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This guide will help you:
1. Get money back.
2. Get accounts back.
3. Involve and assist the justice system.
GETTING YOUR MONEY BACK
Most scamming happens through paypal. Knowing what to say in a dispute
is important.
If you are the buyer
1. If the payment was sent within the last twenty days, you can log
into paypal, locate the payment, click on details, and then use the
'report a problem with this transaction' link to start a payment
dispute. When you do this, you will be asked to categorize your dispute
or problem. Select nondelivery and Do NOT select any option that
reveals that this is virtual goods. If you do, Paypal will
AUTOMATICALLY close your dispute and you lose, instantly.
From the time that you start the dispute, you will have about twenty
days maximum to escalate it to a claim. Do not immediately escalate it
to a claim. The dispute interface will let you send messages to the
other party. Begin by sending a message that states your problem, be
very generic. "I sent you money and did not receive what I paid for."
Wait a day, send another message, "Please respond."
Wait a day, send another message, "You need to respond."
Wait a day, send another message, "I am concerned that you are
committing fraud, you are avoiding communication, please respond."
Each of these messages get stored, and they help you build a case
because it shows that the other party is not interested in helping you
resolve problems.
Send another message. "You have not responded, I send you money and
have not received anything, I want a refund." - This will be a good
message to use when you escalate the case to a claim. Initiating a
dispute will sieze the balance of the paypal transaction so that they
can not access those funds. If the funds are already removed, or the
ballance is less than those funds, their paypal account will go into a
negative amount. The dispute phase lets a buyer and seller talk it out
by sending messages to each other. That's pretty much all a dispute is.
It siezes funds, and it lets you communicate. When you escalate to a
claim, you can nolonger communicate in this fashion by sending
documented emails to each other through paypal.
Escalating to a claim tells Paypal that the buyer and seller can not
work out an agreement and the buyer wants a refund. Paypal will wait
for about three days for the seller to respond to the claim. If the
seller does not respond, that makes your case stronger. If they do
respond, that's ok too. Paypal will send their respone to you in an
email and basically tell you, "Ok guys, the seller responded with this,
we are not going to investigate anything yet. Talk to each other, sort
it out. If you leave the claim open because you can't sort it out on
your own, then we will begin investigating in three days."
Paypal really makes you wait a long time because they don't want to
have to investigate anything or spend human resources. Paypal will take
a look at the correspondence sent back and forth so far, and other
information.
If the payment notes included any disclaimers about the goods being
nonrefundable, nondisputabe, or virtual, that can assist your case.
Many cases are won by experiennced sellers by writing to paypal and
saying, "Hey, look at the notes or the description of the item. Right
there, it says no refunds." or "Look at the notes or item description,
he knew these were virtual goods before he paid and Paypal does not
offer buyer protection for that. I warned him about that before he paid
and I did provide what he paid for, he's just trying to scam me." Only
draw attention to or admit that the goods were virtual as a final
resort. Paypal doesn't protect sellers either when it comes to
virtual goods. Their general policy and behavior is to reward sellers
if the seller can provide proof of delivery. Beause of this, intangible
goods or services usually result in denied disputes and denied
judgements.
Having a paypal account with a strong history is beneficial and can
affect Paypal's judgment. It may be beneficial to be paypal verified as
well.
Some scammers use hacked paypal accounts, but that's usually when
buying instead of selling. When selling, their tactic relies on using a
newly created paypal account that is usually tied to a disposable email
address.
Seller paypal fraud -
how it works
1. Provide stolen goods, or provide real goods that they can steal back
later, or get you to pay first and then provide anything but excuses so
that they have enough time to do step two.
2. Request a payment from paypal so that if you file a dispute, the
account is empty and they have a check from paypal. OR - use the funds
in their paypal balance to buy stuff.
3. Steal back what they sold if it actually belonged to them.
The vulerability of a scammer using this technique is that in order to
be paid by paypal, paypal needs your name and address. In order to cash
a check, you need to have a bank account or at least photo ID at the
bank. To receive a check, you need a real address where you can receive
mail. That means they just identified themselves to Paypal. If they
didn't identify themselves to paypal and they used the funds in their
paypal account to buy stuff from other people, then those other people
will have, at the very least, an address where they would have shipped
the stuff. Even if your dispute is denied, Paypl and others may have
information that can help. Law enforcement investogators should be able
to fill out an information request form to ask for the information of
the other person and the contact info for anyone else that they dealt
with.
Buyer paypal fraud -
how it works
1. If they're a hacker, they do things like hack forums to get email
addresses and passwords, then try those out with Paypal. Most paypal
fraud for virtual goods is not from hacked accounts. Hackers are better
off buying real goods that they can sell on the street out the back end
of a van.
2. They send payment and receive goods.
3. They dispute payment as unauthorized, undelivered, or not as described.
If they're a hacker and are in
possession of a stolen
paypal account, you will have no recourse and it will be virtually
impossible to track them down. The person that got hacked may or may
not be interested in volunteering their computer to an investigator to
try tracking the hacker down.
The vulerability of a scammer using this technique is pretty much the
same as seller based fraud. If they claim unauthorized transaction,
then they are basically claiming that they were hacked. You can
challenge that by providing any emails received from them. Most emails
have a timestamp and an IP address unless they are from a free email
service that strips that information. Show paypal the timestamp and IP,
get a geek to help you get this from the email header if necessary.
Paypal logs IP addresses and timestamps on each payment. If this
information tracks back to the owner of the paypal account, then it
becomes clear that the account was never hacked, the other person is
just a scammer. Paypal may not investigate information like this if you
do not provide it. So be sure to provide it. If you have a name,
telephone, address, etc., that can also be used to help.
If they claim not as
described, or undelivered, you know what to say already from
reading up to this point.
Some scam artists are cocky, or will tell you lies when they should
have stopped communicating. You can use that against them. Communicate
with them and try to get a response. Don't drop any accusations when
you begin communication. If you can get them to start feeding you a
cover story, then you're getting IP addresses with time stamps. If they
don't respond, then try accusing them. "Hey, you stole my stuff!" If
they are cocky, they might write back and gloat about it or say, "Buyer
beware, dumbass!" - That too, gives you an IP address and timestamp. If
you can get a phone number from them, that's very valuable. If it's a
cellphone, you can get their personal information by doing an
information search on that number. This costs $25.
RECOVERING STOLEN ACCOUNTS
If the account is still in your email address, request a password
reset. If not, then contact the gaming company and say that you
suddenly can not log in and that you are concerned that someone may
have stolen your account. They will ask very basic questions, no
tricks, nothing to be worried about. If they authenticate you over the
phone, they'll just set your account back and email you a new password.
If they authenticate you using other methods, then they will change the
password and not realease it to anyone until someone provides proof of
ID such as a scan of a driver's license. The scammer does not have your
telephone, the scammer does not have your ID. Because of that, it's
virtually impossible to steal an account from an original owner.
Blizzard does offline authentication checks by having you go to a
notary. Due to this, even if the scammer has your ID, they can't
authenticate because they do not have your face. Only you look like
you, and the notary is going to ask to see ID. Never tell the gaming
company that you sold your account and the deal went bad, they will ban
you for that.
GETTING ACCOUNTS BANNED
If you bought an account and then it was recalled. Contact the gaming
company and give them all the information that you have on the account
and on the person that sold it. Gaming companies do not support the
sale of their accounts, and they also don't want them to be involved in
scams. The account will be banned. Encourage the game company to check
access logs for IP addresses. "On June 9th to June 13th, I had the
account, and you will see that the IP address is in Minnesotta instead
of where it normally is. You can also check the IP range of this email
that I am sending, you will see that I was connecting from my internet
service provider that I'm on right now as I email this. On June 13th,
the password was changed, and the original owner stole it back. I would
not know this information if I was not given access to the account and
then later had that access taken away. If you check custome service
logs, you may find that the owner reported their account stolen. It was
not stolen, it was sold. The only thief is the owner. I have lost money
due to this and am in the process fo pressing charges. Please ban this
account so that it can not be used for online fraud." - Say something
like that and the account will be investigated and banned. If you have
information about the owner such as their email, name, phone, etc.,
give that as well, it lends credibility to the accusation that the
account was sold.
A letter like this is also a great way to get your own account banned
if a scammer is in possession of it and you are unable to recover it.
The benefit of banning accounts is that it removes the profit from
theft. Why steal something that the other person can remotely destroy
any time they want?
WHAT IF
PAYPAL CAN'T RETURN MY MONEY?
If you can identify them, sue them in small
claims court. Think Judge Judy from television. When sued, a person is
summoned to defend themselves in the juristiction of the country where
the proceedings were filed. For most cases, this means they have to
travel hundreds of miles. If they can't make it, you will probably win
the case by default.2
Get printouts of everything. Print out the paypal page, correspondence
with paypal and correspondence with the scammer, any information on the
scammer, the webpage which you used to sell your stuff. Print out every
single piece of information that you have wheter you think it is
important or not. Judges like documentation. Think of all the cases
judge Judy throws out because one party had paper and the other party
did not. Don't worry about a judge not hearing your case or thinking
that virtual goods are stupid. They've seen it all. Online fraud is
nothing new and you will have a good chance of winning (IF you
have some paper.)
MAKING THEM PAY
Start out by reporting them. If you have email from them, you can get
forensics from the email that can be used to determine their true
identity through their internet service provider. Specificly, the IP
and timestamp. If you are unfamiliar with viewing email headers, then
ask your nearest geek for help.
If you had their telephone number, even a cellphone number, you can use
that to track them down. Go to 411.com, look it up, and then follow the
links for more information. This will cost about $25. Most tracking
will have to be done yourself. Small crimes are usually ignored by
authorities because they're too busy and they have bigger fish to fry.
Most account fraud isn't by professionals, it's teenagers that think
they can get away with it. Simply getting their info and writing a
letter or getting their parents involved can be powerful. Sending them
a google map to their address is especially intimidating.
Some instant messenger programs reveal the IP address of the other user
when they are sending messages. use a computer with no other software
or open windows, make a new chat name, say hello to them. type netstat
-n at the command prompt. Practice with a friend first to get used to
it.
Don't forget social engineering - keep them talking, in as many ways as
possible, as long as possible to help you gather more information.
Again, consult someone that's familiar with computers.
Google them. Name, email, phone, screen names, every single piece of
information that you can think of. If you get too many results, reverse
search ther IP address to get the locality of their internet service
provider, then re-run your search, adding state and or city to the
query.
Resources to use for reporting
and tracking:
http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/reporting.htm
http://network-tools.com/
www.dnsstuff.com
Don't think that your fraud case is too small or trivial. People that
scam wow accounts, often do it frequently. There have been cases where
international serial scammers have been brought to justice because
everybody that ever got scammed from them, posted all of the
information that they could collect, and eventually, it was enough
information to have a successful prosecution. A source of IP addresses
is the medium by which any account was advertised. When Markeedragon
gets an information request form from an investigator, they give out
the IP and any information that can help the case. What this means for
you is that even if you can't get your money or your account back, you
can make a contribution to the fraud forums that may help justice find
your scammer.
If you have had an account stolen and you did not have it banned, it
may be beneficial to google for the armory links of your characters.
There is a chance that you may be able to find the scammer as they are
trying to sell the account. Make yourself a new email address and
pretend to be an interested customer. Collect as much information as
possible and ask about different payment options. What is your
information for if I want to send you a check? Can I call you on the
phone? Get their paypal account if you can. Some scammers use
disposable paypals for buying, but a real one for receiving payments.
Some do bad buying, but good selling. If they are doing this,
identifying their real paypal account can hurt them. One of the most
enticing things you can say when posing as a potential buyer is, "I
want to send you Western Union, to do so, I need your name and
address." Scammers LOVE Western Union because the payment is
nonreversible.
As an additional social engineering tactic (this one is really sneaky)
Contact them and state that you read in a forum that they scammed a
really valuable account and that you saw screenshots and stuff and you
want to buy that account from them. To make it sound enticing and real,
also ask for the armory links of any other accounts that they have
scammed. They want to sell what they have stolen, but to get paid, they
will need to provide personal information. That's how you con a con
artist and get the info to put them in jail! If someone did that
fulltime, just contacting scammers and offering to buy because they
read the scam post, hundreds of scammers would be sitting in jail right
now. The beautiful thing about asking if they have any other stolen
accounts for you to purchase is that the info from those accounts can
be used to contact other people that have been scammed. There is
strength in numbers, and the ability to prove that they are guilty of
thousands instead of hundreds in fraud will result in longer prison
sentences!
This information can help others if you help share it. Digg it, telll
your friends, get the word out. Link to it when you share your story or
post the scammer's information to help others.
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