Is it a scam? Updated site helps you spot cons: Plain Dealing - Cleveland Plain Dealer

Chris Morris

Amy Mann smelled a scam when a debt collector called last month.

Everything about the call was squirrelly, starting with the caller's insistence that she owed money on an overdue payday loan. When Mann refused to wire a payment -- the debt wasn't hers -- he told her he would file fraud charges against her.

Mann hung up.

A few days later she got another call that showed on her cell phone display as "Emergency." The phony collector -- this time he claimed to be "Officer Longbody" -- gave her the choice of wiring money to him immediately or being arrested at her Cleveland workplace.

You gotta hand it to those scam artists. If one pitch doesn't work, they just adjust their story and try again.

Scammers have adjusted their pitches to social media like Facebook and Twitter, seized on Craigslist as a way to get to the unsuspecting and freshened up their phone scams.

To help you spot them better, I've updated cleveland.com/scamfinder, adding a new batch of evolving scams. Plain Dealer online graphic artist Felesia M. Jackson spruced up the look and made the site even easier to search.

You'll find three new categories:

Friends, Family and Social Media scams, which includes everything from online dating scams to Facebook hacking.

Housing and Real Estate scams, which has new entries on swindles aimed at renters, landlords and homeowners

Phone scams, which puts a spotlight on fraudulent debt collection calls and the grandma scam, a con that Attorney General Mike DeWine recently called an "epidemic."

If you're confronted with an offer that sounds shady, you can visit cleveland.com/scamfinder anytime to find out if the pitch is patterned after a known scam.

You'll also find the red flags that mark a dangerous deal. Links on the site let you report the scam to the proper agency.

Some of the new additions:

Bogus landlord scams -- Scammers use sites like Craigslist to advertise houses for rent. The houses are real, but the person trying to collect the security deposit has no authority to rent the place out.

Bogus tenant scams -- Someone who lives overseas feigns interest in a place advertised for rent online. He sends a huge check and then pleads for part of the money back because he's had an accident or horrible turn of luck that has spoiled his plans to move to the U.S. If you guessed it's a counterfeit check scam, you're right.

Timeshare resale scams -- If it's not bad enough being saddled with a timeshare you can't unload, these swindlers will take your money and also not sell it.

Foreclosure rescue scams -- Scammers target people who are struggling to make the mortgage payments and take the money they can't afford to lose. Use links in the site to find help that's both legitimate and free of charge.

Facebook/Twitter scams -- Hackers use taunting or teasing messages to get people to click a link that lets them gain access to the victim's account or computer.

Stranded overseas scams -- In these scams, a friend asks for a quick loan to help him get through an emergency he encountered while traveling overseas. Victims send money because they recognize the email or Facebook account as a friend's. What they don't realize is the account has been hacked.

Grandma/grandpa scam -- Phone scammers pose as a grandchild in trouble to con older consumers into wiring money out of the country.

Although you look at cleveland.com/scamfinder when you receive a suspicious offer, you can also use the site to arm yourself in advance. Scroll through the entries to become familiar with scam architecture and red flags, and you should be able to spot a scam more easily on your own.

As always, if you encounter a suspicious pitch that isn't listed in some form on the site, drop me an email.

Check out Wednesday's Plain Dealing column for regular scam updates. I also tweet scam alerts to those who follow me on Twitter @consumerwriter.

Enjoy the updated cleveland.com/scamfinder site. Let me know what you think.