OK, so what’s up with people from Nigeria? They are already legendary for their infamous “419 scams,” which get their name from the section of the Nigerian penal code that deal with such crimes. Back in February a member of a group of Nigerian immigrants in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area plead guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud.

Olayemi Lateef Banjoko was one of 10 suspects that were rounded up after their scheme netted them somewhere around $650,000 by creating phony credit cards using personal information belonging Capital One bank customers. The information was somehow obtained by cyber criminals who had stored the stolen information on a server in the Ukraine.

It is not uncommon for cyber crooks to steal personal information by hacking into various company systems and then selling the data to other criminals to use for identity theft crimes.

With the phony credit cards, they were able to visit ATM machines in the Twin Cities area and withdraw money from unsuspecting customer’s accounts.

Some of the suspects were more creative than others and laundered their ill-gotten profits buy purchasing expensive automobiles at auction and then shipping them to Nigeria where they were sold for a nice profit.

According to court documents, the criminal group committed more than 4,000 acts of fraud involving more than 1,300 customers of Capital One Bank. A bit of a black eye for Capital One, since one might suspect that they somehow leaked customer’s personal information to hackers.

It’s a shame to see immigrants come to this country to make a better life for themselves and end up turning to crime instead of earning an honest living.

It’s also sad that the good people that undoubtedly live in or come from Nigeria are smeared by the activities of the criminal element.

Welcome back!

If you’ve been receiving a lot of credit card offers in the mail lately, it may actually be a good sign. An article in the Wall Street Journal cited new data from a market research firm that revealed a 46% increase in solicitations during the last quarter of 2009 when compared to the previous quarter.

What’s good about being on the receiving end of these offers is that the card issuers are more cautious about who they are making offers to, and if you are one of them, you probably have a good credit report and credit score. The issuers are less likely to take on the risk they once did but sending credit card offers to just about anyone.

From personal experience, I did notice that the credit card offers I received in the mail seemed to drop off sharply at some point in the not-too-distant past. Probably around the time the the economy started to go bad and people started losing their jobs and homes.

I have noticed, however, that the credit card offers have begun to pick up a bit once again. This bears out what the research reveals, and perhaps the optimistic among us can interpret it as a sign that the economy is getting set to turn itself around.

I actually realize a little site benefit when I receive these offers in the mail. In addition to indicating that my credit report is still in good shape, all that paper is quite useful during the colder months of the year since I can use it as fuel to get my wood stove started.

Thanks go out to the credit card issuers for making my life a little easier this winter!

I don’t know how things work in your home, but for us, paying our mortgage is the Number 1 priority on our list of bills to pay every month. Surprisingly, some consumers are deciding that they would rather pay their credit card bills instead of their mortgage.

The we we figure it, we can live without a telephone, satellite TV and even electricity if we had to, but we have really grown fond of having a roof over our heads! Fortunately, we have not had to make any touch choices like that, but having been through some difficult financial times in the past, it’s easy to understand the anxiety and fear that results when you realize you cannot pay your bills.

In an article from February that appeared in U.S. News & World Report, it’s revealed that an increasing number of consumers are indeed deciding that their credit card payments take precedence over their mortgage payment.

The article points out that some people are more reluctant to give up their credit cards since they can be used to purchase staples such as food and clothing. I suppose if things are that desperate, it might make sense to hang onto the cards and walk away from the house. At least you’ll be able to eat. In theory, anyway.

One wonders what reaction some credit card companies might have when they learn that one of their customers had their home foreclosed on. The credit bureaus make millions by keeping track of just about everyone’s financial history, and it seems unlikely that something as major as foreclosure will go unnoticed for long.

I personally know of some credit card companies that have cut back credit limits. Not because a payment was missed or late or anything like that. Simply because they didn’t care for the amount of debt a consumer was carrying on their credit cards.

This may be something that people find out the hard way. Being thrown our of your home is one thing, but having your credit card limits cut makes matters that much worse.

For now, we’ll continue to make paying our mortgage a priority. For us it just makes sense, and with new regulations and programs designed to prevent people from losing their homes, it can take longer these days than ever for a foreclosure to actually remove you from your home, giving you valuable extra time to find a job or some other way to pay your bills.

Credit card companies continue to anger and frustrate customers with higher fees and ever-changing terms and conditions. At times it seems like every other statement has something else enclosed to revise the terms and conditions yet again.

Wonder where you might go for a better deal? Although it may come as a surprise to some, credit unions almost always offer better credit card deals than the big banks.

One of the major advantages of a credit union is that they are non-profit entities and are actually owned by their members. Consequently, credit unions are often able to offer better deals for their customers. The fact that the interest rates they charge on the cards they issue are capped by regulators also helps keeps fees more reasonable.

Although these facts may send some credit card customers scrambling to open an account with the nearest credit union, there are some caveats to consider.

It’s important to note that not all credit unions offer credit cards. Since about half of the nation’s credit unions do not offer credit cards, you may not have one in your area that does.

Being a member of a credit union does not automatically qualify you for a credit card, however. You still have to go through the application process and be approved before a card will be issued.

Credit cards issued by credit unions often don’t include perks like reward programs, but speaking from personal experience, the credit card issued by my credit union does indeed include a rewards program. If you have competing credit unions that you are eligible to join, you probably want to compare their offers.

Although you may have heard, or even experienced some of the outrageous interest rates imposed by big bank credit cards, credit cards issued by federally chartered credit unions are capped at 15 percent, but can be raised as high as 18 percent due to economic conditions such as the current recession. Credit unions that are not federally chartered are regulated by the state they operate in, but rates are generally below 18 percent.

For a quick comparison, a 2009 study by The Pew Charitable Trusts found that the average interest rate that banks charge on credit cards we between 12.2 percent and 17.9 percent, while rates on cards issued by credit unions averaged between 9.9 percent and 13.8 percent.

Rates are not guaranteed to be lower at credit unions. You may find a better deal from a bank when compared to what is being offered by credit unions in your area. The interest rate that you pay on a card issued by a credit union is subject to adjustment depending on your credit history, just as it will with a bank-issued card.

Fees tend to be lower with cards issued by credit union when compared with banks. The average fee for exceeding your credit limit is about $40 at most banks, but only about $20 at most credit unions. Banks also tend to a fee for a balance transfer, while only about 25 percent of credit unions impose those kinds of fees.

Cash advance fees also differ between banks and credit unions. Banks average between 20.2 and 21.2 percent, while credit unions average between 10.2 and 13.8 percent.

Some credit unions charge a fee to open an account. Most of the time these fees are very reasonable, oftentimes under $1, but some may go as high as $50.

As someone who has been doing all his banking with a credit union for over a decade, I can say without hesitation that I find the fees and service much better than I did when I had my account at a big bank. My experience with my credit union has been very positive and it hard to think of ever taking my banking business back to a traditional bank.

I’ve been saying from the start that the meteoric rise in gasoline prices we have been dealing with are like re-living the early 1970’s all over again. I haven’t bought the whole “supply and demand” excuse from the start and I still don’t.

There is no “shortage",” just as there was no shortage back in the early 1970’s. I didn’t know for sure who was to blame back in the 1970’s, and I don’t know who to blame now to be honest. Was it the producers (OPEC) cutting back to drive up the price? Or maybe the speculators trading oil futures up to ridiculous levels on rumors of wars, or the possibility of hurricanes and other natural disasters.

By the way, unless you are a high-level government official, a Wall Street Fat Cat or an OPEC official, you do not know what really caused the price of oil to increase so dramatically either, but I’m always open to hear the theories and speculation of others, with one caveat. Keep it civil or your words will never see the light of day on this site.

Anyway, that really wasn’t what I intended to talk about. I really wanted to talk about the possibility that we are being shafted by the gas station operators or perhaps their suppliers. Here’s what I’m getting at:

As we all know, as soon as we hear about the price of oil going up, we start to see it reflected almost immediately in the prices we pay for gasoline, heating oil, propane and other related products. Naturally, some of us ask why it is that prices come down so much slower than they go up.

If I’m not mistaken, a common reason that’s offered by the retailers is that they have tanks full of product that they paid a high price for, and they have to hit their profit margin in order to stay in business. Therefore, they can’t sell that existing inventory to us at a significantly lower prices than they had to pay for it, which pretty much makes sense to me.

If that’s true, shouldn’t it work the other was as well? When we get word of an oil price hike, how is it that we see a rise in gas prices almost immediately? Aren’t those same tanks full with product that they have paid a lot less for than the current rate? Shouldn’t the prices remain relatively stable, since they are selling us gasoline that they paid a lower price for when compared to the current price?

This is something I’ve been contemplating for a while, but what prompted me to write about it was this particular news item from Yahoo! Finance News today. Go ahead and read it and then see if you see anything wrong with the big picture.

Did you see it?

If not, I’d like you to take note of this particular statement from the article: “The price of crude oil has tumbled 54 percent from its peak of $147.27 reached in mid-July.”

Are you starting to see where I am going with this?

Check this article out from CNN Money from just a couple of days ago.

Here is the key statement from that article: “Gas is down 22% from a month ago and nearly 30% from July’s peak price of $4.114 a gallon.”

I think you know where I am coming from now, don’t you?

If oil is down 50% from its peak of $147.27 in July when we were paying the peak price for gasoline of $4.114, why is gasoline down only 30% from July’s peak? Shouldn’t gasoline prices be 54% lower now than they were in July? If so, we would be paying $2.057 per gallon for gas. I don’t know how much gasoline is going for where you live, but where I live it is currently around $2.95 a gallon. The math tells us something fishy is going on.

How does this make sense? They’ve been telling us from the start that this whole crisis was a supply and demand issue with regard to oil, and since there was not enough supply to meet the demand, the prices had to go up. Well, oil is down 54% from its high. Why isn’t gasoline also down that much?

It’s things like this that really convince me that there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that we will probably never know about that really stinks badly.

Have you read any of the fine print on the back of your credit card statements lately? If not, you might want to take a good look at one of them. And it would probably not be a bad idea to give it a look every time you get a statement in case they make any changes.

I was carrying a pretty good balance on another credit card, and was getting killed on the interest payments every month. About half of my payments were paying down the balance and half of the payments were going right into the pockets of the credit card company.

This was not a surprise to me. I know how they work their magic with the intent of keeping people in debt to them as long as possible.

Then I got an interesting offer in the mail from the Discover Card people a few months ago. I already had a Discover Card, and had used it a bit here and there but not very often, and I did not have an outstanding balance on it.

The offer was pretty attractive, they were offering me 0 percent interest until next summer. I thought it would be nice to have the entire amount of my payments going towards paying down the balance for almost a year.

Just to be sure I would not be getting in over my head, I called Discover Card and asked them if they could give me a rough estimate of how much my monthly minimum payment would be if I did transfer the balance to them. The woman on the phone told me approximately what the payment would be, which turned out to be pretty much in line with what my minimum payment was for the other card I was paying every month.

It sounded like a no-brainer. I would be paying about the same monthly minimum, but all of the money would go towards paying down the balance until next summer. I transferred my balance to the Discover Card and felt that it was a pretty good deal.

Since then I made two monthly payments to Discover. The monthly minimum was a little higher than what the woman on the phone told me, but only about $10 more so it was no big deal.

My most recent Discover Card statement arrived about a week ago, and you can imagine my surprise when I saw that the monthly minimum had suddenly doubled in size. No, that’s not a typo – the monthly minimum payment had doubled!

This was quite a shock to me, and did not really fit too well into our current budget, so I was not very pleased about it, and I decided to give Discover Card a call to find out what was up.

When I reached the customer rep on the phone (who actually was very nice, by the way), she explained to me that if 90% of your balance is from a balance transfer, they raise the minimum balance by changing the percentage of your outstanding balance that is due every month from 2% to around 4%.

There was no explanation as to why this was the policy, but you’d think they would be more grateful that you transferred your balance to their card, and not be blindsiding customers with a doubling of their minimum payments. After all, it’s unlikely that my entire balance will be paid off by next summer, and at that point, they stand to start making money of the interest rate that kicks in at that time.

As I said, the woman I talked to was very nice, and she offered to lower my rate back to 2% if that was what I wanted. I told her to go ahead and do that and thanked her. Kind of strange the way a phone call was all it took to bring that monthly minimum payment right back down again.

I’m going to confess that I may not have read that original balance transfer mailing they sent me, and perhaps somewhere in there, it mentioned the increase in the minimum payment and I missed it. Still, that does not explain why my first two payments were pretty much in line with what I was told before I transferred the balance and then suddenly doubled without any warning. The woman I spoke with at Discover Card before I made the transfer made no mention of the payment going up.

If their policy is to charge more for balances that are made up of 90% or more of a balance transfer amount, why was that not reflected in my first two payments or imparted to me by the woman I called at Discover before I went ahead and initiated the transfer?

That smells a little rotten to me.

Anyway, I was glad to get the minimum payment back down to where it was, although they would not let me off the hook for the statement they had already sent out, so I do have to make one payment that is double the amount when I first started making payments to them.

The main point is, make darn sure you know what you are getting into when you decide to go with one of these 0% balance transfer deals or anything else a credit card company or bank is offering. Ask a lot of questions and make sure you get the all the details of the deal.

This time the case is clearly do as I say and not as I do, because I should have taken the extra time to understand every detail of this balance transfer deal. It all ended well, since my minimum payment will return to what it originally was, but it could have become nasty if they refused to do that.

The bottom line is that there are very few companies in the financial industry (perhaps any industry) that you can trust. Who knows, maybe there are none. Look at the mess the global economy is in now and its partly due to the greed of big financial institutions who were passing out mortgages like candy to people who could not afford to keep up with the payments. So much for the CEOs and other MBA geniuses that run these institutions. They’ve contributed to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Nice going, guys!

As I’ve said before, these telemarketers are a persistent bunch. At 9:18 this morning the phone rang it was my friends from Chase again. The fellow that called had a thick Indian accent, so apparently the big greedy credit card companies are now outsourcing out-going calling services (I had only encountered these when making a call to a company previously) to these cheap-labor overseas call centers now because God knows, credit card companies have such a hard time making money, and we all know that no Americans want these call center jobs!

Anyway, he told me he was calling on behalf of Chase and I told him, “I know.” He said, “OK” and proceeded with his script and advised me he was calling in regard to my Chase credit card account.

He mentioned the big payment I made recently that resulted when I transferred the entire balance over to a 0% deal and he told me they appreciated it. Yeah, I’m sure they did! They just lost the profit they were pocketing by snagging half of every monthly payment I was making! I’m sure that made them dance with joy and pop champagne corks!

At this point, the true nature of the call became apparent. He said he wanted to “survey” me in an effort to improve their customer service or some other bunch of crap like that.

He then asked me if I am using another card with a different percentage rate. If I had answered him, he would have likely tried to lure me back to Chase with some low-interest deal, but at that point I stopped him I was not interested in answering any questions, and further advised him that I completed their automated procedure to add me to their “Do Not Call” list the last time they called (and there was nobody on the line).

He then when through the standard spiel about how it takes 30 days to complete the process of adding my number to the list (for the life of me, I cannot imagine why!) and I “may” receive more calls from Chase during that time. For the sake of the telemarketer that makes that call, I hope not.

Well, that’s CitiMortgage and Chase so far. Perhaps Chase will offer me the opportunity to file an complaint against them with the FCC at some future date. Time will tell.

By the way, with my latest CitiMortgage statement there was a little flyer in there entitled “Your Choice To Limit Marketing By Our Affiliates.” I can’t help wonder whether this has anything to do with the complaint I filed against them with the FCC recently, or whether or not it’s just a coincidence.

More on that subject later.

I just saw a report about a ticket scam on our local Fox TV station and I thought it might be worth mentioning with the hope of warning others about these kinds of scams.

A woman and her daughter who are all huge Boston Red Sox fans bought a tour package from a local company. The package included tickets to two Red Sox/Yankees games at Yankee Stadium in New York City.

When the women arrived at Yankee Stadium, they were not allowed in since the tickets they had been given were already used.

I was not aware of this, since I don’t buy tickets very often, but apparently, you can buy tickets online and print them out yourself these days. Very convenient, but like any other convenience it tends to open doors for criminals who figure out ways to exploit these things.

It should be noted that the company that sold the women the tour package was not to blame. They bought the tickets off of eBay, assuming they were legitimate. In fact, the guy that sold the tickets to the tour operator was not even the one to blame!

It turns out that the fellow who sold the tickets to the tour operator also purchased them on eBay from a guy who turned out to be a crook. The TV station’s investigative reporter attempted to track the crook down but since he had used a phoney address, the reporter had no luck finding him.

Certain unscrupulous individuals are purchasing these “print-them-yourself” tickets and just copying them and selling the same tickets to multiple victims.

The good news for the women who would up at the gates to Yankee Stadium with bogus tickets is that they were somehow able to get in to see the game anyway. It was not clear how that was accomplished, but it sounded like someone from the Yankee’s organization arranged it or something like that.

The advice from the reporter was to make sure you use a credit card if you purchase any tickets online since you can file a complaint with the credit card company and have a much better chance of getting your money back.

Anyway, for people looking to purchase tickets to various events, I do know of a legitimate ticket seller on eBay named Michael. I have worked a little bit with Michael, talked to on the phone on more than one occasion and I know he is on the up-and-up.

If you’d like to check out Michael’s eBay ticket listings, here is the link:

Michael’s Tickets

Now that my complaint to the FCC seems to have silenced the calls from CitiMortgage and their "affiliates," another company has decided to disturb the peace in my home.

This time it’s Chase Bank and since I do have a Chase credit card, they are allowed by law to make telemarketing calls to our home. The timing is a bit strange since I cannot ever recall receiving a telemarketing call from Chase, and I just recently transferred the balance on my Chase card to another credit card which had a very attractive 0% offer for a year. Since about half of the payment I was making to Chase every month was going straight into their coffers and half was being applied to my balance, it was not a difficult decision.

Perhaps Chase makes a habit of calling people who have paid of their credit card balance and try talking them into some other loans or something.

It was 5:15 PM when the phone rang today and 800-601-9330 showed up on the caller ID display. This time it was one of those cases where there was nobody on the line. Apparently, there was no telemarketer free to grab that particular outgoing call, which as I understand it, is made by machines.

I called the number back and was greeted with a recording that said "Welcome to Chase" or something to that effect. It then advised me that if I wanted to apply for a Chase credit card, I had to call a certain number and if I wanted to talk to a customer representative, I would have to call another number.

It then informed me that I could add my telephone number to their "Do Not Call" list by pressing "5," which is exactly what I did. I went through the procedure and was advised that my number was added to their "Do Not Call" list, but of course, it may take up to 30 days for it to be processed. Imagine that, in the age of computers, it takes them 30 days to remove a phone number from whatever dialing machines they are using.

Hopefully, I will not be hearing from Chase again. If I do, there’s a good chance I may just cancel that card and be done with it. It wouldn’t be the first time.

OK, I guess you could say that I’ve had it. Somehow, the work-at-home scammers have obtained one of my e-mail addresses and I am starting to receive these work-at-home scam e-mails.

I’m going to show you the one I got today. I am not going to change the name of the individual who sent it. It’s probably not his real name anyway and the e-mail address is probably fake as well. Anyway, here is the e-mail I got from this particular scam artist:

How can I tell this is a scam? Well, just visit the link that was placed in the e-mail message three times to see. Like all work-at-home scammers, they are trying to sell you a membership to some useless work-at-home site or system or whatever it is. It’s usually just a bunch of information or lists of companies they hire people to work at home but most of them are out-of-date or for companies that don’t exist any longer.

This looks like all the other work-at-home scam pitches, with the screen shots of the supposed earnings and of course a fantastic discount price of $49.99 (normally $139.95).

Well, the real value of this crap he’s selling is roughly equivalent to what normally comes out of the rear end of a bull.

Here’s the one thing you never want to forget about any work-at-home offer or any kind of job offer! If they are trying to sell you something or are asking you for money for any reason, it IS NOT a legitimate opportunity.

I wish these scam artists like "Mario Ramas" would go find themselves and honest way to make a living. I’m really getting sick of seeing this crap in my e-mail.