IBMWR Scamming

SPIKESBIKE said:

Thanks everyone for the info, I know its only $280 but its the point that i would never do that to anyone,my parents raised me to be an honest person and i expect people to treat me the same way. I will give it a while longer and see what transpires.

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I have been doing it this way for years, both buying and selling. Sorry to hear about you loss. I do not plan on changing the way I buy and sell. Hope it all works out for you.

SeabeckS said:

That might be a good idea...but we have a relative who's a patrol sargeant on Orland PD...it's a VERY small department and I'm reasonably sure they don't have a web crime unit. That USPS idea seems the best initial route....

Good luck!

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Small department= better service for the small matters, which this is!

I worked for both a large police department and a small one, retired from the latter. After retirement, having been into photography and active on several internet forums, I shipped off a box of older Leica camera lenses, nothing really spectacular, but quite a few, to a person I had communicated with for a long time. I'm in New Jersey and he was in Massachusetts. He lived in a small town. He was undecided on what lenses to buy, so I shipped him the box and told him to pick what he wanted and send the rest back with payment for what he kept. Well, he did continue to communicate and one excuse led to another and another, etc and a couple of months went by and I had neither payment nor the lenses back and then he didn't answer my emails. I was mentioning this to a detective friend who made 1 phone call to the buyer's small town police department and they knocked on his door at 6:30 PM and asked him if he was running some type of internet scam, and informed him of the potential criminal charges if he was doing so. Well, I had the box of lenses back in my hands via FedEx by 12 noon the very next morning, all were packed even more carefully than I had packed them!

So it very well may be a good idea to call his small, local PD.

ClassicVW said:

...I was mentioning this to a detective friend...

So it very well may be a good idea to call his small, local PD.

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Or it may be a good idea to be a retired LEO. I don't have any "detective friends" who would take the time to help me.

TR250Tom said:

Or it may be a good idea to be a retired LEO. I don't have any "detective friends" who would take the time to help me.

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I just knew someone would point that part of my post out, thank you for not disappointing me!

The other point of my posting was that generally a smaller department will go over and beyond in trying to help. With a larger city's police departments you are wasting your time contacting them unless your loss is in the thousands of dollars.

Scaming

A bit off the original topic but I always use USPS tracking when sending out my goods. I sent my best friend a very expensive power sander to his P.O. Box with tracking and he never received it. Post Office documented that they had received it but probably put it in the wrong P.O. Box and said that they were sure who ever had it would return it. It has been over a year now so I realized that tracking is no guarrantee of delivery. The Post Office scamed me and I do not have a leg to stand on.

hondarider said:

I'd definitely report it to the Post Office. I've got a buddy whose a Federal Marshal working fraud related to the USPS. These guys are no joke. They go full on SWAT anywhere in the country with teams of agents or provide surveillance for everything from stealing money out of birthday cards on the sorting floor to Social Security fraud. I'm not guessing that this guy is the master mind behind a huge fake credit card enterprise, but they do take this stuff seriously. You might at least help the next guy by reporting it.

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I find that laughable! I spent a lot of time filling out USPS forms & furnishing copies of all documentation on my bad guy to include is authentic name,phone number and physical address, postal money order carbon,you name it , I had it. I got nothing, as in zero response and I was trying real hard to get some action , believe me! Full swat was more like full joke in my case.

JStrube said:

Make sure to call local police. I know quite a few departments have web crime officers. If you have an address & a name & all that info, who knows, he may be a local criminal & this might just help them on another issue.

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They have far more cases than any human could handle-I forget how many the detective in Lou.,KY told me but it was huge. It was coincidental that my bad guy happened to be on his list already and he needed more proof prior to turning the case over-I got lucky.

SPIKESBIKE said:

Just a warning, I have been beat for $280.If anyone does a deal with Gary from Orland Cal. beware. He was supposed to send me carbs for my /5 3 weeks ago, he keeps coming up with excuses and finally no response at all.Probably my fault for not getting more info on him.I have been buying on IBMWR for a long time with no problems, guess there is always a first.

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Have you contacted the IBMWR Marketplace Admins?

If you do you'll find that they will pursue you're case with the seller and do their best to get to the bottom of it.

http://marketplace.ibmwr.org/help/admincontact

Ian
IBMWR Marketplace Admin

Ted Verrill did an awsome job for me. The police dont give a **** and the seller just laughed at me.So i have learned my lesson.Its scumbags like this that ruin it for everybody else.

SPIKESBIKE said:

Ted Verrill did an awsome job for me. The police dont give a **** and the seller just laughed at me.So i have learned my lesson.Its scumbags like this that ruin it for everybody else.

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Ya don't mess with Two-Truck Ted.

kantuckid said:

I find that laughable! I spent a lot of time filling out USPS forms & furnishing copies of all documentation on my bad guy to include is authentic name,phone number and physical address, postal money order carbon,you name it , I had it. I got nothing, as in zero response and I was trying real hard to get some action , believe me! Full swat was more like full joke in my case.

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Actually, when you think about it, the USPS is a joke.

A little more info with regard to "the police just don't give a ****."

Did you contact them? What did they tell you?

They said they would look into it time permitting,no response to e-mails from me etc,etc.

The heck with emails. Call them on the phone and put them on the spot, but nicely.... "Hi detective Johnson, this is Spike. I was wondering if you had an opportunity to look into the fraud that I was a victim of?" Several of those and then a call to his superior, also dripping with niceness...

Uh...Detective Johnson? That department is so small they don't have detectives... They do now have a new "interim chief" after the last chief resigned because of alledged fraudulent activity. That department has fewer than 25 officers, no webcrime unit, no detective squad, etc, etc. They'll take a report, but doubt they'll put much time into solving this crime.

I'm just sayin'...

SPIKESBIKE said:

Ted Verrill did an awsome job for me. The police dont give a **** and the seller just laughed at me.So i have learned my lesson.Its scumbags like this that ruin it for everybody else.

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It's not a matter of not giving a s***, it's not being able to do s***.

Lets say the police have the address that you sent the money to. They knock on the door. "Did you sell carburetors to some one on the internet?" "No" "Do you have a computer?" " Yes" "Can we see it?" "No" "Are you the only one who uses the computer?" "No, lots of people use it" "Did you receive a money order in the mail from Mr Smith?" "No, but I think I had alot of mail stolen recently, I figured it was just bills so I didnt report it"

Case closed, no new leads, no identifiable suspects. Sucks, but thats the way it is.

oldnslow said:

It's not a matter of not giving a s***, it's not being able to do s***.

Lets say the police have the address that you sent the money to. They knock on the door. "Did you sell carburetors to some one on the internet?" "No" "Do you have a computer?" " Yes" "Can we see it?" "No" "Are you the only one who uses the computer?" "No, lots of people use it" "Did you receive a money order in the mail from Mr Smith?" "No, but I think I had alot of mail stolen recently, I figured it was just bills so I didnt report it"

Case closed, no new leads, no identifiable suspects. Sucks, but thats the way it is.

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IF the police care, have the time, and it fits their SOPs on what and how to investigate a long distance complaint....

If the scammer's not that smart it could also go the way my case went that I posted previously. Cop could say to him: "Do you really want us to forward this to the Feds? You know you could do 10 years for mail fraud, right? Or maybe you have $20,000 set aside for legal fees. Is this guy's $280 worth all that risk? " Kind of like, "Do you feel lucky, punk?" He might just write a refund check on the spot if he has more dirty dealings he doesn't want found out.

Even if he does have all the snappy answers like you posted, he's still gotta have it in the back of his mind that he's now on the law's radar, and the cops might now keep a closer look at him. Maybe he's not just doing small-change internet rip offs. Maybe he's branched out into other things that could get him arrested. He just might be convinced to do the right thing. The cops also have to be savvy enough to get a veiled threat across to him without getting themselves in trouble for being too overt. It's an art that some of us have!

Hey Classic, I agree 100%, you gotta follow up on every one you get, and sometimes you do get lucky and run across the 'dull tool in the shed' , and when that happens, it makes the day a little better for every one!

I work for the USPS. Take your copy of the money order to the Post Office and see when the money order was cashed. Then go to your local law enforcement office. Mail fraud is a big deal. And they do prosecute.....