Trading Standards eCrime
A criminal who ran an elaborate business grants scam online has been jailed for 18 months, suspended for two years. Ashton Kevin Saunders, aged 27, from Chesham, Buckinghamshire, deceived small businesses into paying hundreds and in some cases thousands of pounds for online advertising that was never carried out or of no commercial value. Saunders was also given 300 hours of unpaid work, ordered to pay £13,255 of compensation to victims, and has to pay costs of £8,776.
Advice issued to supporters buying remaining tickets
Fans planning to purchase the remaining tickets for Rugby World Cup 2015 are being urged to be vigilant and “buy official” to avoid being let down. With ticket demand higher than any previous rugby event, some unofficial sellers are expected to exploit the build-up to the event by offering unauthorised or counterfeit tickets to unsuspecting supporters.
Image supplied by Rebecca Pollard via Flickr
More than a third (37%) of parents feel as if they have no control over their children playing online games. In addition, more than half (51%) worry about their safety when it comes to gaming online.
For information and advice on safe online gaming for your children, click here
Citizens Advice estimates so-called ‘free trial’ slimming pill scams will cost UK consumers around £1 million in the financial year of 2014-15 alone. Free trial scams are spreading into many other product areas, so consumers are likely to lose more money to this scam in the long run.
Scams awareness month runs this month with the campaign theme of “Don’t be rushed, don’t be hushed!”
The campaign aims to highlight the fact that people are often socially engineered into being scammed, and scammers flourish when victims remain silent about being duped.
Social engineering is where scammers persuade their victims to give up sensitive personal information, or persuade people to take actions that puts them at risk of being scammed.