Does reporting scams achieve anything ?

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Mark

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Topic # 97028 9-Feb-2012 11:49

Hiya,

I've a scammer trying to weasel money out of me via my car advert on TradeMe (oh yes of course you are overseas and want to buy my car unseen via Paypal and sure I will take the $1500 extra dollars you will deposit and use it to pay for the courier by sending the money to a UK address via Western Union .....)

Is there anywhere I can report this sort of stuff that might actually result in someone taking a look ?

Or is it a lost cause and I should just ignore it ?

I'm loath to drop it though just because they are probably targetting many others who may not recognise it as a scam (little old folks selling there car and what not)

I've looed at www.scamwatch.govt.nz but it looks to be a waste of effort, and I can;t find the right pages on the Police website.

Thanks

Mark

johnr

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Reply # 579200 9-Feb-2012 11:54

NZ Police will advise you to ignore them,

Report the trademe user name to trademe

webwat

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Reply # 579286 9-Feb-2012 13:55

johnr: NZ Police will advise you to ignore them,

Report the trademe user name to trademe

Or just ask them to deposit the money and then tell them police are investigating. Check the headers of the email they sent you to find their original IP address, and police in that country can investigate. I doubt they will though.

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scuwp

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Reply # 579296 9-Feb-2012 14:18

Brother got hit with the same scam. All he could do was report it to Trade Me who immediately banned the users ID. No one else was interested.

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gzt

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Reply # 579421 9-Feb-2012 19:40

If you would find it entertaining take them along for a ride and see what information you can get out of them. Most likely running the thing from Nigeria anyway.

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cyril7

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Reply # 579427 9-Feb-2012 20:03

Hi, I got an SMS from these scroats recently when selling my UTE, same thought, why would you spend the time and effort to buy a 300,000km old ute from way down here and have it shipped overseas. Naturally I ignored it, and to my surprise a TradeMe staffer contacted me a day latter advising me that I had been contacted by these drongos and not to reply to them, so full marks to TradeMe.

I understand from the coversation with the Trademe person that these guys have been hitting folk real hard of recent times.

Cyril

johnr

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Reply # 579428 9-Feb-2012 20:03

Play scam the scammer!

Hammerer

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Reply # 579455 9-Feb-2012 20:48

Chances are that they are already there. But you can report and check as many sites take user submissions to their databases which are often searchable.

Some specialize in scammers and spammers. PhishTank for example is run by OpenDNS so using their DNS servers will. Some focus on the Nigerian scam e.g. www.aa419.org (but site was being redeveloped last time I looked). Some focus on the sources and others on the sites mentioned. See below in this partial list.

[Edit: list reformatted]
Phishing:
aaa419.org
castlecops.com (mydyndns.org)
antiphishing.org
autoshun.org -for snort; also monitor.teamics.com
google.com
phishtank.com (OpenDNS)

Spam:
joewein.net
projecthoneypot.org
sitetruth.com
spamcop.net
spamhaus.com
spamtrackers.eu
surbl.org (sites appearing in spam not senders)
urible.com (sites appearing in spam not senders)

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mattwnz

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Reply # 579470 9-Feb-2012 21:32

I think trademe should require people be address verified when they signup. Although this can be abused, it should stop at least some of the scammers.
Otherwise people should either buy using paynow, or by safepay if for larger amounts.