I have been defrauded....
What do I do?
Things you SHOULD do:
- First and foremost, is don't continue to beat yourself up. Even the best of us can fall prey to scammers.
- Report the event to the Shipper, there may be a chance of recovery if it hasn't been delivered yet. Even if it costs you af fee, it's still worth it to pay a (relatively) small fee to recover an expensive item.
- Report the event to the Local Law Enforcement - Whether they do anything or not, Report it. Make your statistic known. The more reports, the more likely it will get the attention of law makers around the world.
- If paid by credit card... Contact the issuer IMMEDIATELY. If the scammers are stupid enough to accept Credit Cards, then this may be a way for Law Enforcement to interceede, however, if you provided the Scammers with your Credit Card Info, then you need to ENSURE that your cards are protected. Either way, if ANY credit Card Information was provided, you need to contact the issuer.
- Report the event to the IC3 (formerly the IFCC) - see link above.
- Report the event to as many sites like this as you can. The sonner they get added to sites like this one, the sooner they get picked up in search engines. I see the search engine spiders crawl my site DAILY so usually within a day or two of me adding a site, it will show in the search engine.
- Get involved. Help US or anyone else to make people more aware of this rapidly growing problem. You can help by providing information, support (in forums or otherwise), or financially - donations accepted (I/we do this ALL in spare time and on equipment that is paid for out of my/our own pockets.)
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