Venditoris: Beware of Scams

My not so dear, not a friend, MR WILLIAN PETER, whom I have never corresponded with nor know, wants me to send UNITED STATED PARCELCOURIER COMPANY a delivering Charge, Insurance premium, Clearance Certificate Fee and Security Keeping fee of $125.00 US Dollars with the admonition of “don’t be deceived by anybody to pay any other money”.

I’ll prefer not to be deceived by him and his YANL. Hope you do, too.

To:
Subject: NOW CONTACT UPS FOR YOUR PACKAGE
From: “MR WILLIAN PETER”
Date: Sat, 31 May 2008

Dear Friend, Greetings!

I have been waiting for you since to contact me for your Confirmable
Bank Draft worth of (usd $2.500.000.00)TWO MILLION FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND
UNITED DOLLARS which my boss left with me before he travelled out,but I

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Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) have published the latest edition of their “Pig Book”.

The Congressional Pig Book is CAGW’s annual compilation of the pork-barrel projects in the USA’s federal budget.

The 2008 Pig Book identified 11,610 projects at a cost of $17.2 billion in the 12 Appropriations Acts for fiscal 2008. A “pork” project is a line-item in an appropriations bill that designates tax dollars for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures.

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USASpending.gov is a new website that supposedly will show “Where Americans Can See Where Their Money Goes”

It is a relaunch of www.FederalSpending.gov, that provides citizens with easy access to government contract, grant and other award data.That would be really neat, if anyone can understand it.

According to the site here’s how it will work.
“Have you ever wanted to find more information on government spending?

Have you ever wondered where federal contracting dollars and grant awards go?

Or perhaps you would just like to know, as a citizen, what the government is really doing with your money.

The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (Transparency Act) requires a single searchable website, accessible by the public for free that includes for each Federal award:

1. The name of the entity receiving the award;
2. The amount of the award;
3. Information on the award including transaction type, funding agency, etc;
4. The location of the entity receiving the award;
5. A unique identifier of the entity receiving the award.

Let’s see if it uncovers any shenanigans and pork barrel spending. There certainly seems to be a lot of that around. We will try to stay up on any really solid results and let our visitors know.