Banklady Credit Doctor

Tag: Scams

  • Beware of Fake Websites Impersonating FinCEN for Beneficial Ownership Information Report Due

    Beware of Fake Websites Impersonating FinCEN for Beneficial Ownership Information Report Due

    The FinCEN Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) Report filing deadline is approaching fast. It’s important to be aware of scammers trying to take advantage of this by creating fake websites that look like the official FinCEN website.

    What is the BOI Report and What is the Deadline?

    The Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) Report is a government mandate aimed at enhancing transparency within business ownership to combat financial crimes. However, it presents challenges for businesses, particularly small ones. Faced with a $175 per report fee from my accountant, I decided to file it myself. This led me to encounter numerous scam websites, highlighting the risk of falling victim to fraudulent activities.

    While the actual government website (fincen.gov/boi) is relatively quick to complete, navigating through the process can be a significant distraction for small business owners already juggling numerous end-of-year tasks and facing potential confusion and misdirection.

    Scam website BOIR(dot com). Watch out for scams online when dealing with government website impersonators that can steal your identity..

    The BOI Report is a new requirement for certain businesses to report information about their beneficial owners. The deadline to file the first BOI Report is February 28, 2025. Failing to file by the deadline can result in penalties of up to $592 per day.

    We love searching on Google and using AI and other searches such as Facebook search, but as you can see, there are many scam artists ready to take your money on things such as hotel searches and masquerading as government websites.

    The actual .GOV website to file the BOI report.

    How to Avoid Scams

    • Never enter your credit card information on a BOI Report filing website. The FinCEN BOI Report is free to file.
    • Only use the official FinCEN website: The legitimate website address is fincen.gov/boi. Look out for typos or lookalike domains such as boir.com in the address bar.
    • Be cautious of unsolicited emails or calls about the BOI Report. FinCEN will not contact you directly to request your filing.
    • Don’t trust TikTok or Youtube videos on this subject

    How to File a BOI Report

    The BOI Report can be filed electronically through the FinCEN website. You will need to create an account and gather some information about your business and its beneficial owners.

    Here are the steps to file a BOI Report:

    1. Go to the FinCEN (make sure it says .GOV in the url at the top of the browser) website
    2. Click on “File a BOI Report”
    3. Create an account or sign in to your existing account
    4. Follow the instructions to complete the BOI Report

    By following these steps, you can ensure that you are filing your BOI Report correctly and avoiding any scams.

    The biggest take from this is that here we have a fraudulent business taking advantage of a government report set up to be more transparent about financial crimes. Someone tell us how this makes sense and why no one is being arrested over this?

  • Don’t Believe Anything Equifax Says in the Breach of 1/2 the U.S. Population

    Don’t Believe Anything Equifax Says in the Breach of 1/2 the U.S. Population

    First, Let’s start with the Banklady’s take on the Reasons why the Equifax data breach is a total disaster:

    1. Security breach on their end.
    2. They knew a month ago and waited this long to give the details to the people impacted (that’s us).
    3. It looks like some of their shady executives were dumping stock in the meantime.
    4. Their website to “help” looks like it was designed by the slowest kid in fourth grade. People are questioning whether to even trust that site.
    5. Once you enter your information on the makeshift site they made to check to see if you have been on of the people affected it doesn’t even tell you if were impacted for sure.
    6. The site won’t let you enroll for any help and they won’t send a reminder when that’s ready.

    Equifax as we have told you about in the past is one of the nation’s three main credit reporting agencies. They announced a “cybersecurity incident” that could potentially impact roughly 143 million U.S. consumers. They knew about it for weeks before they revealed it to the general population. The news also comes just months after a breach occurred at an Equifax subsidiary earlier this year, exposing W-2 and payroll data to criminals.

    Equifax data breach exposes personal info of millions of Americans

    According to Equifax, hackers exploited a security vulnerability in a U.S.-based application to gain access to consumers’ personal files. After discovering the breach on July 29 of this year, the company says it “acted immediately to stop the intrusion” and “promptly engaged a leading, independent cybersecurity firm that has been conducting a comprehensive forensic review to determine the scope of the intrusion, including the specific data impacted.” (more…)

  • Facebook, Instagram & Social Media Money Scams To Avoid

    facebooklottoscamWe have all at some point at least learned once not to just click on any email when it says it’s from Yahoo or a password reset to a site. At least we hope you check every link carefully that comes in your email as such. Now that most of our time has turned to Social media so have the hackers and scams from deep within the dark world wide web.

    Cyber criminals can get to you easy on social media especially on Facebook. With more than a billion users, Facebook has become an easy way for scammers to rip off as many people as possible at once in a variety of different ways. These hackers and scammers are getting smarter and more innovative posing as the people running contests or freebie sites to find a way for you to reveal your personal information or send them money.

    You need to know how to spot some big scams that are making the rounds and how to protect yourself. Here’s a few Facebook and social media scams to watch out for:

    If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. That same rule of thumb applies to Facebook and every other social media site, email chain etc. Any promise of a outrageous return on a small investment is probably a scam! If someone is messaging you on Facebook or Instagram claiming to be the owner of a contest or freebie site then contact the page you follow and see if that is the actual person. Most likely it’s a fraud. Just recently a friend who owns a freebie site told me about how a friend of theirs was messaged from a person on Instagram using the logo of the site on their page making it believable. They had claimed they were Paula Abdul trying to get that person to send in information and money. They would not give their phone number at first and when they did it was a Google Voice number that could not be traced easily. People actually fall for this and think they can send money to this person online who seems trustable then they never get anything back in return. (more…)

  • “Chase Away Debt” Relief Scams

    debt spam exampleI received a disturbing email today from Jill West today with an address of Alvera@aybyra.com. I first thought it was from Chase because the logo was so similar but then I scrolled down the page and the MSNBC logo was on there to make it look reputable. The email just looks plain legit if you are one to just click on logo’s that look like the real thing. When you examine the email more closely it has some characters at the bottom that do not make sense and then when I mouse over the click-able Chase-like logo ad it sends me to a page that is hosted at vczzmt.com. A site that sounds nothing like true Debt Consolidation. I would not click any link with that type of mouse over.

    Chase Bank will most likely be disturbed by this email. This is clearly copyright infringement using Chase’s logo and MSNBC’s logo for inappropriate use. The logo looks so close to Chase to confuse people and is highly misleading. Making this our phishing scam of the week. Comment your phishing scams you have dealt with but NO links please.

    Chase has nothing to do wi

  • Twitter Cash Kits Can Make You Nothing

    The latest and greatest scam has hit my email box today and they actually are charging for this kit.  A kit that teaches you how to make money on twitter which is a web site that does not even make money on its own much less others making money from it.  I highly doubt there is any way to make money from twitter or Facebook unless you are using the social networking sites to gain or keep current customers and build report.  People are not on twitter or Facebook to buy things they are on there to socialize and tweet about things.

    The email advertisement states that Oprah Winfrey, Ashton Kutcher, and your neighbor down the street are all making money from twitter.  I would like to know how?  Oprah is not making anything on Twitter and neither is your neighbor.  You could make $1,000’s a week by tapping into the gold rush of our lifetime according to this company.

    This is just one of the get rich quick schemes coming to my inbox since the recession started and many are out of work.  This is only a way to get you in more debt and give people high hopes when they should be job searching or starting a real business.  If this twitter school really has 4 DVD’s of their program as pictured in the ad then that looks like the biggest waste of time known to mankind.  Twitter itself is a waste of time in my opinion.  Mow lawns, make specialty pizza’s, write a novel, but a tweet will not be making any money from something such as this.