Reporting scams
 

Does anyone have an email address where they can be forwarded?

If it's illegal, you can report it to the attorney general's office in your state.

Thanks, Howard. This one is in French and from the Ivory Coast. Someone posted a US Goverment email address last year.

Cigale, if you Google "report scam" you'll get several website addresses, sorry, don't know which are better.

[email protected] is the one I think you want, Mimi.

You could try this one , too

http://68.166.162.20/repoform.htm

Does antyhing really happen when we report a scam?

I don't know Dick, but worth a try.
Thanks Jody and Faina.

When the "Nigerian Scam" was in its youth( about 20 yrs ago), i reported it to the FBI.

Their reaction, "you didn't fall for it and didn't lose any money...so don't worry about it"

After the scam was reported on 60 Minutes and other shows, I guess it became more interesting to the authorities.

Cigale, here is another idea - thank you, Dick - report it to a TV station, if you get their support it will look "official".

Are you talking about an e-mail solicitation to "help them move millions out of their country"? Oh my, I must get one or two of those every single day! The authorities couldn't possibly have any interest in the billions of those, circulated worldwide.

Although I do have the occasional twinge as I toss them into the spam box of my e-mail provider... could it be that somewhere in the third world, some poor peasant got talked into giving up a hard-earned dollar to some swindler to "buy a get-rich-quick scheme"?

It's hard to believe that they ever get a penny from their "targets"; makes me think that they are working the naivete of "the other end".

Best wishes,

Rex

I think if you look online to the FTC or somewhere, there is a place to report email scams. I never do myself, but you can if you really want to. There are a zillion variations on sending money to Nigerians and scams in all kinds of languages. I get them all the time, including many in French.

oh, I mean the FCC, they'd probably be right for the internet.

Åctually, it is the FTC. Lots of good info here:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/online/inbox.htm

It says you should send a copy of unwanted or deceptive messages to [email protected].

Good luck. You're being a good citizen.

Like Rex, I am a regular recipient of these. Someone commented that they couldn't believe anyone would fall for them. Well, so do because of a thing called "greed"!

There was actually an article in this month's Readers Digest about the Nigerian mail/fax/scam and the people that DO fall for it.

I've always felt is was amazing that anyone could fall for such an obvious scam, but I find it even more amazing that anyone who does fall it would publicly admit to doing so.

I get dozens of these in both French and English every week. IMO it's probably a waste of time reporting them, but who knows?

Anyway, here's someone who's actually DOING something about it:

http://www.quatloos.com/brad-c/directory01.htm

>Does antyhing really happen when we report a scam?<

No. When I got my scam eml, I reported it to the local FBI. A very pleasant person thanked me and suggested I just delete it.

((I))