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In today's society being a good Samaritan and doing good deeds can sometimes backfire on people and put them in danger. Criminals are often some of the most desperate and devious people you will ever meet, and they certainly wouldn't stop at something like taking advantage of someone's good nature to get what they want.

Things like stopping in your car when someone seemingly needs a ride or help with their own car which appears to be broken down may seem like a generous and nice thing to do. However there have been recent patterns of criminals targeting people in this way for carjacking, muggings and even murders.

Similarly there are all kinds of scam emails and letters constantly being sent which might appear to be from charities, or people struggling to have enough money to eat. Instead they are being sent from con artists, designed to steal money from the must vulnerable people in society, such as seniors living alone, or people with a poor grasp of English.

The thing to remember generally is that most criminals like this are opportunists, and they wont target you unless they perceive you as an easy target, which they wont so long as you have enough background knowledge to sort scams from genuine opportunities for good deeds.

Many lottery winners and similarly wealthy people can attest to the fact that once is becomes public knowledge that you have a lot of money, the scams and cons come flooding in. Treating others as you would like to be treated sounds like a good motto to live by, but in practice it could end up costing you a lot of time and money.

Even things like giving to charities are risky these days, as criminal con-men are setting up more and more bogus charities every day. Conning people into donating cash or even setting up direct debits from their bank details paying the criminal every month until the scam is found out are becoming more common.

The easy way to avoid this it to make sure you know a lot about the charity before you donate to it, and to research its registered charity number, which all real charities have. Any real representatives from charities should be happy for you to research the charity at home, and if you choose to donate to sign up through their website, which again all real charities should have.

Perhaps the worst example of criminals preying on good deeds would be the case of Ted Bundy, who would encourage women to help him with bags of shopping by pretending to have an injured arm and would wear a sling. Obviously this resulted

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