Thinking Like the Pros and Cons

And the sneaky thing, he adds, "is that credit card companies give you a due date that is really their date to process the payment by, not the date it has to arrive."

Another rip-off that doesn't qualify as a felony but routinely victimizes vulnerable people is the way some hospitals identify their itemized charges to inflate bills, says Kirchheimer. "I love the 'hospitalese' -- how they hide charges. A 'mucus recovery system'; that's just a box of tissues, but they charge you $12. A 'thermal therapy kit' for $30 is a bag of ice cubes. A 'portable urinal device' for bedridden patients is a $10 plastic cup.

"And these are not isolated cases. Is it illegal? No, they can call it whatever they want. But is it a scam? Of course it's a scam."

Hospital overcharges alone total more than $10 billion a year, he says. "Legitimate studies show they can affect as many as three hospital bills in four, and the overcharge is as much as $1,200 a bill."

You want another sting, don't you? There are lots of pointers for consumers buying new cars -- including a heads-up on a little-known, underhanded tactic some new-car salesmen use to get an upper hand in negotiating the sale price. While the prospective buyer is off test-driving the car, the salesman uses the info from the customer's driver's license (photocopied as a condition for taking the test drive) to sneak a peek at his credit report online to determine how much he can afford, what he paid for his previous car, etc. Not only is that routine at some car dealerships, he says, but it's also illegal.

Some of the newest scams use new technology to bilk customers, says Kirchheimer. In ATM skimming, crooks mount a portable card-reading device onto the mouth of an ATM so when customers swipe their cards, the crooks collect the pin number and consumer information from the card's magnetic strip. And in a recent surge in phony jury scams, criminals using caller-ID-spoofing technology call up people to inform them that they failed to show up for jury duty and that a warrant has been issued for their arrest. The caller ID shows that the call is coming from a local court. When the victim protests that he never received notification, the scammers tell him he'll need to verify some information -- name, address and Social Security number.

"It's just amazing how many different ruses are played," says Kirchheimer, adding that since writing the book, he has stopped giving out his "real" e-mail address to anyone he doesn't know and uses a free e-mail address under a fake name for everyone else. "Some of them are the most common, some are classics, and some are the newer ones, and they're scamming billions of dollars."

Got questions or comments? A consumer complaint? A helpful tip? E-mail details toconsumer@washpost.comor write to Don Oldenburg, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071. Because of the volume of mail, personal replies are not always possible.