Cash Gifting and Mail in Gold Scams Identity Theft Expert www.IDTheftSecurity.com

Let's bring in Jolene over here. Jolene Sheets, who says she was scammed by a gold company called Goldpak. Now we've all seen this on— in fact, before I came down to the studio today, there was one of these commercials saying, "You're in tough economic times? How about turning in your jewelry, melting your gold?" Was that the way you were thinking?

That's what I thought. You know, economic times were tough, gas prices were outrageous, and at that time gold was about $900 an ounce.

And you're on medication now that—

that was it too? Yes, yes, and of course, you know, inflation, everything Everything's going up.

You and hubby are desperate.

Right. So we needed the money.

You go, you send in your gold. You mail it, right?

Right. We, first we contacted Goldpak and they, you know, sounded promising. You know, just got on the internet, typed it in.

Well, I tell you what, there's a commercial that runs, like I was saying. Is this the commercial that you saw? Roll a little bit of that commercial here, okay?

At Goldpak, we will pay you cash for your old gold or unwanted jewelry. No matter what you send in, Goldpak guarantees payment.

Goldpak sent me fast payment for old necklaces I had tangled up up in my dresser drawer.

It was jewelry I didn't even wear.

We'll send you a free gold pack with everything you need to make money from your unwanted jewelry today.

So that's the commercial that you saw?

Yes.

Okay, and what did you do? You sent in your gold?

Yes. When they sent us— yes, when they sent us a gold— what was considered the gold pack, and after we received that, we sent in our gold after— only after we weighed it.

Okay, well, let's see, gold, if you melt it down, is about $900 per ounce. How many ounces did you have?

Um, in what we had, the necklace that my aunt gave me, the bracelet that my other aunt gave me, which were very sentimental products, you know, items to me, and the other few rings that we had, um—

Did you have an ounce?

Um, over 1 ounce.

Over 1 ounce. So you're expecting about a $900 check in the mail?

At least half of that.

You knew that you were going to lose a little bit of money there.

Absolutely.

You expected $400 or $500. How much did you get?

We got just over $60.

What?

What?

$60?

I mean, obviously you're sending money, you're sending money money through the mail because this, this stuff is worth something. Can you ever make money this way?

Once you package it up and ship it, you lose. The fact of the matter is, is there are too many variables here. There's too much that can go wrong. You know, whether you are sending 10-karat or 21-karat gold, you know, they're going to pay you for 10-karat. They're going to pay you for the, the least amount of money they can possibly pay. Ultimately, you should deal— do business locally. Do business with local jewelers, local pawn shops where you can get a fair estimate value for your gold.

And if you watch that commercial closely, it says You send us your gold, we'll send you some money. They don't say that we'll send you the going rate for that gold.

Exactly.

We'll just send you some money. $60 in this case.

Well, we invited this company, GoldPak, to come on our show, but sadly they declined. They didn't want to hang out with us apparently today. More than 95% of our customers, they say, are having their monetary needs satisfied. Our return check rate is less than 5%. We never promise to pay retail prices for gold. We are strictly paying based on the weight and the purity of the items. A customer may be disappointed with payment because they paid inflated retail prices for their jewelry. Mm-hmm. Boom.

Of course you can send the check back, but you got— but you have to do it within 10 days, and she got it 9 days into the transaction. So watch for that as well.

Again, another bold-faced lie right there. Just do business locally, and generally you're going to do fine locally.

And if it's too good to be true, it probably is. All right, guys, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. All righty, when we come back, the Better Business Bureau reveals the top 5 most complained about scams and how to look out for them. We're back with our investigation into money scams.

Yeah, still with the security expert Robert Siciliano, and joining us now from the Better Business Bureau The BBB, Claire Rosensweig. Okay, let's go top 5 scams out there. Something called the phishing scam.

The phishing scam. Somebody sends you an email, pretends to be a bank, the IRS, even the BBB, but it's not true. What they're looking for is your personal information, your financial information. Don't give it to them. Don't open the emails. You could even get a computer virus.

Is that the, you know, I'm the guy from Nigeria who's writing you?

That's actually something else. That's the Nigerian letter scam.

Okay, here's another one. Go ahead, sorry, advanced fee scam.

Advanced fee scam is where you pay money up front for the hope of getting something in return. Might be a loan, might be a puppy, might be anything, but basically you send your money and you don't get anything in return. And they're also looking for your personal information and information on bank accounts. Sometimes they get in there, they plunder your bank account.

Robert, you know this one.

Oh yeah, anytime you get an email from General Mutumbi Mbutumbu, my uncle, just hit delete. Really, that's all you have to do.

Yeah, royalty in Nigeria, pretty much delete those ones. Okay, work-at-home scams. So we've talked about these before.

That sounds good.

Especially even today, work-at-home scams. The key thing is you don't have to pay a fee, you don't have to have an investment from a legitimate employer. They don't do that. There are very few good work-at-home scams. You see the medical billing, things like that. Skills that are not marketable, and at worst you send in your money and you don't get anything in return.

Stay away from those medical billing scams. Also there's a mystery shopper. Now that one sounds good. Mystery shopper.

You can be a mystery shopper at home. Yeah, mystery shopping sounds good, but the thing there is they'll send you a check, maybe $2,000, maybe $3,000, saying put it in the bank, go shopping, spend $200 or $300, and gee, wire us the rest.

Yeah.

And then the check turns out to be a fake, and you end up having given your money, plus you have to pay for the bad check. Just stay away from that. There are— I just want to say, though, there are legitimate mystery shoppers.

There are, yes.

So you just have to really check it out.

Contact the BBB. And charity scams, too. People are so giving, but watch out for them.

Charity scams— make sure the charity's legitimate. You can check it out at the BBB and other places too, but make sure it's legitimate.

Pay—

don't pay cash.

Yeah.

Send a check. Make sure it's written out to the charity. And the key thing is call the charity and make sure that they're for real.

But the BBB is the best way to go.

I'm telling you.

Thank you.

Yeah, you have all the answers. Again, if it's too good to be true, it probably is. Robert, thank you very much. Clark, good seeing you again.