Help regarding internet fraud

[erlend]

Hi,

Recently I applied for a job through Craigslist. I read through all of the instructions provided and decided to follow through, which required a payment of $29.95 via PayPal.

I payed the money, however I've not heard back from the person. I know I know, I'm not so naive to know that I was quite gullable, however I wanted to ask your advice here, after reading this post (http://www.all-nettools.com/forum/sh...&threadid=2325) and finding everyone helpful and nice.

I have taken the steps described within the aformentioned post; I've turned on full headers and got his IP address (69.147.97.37) and then I entered that into IP2Location (http://www.ip2location.com/demo.aspx) and Whois on Samspade (http://samspade.org/). Both these tools suggest the person is located in Sunnyvale, California, United States, Zip Code 94089, Latitude/Longitude 37.3779 -122.027. Or at least the Yahoo server it went through is.

I would appreciate any advice or help regarding the steps I should take regarding this issue. It seems the logical next step to contact both Craigslist, PayPal and in turn the police, however I am unsure as to whether or not the information I have gathered is useful to them.

Anything would be greatly appreciated.

[Ezekiel]

Originally Posted by erlend

Hi,

Recently I applied for a job through Craigslist. I read through all of the instructions provided and decided to follow through, which required a payment of $29.95 via PayPal.

They require you to pay them? You are the one providing your services to them, not the other way around. Be very suspicious, unless they have a very good reason for wanting this money.

I payed the money, however I've not heard back from the person. I know I know, I'm not so naive to know that I was quite gullable, however I wanted to ask your advice here, after reading this post (http://www.all-nettools.com/forum/sh...&threadid=2325) and finding everyone helpful and nice.

PayPal is well known for the poor protection it provides from credit card 'chargebacks' -- reclamation of money paid through through your credit card that you say was done fraudulently:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chargeback

If you paid via credit card, contact your credit card company and tell them what happened. They may be able to reclaim the money, because although it wasn't fraud per se, the offending PayPal account owner will not likely dispute the chargeback, thus uncovering their little scam (according to what you said).

I have taken the steps described within the aformentioned post; I've turned on full headers and got his IP address (69.147.97.37) and then I entered that into IP2Location (http://www.ip2location.com/demo.aspx) and Whois on Samspade (http://samspade.org/). Both these tools suggest the person is located in Sunnyvale, California, United States, Zip Code 94089, Latitude/Longitude 37.3779 -122.027. Or at least the Yahoo server it went through is.

As you probably already read in that thread, IP addresses for home users are owned by the users' ISPs, and will not yield any personal details of the actual user. The address you got was probably that of the user's ISP.

If you wish to map IP addresses to real people and real addresses, the ISP staff are the only people that can help you. They will only disclose information like that when ordered to by authorities.

I would appreciate any advice or help regarding the steps I should take regarding this issue. It seems the logical next step to contact both Craigslist, PayPal and in turn the police, however I am unsure as to whether or not the information I have gathered is useful to them.

If this is an isolated incident with a theft of only $29.95, it's unlikely that they will follow it up and investigate it for you. I'm not an expert on law though, so it may be worth asking the police and Craigslist about it, but just don't expect that money to be returned any time soon.

The best idea is to move forward with a better knowledge of what to avoid on the Internet -- the hassle of getting the money back may not be worth it.

[nozf3r4tu]

i totally agree with mike,for that little money you can't expect much done from the credit card company. However,if you were smart enough to keep the confirmation email from paypal,you need to contact paypal fraud department so that person cannot use "that" id anymore. And contact ftc.gov
(i think) and report his azz. If nothing happens in a reasonable time,post his site,his email adress and all info about him in every hacking forum there is,i'm sure somebody will teach him a lesson .
I had a problem with credit card fraud years back,and it was hell to fix the problem,so $29.95 is not worth the agravation.

[john977]

Hi I`m John977, and I`m a Newbie.

Just wanted to comment on erland`s experience. I too was targeted by a scammer, but this was apparently a lady. We got into IM chat, and eventually after I became suspicious of her, I found a way to get her to e-mail me. From the header on the mail I came up with the same IP address as erland, that is 69.147.97.37, which according to whois is based in California. So what mike951 said appears to be correct, its not the actual address of the sender but their ISP. My scammer was actually based in Nigeria.