Oh my goodness! After my post yesterday (Email Scam using Embrace Pet Insurance as a Lure - Bah!)about people purchasing pets online (and this includes monkeys of all things), a number of people contacted me confiding they had been duped - one to the tune of $1,300.
Ouch.
All of them asked what they can do to get their money back. If this happened to you (so sad :( ) I'm not sure you are going to see anything back but here's what I've found in my digging online on what you can do.
- If you used Western Union, they can't get your money back for you (they are just a conduit to facilitate money transfer, they don't hold the money or anything) but they can shut down the other party. So, email them at spoof@westernunion.com and let them know what happened. They have more information on fraud online.
- You can file a complaint online at the Internet Crime Complain Center run by the FBI. I'm not sure that much can be done for a complaint against someone in Cameroon but again, reporting it might help others.
There's more information on what you can do in this excellent article called What to Do If You Are Scammed Online.
If you have been a victim of this fraud and do report it, let us know what happens so we can report to others out there going through the same thing.
Related Posts:
Email scam using Embrace Pet Insurance as a lure - bah! - intro to the pet scam
Foreign puppy shipping fraud continues - another sample letter from scammers
