Real Estate

How These Scams Work And How To Protect Yourself

Ownerless Goods is known in latin as Bona Vacantia and it means property or funds that have no rightful owner that can be located and the government takes management or ownership of. In other places depending on the location, it is called by other terms. The US has shortened the term to unclaimed property and usually the individual state manages though at times the US government may take possession of the goods. If you know about the goods and can prove you should have them they can be recovered.

Unclaimed property can consist of bank accounts, property, company assets, or any other item of value. Many times a person passes on without a will or designation of where the items are to go. These funds and/or properties are held for an indefinite amount of time by the departments responsible for them until claimed by an heir or the original owner if it was abandoned.

This possibility of being the heir to unclaimed property or having unknown money floating in governmental coffers has opened a wide field for scam artists. Everyone hopes that some deceased relative has left money or property that will make them rich simply by answering a letter or e-mail. Dishonest people take advantage of this desire to scam people out of their money.

Victims will usually see some sort of advertisement or communication online stating that they should submit their personal information in order to determine whether or not they qualify for the bona vacantia, or unclaimed property, that is being held by the government of their home country. You might even have to enter names of family members.

If there is a match the person applying is contacted and further information is required. This is all done by correspondence and no agent will be contacting the applicant. A person aware of this information will not be taken in by a scam.

Anywhere a person has their email or name made public is a source of potential victims for the Unclaimed goods ripoff artist, it could be the phone book, email lists or email scrapers off the internet. The next step in this ripoff is to be contacted by the con men usually by correspondence or by an e-mail and they will be informed they have funds due them. A simple glance won’t usually reveal these communications to be frauds because the con men take pains to make it look as if the letter were from a government or state agency.

Once a victim sends a response, they often get a phone call from the scammer, informing them of fees that they have to pay in order to collect. For the most part, this money gets paid to the con artists, and the victim never receives any of the money they were led to believe they would. As a result, you have to consult info-trace.com/area-code-913.jsp or other such telephone look-up services in order to find out just how valid the caller is, and whether or not they’re legitimate.

Over any other form of payment a bank draft is considered the best by ripoff artists. A personalized bank draft from the victim opens them up for even worse scams and their name, home address, bank account number and sometimes even driver’s license number become available to the con men. Sending a personal bank check to con men can make the sender vulnerable to ripoff artists who steal their identity. The proper place for letters of this sort is the garbage can and of course never write back to them, the next step would be to email or write the proper agency to report this type of scam.

Please go to info-trace.com/area-code-843.jsp if you want to find out more about reverse phone lookup services online

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