Just for kicks I checked out the FBI’s cyber crimes page ( http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx ). You can file a complaint there, but they said if it’s time sensitive (which this would be) to file it with your local police department. Of course, I’ve heard stories of local PD’s blowing people off when they try to report these kind of crimes, I guess it would depend on your specific PD. OTOH, this one seems pretty easy. Your PD, calls the PD in the other town gets everything all set up, then all you have to do is email your guy back to tell them the money is there waiting for them and the other PD just has to sit there and wait. I’d be willing to bet someone would be there within minutes of receiving that email. Now, it would probably be a middle man, I doubt it would actually be the people you were talking to, but still, it’s someone.
Since it’s a wire transaction and across state lines, it’s federal. I would get the FBI field office closest to there.
ETA: I don’t see this as “filing a complaint”; you haven’t suffered damages.
I don’t see why Mastercard would care. You’d have to alert the bank that issued the card, since they’re the ones that end up footing the bill for fraudulent charges.
This scam is fairly common. It has nothing to do with whatever you are selling, they don’t care and aren’t even interested in the product.
The scam is all about paying the freight forwarder. They don’t care what your company sells, they are just trying to entice you with the promise of a big sale and the amount of the freight costs will seem so small that someone will make the foolish mistake of forwarding the freight money.
To use the Relay Service, you must be deaf, or at least able to know how to sign well enough to fool an interpreter. The emails read like an ASL speaker writing English.
Is this a Deaf conspiracy against the Hearing? 
It appears to register for AT&T’s IM relay service all you have to do is agree to some terms and conditions stating that you have a medically recognized hearing or speech disability.
But practically you must be able to sign well enough to fox the interpreter.
IM Relay is “instant message” relay. It’s texting with at&t reading out the text, no ASL sign language is involved.
I doubt that the interpreters are going to challenge the validity of the users of the relay service, so I don’t think you need to try very hard to fool them.
Can you explain how this works? Thanks.
Oh! This piece of information was missing. I couldn’t understand how a (phone) operator would know what was said, and warn the poster that it was a scam. I didn’t know it involved a translator.
I (the scammer) call you up, order 100 widgets for $10 each. That’s $1000. Then I tell you I’ll send a trucking company over to pick them up next week and you agree. Then I tell you that, oh, BTW, the trucking company doesn’t accept credit cards, so I need you to run my credit card for an extra $900 and western union that money to the trucking outfit. Assuming all goes as planned, you will run the (stolen) credit card I give you for $1900. Western Union the $900 to me. I never show up to pick up the widgets, but that doesn’t matter because at some point the owner of the credit card is going to see the charge on have it reversed. Now you’ll be paying back the $1900. Since the widgets never left the door, you’ll essentially only be out the $900 that you sent to me via Western Union.
This is exactly the same way the cashiers check scam works. You’d sell something on ebay for $100. The buyer would ‘accidentally’ send you a cashiers check for $1000. He’d email you and ask that you just wire the $900 back to him. After you did that, the cashiers check would prove to be fake and you’d be out all the money (and the product).
I’ve been corrected, though.
Yes, but you were still pointing at the piece of information I missed. The fact that the person speaking was the operator.
If it sounds TOO good to be true… It PROBABLY, IS! (not true) :dubious:
“Old sayings” didn’t COME to be, old sayings, if they were NOT TRUE! Just sayin’… 
The grammar alone, indicates (to me, at least) that the buyer is probably NOT, local.
Well, Eric is apparently using a stolen MC; who else would you have me inform? I checked out the FBI fraud link, but after trying the web site for 10 minutes I gave up. Local police? I’d rather not waste my time.
BTW, Eric is still awaiting his money…
Seems to me you’ve got two choices if you want to report this, the FBI or your local PD. I’m not sure why you think calling the local PD would be considered wasting your time. Call them up, tell them you want to report a cyber crime in progress and ask them if that’s something they can handle. Some PDs have a department that handle that, some don’t. Some will listen to you but as soon as you mention another state will give you the number for the FBI.
Otherwise, see if the FBI has a local office and give them a call.
If you want to report it, but don’t feel like making the effort to call the FBI or police, there’s not much else you can do. Mastercard won’t pursue it beyond shutting the card down and charging back anything that’s gone though if the owner requests it.
I’ve had a couple of extremely bad experiences recently with my local PD. I’ll leave it at that. I wouldn’t piss on any of em if they were on fire, and avoid any contact.
Then call the PD in a neighboring city, or the city for the receiving Western Union…or just call the FBI since that’s who ultimately going to take the case anyways since it crosses state lines.
Wait a second - are you saying merchants are on the hook if the card turns out to be stolen? I thought part of the appeal of credit cards to merchants was that as long as they follow the rules and the card check comes back clean, they get paid, even if it turns out the card had been stolen (but unreported yet).
I get why in this case they’d charge back the entire $1900, since the $1000 in merchandise never went anywhere, but are you saying if someone walks into a store, buys something for $1000 with a recently stolen credit card that comes up clean when its swiped, the merchant gets stuck with the $1000 loss, not the bank?