[LINK] reporting potential illegal activity on the internet

Ash Nallawalla nospam at crm911.com
Fri Aug 18 21:20:05 AEST 2006


> From: Jan Whitaker [mailto:jwhit at janwhitaker.com] 

> This country is such a shambles when it comes to reporting 
> e-crime. I received a potential money laundering scam, not 
> just a phishing one, and tried to find an agency that would 
> be able to receive the information. AFP defers to ACMA who 
> defers to etc etc etc. I ended up being referred back to 
> where I started.  There are all sorts of 'protect the 
> children from nasty words' programs, but I'm really 
> disheartened that when it comes to real crime, they don't 
> have their act together.

Was this spam or a one-on-one communication?  

If the former, it is likely that the agency that needs to care about this is
already aware of it.  There has been at least one recent story in the
newspapers about someone who was recruited with a typical "work at home and
receive money on behalf of our company" story.  The victim was an accountant
or "someone who should have known better" who was conned into depositing
money into an account controlled by the former, who then transferred it into
a Western Union account for a small commission.  I see about one of these
each month, with some more plausible than the others.

Today I saw an email purporting to be from eBay inviting me to be a
PowerSeller for free.  The "eBay" URL was on an Earthlink account webspace.
If I were an eBay seller, I suppose this would be very tempting and it
didn't resemble the usual eBay phishing email claiming that I hadn't paid
for something.

- Ash




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