There's something about cleavage that moves simple men to accept the most preposterous notions. Witness the witless people who were scammed last week by a perp who offered them jobs as security guards at the Playboy Mansion Halloween bash.

According to KTLA News, several people showed to meet their boss at the appointed time and place (a Denny's), after paying the cons who posed as organizers an upfront fee of $225 each for uniforms and security passes.

After hanging out at the restaurant waiting until 1 a.m. it finally occurred to them that they had been scammed. No job, no booty, nothing but another lesson on the benefits of thinking with your brain rather than your libido.

After all, for a job working security at the Playboy Mansion, you'd have to pay a lot more than $225, right? At auction, I bet the positions would sell for thousands.

We all want to see breast cancer cured, so it's no surprise that people respond to an email that tells them that sending a single text message or email to a friend would cause a large national company to donate a buck to cancer research. Unfortunately, it's not true.

The email, according to Snopes.com, encourages the recipient to email or text this message to a friend: "What if it was ur grandmother, ur mother, daughter, sister, niece, aunt, cousin or ur best friend that had breast cancer? How would u feel?"

It promises that, for each email or text message sent, Verizon, Sprint/Nextel, T-Mobile, AT&T and MetroPCS would donate a dollar to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. The Komen Foundation is the largest fund raising organization for cancer research, having raised over a billion dollars since 1982. It does not deserve to be besmirched by this hoax. If you want to donate to this organization via a text message, it has a link for that.

I haven't found any reports that this message contains a virus or other malware; it appears to be simply a stupid stunt.

The hoax is a new iteration of an old theme. In the 1950s, cigarette companies included coupons with each pack of smokes that were redeemable for "gifts." At that time, an oft-repeated rumor claimed that these could be donated to one charity or another which would redeem them for iron lungs. Another version substituted seeing-eye dogs. Yet another claimed that pull tabs on cans (back when they pulled entirely free of the can) could be used to buy time on a dialysis machine.

I fail to see the humor in a hoax that takes advantage of our concern about such a killer as breast cancer.

The well known women at wowOwow.com are stopping by WalletPop on a frequent basis to answer your spending and personal finance questions.

This week we asked them: Step into Nancy Pelosi's shoes for a moment: What should be done about Charles Rangel (D-NY)? What do you think will be done?

Whoopi Goldberg: I like Charlie Rangel, but I think now there is too much stuff to ignore. He's got to go! And if he goes ... can I have his health-care package?

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Homebuyers did not have to truly be first-timers in order to qualify for the "first time homebuyer" tax credit, expiring Nov. 30; they only had to meet the limitation of not having owned a primary residence for the past three years, with income limits of $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 for married taxpayers.

According to the Treasury Department, however, 4-year-olds (and other individuals incapable of legally signing a purchase agreement) don't count.

In an Internal Audit Report meant to assess the 2008 filings in anticipation of a surge in claims for the 2009 tax season, as many as 90,000 claims were determined to be potentially ineligible, and 528 of those were to homebuyers under 18.

The federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers is $8,000.

My mother-in-law is divorced, newly retired and wants to enjoy her Golden Years. Because she just turned 62 and owns her house, she considered a reverse mortgage to turn her home equity into a steady income stream every month.

But after I gave her the highlights of a new report from the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) that said, in short, reverse mortgages have the potential to start another subprime-style financial crisis, she decided to look elsewhere.

Walletpop's Mitch Lipka posted in July how the FBI issued a warning about reverse mortgages and the number of scam artists eyeing them greedily.

MoneyGram International, Inc., has agreed to pay $18 million to settle federal charges that the money transfer service allowed itself to be a conduit for con artists who allegedly bilked people out of tens of millions of dollars.

The money will be used to help consumers recoup some of their losses, the Federal Trade Commission said. MoneyGram is also being required to install an anti-fraud program and monitor its agents, the FTC said.

According to the FTC, between 2004 and 2008, MoneyGram agents helped criminals make away with $84 million wired to Canada and around the U.S.

Having money sent by a wire transfer service is a common method used in a variety of scams, mainly those requiring an upfront payment to participate. Consumers likely lost considerably more, the FTC said.

Advertisements trumpeting "Bernie Madoff Auction" ahead of events being held at hotels around the country appear to have little or no connection to the criminal or his victims, a WalletPop investigation found.

Instead, customers who show up are likely to find a garden-variety auction of items from estates and liquidations and, perhaps, the possibility that a victim of Madoff might sell something, too.

Consumers who were lured to the auctions recently in two Florida cities -- West Palm Beach and Naples -- noted the advertisements created an expectation for something that wasn't there.

At the annual meeting of the numismatic world this week attendees have had the opportunity to examine some examples of counterfeit coins from China that are reportedly flooding into the U.S. market. Five key organizations in the field have cooperatively issued a warning to collectors about these fakes.

These coins reportedly appear frequently on online auction sites and at flea markets, pitched primarily to buyers who are not familiar with coin collecting and fraud detection.

One magazine estimates that more than 1 million have been sold in the U.S. already. While the Hobby Protection Act allows manufacturers to create copies of coins, it requires that the word COPY or REPLICA be clearly marked on them. The coins in question carry no such mark.

According to a story by Reuters Friday, a recent study determined that moustache-wearers earn 4.3 percent more than their clean-shaven compatriots. The survey -- which claimed to have randomly sampled 2,000 moustachioed men, 2,000 bearded men and 2,000 fully-shaved men -- went on to assert that those with hairy lips also tended to spend 11 percent more and saved 3 percent less than their bearded and barefaced brethren.

As the proud owner of a handlebar moustache, I would love it if this story were true. Unfortunately, the study appears to be a joke. It was commissioned by the American Mustache Institute, a tongue-in-cheek advocacy group tasked with "protecting the rights of, and fighting discrimination against, moustached Americans by promoting the growth, care, and culture of the moustache." Even ignoring the study's occasionally bizarre assertions, there doesn't seem to be any evidence to corroborate the existence of principle researcher Hans Menjou-Bärtchen, or his company, "Menjou-Bärtchen Research Consultants."

There are a few things you just don't do and one of those is mess with someone who is close to Oprah.

That's a lesson that the several sellers of Resveratrol, a supposed anti-aging product, found out after being sued by none other than Dr. Oz and the Oprah Winfrey Show for using his likeness to trick consumers into trying out a free trial of Resveratrol which comes with more strings than a marionette.

These days it should go without saying that there's no such thing as a free trial, especially if there's an asterisk anywhere on the screen, but companies like Resveratrol continue to take advantage of consumers by offering limited "free" trials and charging incredulous fees if customers fail to cancel the free trial. Take note, if you have to provide your credit card number for a free trial you should ask yourself, "what's the catch?"

Fox 5 from New York spoke to many of the consumers who have been duped by the company and found several practices and claims that should shock you.

Crooks really don't know any bounds to how low they can go. Video aired on Good Morning America showing members of an insurance fraud ring setting up motorists -- mainly women -- for collisions is a demonstration of the depths they are willing to plumb.

The crooks stage accidents that make the victim look to be at fault and then, working with doctors who write up bogus medical reports, they go on to collect big insurance payouts. Video footage of the scammers in action shows just how devious the criminals are and how reckless they are with other people's lives. What's scarier, according to the report, is this type of crime appears to be on the increase.

You didn't complain. So you're going to pay more.

Last week, WalletPop told you about the new $10-each-way increase that the airlines planned to sneak into a few peak days of holiday travel. Originally, that was supposed to fall on only three days: Nov. 29, Jan. 2 and Jan. 3.

But after this charge was announced and relatively few complaints surfaced, the airlines, again practically en masse, felt emboldened enough to roll out the fee on a lot more days, which site FareCompare.com spotted in the course of its routine price checks.

In fact, the big carriers added 10 more days -- an increase of more than 300%, and now equivalent to nearly half of a 30-day month. The extra fees now bleed into holiday periods across the calendar, including Spring Break and Memorial Day. You'll find them on American Airlines, AirTran, Delta, Continental, United, and U.S. Airways.

If you were one of the thousands of shoppers who purchased a new computer since June 26 and are expecting a free upgrade to Windows 7 you may find yourself paying to get that "free" upgrade.

Mouseprint.org dug through the fine print of the free Windows 7 upgrade offers and found out that while the actual Windows 7 license is free you could pay $11-$17 in shipping, handling and other fees.

During their investigation, Mouseprint found that the following manufacturers are charging at least some of their customers for a free Windows 7 upgrade.

• Compaq - $12.99 for the first kit.
• HP - $12.99 for the first kit.
• Lenovo - $17.03
• Sony - $14.99
• Toshiba - $11.25/$12.99

Publishers Clearing House is known for its prizes. You've seen the commercials. The prize patrol is driving around, looking for you, hoping to give you a big fat check for entering its sweepstakes.

Well, television consumer reporter John Matarese, very well known in my neck of the woods (Cincinnati, Ohio) for looking after the little guy -- has an interesting report about how collections letters from magazines are becoming increasingly common.

Nice guy, too. As a former features writer for the now-defunct Cincinnati Post, I used to run into Matarese, who works for ABC's Channel 2, downtown occasionally. But I digress.

Matarese interviewed a Cincinnati man, Matthew Roberson, who received a letter saying he owed $61.92. Roberson was puzzled, certain he hadn't ordered any magazines, and so he contacted Publishers Clearing House, only to learn that a Reader's Digest subscription of his, which had been a gift from his mother-in-law, had lapsed, and he didn't renew it -- hence, the stern letter making it sound like he owed them money.