If Your Identity Has Been Stolen

The Better Business Bureau has issued a warning about travel and vacation fraud. If your identity has been stolen, it is a good idea to put a fraud alert on your credit. That's done by contacting each of the big three credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and Transunion. A fraud alert will limit anyone from taking out new credit in your name. 15. Set up a fraud alert or credit freeze at the first whiff of trouble. If you have any reason to believe that someone has accessed your Social Security number and can open accounts in your name, contact the credit bureaus.

Error and fraud losses for 2010-11 were just over 8 per cent, amounting to almost £2.3 billion, around £850 million higher than if HMRC had achieved the target. Today’s report concludes that, while HMRC has made improvements to its approachand increased the amount of error and fraud it prevents, HMRC is not yet achieving value for money.

The target prompted HMRC to introduce a new approach to tackling error and fraud. From April 2009, it increased the number of checks on claims, targeting claims at greatest risk of containing fraud and error. HMRC has been innovative in how it tackles error and fraud, developing a wide range of activities to tackle specific types of risk and monitoring their effectiveness.

HMRC believed it was on track to meets its target, but had overestimated the impact of its activities to tackle error and fraud. It estimated that it had prevented £1.4 billion of error and fraud in 2010-11, but has revised this to under £500 million. HMRC has not yet developed an effective response to stop error and fraud recurring after it has corrected a claim.

It has also been less effective in tackling certain types of risk, such as the misreporting of hours worked by claimants. Despite HMRC increasing the number of checks to tackle error and fraud, there remain a substantial number of incorrect awards at the end of each year. In 2010-11, in the case of 1.4 million awards, claimants were paid more than they were entitled to.

A rise in mortgage delinquencies is often accompanied by an increase in foreclosure rescue scams. A rise in mortgage delinquencies is often accompanied by an increase in foreclosure rescue scams. Unfortunately, a crook is unlikely to tap you on the shoulder and announce his intention to steal your money. Thieves come from all backgrounds and live in all places, so it is a mistake to think that you will be able to identify a con artist by the way he/she looks or by the way he/she acts.

In fact, a successful con man is likely to be very good at making you feel comfortable and safe. So how can you spot a foreclosure scam, What are the warning signs, Generally, it is the ‘too-good-to-be-true promises con men often make as well as the questionable things they ask their victims to do that should raise big red flags. Successful scams normally require the victim to willingly give money to the perpetrator (this is the critical mistake).

Bernie Madoff would not have been able to swindle billions of dollars unless his victims had entrusted him with their money. Most email scams promise victims large sums of money as a result of winning a bogus lottery for example. In most cases, these victims will eventually be asked to pay advance fees to allow the phony deal to proceed (gotcha!).

So how do you avoid making this error, The answer is simple--by keeping your money in your pocket! You can only lose money that youve actually given away—so dont give away any money! A request for you to pay fees in advance before any service is provided should always make you stop and think twice, even if the person requesting the money is an attorney. Remember, every dollar you give away is a dollar you may never see again. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Since thieves are singularly focused on taking your money, they will promise you anything in order to get it. Keep in mind that you can only put a guarantee on things you have 100 percent control over. If a homeowner cant pay his mortgage, only his lender can guarantee a particular outcome.

Therefore, if you are guaranteed a specific result (i.e. a promise to stop your foreclosure, lower your mortgage payment or loan interest rate), you should ask yourself, does this person actually have the authority to make this decision, If the person giving you the broad guarantee does not have decision-making authority, chances are either he is incompetent or he is lying. Either way—you should run for the hills!

Dont allow yourself to be used as a guinea pig. As a rule, you should always ask for references and demand that anyone offering to provide you a service demonstrate proof of his experience as well as the results he has already achieved with other customers. So what should you do if you are having trouble paying your mortgage, First of all, be honest with yourself about what you are hoping to accomplish.