… goes after internet fraud?
we’ve got one of those phony cashiers checks from a “nigerian” who wants to buy a couple of monty’s 25th anniversary dura ace groups. so we’re ready to have the shipper come and pick up the goods, and we want to have a badged authority here to greet him.
but we’re unsure whether it’s local or federal, you know, mail fraud or interstate or what. i figger somebody out in forum land will know who we ought to contact.
if it is a phony check, that would probaly fall under counterfeit and be the secret service.
I think it’s the Secret Service. They have these scam warning listed on their website and you are asked if you are scammed etc. to contact a local field office. Here’s a link:
The U.S. Marshalls (I believe), but I would contact your local U.S. Attorney’s office first. They will handle the “details”.
-Robert
Dan’s situation is quite a bit further along. He already has a check that is probably phony, or at least he thinks so. Those Nigerian emails are just laughable. I doubt the U.S. Attorney is doing anything about them unless someone has actually BITTEN on it.
Oh, I forgot to add that the U.S. Attorney’s Office probably won’t want to handle it anyway unless the amount is quite large (In excess of $25,000). Your local PD or Sheriff is more likely to help.
-Robert
Call the A-Team, you crazy fool.
Here in our town, we’ve had a recurring problem over the last few years with people passing counterfeit bills. The local police department always handled the matter initially. I’m not sure what happened after arrests were made and charges brought forth; i.e. I don’t know to which agency the police department then turned the case over. But the local police responded to the call and then made the arrests. I’d start with the local authorities first.
RP
Hey sucka - ‘howling mad’ is the medical term, I believe.
It’s under the jurisdiction of mail fraud, which is handy because the posties have their own marshals. There was a story in the paper a couple of weeks ago about how a postal fed tracked and busted an internet scammer even has he fled around the country (I think he was caught in Fla).
If he got the check by mail, then yes, but the U.S. Attorney’s Office handles the prosecutions anyway so that’s where I’d start. As I said, the Feds may not be interested even if it is mail fraud unless it is a large amount. The U.S. Attorneys are very very busy right now. Overwhelmed is the word I believe.
-Robert
secret service IS a good place to start, as it turns out, and yes, U.S. attorneys are the prosecuting authorities.
we’ve played this out, monty and i. we’ve gotten the fraudulent cashier’s check, deposited it, etc., and so forth. we’re at the point of the nit-picky instructions of how the goods will be picked up, where the excess money sent, etc. i’m going to write a story about it. it’s all fairly interesting and comical.
Will this be an episode on Monk? :),
-Robert
The secret sefvice generally pretty busy. They’re understaffed to begin with, and with all the different Nigerian latters floating around, they get swamped with all the e-mails they get sent.
Hopefully, you can get some of the scammers busted. I knew a guy who lost his business after that sort of Nigerian scam.
And if you ever wanted to know how the Nigerians plan things out, here’s an ad for the 3rd Annual Nigerian EMail conference:
http://j-walk.com/other/conf/index.htm
I like the breasfast options: Your choice: A hard boiled egg, or two slices of white bread and a cricket.
Ch 11 I think because they bit, not that I knew them personally but it turned out that they were unable to pay our bills and this was why.
Ooooppps.
secret service to busy. hmm. if u only knew how much time these folks jerk around. i’ve drank a lot of beer with these folks and they have the time. now also i can tell you they may want to do something but they know what will be prosecuted and what won’t. i spent 7 yrs as a cop and the only things i got taken care of by the feds that was under their jurisdiction was because i knew someone. if u raise enough hell someone will listen. trust me. anyway enough of that. if u don’t find out for sure dan i’ll send u an email of a budy in the ss who can for sure tell u where to go. that didn’t sound to good did it
can’t wait to read the story about this episode. it sounds quite entertaining already.
Dan - as the Secret Service may have mentioned, it’s very possible that nobody will show up to claim the goods if this particular scam is that they paid over the asking price and asked you to wire them the over-age. I mean, obviously you’re not wiring them anything, but apparently part of the scam is that nobody ever actually shows up to pick up the stuff:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/carsale.asp
Wacky.
Funny. The agents I know average 60+ hour workweeks. There are people I know who worked 100+ consecutive days after the Twin Towers went down, and very few of those days were only eight hours.
But we’re getting off track here.
Any law enforcement agency in your jurisdiction can arrest the offenders, provided they’ve established probable cause to do so. it’s not necessary to contact secret service or any other federal agency. your local boys should do just fine. simply call them, tell them the story in brief and be able to document the fraud. they should be willing to help you set up the sting and arrest the bastards when they show.
under any penal code the crime you’re speaking of is “theft” or “larceny”. there might be some regiional variances, but it is a simple theft case in the end. call your local cops; they’ll dig the action as being a bit unusual.
sv-
There’s an article in today’s(Sun) LA Times about Nigerian check scams.