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RSSThe reports were from people close to me who were separately listing their homes for rent on Craigslist, and they each received similar emails. One email, signed by Dr. Dennis Johnson, started, "Hello, I come across your apartment advertised on the internet and i am interested in renting it, please let me know if it is still available. I will be signing one year lease for this unit and will be staying with my wife and daughter, and will be willing to offer you 2 months rent plus the security deposit in order to secure this unit prior to our arrival."
The scammers, assuming there's some group of them going about this (various signs such as inconsistencies in the exchanges indicate there are multiple perpetrators), include some other facts that they happened to Google, though their information isn't always current. In one example, the scammer posing as Dr. Johnson mentioned that Merck CEO Raymond V. Gilmartin would make arrangements on his behalf -- a pretty impressive connection. Gilmartin is actually the former CEO, one who ironically resigned when Congress started investigating safety issues with Vioxx. This would be comical, except that these scammers are targeting people who are vulnerable and want so desperately to believe that they've found a renter.
The email correspondence in these scams proceeds until the scammer says he's sending a check through some circuitous route, which he does manage to send if the correspondence goes far enough. The sender, however, mistakenly overpays the victim, so the victim has to then send the difference back. If the victim goes through with it, the loss tends to amount to a few thousand dollars.
When these scams were brought to my attention, I was relieved that my friends figured out the ruse before sending any money out, but as we were all shaken up and had little direct recourse to pursue the scammers, I realized there was one way I could help. One of my friends sent me the entire text of his correspondence with the scammer, and I posted it in full on my blog with a summary of the scam, omitting my friend's personal details. I didn't care in particular about informing my blog's readers, as it may or may not have mattered to them. Rather, there were four or so readers I hoped would catch it -- Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Ask. Humans, at first, were irrelevant. If the search engines could access the post, then other people would be able to see it in time.
That's exactly what happened. That blog post and a follow-up have attracted a number of people who searched for information about what they suspected was a scam and wound up with the proof to confirm their hunches. Several of these visitors have in turn left comments with other aliases used by the scammers and other pertinent details, giving the engines even more content to work with. One commenter named Jodi wrote, "[I] just had the same thing happen to me...just received a check for $9000 and was asked to send $3000 to a furniture company by Dr. Scott. i was suspicious as i hadn't received my application or any personal information back from him so i googled him and found your blog."
It's incredibly empowering to be able to share information this way. There were so many other communications channels available that wouldn't have been nearly as effective. Trying to tell friends about this would have fizzled quickly, as it wouldn't have been relevant. Craigslist can't do anything to police this, and they already include warning messages in emails that come through the site (one warning message even said "AVOID SCAMS BY DEALING LOCALLY"). If someone completely fell for the scam and tried to seek financial recourse, it's unlikely any local or federal investigators would track down a $3,000 check that clearly wound up further overseas than the UK (in one of the many incredible aspects of the scam, these people posing as British doctors have no grasp of the English language).
By telling Google, the information is relevant to people when they need it, and it's accessible to people who are several degrees of separation away from me. For any sort of information that retains value beyond the day it's created and that is most valuable to people in very specific situations, there is no better way to reach them than by funneling the content through an online communications channel optimized for search engines. That can apply to holiday recipes, product manuals, local business reviews, and countless other forms of content.
When you have something to share that's truly valuable, you may or may not need to tell a friend, but you definitely need to tell a search engine.
RSS FEEDS
What?!?!? When you get a service for free you can't expect that service to then protect you from yourself.
If got an email from a Nigerian (oldest scam around) and got bilked out of $10,000 because I sent it to him to get my share of the $4M he's proportedly moving out of the country, the only one who should pay is me, for my naivity and stupidity.
What you're proposing is akin to saying we should sue the US postal service for delivering fraudulent mail, or sue the phone company because a fraudster called you. We can't shoot the messenger. Google, Yahoo, MSN and the other mail services are simply delivering mail.
I don't know about everyone, but I don't want the mailman opening and reading every peice of mail I recieve to check it's validity AND I don't want the phone company monitoring everyone of my calls because they are afraid of being sued. I surely don't expect that a free mail service to something similar.
You propose an interesting idea. But I wouldn't want it too automated so that it just "trusts" the person who presses the "scam delete" button, just like I wouldn't want my choices for "spam" to be global to everyone on gmail. The problem that I see is that a completely automated system would open up potential abuse, letting people identify innocent persons as "scammers" and potentially harming legitimate marketers or individuals on the internet. So without complete automation, there obviously needs to be human interaction. How can a free email service provide enough labor to review and react to every potential threat submitted?
Internet users need to learn to protect themselves and quit expecting someone else to do it for them. We don't expect our phone companies to listen in to all of our calls and cut off suspected scammers who call our elderly? No we instead should educate our elderly to avoid these scams. The same is true with the internet, Internet users need to be educated to avoid these scams.
I also agree with the post from David that we "should tell a search engine" but the best way to do that is to post your discovered scam somewhere other scams are collected. A few good resources are:
www.fbi.gov/majcases/fraud/internetschemes.htm www.scambusters.org/ www.hoax-slayer.com/ www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/Internet_Fraud.shtml
Each of these sites publish known scams and are great resources for finding out whether or not something is a scam, and their resources all index nicely on the major search engines. Centralizing this type of information is a good idea.
Do a search for "Asia Domain Name Registration Limited scam" and you'll find lots of posts about it. Posting these scams as they are discovered makes it easy for others to quickly verify that it really is a scam.
The way to leverage this is for someone to go after the money. I hate lawyers but this is one that a clever lawyer can turn into a windfall- just start a class action against Yahoo, Google & MSN. They don't take reasonable measures to protect their email clients so they should pay restitution to those who are scammed. For a smart lawyer there's an awful lot of money out there...
Presently, I use yahoo mail. Wouldn't it be responsible if yahoo or any other mail service who is profiting from their business to have a scam delete button that when someone deletes a message as scam, the company categories, files and shares with investigators of all levels as well as their own - then not only block that email address (a little detriment), but follow up and do what they can to shut it down (which will cramp their style at least) ? With all of that cooperation, it would be more possible to even catch some rings and eliminate them even temporarily. Something tells me, various officers of the court may find more than just scammers. But, oops, that would mean it might cut into enormous profits and high end payouts - oops again.
Awesome post, and an incredible example of social media at work for the collective good.
Question: Can the people who received the checks pursue them for payment? It would be a truly great twist is the scammers wound up paying for this, or, going to jail for hot checks (three of which is a felony in most states). Granted, you have to find the perps, but if several people got together and filed complints about the same check issuer... This collective behavior is easy to do given the information you've already made public.
Dave