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Guide To Avoiding Escrow Fraud
3 posts
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Here are some great tips to spot frauds. How to shut down fake escrow accounts.
http://www.carbuyingtips.com/fraud.htm
Time to get cranking here, this scammer is playing you and a dozen other victims, from his free Yahoo or AOL email account. Some scammers spoof the sending address so it might say XYZ@Yahoo.com when it's really coming from somewhere else. If you report this spam to Yahoo and AOL, they shut it down almost immediately.Â
Your Simple Strategy:
You must forward to the abuse team the scammer's email PLUS the IP Address headers (very important). If you are using Microsoft Outlook email, here is what you do:
1) Right click the message in your inbox, and choose Options. A popup window appears and at the bottom is a field that has Internet Headers. You'll see a bunch of garbage that starts off looking like this:
Return-Path: <thomasvanvugt3@yahoo.com>
Received: from web60710.mail.yahoo.com ([216.109.117.233])...... and it keeps on going for several lines.
That IP address you see there is what the abuse team needs to see, so they can verify it really did come from their servers. Select all the lines of IP Headers in the box and do a CTRL-C to copy the header information into your windows clipboard. You're almost done!
2) Now go to his email, hit the Forward button, and paste the Internet Headers right above the scammer's message. Include a brief note to the abuse team that this scammer is sending victims to a known fraudulent escrow site. His poor English and grammar should be a giveaway.
* For Yahoo, mail it off to abuse@yahoo.com with the subject "Abuse: Nigerian Scam/Spammer". That seems to have the most success.
* For AOL, mail it off to abuse@aol.com with the subject "Abuse: Nigerian Scam/Spammer".
* For all others, insert the ISP name, abuse@Whatever-Their-Mail-Service-Is.com, with the subject > "Abuse: Nigerian Scam/Spammer".
3) I also use SpamCop.net to submit him as spam. The reason is, Yahoo automatically shuts down any email account that receives a SpamCop.net complaint. Pretty wonderful huh? But we can use that in our favor to get the scammer's email shut down in a few hours. Also, SpamCop.net does a great job of reverse engineering the internet headers for you to determine where the email really came from and automatically notifies the abuse team of the proper ISP. This effectively renders useless any tricks the scammers used to spoof/hide their own email service.
NOTE: If you don't send the internet IP headers, the abuse team will ignore your email, because they MUST verify the IP address of the sender as coming off their email server, and you would have wasted your time.
After the scammer's email account is shut down for abuse...
The scammer will email you the next day from another address, saying "Sorry, I had problems with my other Yahoo account." I'll bet you did buddy! LOL! When he tries to continue business with you, turn in his new email address to the abuse desk! This is an important step in the fight against online fraud, as many victims tell me they saved themselves at the last minute when the scammer started emailing them from another address, and the victim became suspicious and bailed on the deal. I'm no fool, no siree, I'm going to save $20,003! Shutting the scammer's email account saves several people.
How to shut down a fraudulent escrow site
If you find a site that is a fraud, the you must convince their web host to shut them down. Then send an email to their registrar, to disable the domain name so they cannot pop up on a new web host. Go to Register.com, do a WHOIS search on the domain name.Â
Or http://www.whois.com
Usually in the record, they lie about the administrative contact, using one person's name to be the patsy with another person's phone number. Call the number and ask if they are related to the escrow. If they say no, then you know it's a scam, and the escrow site used their name without their permission. Once you find the domain servers at the bottom of the listing, go to that web host company web site, and contact them via email. For example, here is a partial WHOIS lookup for a site that ripped off some victims, MOTO-EXCHANGE.COM.
Domain Name: MOTO-EXCHANGE.COM
Registrar: MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE
Name Server: YNS1.YAHOO.COM
Name Server: YNS2.YAHOO.COM
Creation Date: 12-mar-2005
Expiration Date: 12-mar-2006
The site was hosted by Yahoo, try their Yahoo! Abuse Feedback Form Online or you can email abuse@yahoo.com with an evidence list of information that proves they are fake, false mailing addresses, phone numbers that go to someone's fax or no where at all, etc. Whatever web hosting company is displayed in Name Server Field of the WHOIS record, that is where you email your abuse alert to. The above example shows Yahoo as the web host. In the above sample WHOIS record for the escrow fraud, it shows MelbourneIT as the registrar. Email their registrar abuse@melbourneit.au because of the false info in the WHOIS database, and ICANN requires they investigate. Go to the web host's site, and the registrar's site and find out how to contact them. By shutting down an escrow scam, you have just ruined about a dozen or more scams in various stages of completion, and really put a damper in the scammer's week. Once their site is shut down, it can take them a few days before they sign up to a new web host and for it to propagate across all the domain servers on the internet and finally resolve to the new server location. This really puts a cramp in their style. Even if the web host is an idiot and ignores you, they eventually will close the site down when the stolen credit card used to pay for the web hosting does a chargeback. -
i have been a victim of a fraud in http://www.mobiletreuhand.de with the frauder Kopolodas2@yohoo.de how do i do it?
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ArtBroker,
Great info! Thanks for the tips.
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