Identity Theft Scheme
It has been a while since I have navigated around the SWNI site, and wow, what a difference!
Although we meet on the first Thurday of the month with the Crime Prevention Committee at the Multnomah Arts Center (open to the public), I thought this would also be a good forum to disseminate information pertaining to crime as it happens in the SW Neighborhoods to those that may not be able to attend. This topic, ID Theft, will be discussed more in depth at the next meeting. Until then, here are some details.
Last week, PPB SW Officer Ralph Elwood was called to a home for sale on a report that numerous people had arrived at the residence after a Craigslist posting that it was for rent at the price of $1000/month. Well, such was not the case and Officer Elwood gave me a copy of the Criagslist posting. On it was an email address which contained a portion of the brokers first name and all of her last name @ yahoo.com. Using one of our investigatory email accounts I sent an email to the person who placed the ad and received a pathetic response asking me for my personal information and suggesting that the person placing the ad was working on a Christian Charity and could use the money! Once I had the reply it was very easy to query the path that the email travelled over the internet... right to an Internet Service Provider based in Lagos, Nigeria.
Unfortunately, at this point, the investigation becomes a bit of a jurisdictional issue, as Oregon State Law does not extend to the African Continent! www.IC3.gov is the clearing house for these types of cases. On that site you can learn about various internet frauds (new ones pop up almost daily)and REPORT an on line fraud to the agencies responsible for enforcing federal law, like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Trade Commission and the United States Department of Homeland Security. The chances that your case will be solved here are not very high. What is highly likely is that your report could fill in a missing piece of an on-going investigation.
Internet fraud scams from Nigeria are not new, they have been around for years. It is unclear to me why so many schemes come out of this country. What is clear is that many, many people fall prey to the scams. One in particular is an email requesting a check for x dollars because so and so has come into a large quantity of gold, lottery winnings, etc and they need your help to cash it in. Send the check for $1000 and we will include you in the windfall of money that awaits. This is not what awaits and please immediately delete this email from your in box!
I hope this was informative and helps some of our SW Neighbors in some way.
Take care,
Officer Brian Hughes
Portland, Oregon Police Bureau