| Author | Message | ||
     Slaughter |
WOW! I get to look at Mom's email with her sometimes - and she has another amazing opportunity!
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| Mm128 |
Tell her to NOT delete it from her EMAIL ACCOUNT. Have her contact her FBI field office and FORWARD the email. -Matt (LEO SOUTH GA.) | ||
| Spiderman |
That doesn't help. The FBI gets a million of these a day. Even if you fall for said scam the FBI won't help. | ||
| Mikej |
I got one from the "IRS" the other day, even had their official logo in it. I sent it off to their phishing address after capturing the live link in it and pasting that into the forwarded message since some spam/phishing email has deleters of some sort built into them when the message is sent to someone else. | ||
| Thumper74 |
Wow... you too?! When I had my CB750 on Ebay, a guy from England won the bid and sent me a check for 5 times what the auction went for and asked me to call the 'shipper' right away and give them a check for the difference. The FBI wasn't too interested either... | ||
| Swordsman |
Thumper, what prevents you from cashing their check and just walking away? ~SM | ||
| Mikej |
Because the check is probably a fraud, and even though one might find a bank to cash it when it bounces or comes back counterfit they'll come after the person who cashed it and attach penalties with a strong possibility of charging the person with attempted bank fraud. Right or wrong, it has happened. Just hang the check on a wall and use it for darts, whether one continues to play with the potential crooks on the other end is up to them. | ||
| Slaughter |
You cash a fake cashiers check, it can take up to a couple weeks before it bounces and then you're liable for any expenses you have incurred. That's why in international deals on ebay it's better to do wire transfers. Shucks, I was hoping Mom would become wealthy in her retirement. When I was in Washington DC visiting, I read an article in the local paper about a guy (in jail) who had made a living "phishing." He said addresses are available for a fee through underground sources. He would email out a couple hundred thousand emails and only needed one or two "hits." He made LOADS of money by fleecing trusting (gullible) people. (Message edited by slaughter on October 02, 2007) | ||
| Hughlysses |
I found a great one on youtube the other day. Someone convinced some of these scammers to act out the entire "Dead Parrot" sketch by Monty Python and video tape it in the hopes of getting a massive grant from a university to do more film projects. It's great when the scammers get scammed. | ||
| Anonymous |
You guys are right that the local FBI office won't be all that interested because this kind of spammed scams happen all the time and the perp is almost always out of their jurisdiction, but the FBI as an organization does want to know. Go to http://www.ic3.gov/ and report it there. It is run by the FBI and every reported incident helps. For those of you that like analogies: It's kind of like Buell and the R headlights. One person complains, and they don't care. Once we banded together and sent in many complaints, Buell started the ball rolling. (I know it's a slow process) Please, please, please, report fraudulent emails or any other Internet crime you come across. I have friends that work there. There is not much they can do if you don't report it. Inappropriate anonymous post by "Cereal" (Message edited by blake on October 08, 2007) | ||
| Ulywife |
I just got one from PayPal about updating my profile for security reasons. I e-mailed it to PayPal's Spoof addy, and just as I figured, it was not from PayPal. | ||
| Hdbobwithabuell |
If you send me your credit card info, I'll be glad to look into this. Thanks, FBI Agent  | ||
| Thumper74 |
I didn't cash the check because it came in silk envelope with stamps from about half a dozen African countries, but the check was from a casino in Carson City, NV. The bidder was in England. I had contacted the phone number on the check and was not able to get a live person or anyone to return my call. I confronted the bidder and he cancelled his account before Ebay could get ahold of him. I was able to list it again for free and a local guy bid on it. No harm done. I reported him to Ebay as fradulent and a nonpaying bidder and sent everything to the Feds. I never heard anything about it. This is common scam. They usually never even get the merchandise. But you just cashed a fake check/money order that will take weeks to show up and just sent them big money. When I get these offers to send me more than I'm asking, I usually offer to hold the check untill it clears. They never reply back. Oddly enough, the day after, I recieved an e-mail from PayPal stating that I should click this link, log in and update my info. I clicked the 'properties' and found that it didn't got to a PayPal site. Hmm... (Message edited by Thumper74 on October 02, 2007) | ||
| Djkaplan |
I singled out one of those scammers a couple months ago and send him rude e-mails every couple days. He must think I'm nuts. | ||
| Cereal |
I bet he's hopped addresses and no longer checks it. Your probably waisting your time. | ||
| Mikej |
A casino in Carson City? That one could be fun to play with if they found out someone possibly in England is forging checks from them. Some of those folks don't always play by the same rules as other folks do.... | ||
| Djkaplan |
There's lots of stuff I do that's a waste of time that I enjoy. | ||
| Cityxslicker |
oh its worse, I had a guy come in and want to buy a bike with one of the "guaranteed certified verified authentic" cheques. I simply couldnt believe that he fell for it. He sent them 1500 dollars for the "inheritance" of 300,000. I told him that once the bank clears that check, we would be happy to take CASH for his next bike. Its been 3 weeks, I think he finally caught on. | ||
| Johnnylunchbox |
MikeJ, if the email had a bogus IRS seal, I'd report it to the IRS. Impersonating a goverment official is a big deal, and I'd imagine impersonating a government agency is even bigger. They do have people who look into these things. | ||
| Hughlysses |
As mentioned in my post above, here's one particularly clever case of revenge against some scammers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvyrzQldOKE | ||
| Leftcoastal |
It's settled down a bit lately, but I used to get several of these a day! I guess I could be a zillionaire (like Steve's Mom's gonna be!) many times over if I'd just take them up on their kind offers to let me help to move all that money to my account! They are not worth the time it takes to read them. Whenever I sell anything on Ebay - I ALWAYS state very clearly that there is no way I will ship internationally. Especially to France. That eliminates most of the wierd money transaction BS. AL | ||
| Mikej |
Already sent it to them. |
