Don't Fall for These Classic Scams

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Even in an era when a sizable proportion of fraud has migrated online, most con artists ply their trade on the phone, via U.S. mail, and even door to door. Here are a few of the most enduring con games. If you encounter them, simply don't engage.

IRS Imposters

News accounts in October 2016 reported that a notorious fraud swindled victims out of up to $150,000 a day by convincing them they owed the IRS money. And while news reports in April of last year said that the alleged ringleader of the network of call centers was arrested in Mumbai, this type of con is still going strong.

In a recent version making the rounds, scammers target deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals who use a video relay service, a type of video telecommunication, instead of a regular telephone. Placing a video phone call, the scammers claim to be from the IRS, providing fake names and IRS identification badge numbers, and ask for personal information.

Another variation on the con targets recent immigrants and other non-native English speakers. Scammers call, addressing their victims in their native language, and may threaten them with arrest, deportation, or suspension of their driver’s license if they don’t supply the information demanded.

Less-polished fraudsters also engage in imposter scams. A telltale sign is the use of “scammer grammar” in email and on the phone, communications that contain spelling errors or subject-verb disagreements.

Home Repairs and Security Checks

Many con artists show up on doorsteps claiming to be contractors offering to inspect a roof or driveway, gratis. They then declare it in need of an overhaul, get victims to fork over an advance cash payment for “supplies,” and skip town.

Another variation on this theme: “Representatives” who have spotted a home-security sign in your yard will knock on your door, hand you a business card, and inform you that, while you might not have yet received an official letter, your security company was just acquired by their company, which is now upgrading clients’ systems. The scam that follows might involve crooks coming inside your home to dismantle your system and case your house for a future robbery, install shoddy or worthless equipment, and/or get you to sign a draconian contract.

Grandparents Scam

Many scoff at the very idea of ever falling for this long-running phone fraud—until they get a call from a “grandchild” or other loved one in desperate need of money to pay for medical treatment.

“Victims will tell us, ‘I knew everything about this scam, and yet when I picked up the phone and this person said she was my granddaughter and was in trouble, everything I had in my brain went out the window and my emotions took over,’ ” says Amy Nofziger, a fraud expert at AARP. She notes that “we still see about two or three victims of this scam a week” on the organization’s Fraud Network helpline.

Lotteries and Sweepstakes

According to one study, these bogus jackpots nabbed nearly 10 percent of the fraud victims surveyed. Typically, the con begins with a phone call congratulating you on winning a contest you probably don’t remember entering—an objection the scammers skillfully overrule. But before you can receive your winnings (a car, a vacation, a big check), you must first pay taxes, fees, or other expenses via a wire transfer or prepaid debit card. The “winner” sends off the money, but the jackpot never arrives.

Editor's Note: This article also appeared in the June 2018 issue of Consumer Reports magazine.

Passengers heard window popping on Southwest plane

CLEVELAND (AP) -- A cracked window forced a Southwest Airlines plane heading from Chicago to New Jersey to land in Cleveland on Wednesday, just two weeks after a jet engine blew apart and broke a window in a deadly accident aboard another Southwest flight.

There were no reports of injuries after Flight 957 landed safely after making an abrupt turn toward Cleveland while over Lake Erie, according to tracking data from FlightAware.com.

Some of the 76 passengers told The Associated Press said that they heard popping and those sitting near the window moved away quickly. They said the plane's crew handled the situation smoothly.

Dallas-based Southwest said that the plane was diverted to examine damage to one of the three layers in the window, but didn't immediately release details on how it was broken. Photos taken by passengers and posted on social media showed one window with a large, jagged crack.

Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Brandy King said that the plane never lost cabin pressure — that would have triggered oxygen masks to drop down for passengers — and that the pilots did not declare an emergency before landing.

There were no other mechanical problems with the Boeing 737, which was taken out of service, King said.

The timing of the incident could hardly be worse for Dallas-based Southwest, the nation's fourth-biggest airline. Airline executives said last week they have seen ticket sales slow since the April 17 engine failure than sent debris flying into a plane, breaking a window and killing a passenger, 43-year-old Jennifer Riordan of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Southwest estimates the drop in sales will cost it between $50 million and $100 million.

Robert Mann, an airline consultant and former American Airlines executive, said windows are periodically polished to remove crazing, the formation of tiny cracks in the acrylic windows from exposure to chemicals and the sun's rays. He said he couldn't recall a similar incident caused by crazing and that the pilots were right to make a quick landing.

The window on the flight that landed in Philadelphia blew out after being hit by a loose engine part and Riordan died of injuries suffered after she was partially sucked out.

After the Philadelphia emergency landing, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered inspections of more jet engines like the one that blew apart at 32,000 feet on that Boeing 737 jet heading from New York to Dallas. The National Transportation Safety Board believes one of the blades snapped on the Southwest flight, hurling debris that broke a window.

Boeing declined to identify the supplier that manufactured the windows on its 737-700s, the model involved in Wednesday's incident and last month's fatal accident.

Porn star Stormy Daniels sues President Trump for defamation

The porn actress alleging an affair with President Donald Trump is escalating her legal fight, suing the president for defamation.

Stormy Daniels filed the complaint in federal court in New York on Monday. At issue is a tweet Trump made in which he dismissed a composite sketch that Daniels says depicted a man who threatened her in 2011 to stay quiet about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump.

In the tweet earlier in April, Trump said: "A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!"

The filing says the tweet was "false and defamatory," arguing that Trump was speaking about Daniels and that he "knew that his false, disparaging statement would be read by people around the world, as well as widely reported." It also says Daniels has been "exposed to death threats and other threats of physical violence."

Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, is seeking a jury trial and unspecified damages. Her attorney Michael Avenatti said Monday: "We intend on teaching Mr. Trump that you cannot simply make things up about someone and disseminate them without serious consequences."

The lawsuit is the latest legal move from Daniels, who already is suing to be released from a non-disclosure deal she agreed to days before the 2016 election in exchange for $130,000. The payment was made by the president's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. That civil lawsuit was delayed in federal court in Los Angeles on Friday, with the judge citing a criminal investigation that Cohen is facing.

Cohen asked for a delay after FBI agents raided his home and office several weeks ago. The FBI was seeking records about the nondisclosure agreement. Cohen's attorney said in court last week that because the criminal investigation overlaps with issues in the lawsuit, his client's right against self-incrimination could be adversely impacted because he won't be able to respond and defend himself.

Aided by her hard-charging attorney, Michael Avenatti, Daniels has aggressively sought to keep her case in the public eye. Several weeks ago, she revealed a sketch on ABC's "The View" that she said depicts the man who warned her in 2011 to stay quiet about a 2006 tryst with Trump.

Trump faces a number of allegations about his sexual exploits long before he ran for president. The White House says Trump did not have a sexual encounter with Daniels, and the president has denied the other allegations as well.

Trump is also facing a New York defamation lawsuit filed by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on "The Apprentice." Zervos has accused Trump of unwanted sexual contact in 2007 and sued him after he dismissed the claims as made up. A judge ruled that lawsuit can move forward.

57 white supremacist gang members arrested in North Texas

DALLAS (AP) - Federal authorities say dozens of people associated with white-supremacist gangs in North Texas have been arrested on charges of drug trafficking and also a kidnapping that included using a hatchet to chop off the victim's finger.

Authorities announced Monday that 57 people were charged in the conspiracies. Forty-two were arrested last week, nine were already in custody on unrelated charges and six others are being sought.

An indictment shows the defendants were members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, Dirty White Boys and other gangs.

Prosecutors allege the group beginning in 2015 conspired to distribute methamphetamine in Texas.

They say four defendants early this year kidnapped someone in an effort to obtain drug proceeds that they believed were owed to them. The victim was beaten and had a finger lopped off.

Facebook Reaches Its Natural Conclusion As A Dating App

Facebook will soon include a dating feature in its service, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced at the company’s F8 developer conference in San Jose Tuesday.

The service will throw Facebook into a sphere it’s long been adjacent to but never entered. The social network already has online dating’s critical ingredient, a robust graph of people’s connection, and services like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge have been built on top of it. Now, it’s getting into the dating game itself.

“There are 200 million people on Facebook who list themselves as single, so clearly there’s something to do here,” Zuckerberg said. "Today, we are announcing a new set of features coming soon, around dating.”

The feature will be opt-in, and will not match users with people they're already friends with. Users can meet other single Facebook users interested in similar events and groups by unlocking their dating profile (built inside Facebook) to make it discoverable to others interested in the same events and groups. To start a conversation, you can pick a picture from a profile of the person you like and comment on it in a dedicated experience. That gets the conversation going. Friends will not be able to see each others' dating profiles, Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg took a shot at his new competitors. “This is going to be for building real long-term relationships, not just hookups,” he said.

Immediately after the announcement, stock for Match Group, which owns Tinder, OkCupid, and several other dating services, dropped by more than 15%.

10-year-old boy found dead inside dryer after game of hide-and-seek was electrocuted: autopsy

A 10-year-old Texas boy who was found dead inside a communal dryer after a game of hide-and-seek was electrocuted, according to the Harris County Medical Examiner's office.

The child, identified by his mother as Fernando Hernandez Jr., was playing hide-and-seek and having "Nerf gun wars" with a group of other children in his East Houston apartment complex when the incident took place on Friday night.

"I don't know what happened," the boy's mother, Christina Rodriguez, told KTRK through tears. "I was just inside cooking and my little son came inside and told me my son was dead on the floor."
"My boyfriend picked him up and brought him into the house. He was purple and his eyes were open and he was gone."

KTRK reports that first responders attempted to perform CPR on the third grader before rushing him to a nearby hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

• This article was initially published on AOL.com: 10-year-old boy found dead inside dryer after game of hide-and-seek was electrocuted: autopsy

In a first for fast-food industry, burger chain workers vote to unionize

No major business sector in the U.S. may be more resistant to worker efforts to unionize than the fast-food industry. But employees at one regional burger chain aren't taking no for an answer, a potentially important precedent as labor activists press their case for better pay and working conditions at restaurant giants ranging from McDonald's to Yum! Brands.

After a two-year effort, workers at a Burgerville restaurant in Portland, Oregon, recently became the first fast-food outlet to vote to form a union.

The chain, which prides itself on offering local produce and meats at its 42 restaurants in Oregon and southern Washington state, pledged to work with the new union. "We will navigate this new working relationship together in a positive, productive way," Beth Brewer, Burgerville's senior vice president of operations, said in a statement. "We are ready to support the nation's first unionized fast-food store."  

The company also purchased a full-page newspaper ad and took to social media to put a positive spin on the results of an election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB.

"On Monday, one of our locations voted to become the first fast-food union in the country. This is new territory for us at Burgerville, but we're used to that. We've never been afraid of going first," the company said on social media under the heading: "This will be great."

The April 23 results had the Burgerville Workers Union (BVWU), garnering 82 percent of the vote in support of forming a union following a two-day election. Another union vote set for May 12 and May 13 at a second Burgerville in suburban Portland.

The workers resorted to the process of organizing under federal rules after two years of failed efforts -- including walkouts, protests and a boycott of Burgerville -- aimed at getting the company to discuss pay hikes and improved working conditions. 

"The reason the union started is because workers frequently experience poverty and homelessness," said Emmett Schlenz, 24, a spokesperson for the union who moved to Oregon from Rhode Island two years ago. 

A majority of Burgerville's 1,500 workers earn slightly above above the minimum wage, which stands at $11.25 an hour in Portland, said Schlenz, who has worked at Burgerville for nine months.

"We've been making these demands for two years, and they've been largely ignored. They refused to talk to us as a union," he said.

Burgerville, which says it pays an average hourly wage of $11.70 an hour, has reached out to the union to begin negotiations, according to the company.

"There'd been a real reluctance on behalf of the employer to formally recognize the union -- it seems like they have turned a corner on that," said Kate Suisman, an attorney at the Northwest Workers' Justice Project, who counseled Burgerville workers on their dealings with the NLRB and the company.  

Some 3.6 million Americans work in the food industry, including fast-food, according to the Labor Department. The National Restaurant Association puts the total number of restaurant employees at 14.7 million. 

Affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Burgerville union drew energy from the "Fight for $15" movement, a union-led national campaign to boost wages for lower income workers.  

"As we understand it, we're the only fast-food union that's federally recognized," Schlenz said. "We want to prove to other fast-food workers that they themselves can take charge of their own lives and fight for better treatment."    

The Service Employees International Union, which lobbies for better wages for restaurant workers, has taken notice of the Burgerville fight.

"This is a victory for fast-food workers across the country, and it shows that our demand for unions is stronger than ever," Joseph Franklin, a McDonald's worker in Hartford, Conn., said in a statement provided by the Fight for $15. "To raise wages and improve conditions at work, we need an organization on the job. Now McDonald's, which sets the bar for pay and conditions across the fast-food industry, needs to follow suit and respect our right to a union."  

Ruth Milkman, a sociology professor at the University of New York, pointed to "the youth and aspirational politics" driving the Portland union, also noting that millennials have spearheaded a number of union drives in media. "There is a lot of evidence that the so-called millennial generation has more pro-union politics and is critical of the status quo, versus older workers."

Yet while restaurant workers in other states might take inspiration from Burgerville's pioneering union drive, Kate Bronfenbrenner, a director of labor education research at Cornell University, noted that Portland's famously progressive social climate in Portland might have come into play.

"The question is, is this the Portlandia effect?" asked Bronfenbrenner, referencing a sketch-comedy TV series that parodies life in Portland. "I've been studying organizing campaigns since 1996, and an organizer for 20 years before that, and I can tell you I've never seen an employer in the private sector do any communication like that." 

Schlenz had a more cynical take on the company's public stance, saying "they put on this very progressive, liberal, empathetic face, but at the same time are paying workers poverty wages."

The union also mocked some of the company's PR efforts on Facebook, while calling for a boycott of Burgerville to continue until it negotiates a "fair" contract with workers.