What are the liliane bettencourt scams?
I got a text message from an Elizabeth.Zamora@Bridgeportct.gov
sub; RE: donations!!! "donation was made to you by Mrs. Liliane Betterncourtm, contact her at: lilianebettencour@163.com" for more info.
When I made contact I got an email saying she had gotten my number from a web journal and felt strongly enough to write to me, and so on. I printed out all the emails back and forth. I got the wikipedia.org link and a picture of her. She said she had 'Dementia' and did not have a lot of time as the doctors were ordered to take away all electronic equipment. I got a Right to claim form and a power of attorney letter from a law firm. I checked out the bank, which does exist, but I don't know about the contact person. The phone number given is an electronic voice message. I was almost ready to open an offshore account for $2000, as advised by the Credit Foncier but I decided to investigate and found the scam when I put her name in google. It seemed so real, I'm glad I didn't do it. I did send personal information before I realised it may be a scam. So they have my driver's licence# and my passport#.
What can I do now to protect myself from identity theft?
This sounds like a typical liliane bettencourt scam, the tip-offs are:
A message from a complete stranger claiming that they will give you money. Creating a sense of urgency to push you to do things quickly and not think them through. ("...and did not have a lot of time as the doctors were ordered to take away all electronic equipment.") I'm not sure what you can do to protect yourself from identity theft, except to watch your accounts extra-carefully for suspicious activity, and report anything that you notice. For any North Americans that read this thread: the Better Business Bureau has launched an online Scam Tracker tool where you can search keywords to see if other people have reported the same scam.