A way to fight back against scammers

[duffy75]

Can one of the admins please sticky this here or in the scammer forum?

I just got off the phone with a good friend of mine who was unfortunately scammed through a website similiar to this one about a month ago.

Apparently he filed a complaint through this website and just this morning was contacted by this agency with all of his scammed accounts information, which he now has back under his rightful control.

From the website:

"The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C).

IC3's mission is to serve as a vehicle to receive, develop, and refer criminal complaints regarding the rapidly expanding arena of cyber crime. The IC3 gives the victims of cyber crime a convenient and easy-to-use reporting mechanism that alerts authorities of suspected criminal or civil violations. For law enforcement and regulatory agencies at the federal, state, local and international level, IC3 provides a central referral mechanism for complaints involving Internet related crimes."

On the web: Internet Crime Complaint Center

Thank you.

 

[Nuka-Banned]

Banned

Interesting, can't see it being a crime if someones stolen your account during a trade though, if you give them your information its basically trusting them not to abuse the situation, I can see if you've sold\ bought an account and the other party retracted payment or recalled the account that it could become a legal matter, however something like changing the password on a Video Game would not (I don't think) given selling a World of Warcraft account is illegal in the first place since the account is not technically your property but Blizzard's and they have the right to do what they like with it, so by selling or even trading an account it infringes on their policies.

 

[duffy75]

I really couldn't say one way or the other as I am not an attorney familiar with intellectual property rights, license agreements or whatever other legal channels that may or may not need to be navigated in a situation where a trader is openly defrauded.

The only thing I can say is that my friend was involved with a trade where he was openly defrauded, he reported it to this agency and this agency contacted him with closure on his issue putting his account back under his control.

My personal belief is that when/if someone scams another; they know (within themselves) that what they are doing is inherently wrong and quite possibly a crime.

Taking that into consideration, I really can't see the average scammer being willing to push the issue once they receive an email from a regulatory body affiliated (in one way or another) with the FBI.

I think the "exception to the rule" would be the individual that subscribes to the murky notion that they may not be criminally liable through their interpretation of Blizzard's EULA.

Honestly Nuka...

I think the average scammer would be like "oh shi*". Then figure out a way to return the information rather than risk criminal prosecution. Then again that is just my opinion.

There is no discounting the fact that any way you look at it, this is a good tool and certainly better than doing nothing.

 

[Nuka-Banned]

Banned

Defineatly, I completely agree. You guys better be sure the person has scammed you and won't give what was taken back before you persue something like this A: Because just because he stole your WoW account doesn't mean he deserves a Criminal record and B: It could cause serious problems for the person if there was some lack of communication and the person was not scamming you at all. Also, not to state the obvious, if you have not got all the proper information to give on the account stolen due not use this, you have no way to proove the account is rightfully yours unless you have the CD-Key and it is your E-mail on the account. But never the less I think, as Duffy said, getting an email from someone affiliated with the F.B.I can be intimidating for obvious reasons.

I would also suggest a ~Sticky on this post.

 

[duffy75]

[ QUOTE ]
Defineatly, I completely agree. You guys better be sure the person has scammed you and won't give what was taken back before you persue something like this

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[ QUOTE ]
B: It could cause serious problems for the person if there was some lack of communication and the person was not scamming you at all.

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[ QUOTE ]
Also, not to state the obvious, if you have not got all the proper information to give on the account stolen due not use this, you have no way to proove the account is rightfully yours unless you have the CD-Key and it is your E-mail on the account.

[/ QUOTE ]

QFT.

 

[Nekcihc]

yea, sucks that digital evidence doesn't hold up in court

 

[duffy75]

[ QUOTE ]
yea, sucks that digital evidence doesn't hold up in court

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Could you possibly make a more follish statement?

Digital evidence doesn't hold up in court?

How do you think the MPAA & the RIAA are suing individuals for downloading music & movies?

By pointing to their IP logs (which is a clear form of digital evidence). These people are being sued even though the agencies can not prove that they were the ones who actually engaged in the downloading. All off of "digital evidence".

In a prosecutorial capacity, "digital" forms of evidence are used in civil & criminal courts throughout our justice system each and every day.

Anyone stupid enough to try and defraud someone and risk criminal and/or civil prosecution based on the theory that "digital evidence doesn't hold up in court" would be an absolute bufoon and putting themselves at a great deal of risk...

 

[XFossilX]

First of all you can only go through the FBI if it has to do with paypal and getting scammed by money. If someone just scams a WoW account nothing the FBI can do, some guy told me he tried to do this once report a stolen WoW account and get an email back from the FBI telling him that with items like that there is nothing they can do because it is your word against anothers plus it is a trust basis, and to please not email any future things like that. No thats not how they worded it but it sounded like they were aggravated about filing about a complaint over a computer game account.

 

[ewokforhire]

Would putting in a complaint to this site be useful in my situation?

here is my thread about what happened:
http://www.markeedragon.com/u/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/80749/an/0/page/0#80749

to sum it up though, i paid 100$ for a rouge and it got recalled. i have already put in a complaint with paypal. would contacting this site be useful?

 

[patmcdougal]

Paypal will refund you, so you will get your money back anyways, but it might be worth it to prevent him scamming others...

 

[duffy75]

[ QUOTE ]
Would putting in a complaint to this site be useful in my situation?

here is my thread about what happened:
http://www.markeedragon.com/u/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/80749/an/0/page/0#80749

to sum it up though, i paid 100$ for a rouge and it got recalled. i have already put in a complaint with paypal. would contacting this site be useful?

[/ QUOTE ]

Two things here:

1. It costs you nothing but time to file the report, so really you have nothing to lose.

2. Like i said, my friend who got scammed was involved in a *TRADE*. The transaction itself had nothing to do with currency in any way, shape or form. So i would have to disagree with the poster above.