In the last few weeks alone VillagePRESS has received letters of thanks for scam advice from Australia, Italy, and USA, with Britain, South America and European contacts using Internet to everyone’s advantage.

While there is a variety of spelling for one alias -- sometimes “Dr”, variously “Allen” and “Allan” with surname “Bradley” or “Brad” -- the content and approach is basically the same. Still with the same message are other names including “Eng Glenn Hamlin”, “Anthony Philips”, “Mike Ellis”, “Walter George”, “Matt Petterson” and"Donald Smith".

The base scam concept is first an attractive booking, then a series of return emails heading to the payment of the bill by credit card with some reason requiring the proprietor to pay something back via credit card. Guess which ‘bounces’ !

Despite how “obvious this is a scam” by those who know, new comers eager at the start in their business do get ‘caught’. The sheer length of time these scams have been running, the peretrators must have sufficient success to keep them repeating.

Provided emails often appear genuinely connected to a legitimate business but the observed email address often hides the real one -- so often “@gmail.com” or “@yahoo.com”.

Fortunately, socially caring business people forward their information to VillagePRESS for the benefit of others. Our thanks to them.