What to do if you think you’ve been scammed

This is a tricky topic. It’s incredibly hard to know where to turn and who to talk to when you think you’ve been scammed by someone. And while I’m not a lawyer or in any position to give legal advice, all I can share are my thoughts with the hope that they may in some way aid others in their hunt for justice and compensation. But be sure to read to the end for links for must-do filings.

The obvious first place is to file a report with your local police department. Most of these scams involve online activity and money transfers so that might open some possibilities regarding electronic wire fraud or some other form of fraud or electronic theft. But be wary and don’t expect much from this approach. Because many of these groups work through shadowy channels and often reside in another country, there are limits that prevent local law enforcement from doing much. But it never hurts to at least report it as a crime, which it should be.

Plus, without cases getting filed regarding the same groups or people then maybe it will catch the attention of bigger agencies. With enough victims to similar crimes maybe it could be considered racketeering and other more serious crimes that give other agencies more power to investigate and prosecute when compared to a one-off victim who might be out a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars. When you start looking at multiple victims and the loses counting into the much bigger numbers then the case takes on a new light. But cases can only grow like this with people reporting them to law enforcement.

If you used a credit card to pay for any of these services that you feel you’ve been scammed on, dispute the charges with your credit card service. Yeah, you might have to file a fair amount of paperwork to argue your case, because odds are the scammers will file paperwork to prove their case to keep the money since that’s all they’re really after. But be diligent with this. File the paperwork. Keep emotion out of the filings and stick to the facts. Did they deliver what the contract promised? Did they miss delivery dates? Did they take more money than what was agreed in the contract? Did you attempt to cancel the contract for a refund as stipulated in the contract but the company failed to comply in accordance with the contract? All of these things will help to prove who is acting in good faith and compliance with the signed agreement which could be powerful in reversing the charges and getting you what you’re owed.

Be careful trying to engage with these groups directly. While many may not have an actual legal department, they may make an effort to frighten you with legal documents or messages from their “legal” team. Unsure of what is or isn’t legit with these groups makes this a bit of a slippery slope to me. If anything, engage your own lawyer and let them interact with these groups instead of you doing it. They’ll know the best and legal approaches to protect you and your assets. It may not be cheap to do this, and this is what some of these groups count on. They take you for a large enough amount to be worth their time but not such a large amount that it’ll be worth you spending that much or more on legal fees to recover it. But sometimes it’s less about the money and more about justice and trying to protect others.

Some other KEY places to file complaints are econsumer.gov and the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. This engages the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and the FBI. These are the big agencies that can take the reports from multiple victims of the same scam to create a single case that shows larger victim counts and larger sums of money involved that will warrant the extra steps to stop the perpetrators. 

And finally, raise awareness. Unless you have a legal case pending and are advised not to talk about the case publicly, I would share my experience online for others to see. Don’t go full aggro and go around cussing and slandering anyone but again, stick to the facts. Post what happened and when. Not what you feel or what you assume. Only what you can prove through text messages, emails, documentation, etc. Don’t get drawn into a he said/she said argument about conversations that have no paper trail or can’t be verified. And that’s why I generally only conduct business via email, to ensure a documented paper trail of who said what and when. If I must take a phone call, I always follow that phone call up with a email summary of that conversation detailing the contents of the call so the other party has a chance to know what I took away from the call and they have an opportunity to correct any mistakes, oversights, misunderstandings, etc.