Good News in Fighting Frauds

Hopefully none of the readers of this blog have ever been a victim of a consumer scam, had their identities stolen, or know someone who has been a victim. That said, it is unfortunately likely that we all know someone who has been a victim of a scam. But there is good news on an international front regarding a scam that required victims to send money in order to claim their “winnings”.

An article about efforts from U.S. and Dutch law enforcement efforts explain that FIOD and US DoJ conduct simultaneous operations against worldwide multi-million euro fraud with false letters. The article explains Dutch law enforcement is seizing mail from 300 mailboxes and is investigating 6 companies. At the same time DOJ filed suit “against two of the suspected companies and one director in the Netherlands, on behalf of hundreds of thousands of victims.” Here’s how this scam worked

[T]he main suspects sent millions of letters to people in the United States, Great Britain, Switzerland, Italy, France, Japan and many more countries. In the letters, addressed to people personally, the recipients were made to believe that they had won an award in the amount of money or a check, which they had not claimed yet. Another example was that the sender of the letter intended to give money to the recipient as an act of charity. In addition, letters were sent which stated that the recipient was a guaranteed winner in a lottery. To be able to transfer the money to the recipient, the latter had to send a cash amount of between 20 and 45 euro or a cheque, each time to a mailbox in the Netherlands.

In various letters, approximately 300 different mailbox numbers in the Netherlands were mentioned. Allegedly, the six suspected Dutch companies, which are the subject of the FIOD-investigation manage a large part of the mailboxes, empty them and process the mail. Presumably, the companies were allowed to keep part of the money as payment for services rendered, but the larger part of the money was transferred to bank accounts, which allegedly belonged to the main suspects of the fraud.

The DOJ press release is available here which also includes a link to the complaint filed in federal court.  Kudos to U.S. DOJ and to the Dutch law enforcement agency for excellent work!