Newbie to scamwarners from LegalBeagles

Hi all and thanks for having me here at scamwarners, love the bunny jigsaw anti spam, makes a refreshing change to a captcha image.

Registering here following the ebay/Gumtree/Autotrader scams that have started appearing on our site (LegalBeagles wont post a link as I know the etiquette for spamming) and assisting your team in any way we can. Already known to John Barry and Boycie, hopefully together we can clamp down on these *&^%$$$ ers.

Jules

Welcome to Scamwarners Tools.

Being a member here will give you the opportunity to see the scale of the problem. As well as the victims of the car scams, there is also a major ongoing fraud involving agricultural and construction machinery which tends to be based on fake web sites where the victims are largely in Eastern Europe with the sites claiming the companies to be based in England and now Ireland. Underlying many of these frauds are scam employment sites attempting to recruit money mules. It'll take you a while to find your way around the various forums, and victims don't always post their experiences in the appropriate places, so don't expect to find all information in the right place.

Without doubt there is one major organised gang at work but I suspect that there are many 'copycats' too.

Pressure has to be put on UK banks to be strict with those who launder payments for criminals, whether they are innocent dupes or not, and it's well known that many aren't innocent or dupes. We know that the FOS won't help victims and they have suggested that details are passed to the FCA so that at least they are made aware of the failings of particular banks to properly administer UK money laundering legislation. I always suggest that victims write to the bank involved by recorded mail pointing out their responsibilities as regards the legislation to make a report to the FCA on any account involved in fraud. Such a letter gives the bank little option as I suspect that many aren't doing what they should. Then this problem is so widespread in the UK people should contact their MP about the problem in general. This is a good time to give your MP things to do with an election looming and contacting your MP is easy to do using an online site that monitors how MP's respond to issues raised by their constituents.

You might also be interested in this fraud variation where the scammer targets the seller

http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=77280

Thanks for the welcome and the heads up Boycie, useful info there.

I have been talking with John & Buster gathering info and LegalBEAGLES have an opportunity to make a submission directly to the Cabinet (Michael Gove) who has asked for more info on this.

I will look at the link you gave me and have a scout around when I get more time.

Jules

Though the forum doesn't get involved in politics, I think that it's only by government understanding the scale and nature of the problem in the UK that the issue will be properly addressed. I don't think that the government even understands the harm this does to the companies who are being impersonated as employers and as suppliers of construction and agricultural machinery. It is effectively a form of economic terrorism being performed by organised crime and government ignores its prime responsibility of protecting its citizens, which I find astonishing. I'm not even considering the victims whose money is being laundered abroad and is being taken from the UK economy and industry. The one benefit the criminals being to the UK economy is that they are operating a flourishing drug trade as a sideline, which I know from my own research and can back up with photos.

Without the bank accounts supporting this criminal enterprise they wouldn't function and yet in the past year one criminal was found to have set up over 750 bank accounts and another over 100 in unrelated crimes. UK law enforcement and legislation is so poorly enforced and lax it acts as a magnet to criminals as I'm unaware of any country with a similar problem. Indeed the situation is encouraging every back street criminal to climb on the bandwagon and there's another person who runs a blog and facebook page devoted entirely to reporting scam ebay pages. He goes by the name of 'Buster Jack'.