Mail Reshipping Scams

With all the scams and fake emails that go around everyday its getting harder and harder to tell which ones are actually legitimate. These scams cost people millions of dollars a year. They are easy to do by having a link in the email with a well known Website or organization that leads you to the scammers Website. They have set up their sites to look exactly like the original site would. They might ask for your credit card number or your social security number and say they need it to verify your account. To someone who is not all that familiar with these types of scams they might to lured into giving the important information. Scammers also use instant messaging services such as yahoo messenger and AIM to contact people and start up a conversation. They usually look for single men or women. They will try to convince them they are interested in a relationship and chat back and forth a few times before trying whatever type of scam it is they are running.

A friend of mine was lured into a mail scam through the use of instant messaging. A person claiming to be a woman from Africa contacted him. They chat a few times and he felt like he new a little about her. Then she played her sad story to him how she ran a business in Africa and they had some type of trouble and now she couldn't ship any packages to the business or to the customers and would he be willing to have the merchandise shipped to his house here in the U.S and then reship them to the appropriate address. He is a very trusting person so he agreed to ship the packages for her once he received them at his house. He would get several packages a week and have them reshipped out through fed-ex. He asked her what it was he was shipping and she informed him it was DVD players, expensive shoes, home theaters, laptops, and many other expensive items. This is when he started telling me about his arrangement with the so-called woman from Africa. She promised to send him some of these expensive items as gifts for him helping her. She also promised to pay him so much for each package he reshipped. As soon as he told me what was going on all the red flags started going off in my head. I knew this couldn't be right. This had to be some type of mail scam. Why would someone pay to ship an item twice? Why would they just meet someone on line and have him or her do it? How did they know that person could be trusted?

I asked my friend these questions but he wasn't ready to accept someone on line had scammed him. After all she was claiming to be a beautiful woman who was interested in marriage and sending him money and gifts. I knew I had to convince him of this mail reshipping scam before it was to late and he was an accessory to some crime he wasn't even aware was happening. So I started researching everything I could on line about any type of mail reshipping scams until one day I found an article that told about packages being reshipped to Africa that contained stolen merchandise that was bought with stolen credit cards. I sent the article to my friend and he started to see what I was telling him was the truth .He was involved in a mail scam.

He then asked questions to the woman and told her he didn't want to reship anymore items for her. She got mad and started accusing him of stealing the items and not reshipping them out like he had agreed. Then he started getting bills in the mail for companies he had never ordered from and a bill to fed-ex for all the cost of shipping the packages. He called and reported her to the appropriate people and was told that he needed to end all contact with this woman at once. He was also informed that the woman would not be prosecuted because she was from Africa and it cost to much .So this woman was going to get away again with committing a mail reshipping scam .Now she was free to scam another unknowing victim. My friend called all the companies he received bills from and explained what had happened and gave them the number where he called to report it. Luckily they dropped all the charges. Fed-Ex said they have dealt with this reshipping scam several times and have a file to report cases like this as well. His story turned out OK but everyone is not as lucky. People get scammed out of thousands of dollars because they think they will be compensated for their time.

This isn't the case they might get a check but when they go to cash it the check will be fake. A lot of the time the scammers send them a check and want them to send so much of it back to them through Western union. By the time the check clears the victim is out lots of money while the scammer is off and never to be heard from again. If you get any letters in the mail or on line claiming that you can make thousands of dollars for just sending packages or cashing checks for someone out of the country delete it, throw the letter away. Tell everyone you know about these scams so they don't fall prey to a scammer. Never reship packages for someone you met on line. You could end up committing a felony. Mail scams can seem simple enough, a way to make some extra cash, but in the long run it will cost far more then it was worth. You could end up in prison or the poor house. Always remember if it seems to good to be true it is.