artisticcheese
join:2004-11-09
Carrollton, TX
 ·Future Nine Corpor..
·VoiceStick
| [Scam] Does FedEx investigate fraudulent accounts?
Hi,
I accidentally posted thread in wrong forum. »[Info] Anybody has any experience in dealing with Nigerian s
Anybody knows if FedEx investigates this? |
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SnowyOne
Premium
join:2003-04-05
Kailua, HI
 ·RoadRunner Cable
 ·Clearwire Wireless
| There isn't any real chance that a Fedex or UPS investigation into this type of scam will produce anything actionable.
It might seem a trivial task to follow the address trail but in practical terms the investigation has little chance of success.
The bogus check will pass through a dozen mules before it even reaches the victim. The cash will take an equally amazing route once it leaves the victim.
The victim sends the cash to another mule who sends it to another mule, who sends it to another mule etc...
I've seen the return route go as high as 12 different mules that I could follow, sending the parcel from the US to Canada, back to the US & finally to GB.
I'm amazed how any of it actually makes the full round trip.
A well run operation needs more than just victims, they need dependable mules to distance themselves from the victims & the authorities. The operation itself is slick in that identifying which of their 'contractors' are dependable & which ones are not also serves the purpose of further obscuring it's route. This is done by creating a group of new 'contractors' & sending each group member a set of preprinted shipping labels with instructions to use a particular label to ship the remaining labels to. When an expected shipment of these test labels goes missing, they remove the contractor who dropped the ball. They'll do this until they are left with a group that correctly shipped everything as they were instructed.
This successful group will then be challenged by doing the same routine again, but this time a sealed envelope will be added in to the mix, with the contractors instructed to not open the envelope, just ship it along with the mailing labels to whoever the instructions indicated. After weeding out the non performers from this group, they now have a fairly dependable set of mules to obfuscate the return trip.
A successful round trip with an itinerary across multiple nation borders is unlikely to be investigated to the degree necessary for a successful conclusion.
The titles of these shipping labels give a glimpse into the complexity of the routing & weeding out routines. |
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artisticcheese
join:2004-11-09
Carrollton, TX
·Future Nine Corpor..
·VoiceStick
| According to original thread (»[Info] Anybody has any experience in dealing with Nigerian s) they don't need mules? Becouse they can just redirect payment at their will and cash at any WU location? Why do they need mules then? |
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SnowyOne
Premium
join:2003-04-05
Kailua, HI
·RoadRunner Cable
·Clearwire Wireless
| From your original thread
"Scammers also send me information about "mule" (person who I'm supposed to send cash to which will in turn will resend it back to Nigeria).
If they didn't use 'mules' they would be easy to locate. |
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Doctor Four
My other vehicle is a TARDIS
Premium
join:2000-09-05
Dallas, TX
 ·AT&T U-Verse
| reply to artisticcheese
Tracking down the cybercrime gangs who use these mules (and here I'm talking of more than just the Nigerians, I also mean those behind the scam(s) mentioned in this topic »Ebook websites, fraud charges, Devbill/DigitalAge/Pluto) is quite a lot like peeling back the layers of an onion. There are so many levels to such criminal operations that it is nearly impossible to locate the masterminds behind them.
--
"The trouble with computers, of course, is that they are very sophisticated idiots." - Doctor Who (from Robot)
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s0tet
join:2005-06-08
| reply to artisticcheese
There are wonderful volunteers over at aa419 who report advance fee fraud websites to ISPs for take downs. These include 419 of course. Go to »forum.aa419.org/ and post your info there, they might give you some more detailed information. |
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