scammed.....what next?

[majorpea]

so what can be done to shut these people down?

is there anyone we can contact? the uk police thought it was quite amusing and i highly doubt that they will pursue it....

how do you get sites like this shut down?

[benjamin]

The site is being dealt with here:
http://forum.aa419.org/viewtopic.php?t=15250
Unfortunately it often takes time to shut them down. If you' would like to help you could sign up for a mentor at aa419 to learn what is involved with killing fake sites.
http://forum.aa419.org/viewtopic.php?p=80813
The more people involved the better, as there are so many of these sites

[Pat Hamilton]

so what can be done to shut these people down?

I know you are angry and frustrated about being scammed and that's perfectly understandable but the best way to fight back is to follow benjamins's excellent advice and sign up at aa419. Don't get mad, get even.

[Taffie]

The best thing you can do is change your password or close your ebay account and open it under a new user name let ebay know what you plan on doing

[ms13381]

Hi, I too have been scamed a few days ago on eBay (fake second chance offer and forged e-mail "from eBay", payment by Western Union - unfortunately I paid ). I am not a newbie, I've been buying on eBay for 3-4 years and on a local auction website for 7 years but there always has to be a first time for everything...
What's more, the same person has been sending false "second chance offers" pretending to be various sellers on eBay (same name, address, e-mail) for the last couple of weeks. Do you think there is ANYTHING I can do about it? I have the e-mail, name and an address that can be fake, but I belive that the name can be real as I know that the person would need to show an ID to collect the money. Should I report it to the police (and which police, in the "seller's" country or mine?) or contact eBay? The thing that bothers me the most is that this is one person that is robbing (!) many people and he/she deserves to be caught.

Any ideas? I can of course provide the scammers details as a warning.

[Scam Patroller]

I belive that the name can be real as I know that the person would need to show an ID to collect the money.

Hi Ms13381, this is what I wrote to a victim a few days ago on the forum, when they asked the same question about ID needing to be shown to collect Western Union payments:

Scammers often tell victims to send money to them in another country, in your case, the UK, as that fits with the scam they were pulling on you, the problem is that people should only be able to collect money in the country it was sent to, unfortunately, this is not the case, money sent via Western Union can be picked up just about anywhere if a scammer has the right contacts at Western Union, when Nigerian scammers are involved, they will pay bribes to people who work at Western Union outlets in Nigeria for them to cash the payment for them.

The scammer will not need to have shown any ID if they bribed someone, also, the scammers usually ask the victim to send them the money transfer control number (MTCN), and at the same time, they ask for the security test question and answer, the question and answer is supposed to be a security feature of Western Union, it is only supposed to be used in certain circumstances, for example, say you are on holiday in a foreign country and you have your bag stolen, and inside the bag is all of your money and all of your ID's, that leaves you with no money and no ID, that's where the security test question and answer comes in.

You can get a friend or relative to send you money via Western Union, you would normally need ID to collect it, but when they send they payment to you, they can tell you the test question and answer over the phone, this allows you to collect your money from Western Union without having to show any ID, unfortunately, scammers abuse this flaw in the Western Union rules for fraudlent purposes, they never have to show ID once they have the MTCN and test question and answer.

[Julia]

yes please do provide the scammer's information. That way people will be able to find information on them, when doing a search.

[ms13381]

Ok, the scammer's details are:

MARIAH GANLORD
ANTONOPOULOU 138
MAGNISIA
VOLOS 38221 GREECE

e-mail: [email protected]

I googled the e-mail when I started getting suspicious (the "seller" claims he/she never received the money and wants me to send a scan of the WU receipt) and I also found 2 other posts that prove that the same person has been emailing various people in different countries (I'm from Poland) and posing as different sellers (I got exactly the same e-mail...):

Dear **********, I am mikeysvauxshack ([email protected]) on eBay, i recently listed an auction titled: Vauxhall Nova 1.4SR Distributor Coil complete - item#: 110226927691 and I have just been contacted by the eBay staff who informed me that the winner of this item got rejected due to security reasons. Your last auctioned bid of GBP **** prior to being outbided is taken into consideration as eBay policy automatically proclaims you to be the winner by default. Nevertheless, I need your agreement on this and your details so I may contact eBay to confirm your winning position otherwise I will have to relist the item.
If interested do reply with your details such as name and address.
Thank you
ps: i will support the shipping costs, so the total for you to pay would be GBP ****

and

“…I am namebrandgolfshirts ([email protected]) on eBay, i recently listed an auction titled: 4 NEW ADIDAS CLIMACOOL TOUR LOGO SHORT SLV POLOS Lg - item#: 170197125852 and I have just been contacted by the eBay staff who informed me that the winner of this item got rejected due to security reasons. Your last auctioned bid of US $116.16 prior to being outbided is taken into consideration as eBay policy automatically proclaims you to be the winner by default. Nevertheless, I need your agreement on this and your details so I may contact eBay to confirm your winning position otherwise I will have to relist the item.
If interested do reply with your details such as name and address.
Thank you
ps: i will support the shipping costs, so the total for you to pay would be US $116.16”

I think this particular person has been doing it for a couple of weeks at most because all the posts are fresh (end of February / beginning of March).

Now I have a couple questions:
1) I checked a box on the WU form that the seller WILL have ID so I didn't use the test question & answer option, does that mean that the person would have to show his/her ID? I'm going to WU in the morning just to check if the money was collected (and I'm hoping that it hasn't but I'm sure it's long gone )...
2) The "seller" has my name, e-mail and address (for shipping), do you think he/she can use it in any way that would be dangerous for me in any way (no bank details, passwords, etc.)
3) The person who scammed me doesn't know that I know and she/he keeps e-mailing me and making up stories. I don't know if that gives me an advantage but I'm trying to figure out what to do...

Sorry for any mistakes I've made (English is not my mother tongue) and if I missed any information from your previous posts, I'm so angry and nervous It's a fresh case (I sent the money on Thursday evening) and the amount was about 100 EUR (so about $150 in my country), the item was something that I really wanted and it was supposed to be a birthday present...

[Scam Patroller]

1) I checked a box on the WU form that the seller WILL have ID so I didn't use the test question & answer option, does that mean that the person would have to show his/her ID?

1) Normally, yes, they would have to show ID, but as I mentioned in my last reply, the scammer will not need to have shown any ID if they bribed someone in a Western Union office to cash the payment, that happens a lot, or, they could have used stolen ID in the name of their adopted scamming persona, again leaving no trace back to the scammer.

2) You have nothing to worry about if they don't have your bank details or social security number etc

3) It does give you a little bit of an advantage, I see the scammer uses Gmail, so there is no way to check where they are emailing from as Gmail strips the senders IP address and replaces it with the Gmail server IP, maybe you could email them and say their emails are all garbled characters and text from Gmail, can they email you from a different email like Yahoo or Hotmail instead, that way you can at least get their IP address to see what country they are mailing from.

[ms13381]

Thanks, I don't think that IP address will do any good, but I'll try. I didn't send any other details, I changed my eBay user name and password and in a few months I even will be living somewhere else and change my last name (wedding coming soon )

But I just would like to write to this scum you know, and tell him/her that I know he/she is a scammer and I want my money back or else... But I don't think it would do any good for me and I don't want to piss off the scammer, I don't know what kind of person he/she is.
How should I end contact with this person, just pretend that the money got lost somewhere in WU and neither of us has it, or write to him/her that I know that the money has been collected (and then probably never hear from her/him again)? I know that the money is lost but I'm sooo mad and I feel totally helpless..

[Ralph]

Hi and welcome

Sorry to hear that you have lost money in this way.

You would be surprised what we can find out with an IP address, most scammers will change email address often but their IP address will remain the same while they continue to use a particular internet cafe, we can often tell what country they are in and sometimes we can tell which internet cafe they are emailing from.

We can also get information on other scams that have occured from the same IP.

Unfortunately gmail does not send this IP information and we cant check in this case.

there are many scams out there and many more variations on each scam.

A common theme for most, but not all scams involves the victim sending money via Western Union.

We do have a section here on recovery scams, please take a moment to
read the information in that section and be ready for it if you do recieve an email suggesting you may get your money back.


The only consolation I can give you is that by coming here to tell your story and posting the information may prevent others from becoming victims of this scam.


Take care out there, if ever in doubt please come back and ask, we can usually tell you very quickly if an email you have recieved is genuine.

[ms13381]

Hi, thanks for all the advice... There are some new facts considering my case though.
I got the local Western Union interested because when I went to the office where I sent the money to check if (by any chance) it maybe hasn't been collected yet, they couldn't find the MTCN in their system. I checked it on the WU.com site and after entering the number you get the message that the transaction is unknown. Does this mean that the scammer is hacking WU or has someone in WU helping him with the scams so all transactions magically disappear from their system?

Anyway, they found it very suspicious so the guy from the WU office contacted their local headquarters and someone came to talk to me, they want me to file a standard complaint but also a detailed description of the situation with all the information that I got from the scammer attached. They say it's good that I reported it because this person will be added to their black list and will not be able to collect any money by WU from now on (at least not under that name ). Of course they are looking for the person who collected the money and the WU office where she/he did it (because they somehow found out that it has been collected) but, well - good luck with that. But if they did, I would be so happy.

I tried to get some other e-mail address but I think the scammer got suspicious because he/she ceased communication with me. Oh well.

One more thing: I found this site: www.econsumer.gov and I don't know if it's safe to fill in their complaint form? After this scam I got extra careful

[Lynn]

ms13381:

Sorry to hear you were scammed.

I checked the site and it's a valid site. It is owned by the FTC.

I also looked at the complaint form:

- It uses HTTPS for the complaint form page. So it is a secure form.
- Most of the fields about your personal information are NOT required. So feel free to enter the information you are comfortable with entering.

Below is the site info for your reference:

IP Information for 164.62.4.45
IP Location: United States United States Raleigh Federal Trade Commission
Resolve Host: www.econsumer.gov
IP Address: 164.62.4.45 [Whois] [Reverse-Ip] [Ping] [DNS Lookup] [Traceroute]
SSL Cert: www.econsumer.gov expires in 437 days.
Blacklist Status: Clear
Whois Record

OrgName: Federal Trade Commission
OrgID: FTC
Address: 600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
City: Washington
StateProv: DC
PostalCode: 20580
Country: US

NetRange: 164.62.0.0 - 164.62.255.255
CIDR: 164.62.0.0/16
NetName: FTCNET
NetHandle: NET-164-62-0-0-1
Parent: NET-164-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: NS1.FTC.GOV
NameServer: NS2.FTC.GOV
Comment:
RegDate: 1992-12-09
Updated: 2006-01-05

OrgTechHandle: JGA136-ARIN
OrgTechName: Gavin, John
OrgTechPhone: +1-202-326-3103
OrgTechEmail: