An advance-fee scam is a form of fraud and is one of the most common types of confidence tricks. The scam typically involves promising the victim a significant share of a large sum of money, in return for a small up-front payment, which the fraudster claims will be used to obtain the large sum. If a victim makes the payment, the fraudster either invents a series of further fees for the victim to pay or simply disappears.
A pyramid scheme is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products. As recruiting multiplies, recruiting becomes quickly impossible, and most members are unable to profit; as such, pyramid schemes are unsustainable and often illegal.
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using a combination of the victim's credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have defined confidence tricks as "a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct ... intending to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial", as they "benefit con operators at the expense of their victims ".
Pump and dump (P&D) is a form of securities fraud that involves artificially inflating the price of an owned stock through false and misleading positive statements (pump), in order to sell the cheaply purchased stock at a higher price (dump). Once the operators of the scheme "dump" (sell) their overvalued shares, the price falls and investors lose their money. This is most common with small-cap cryptocurrencies and very small corporations/companies, i.e. "microcaps".
Bank fraud is the use of potentially illegal means to obtain money, assets, or other property owned or held by a financial institution, or to obtain money from depositors by fraudulently posing as a bank or other financial institution. In many instances, bank fraud is a criminal offence. While the specific elements of particular banking fraud laws vary depending on jurisdictions, the term bank fraud applies to actions that employ a scheme or artifice, as opposed to bank robbery or theft. For this reason, bank fraud is sometimes considered a white-collar crime.
Phone fraud, or more generally communications fraud, is the use of telecommunications products or services with the intention of illegally acquiring money from, or failing to pay, a telecommunication company or its customers.
Email fraud is intentional deception for either personal gain or to damage another individual by means of email. Almost as soon as email became widely used, it began to be used as a means to defraud people. Email fraud can take the form of a "con game", or scam. Confidence tricks tend to exploit the inherent greed and dishonesty of its victims. The prospect of a 'bargain' or 'something for nothing' can be very tempting. Email fraud, as with other 'bunco schemes,' usually targets naive individuals who put their confidence in schemes to get rich quickly. These include 'too good to be true' investments or offers to sell popular items at 'impossibly low' prices. Many people have lost their life savings due to fraud.
Affinity fraud is a form of investment fraud in which the fraudster preys upon members of identifiable groups, such as religious or ethnic communities, language minorities, the elderly, or professional groups. The fraudsters who promote affinity scams frequently are – or successfully pretend to be – members of the group. They often enlist respected community or religious leaders from within the group to spread the word about the scheme, by convincing those people that a fraudulent investment is legitimate and worthwhile. Many times, those leaders become unwitting victims of the fraudster's ruse.
Email spoofing is the creation of email messages with a forged sender address. The term applies to email purporting to be from an address which is not actually the sender's; mail sent in reply to that address may bounce or be delivered to an unrelated party whose identity has been faked. Disposable email address or "masked" email is a different topic, providing a masked email address that is not the user's normal address, which is not disclosed, but forwards mail sent to it to the user's real address.
Foreign exchange fraud is any trading scheme used to defraud traders by convincing them that they can expect to gain a high profit by trading in the foreign exchange market. Currency trading became a common form of fraud in early 2008, according to Michael Dunn of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Voice phishing, or vishing, is the use of telephony to conduct phishing attacks.
Telemarketing fraud is fraudulent selling conducted over the telephone. The term is also used for telephone fraud not involving selling.
Credit card fraud is an inclusive term for fraud committed using a payment card, such as a credit card or debit card. The purpose may be to obtain goods or services or to make payment to another account, which is controlled by a criminal. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is the data security standard created to help financial institutions process card payments securely and reduce card fraud.
A foreclosure rescue scheme is a scam that targets those whose house is facing potential foreclosure. The scheme preys on desperate homeowners whose mortgages are in default by offering to prevent the foreclosure. There are various ways in which foreclosure rescue schemes work, causing different types of harm to the homeowners, but all ultimately with the likely end result of the owner being forced out of his/her home and losing even more money.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is a financial regulatory body in the United Kingdom which operates independently of the UK Government and is financed by charging fees to members of the financial services industry. The FCA regulates financial firms providing services to consumers and maintains the integrity of the financial markets in the United Kingdom.
Revolut is a global neobank and financial technology company that offers banking services. Revolut Bank UAB is licensed and regulated by the Bank of Lithuania within the European Union. Headquartered in London, it was founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko. It offers accounts featuring currency exchange, debit cards, virtual cards, Apple Pay, interest-bearing "vaults", stock trading, crypto, commodities, and other services.
AnyDesk is a remote desktop application distributed by AnyDesk Software GmbH. The proprietary software program provides platform independent remote access to personal computers and other devices running the host application. It offers remote control, file transfer, and VPN functionality. AnyDesk is often used in technical support scams and other remote access scams.
Bitconnect was an open-source cryptocurrency in 2016–2018 that was connected with a high-yield investment program, a type of Ponzi scheme. After the platform administrators closed the earning platform on January 16, 2018, and refunded the users' investments in BCC following a 92% coin value crash, confidence was lost and the value of the coin plummeted to below $1 from a previous high of nearly $525.
