We all do it. When we're planning a trip to an unfamiliar city or we're looking for a new hole-in-the-wall for a dinner date near home, we poke around online for reviews of local restaurants.

But on some sites, reviews are serving up a steaming plate of B.S.

WalletPop told you about the hugely popular Yelp, which has been accused of extorting restaurants and shops that got received bad reviews. For a price, says a San Francisco CBS affiliate, Yelp will move the badmouthing blurb lower down the page, potentially out of sight. One sofa store owner paid Yelp $350 a month to bury her embarrassing reviews.

Last year, one New York City hotel was awarded a five-star review by an effusive reader of TripAdvisor. Except the hotel hadn't even completed construction yet. Public relations flacks were suspected.

This sort of stuff happens all the time. TripAdvisor says it tries to weed out these obviously false postings. But some readers allege it swerves too far even in that. One travel expert about Hawaii accuses TripAdvisor of twice killing reviews that conflicted with its paid sponsors. For sites like these, integrity is everything. Many publications, though, don't have the resources to do the follow-ups necessary. Increasingly, the phonies are not apparent.

Tracy Coenen recently wrote about the dangers of affinity fraud -- shameless con-artists who infiltrate religious and cultural groups and take consumers for million dollar rides with lofty promises of high returns in an investment that turns out to be nothing more than a Ponzi scheme.

Tracy wrote that "It's not unusual for a company to say they're paying investors 5% or 10% per month on their investments. . . If you're presented with one of these opportunities that sounds too good to be true, run quickly in the other direction. They are always are too good to be true."
Here's another way to think about that: if someone has an investment method that can earn them returns high enough to pay out 5-10% per month, why do they need your money in the first place? If they have a foolproof method for compounding cash at that rate, banks will be lining up to invest in them. They could take out cash advances on their credit cards -- these brilliant investors could achieve a lower cost of capital with payday loans!

Anyone with a legitimate method for earning outlandish returns wouldn't need to guarantee those high returns to investors -- simple as that.

If you bring me your computer and ask me to put in a new DVD burner but somehow I remove your hard drive and leave a screwdriver inside your computer, how would you respond to me asking you to pay for the "service" rendered? Wow! You can stop with the profanity it was only a hypothetical question. Now imagine that You've come to the General Hospital in Ohio to get your right leg amputated and we accidentally remove your left leg, and then had the audacity to bill you for not only the correct amputation but also for the mistaken one! You may be as surprised as me to know that only 23 states have rules against charging a patient for certain mistakes!

As I look at my state of residence there is nothing official to stop them from billing me for a medical error. Instead I am supposed to take comfort in the knowledge that they have adopted guidelines to deal with cases such as these. Unfortunately despite these wonderful guidelines the local hospital has in the recent past billed at least one individual for surgery on both of her knees, after initially operating on the wrong one. If nothing else, I can be assured that my insurance company will fight these charges with the same tenacity they fight legitimate ones. That's kind of comforting. . . not!

Mistakes of this kind are referred to by hospitals as "never events", a slightly ironic term since they seem to be happening rather often nowadays. Maybe we can lobby for better legislation and a name change to classify these occurrences as "never say never events". Before you initial your limb for surgery next time be sure to find out what mistakes, if any your state provides protection from.

As a fraud fighter in real life, I only wish it was this easy. Commit fraud... go to prison... others see the example that's been made of you... fraud goes down.

It's not nearly this easy. Fraud is a crime that doesn't result in as many prison sentences as violent crimes, because our society has decided that violent crimes should be the law enforcement priority. If you look at crimes in terms of how many people are impacted negatively, you'd probably see that the effects of fraud are far more wide-reaching than violent crime.

But fraud isn't as shocking as violent crimes, so fraud takes a back seat. Usually only the most egregious crimes are prosecuted, and prison terms aren't terribly long unless the fraud was huge. Victims of smaller frauds can be hurt just as badly, but they can't really rely on our criminal justice system to lock up the bad guys.

Maybe big bad banks aren't so bad after all. Recently it was discovered that a teller at JPMorgan Chase devised a scheme to fleece 86-year-old Jessie McDonald out of over $300,000 of her savings. The teller, Melindathee Hill, met McDonald while working for the bank, and offered to help her pay her bills. Hill allegedly also helped herself to some of the money, and used it for jewelry, school tuition, and home insurance. The theft was discovered by the bank in August 2007, and they fired the teller, who hasn't yet been charged criminally (although she is still under investigation).

McDonald is under the care of the Cook County guardian's office, and they asked the bank to reimburse her for what was stolen. It took some time, but the bank is now agreeing to give McDonald over $300,000 to reimburse her for her losses.

I am applauding the bank for doing this, especially since it may not have been their responsibility to do so. Even though Hill met McDonald through the course of her employment with Chase, it seems as though this theft happened outside of her job. If that's the case, I don't really know if Chase is responsible for the theft. But I do think it is commendable that they took the high road and are giving this woman her money back. During a time when all we seem to hear are complaints about banks, isn't nice to hear a good story about one?

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

Just when you finished setting up the final Viagra and ED related keyword filters on your inbox, the scamming spammers have found a new ruse to part fools with their money. The new scam claims to offer a discount of 70 cents on each gallon of gas and originate for now anyway, from an individual representing himself as "Gas Saver." According to McAfee, a security and anti-virus company, in terms of volume gas related spam is still relatively low, but it has the potential to skyrocket over the summer in tandem with gas prices.

Next time you sit down with a friend or relative, do your part; remind them that they shouldn't purchase medication, gas or lottery winnings from an email. It seems to have been said again and again but just like the MPAA and the RIAA run their public service announcements before movies; maybe we need to have an announcement before sending money from your bank to another account. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, especially when it comes to reduced gas prices.

I truly wonder how many times local news stations and papers need to run the story of an individual scammed out of their life savings due to an email that touted a too-good-to-be-true scheme. At the very least, it seems these email-armed con men are on the ball when it comes to identifying consumer needs, or perceived needs anyway. I hear later this year they are coming out with a reprinted version of Dante's Inferno which has been updated to include a new circle of hell specifically for spammers. Until then, be sure to check out how to get gas for $2.99 a gallon for the next three years legitimately.

The economy isn't the only thing getting a (alleged) boost from the government's economic stimulus checks, being sent out to taxpayers beginning this past week. The political windfall is also stimulating a lot of creative fraud as well.

According to story on MarketWatch, scammers are calling and emailing consumers posing as the IRS or the Social Security Administration. The callers tell consumers they need detailed bank account information or Social Security numbers in order to process their economic stimulus checks. Those consumers who fall for the scam and reveal this information are then subject to identity theft.

The story recommends some steps consumers can take to prevent getting so scammed.

Back in 2004 a lawyer in Arkansas found out that his odometer wasn't calculating mileage correctly on his Honda minivan. His tests found out that the odometer was off by 5%, so for every 100 miles his minivan would rack up 105 miles. This may seem like small change, but as Bankrate.com points out, even a 5% error can end your new car's warranty up 1000 miles early! The problem only gets worse when you have a car with a 100,000 mile warranty.

The last time you want to be without a warranty is when your vehicle rolls over 100,000, especially not when you really have 5,000 miles left on your warranty. At this point in your car's life it is much more likely to need expensive repairs which would have normally been covered under warranty. You'll appreciate having checked out the calibration of your odometer when your engine or transmission goes out at 100,007 miles.

Finding out if your odometer is quietly eating away at your warranty is really easy, just grab a friend and head to your closest federal highway. All you need to do is measure your odometer against the mile markers, use some of your mathematical skills and viola, you know how far off your odometer is. Bankrate has several steps to take in the event your odometer is skimming cash from your wallet. Thankfully most odometers are computer controlled, and can be fixed at your local dealer.

When we bought our most recent car we made sure that the car didn't have any odometer fraud, but we didn't even think to check that it was recording correctly. It looks like we have a project for our next road trip, especially since we purchased a power-train warranty with the vehicle.

A few years ago, at my 10th high school reunion, I was surprised and delighted to discover that my former Sex and Marriage teacher, a man that I particularly disliked, had been scammed by a 27-year old George Mason student and sometime porn star. Apparently the young man, Anoushirvan D. Fakhran, aka "Jonathan Taylor Spielberg," posed as Stephen Spielberg's nephew, claiming that he was doing research for a forthcoming movie. My former teacher, now the principal of the school, allowed the young man to attend classes, showed him around, and gave him numerous privileges that ordinary (read: paying) students were denied. Ultimately, "Jonathan" was discovered and my alma mater was massively humiliated. I think my former teacher was farmed out to another school.

Recently, I was reminded of this as Yale University suffered a similar scam. Akash Maharaj, formerly of Trinidad and Tobago, got into Yale with the help of a forged letter of recommendation from one of Yale's professors. This letter, combined with a forged Columbia transcript, made him look very impressive, and Yale welcomed him to the school, giving him $31,750 in financial aid. He also received $7400 in federal scholarships, $6739 in loans, and $900 from a federal work-study program. During his time at the school, he received a literary prize, found a boyfriend, and generally seemed to fit right in. Unfortunately, things soured with his boyfriend, who ended up ratting him out to the University. Not long after, his forgeries were discovered and it all came crashing down.

Doing some research on eBay scams tonight, I came across one of the best YouTube videos of all time -- Kelli Filkins appeared on Judge Judy to defend plaintiffs' claim that she had defrauded them on eBay by sending them a picture of a cell phone they paid $240 for. She claimed that the ad said it was for a picture only.

What ensued is possibly the greatest smackdown in the history of Judge Judy -- who tells Ms. Filkins that she is an "outrageous person" and tells her that "If you live to 120, you're not gonna be as smart as I am in one figure. You may weigh more, but you're not gonna be smarter than I am in one figure." Burn sauce!

Always nice to see the long arm of the law sticking it to a crook. I love Judge Judy.

The last thing you want to discover is that one of your employees is stealing from your small business. Not only is it a total violation of your trust, but internal fraud also has the potential to put you out of business. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, businesses lose an average of 5% of revenues each year to fraud. Could your company survive if an employee stole 5% of your revenues?

My new book, Essentials of Corporate Fraud, details many of the red flags that may point to fraud in your company. There are literally hundreds of warning signs that might indicate an employee is engaged in a fraud scheme. Here I'll just mention a few:

Is an employee struggling with personal problems? Employees with financial troubles, addictions, chronic legal problems, instability in their personal lives, or unusual work habits might be more likely to commit the fraud.

Are accounting errors popping up? A company's accounting process and financial records might also point to an ongoing fraud. Some of the best business software will alert you if bookkeeping entries don't line up the way they should.

Sure, we're always writing about identity theft, but it's almost National Consumer Protection week (during the week of March 2-8), and so I figured I ought to check in with fraud prevention expert Judd Rousseau, COO of Identity Theft 911, and see if he has any useful information on protecting oneself. And what do you know? He does. Rousseau offers these five tips for avoiding having your identity stolen, and you know, they're pretty interesting:

If you have one shredder, it belongs in your -- kitchen? Yep. A Staples study found that most junk mail ends up in the kitchen trash, not in the office.

Don't pay money to get money. According to Rousseau, the most common scams right now involve asking consumers to wire money for complex, convoluted and even occasionally believable reasons, and for the consumer's trouble, they will, of course, get a much larger amount in return.

Luckily today it's not hard to secure your credit information. As long as you're not looking to take a loan any time soon, your first step should be to "freeze" your credit report. That way no one can open an account without getting permission from you to look at your credit history.

Once that's in place, you'll need to change some habits when handling key financial information. Here's some simple steps you can take:

• Shred financial documents and paperwork that have any personal information before you throw them out. this includes all statements that have your account number or Social Security number on them. If you commonly write account numbers on checks when you pay bills, be sure to shred those too when you no longer need them.

The first call came from a man in Texas. He said he received a cashier's check from a bank in Alabama in exchange for $3,000 in baseball memorabilia he was selling online. The package arrived by Federal Express and the shipping label listed my name, address and phone number. He called me because he was suspicious because my address is in Connecticut but the bank is in Alabama.

After the second of several similar calls, I figured out that someone had stolen my credit card and was shipping counterfeit checks all over the country using a Federal Express account opened in my name.

I had heard that identity theft, where someone gains access to personal information then uses it to open credit cards and take out loans in other people's names, was rampant. I wasn't sure if that's what was happening to me, but I quickly learned to act on my suspicions. After some research, I realized I needed to make three critical calls, and fast:

Credit Card fraud is not the only kind of identity theft. Identity theft happens in many different ways. You can reduce your risk of being a victim of identity theft if you understand how thieves get hold of your personal data and take away their access.

Here are some of the most common ways identity thieves get people's information:

* Dumpster diving: Thieves rummage through trash to look for bills or other personal financial information. Do yourself a favor. Shred all personal financial information before you throw it away.

* Skimming: Thieves steal your credit card or debit card information by using a special storage device when processing your card. Be careful about using a credit card when you go into a store you don't frequent regularly.