Thought to get some check mule scammers busted....

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Master Baiter Joined: 11 Nov 2006 Posts: 199

Well, not the scammers, but their partners in the US / Canada.

I have noticed that allot of the deliveries of fake checks are sent by fedex or UPS. Most of them are charged on a UPS or FedEx account. I suspect that these accounts are being 'borrowed' by employees of the account holders. The main scammer is in W. Africa... and he has a partner who is here in the US printing and sending out checks using the company account. They prolly do not notice a few extra fedex charges on the bill so the employee is never caught.

My plan is this. If one of us discovers a check muler we do mass baits. To respond to all the baits, they fedex out tons of checks... the fedex bill goes sky high for a month or two and the partner in the US gets fired by his legit employer and perhaps arrested for embezzlement.

Thoughts?

Wannabe Baiter Joined: 30 Jun 2007 Posts: 82

I have used Customer accounts with fedex to send goods to them, I dont seriously think that these checks are sent out by employees using company account, what is required to send a parcel or shipment is just providing a number with a matching name.
So a desk person with any of these courier companies that can just randomly pick and use any name that catches his/her fancy.

though some of these scammers have the IQ of a door knob, you cant rule out any possiblities.

Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 7:24 am

They're doing something right. I have a million in checks that look absolutely perfect. They seem to really go all out on the Money Orders, too. Still, they manage to get the printed dollar amount wrong from time to time. LOL

Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 10:14 am

If it is a mule here in the US they are probably using account details provided by the lad. The lad stole them from somewhere. If it is a partner of the lad here in the US you can guarantee that it is a stole account.

*IF* you can track down the person in the US that is sending the checks, then you have a good chance to get an arrest and maybe move up the chain. I stress the *IF* part.

Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 3:10 pm

I had a scammer trying to take my company for over $20K using a very famous sunglass manufacturer's shipping account - can we say 0akl3y? I notified the risk management dept of said company that someone in his shipping dept wasn't on the up and up - never heard back from them...
If you do get a check scammer to send out masses of bogus checks you have to take into consideration that yes, it does cost the scammer money to produce the checks but then again you are involving an innocent third party (namely the real shipping account holder) and costing them money also. It's a catch 22 IMHO.

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 26 Aug 2006 Posts: 577

@ The Man

Low and behold an employment scam answered today and told me to contact his customer to remit $102,700. The customer has answered - IP is in my city...

Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 6:56 pm

@philo:

Oh, life could get interesting if you can get LEO's interested! Good luck!

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 26 Aug 2006 Posts: 577

^^^ my admin's husband is a detective Twisted Evil

Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 7:01 pm

^ Always good to have an in Smile

I can't wait to see you put a shield in your siggy line Very Happy

Master Baiter Joined: 11 Nov 2006 Posts: 199

guymannemisis wrote:

If you do get a check scammer to send out masses of bogus checks you have to take into consideration that yes, it does cost the scammer money to produce the checks but then again you are involving an innocent third party (namely the real shipping account holder) and costing them money also. It's a catch 22 IMHO.

The innocent 3rd party is already involved... this would just make the involvement a bit more obvious to that person.

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 6:32 am

mike hunter wrote:

I suspect that these accounts are being 'borrowed' by employees of the account holders.

Not to rain on anyone's parade, I seriously doubt that these cheques are being sent out by US/ Canadian scammers using their legit job's Fedex/UPS account. It just doesn't make sense for a scammer to do something like that, especially when they can simply hijack a UPS or Fedex account that cannot be traced back to them. As onyenekwu pointed out, it is very easy to send a package using some else's account, so why would a scammer, living in a country where they may well get arrested if caught, do something so easy to trace?

As The Man said, if the cheques are coming from a mule (highly likely), they are using a stolen account provided by the lad; if they come from a lad, it's a nearly 100% certainty that the account used is stolen.

419Eater is my life Joined: 29 Oct 2005 Posts: 266

Couple of things....

First scenario.. I was baiting a check scammer a bit back.He changed tack and instead of asking me to cash checks for him..he told me that "as part of my job" I would have to buy a good quality printer and print out checks using a program he sent me (not tempted to downloan his program Wink

)
I was then to send out checks to his "employees"(victims)

second scenario... I had a check lad send me 20 pre addressed envelopes.
My job was to send them by DHL.I would be reimbursed for delivery.

Thing is...scammers can scam people into being an unwitting criminal so be carefull of who you are going for

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 9:53 am

Create:

Yes they do.... but in law enforcement you often start at the bottom and roll your way up an organization. In the drug trade you arrest a street level dealer who rolls on his supplier to get a better deal, who rolls on his supplier to get a better deal etc.

If the person sending the checks is an innocent victim (a) they need to know so they stop and (b) who knows what information they may have that might lead up the chain to an actual lad.

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 1:32 pm

recieved my fake money orders via good old Canada Post.

they had a US return address and a DeutschePost "Filiale" postage sticker on it. Luftpost sticker as well.

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 1:55 pm

The accounts are likely stolen. I know that UPS has investigated some cases of fraudulent account use and got the US postal inspector involved because they learned the packages contained forged checks.

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