Oprah's Not Giving You $1M, FBI Warns Marks

Experts warn work-from-home frauds are mushrooming as unemployment rises

(NEWSER) - Scammers are taking advantage of the recession to con people desperately seeking work out of what little cash they have left, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Watchdog groups warn that phony work-from-home offers promising quick cash in return for an initial outlay of money are proliferating, and that some fraudsters are also using job applications to harvest personal information for identity theft. More»

Researchers find a fifth of people are most likely to be fooled by fraudsters

(NEWSER) - British researchers have identified several traits that make a person more likely to be sucked in by a scam, the Daily Telegraph reports. The country's fraud watchdog warns that while nobody is immune to being conned, the following traits make around a fifth of the population most vulnerable:

• An inability to control certain emotions, including excitement and greed.

Cybercriminals hijack Facebook accounts to pose as friends in crisis

(NEWSER) - Fraudsters posing as friends who need emergency cash are scamming Facebook users out of thousands of dollars, CNN reports. Criminals filch Facebook identities, then bombard their friends with desperate-sounding messages pleading for money. The scammers often claim to have been robbed in a foreign country and beg the friend to help out with an immediate wire transfer to a hotel address. More»

Service for the deaf was abused by Nigerian scammers

(NEWSER) - The Justice Department has accused AT&T of bilking the government out of more than $16 million by purposely allowing Nigerian fraudsters to abuse a service intended to help deaf Americans. AT&T says it's just following FCC rules requiring it to offer a free IP Relay service, which allows the deaf to type messages for an operator to read. The government then reimburses AT&T for the calls at $1.30 per minute, Bloomberg explains. But the Justice Department says 95% of the calls AT&T facilitated were from foreign con artists, mainly from Lagos, Nigeria. More»

Move will cut head count by 30 people

(NEWSER) - This week on Oprah: dealing with unemployment. The Oprah Winfrey Network is laying off a fifth of its workers as part of a major restructuring at the cable network, which has struggled for ratings since its launch last year, AP reports. "It is difficult to make tough business decisions that affect people's lives, but the economics of a start-up cable network just don't work with the cost structure that was in place," Winfrey said in a statement. More»