Common Internet Scams

There are many kinds of internet scams. There are purchase internet scams that appear in various forms. Direct solicitation is one of the more straightforward types of purchase internet scams. In these internet scams, a buyer in another country approaches many merchants through spam and then directly asks them if they can ship using credit cards to pay.

Internet scams also include counterfeit postal money orders. There has been a significant increase in these internet scams in the last couple of years according to the FBI and the US Postal Inspection Service. The quality of these counterfeit postal money orders is very high and they make it easy to fool ordinary people with these kinds of internet scams.

The counterfeit postal money orders are used in a variety of internet scams. In 2005 an article in the New York Times detailed a man that had been corresponding with a woman through a Nigerian dating site and had received several counterfeit postal money orders from her to purchase a computer. He purchased the computer and mailed it to her and became another victim of internet scams.

In some internet scams, criminals approach business owners and ask for large orders that range from $50,000 to $200,000, and even agree to pay via wire transfer in advance. The criminal will agree to whatever price is quoted and the negotiation is very short.

In internet scams such as these, the victim is given excuses about the impossibility of sending a bank wire transfer. The criminal also tells the business ownder they will send a check that can be deposited and that they would wait until the check clears before expecting shipment.

These internet scams work because many business owners feel safe because they will have the funds before shipping. The problems arise because what the criminals do is counterfeit checks from a medium to large U.S. company that usually has enough funds to cover the size of check they intend to send. They imitate the signatures very well. These internet scams are performed with common bookkeeping and word-processing applications.

The victim will usually ask why they were sent a company check from a company that is not the client’s company and they are told that it was a payment that the U.S. company owed them. Banks will usually pay those checks. This is one of the internet scams that only comes to light when the U.S. company notices that they did not issue the check and complains to their bank. The bank then debits the account of the victimized business owner who has by then already shipped the goods.

There are some cases of internet scams where the criminals do not tell the business owners that they will not issue the wire. The criminals will sometimes agree to the wire but ask the business owner for their bank's address. The criminal will then send a check directly to the business owner’s bank with a note asking to deposit it to the merchant's account. An unsuspecting bank officer will deposit the check, and then the criminal contacts the business owner stating that they made a "direct deposit" into the merchant's account.