I’m selling a couple of things online, and found a buyer who seemed a bit suspicious. I gave him my address to send a money order and figured “what the hell, if it’s just someone who is barely literate, I’ll have money, if it’s a scammer, what’s the worst that could happen?”
I gave very clear instructions that I would only be accepting Paypal or a money order and that it would be some time after the money cleared before I would send anything. I got a ridiculously fake looking check in the mail shipped UPS Express for about $1800 over the amount with instructions to go to Western Union, cash the check and wire the excess money into his account.
Sure. That’s a brilliant idea. Let me get right on that.
What should I do with all of this? Is there any authority I need to turn this into, or would that be wasted time? Think I can bilk them out of a few extra dollars in wasted shipping expenses?
Idea from the recent, brilliant Crandall Spondular thread: at the very least, you could inconvenience him by making him make several fruitless trips to the Western Union. Depending on how nice (and how dumb) you play it, you may be able to get the asshole to do it three or four times.
I don’t know if you’d be wasting your time or not, but it’s my understanding that the United States Postal Inspection Service takes an interest in people using the USPS to commit crimes.
or call the FBI, sounds like wire fraud to me, especially if the buyer is out-of-state. You could also call a local TV station, it is Sweeps month right now, maybe they would like the story.
It’s still fraud. Me? I’d play him the fool. I would make him make several trips to the Western Union to retrieve the “excess” monies, and then play the "oh gosh, I sent you $xyz too much, can you rturn the excess? And just muck with him a bit before contacting the FBI. Of course, you could always just frame it and giggle if you don’t want to go to the trouble of contacting the authorities.
I saw an interesting case on one of those TV courtroom shows. A women, who apparently knew her received check – which was for something like $3000 – was bad, got her sister to cover the check and send the “excess” money to the scammer. When the check bounced, the original sister wouldn’t make good for the $3000, so sister#2 sued.
They ended up on the court show, and sister #1 not surprisingly “lost”. But, if I understand correctly, the TV show pays the judgment, which meant that sister #1 – the one that was sued – didn’t have to pay anything, so she got to keep the money she had gotten from sister #2, thus ended up $3,000 ahead, and also shared some of the excess appearance money.
No she was ordered to pay back the sister, the money as a judgment. It happened to be covered by her appearance money. Sister one ended up at break even. Sister two had her appearance money and the $3,000 back. The scammer won in this case and that bitch sister really pissed me off. She purposely helped a scammer steal from her sister, and took her own cut.
The scam attempt certainly needs to be reported to the authorities.
The scammer already has your address and probably your name, I don’t think it would be wise to play “Crandall Spondular” games w/ this guy. While the chances are he couldn’t do much to you, he is a crook w/ low morals, so I don’t think I’d take the chance. Call the FBI, if they’re not interested, try your local police, or Wachovia’s security. If all else fails, tell the scammer that your bank refused the check.
Police probably won’t be interested, but you could try. If you’re worried about the scammer doing something bad to you, just email him saying that you tried to cash the money order and the cashier told you to go to the police - you’ll not hear a peep out of the scammer ever again.
My understanding is that the TV show pays the judgment, and then they split any remaining appearance money. Therefore, sister #1 ended up keeping the $3000 she originally got from her sister that she was being sued for, plus got perhaps another thousand in appearance money. Sister #2 got a $3000 judgment paid by the TV show, which merely covered her earlier $3000 loss, plus her share of the appearance money.
The proper thing to do is to call your local police department to report the attempted scam. They, most likely, will not investigate the crime, but direct you to the correct agency. (I believe its either the Secret Service or the FBI.)
I had something similar happen (Mine was an attempt at credit card fraud, not a check). I reported the crime to the locals, and a telephone report was taken. I was then directed to call the Secret Service.
All crime reporting should start at the local level.
