Our on-campus Police Office, PC Keith Emery, has issued the following information:
I have been contacted by a number of students in the past few weeks who are becoming victim to scams.
Basically they all follow a similar theme of job opportunities (mystery shopper) where they are sent cheques to pay into bank accounts, advised to take 10% as payment then send the remainder via Western Union to the originators. The cheques are then later found to be fraudulent and the money is taken from the account holder.
There are also fake companies offering cheap rate loans then asking for money to be sent to release the loans, again these are via Western Union to overseas accounts. Obviously the funds are never released and there are further requests of monies to be sent.
It is worthy of note that virtually all the scams use very traditional British names and UK phone numbers to make contact although these appear to redirect to overseas call centres or offices. Only when the money orders are sent do the names then appear to be more foreign sounding and have overseas addresses.
The BBC website has also recently stated that more and more young people are falling prey to internet scams. i.e. replying to "official looking" e-mails asking for their bank account details. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8558535.stm for further details so that you don't fall prey to these kinds of scams.