swindles.

By National Consumers League staff

What’s a dieter to do? A solid month into the new year, resolutions going strong: counting calories, exercising, avoiding late-night binges.

But the weekend’s just around the corner, and one can only avoid Friday happy hours for so long. Wouldn’t it be nice if somehow you could actually look at any bottle of beer or wine or tequila and find out how many calories or grams of fat are in it?

Have allergies? Wouldn’t it be nice to know the ingredients in what you’re drinking? Counting carbs? Watching your alcohol intake? What’s an info-seeking consumer to do?

Currently, the labeling on beverages containing alcohol is all across the board, with most drinks lacking easy-to-find information about calories, serving sizes, etc. For years, NCL has been asking the federal government to make a change for the positive and better regulate this stuff with a standardized, useful “Alcohol Facts” label. (Think “Nutrition Facts” for beer.)

Here’s our latest call for change.