Help to Stop E-mail Scams and Fraud

Hi,

I just discovered that you can forward commercial e-mail scams to spam@uce.gov and the e-mail scams you receive and forward to them will become part of a data base that is available for law enforcement officials to peruse and investigate. This is a service of the Federal Trade Commission and the data base is meant to help shut down the operations of scammers. I intend to start using it.

Please note: this is not simply for hoaxes or misinformation or even spam -- which is often a legitimate business searching for customers. This address is meant for e-mail scams where someone is trying to fraudulently get money from you, gain access to your checking account, or find out your Social Security number or other private information that would be dangerous to you if it wound up in their hands. It is for e-mail scams.

I have gotten repeated e-mail scams letters at my online customer service address related to my www.bestluggagecarts.com website. I was almost taken in by the first one, but my supplier pointed out to me what was going on. I was so glad they were alert to this and told me about it. I then looked it up on the internet and found out more information about it.

What the scammers do is send an e-mail asking about a certain item (often it is something you sell -- sometimes it seems totally unrelated or even only vaguely related). They say they want to find out "more information about the item", "are they in stock," etc. and they drop the hint that as soon as you contact them they will give you a credit card number and then they will order a large quantity of the items they want. Not.

The reason they have not ordered anything from your website is that they don't have a valid credit card number so they are trying to get in the side door with the temptation of a large order. Don't fall for it. When I got the first one I actually responded to them. The second e-mail I got sounded like it came from a very busy (rich) person who was out of the country (in London) on business and they needed my personal help to get the items they wanted ordered and shipped to Haiti. They even gave me pick up orders because they wanted to use their own shipper. I wish I remembered the name of the shipper in that first letter because it was by googling the shipper name that I found the information about it being a scam.

The scammers will respond to any e-mail you send them and you will be drawn more deeply into their net. Here is an example of the most recent one I received:

Hello Good Day
With regards to your Company i am sending this email regards to order some ( Platform Truck ) ,i will like to know the type and sizes you have in stock and get me the sales price of one so that i will tell you the quantity i will be ordering, and also if you accept credit card as a form of payment .
Stay Bless .
John Truett (Owner)

Notice the name of the signer -- doesn't that sound like a typical American name? In this one the English is much smoother (they are getting better) but the gist of the e-mail is exactly the same. They promise to order (something) and want to know if you accept credit cards. If they had actually been to your website and were really interested in an order they would simply have placed it at the website. There would be no need for them to e-mail asking these kinds of questions or making these kinds of statements.

In this particular one they even have played on my religion with the line above the signature. They are trying everything they can think of to get me to trust them but, once bitten, twice shy.

After that first one, I began to recognize them. They always have what looks like a legitimate person's name as the sender -- something normal and American sounding like Bob Jones -- but it won't be a name from your address book. The language (at this point in time) is still a rather stilted and broken English. That is because it is not coming from native English speakers (nothing wrong with that -- but it is a clue). You get the gist. It will be rather bad grammar and sentence structure -- sometimes it may not even make total English sense. When you read it, it will sound "garbled" in your mind. These don't usually have any attachments but if you get one with an attachment -- do not open it because it will likely contain a virus.

I am glad to have a way to support law enforcement officials in shutting down this type of fraud. I will still delete them but not before sending them to the FTC. I found this e-mail address: spam@uce.gov at the FTC website: www.ftc.gov under the "contact" tab in case you want to check it out yourself. I like to check things out myself just to verify things in my own mind.

Be back soon -- Have a good one!

--Marcia