What to do if you are a victim of a scam
In case you are a victim of a scam or you were just targeted by a scammer, this is what you need to do. The following list doesn’t cover the blackmail scam/sextortion/sextortion – for those cases the list can be found here:
http://www.blackmailscams.com1. Contact your bank and let them know you are a victim of a scam. Ask them to change your bank account details used with the scammer and ask also if is any way the bank can use to track the money and / or recover at least a part of the money sent.
2. Contact your local police with all the evidences you have regarding the scam and fill a complaint. More info you have about the scammer – more chances for the Police to find a way to nail the scammer or at least some of his accomplices.
3. Stop all the contacts with the scammer and all the people you were presented by the scammer. Unfriend them – if they are friends with you in any of yours online profiles and block them. Block them in any chat platform (Yahoo, skype etc) used with them to communicate. Do not reply to their emails if they sent you some – just delete the emails without even open it. Block their phone numbers in your phone.
4. Keep in mind that everything used with a scammer is compromised. The details you shared will be reused by the same scammer or another one in another attempt to scam you. Best thing to do is to change everything: the phone number you are using, the email address, the bank account details. By doing this, you avoid letting yourself targeted again.
5. Avoid any conversation with any person contacting you using the same email address / phone number / skype you were using with your scammer and / or talking with you on the behalf of the scammer.
6. Do not fall for the recovery scam. In many cases of a person being scammed or experiencing a scam attempt, sooner or later someone will contact the victim, claiming to be an official person (police officer, lawyer or similar) with the promise he can recover to money lost and he can put the scammer in jail. If this person will not ask for a fee to do it, he will ask for a fee to send the money after he will tell to the victim he arrested the scammer. It is just another lie, to get more money from the victim.
7. By keeping the contact with the scammer, even if he know you have no money to sent, he will try to made you an accomplice in his scam – promising he will send to you the checks he receive for his work and you can cash the check in your bank account, withdraw a part of the money to re-send that part to him and keeping the rest until his debt to you is paid. In fact, those money are received from other victims and the scammer is just covering his tracks using the first victim. The first victim become a “mule” and he / she may end up in jail for money laundering, while the scammer will be free to scam others in the same way.
Post the relevant details about your scammer on our forum. If you are not sure what elements from your correspondence with the scammer are relevant, try to forward all the pictures, documents and emails received from the scammer(s) to an Admin – our email addresses are on the site under every post we made.