Part 3: Dot-Con – Online fraud from the victim’s perspective

In case you are just tuning in, I am posting a series of blogs about people who were victimized through electronic crime.  My purpose with these posts is to let people know the victims’ side of the story and to point out how the system failed them.

Our previous post talked about “Paul” who fell for an inheritance cash advance scam (see this page for more information on advance fee scams and this page for information on some others who have fallen for this).  The second case I was made aware of involves “Scott”. 

Scott is an eBay power seller and lives in a large city in the US.  Scott saw a half page ad in the main newspaper for his city that said eBay sellers could earn extra income by selling goods for a drop shipper.   The ad implied that sellers would become employees of this company and included an 800 number to sign up.  Scott called the 800 number and spoke to someone about becoming a seller. 

After talking to the company several times, Scott did research on the internet.  He says that there wasn’t anything about the company online – nothing good, but nothing bad either.  There was no reason not to believe the company was legit with a limited online presence.

The company sent him the information he needed to list the items on eBay.  They encouraged him to accept PayPal as the payment mechanism for the items.  Once he had received payment he was to send the money (minus his commission) to the company via Western Union.  Scott said this was the only red flag he had during the entire process.  Everything else seemed professional and well-orchestrated.  And since he knew that many sellers and buyers – especially in Europe – use Western Union as their primary payment mechanism, he figured it might be ok.

Scott says it took a couple of weeks to start thinking there might be something wrong.  Buyers started reporting that their goods had not arrived.  Scott figured the shipments we a bit slow to arrive, so he waited.  And waited.  Eventually he realized he had been scammed and no goods were going to be shipped.

The lesson for me here is that the bad guys have taken this to a new level.  Newspaper ads in respected papers and 800 numbers, where you talk to a live person, both help to validate the scheme.  It’s not just the technologically-naïve that fall for this anymore.  The bad guys are winning.

In the next post I’ll talk about what these two victims went through to try to solve the problem.