loan from central financial agency

I received an email offering loans to customers worldwide ranging from $5000 - $900000. I needed money to pay for bills, car registration fees so I got sucked into applying for a $5000 loan. I gave my bank details (yes I know, stupid me) and next thing I know, I received a call from my bank asking me if I was expecting for receive $5000 in my bank. I said yes and they told me that the funds in my account was stolen money from another account. I was so shocked, my account was frozen and I had to spend the whole day forwarding documents and contract of employment. So I came across this site (scamwarners), and found the name of the agency (C.F.A) was on the list for scamming people.
I received so many Nigerian and Next Of Kin emails as well, isn't there anything we can do to stop scammers?

Deanne N

Hello Deanne, welcome to ScamWarners.

I'm sorry to hear about the trouble you got into. Were you able to get things sorted out with your bank?

Unfortunately, there's not much that can be done to stop scammers. They mostly operate anonymously and are very hard to track down.
Furthermore, most of them work in other countries (or even continents) than their victims. In many countries where the scammers live, tracking down and prosecuting scammers doesn't have a very high priority.
Traditionally scammers operate from various countries in Western Africa, but that's certainly not the only region where they operate from. Eastern Asian scammers are becoming more and more common, and there are also scammers that operate from Europe and America.

Some people are trying to make life hard for scammers. If you want to know more about that, take a look at http://www.419eater.com.

Finally, please post emails that you got (preferably including full headers) in the loan scams forum of this site. That will help other people that receive such emails and do a Google search to recognize it as a scam.

It's a tragedy to hear your story deanne , because the last thing you need when money is tight is to get embroiled in a bank dispute and face the possibility of the police getting on your case when you haven't done anything wrong. Apart from the mess it makes of your finances, it can be the effect it has on your mind that is most damaging.

I almost hate to ask - but did you pay fees to the scammer upfront ?

I've never come across this aspect of the scammer's work before but it's well known that scammers will try to get innocent people to act as their intermediaries in their scams and it's a rare case that one can tell their side of the story, as it's often taken for granted that the intermediary is in on the scam.

I presume that the scammer would have asked you to send them a portion of the money, but it's impossible for me to guess. I can understand that once you believe they are real, it's easy to go along with anything they say and, of course, the trouble they can lead you into is awful. If you have problems already this can be a living nightmare.

I hope you can pull through it okay.

I'm sorry to hear that. Fake loan scams involving advance fees are common, as are scams laundering money through an innocent victim's bank account. I've not come across both scam elements in one scam before. Usually the victim is asked to move most of the stolen money on before the theft is noticed, but the loan scam doesn't seem to allow this as the advance fees have to be relatively small.
Can you post the first email here please, less your personal details).