Ok so here's my story...but I warn you it somewhat long and completely off topic.
I was selling my old iPod mini on craiglist and listed it for $50. I quickly received a reply back from this guy who could just not put a sentence together at all. He claimed to be a soldier over in Iraq who wanted to have the item sent as a gift to his cousin in Nigeria (let the red flags start flying)!
I knew it was a scam, but I played along realizing no money was going to be transacted anytime soon. After a few emails we decided on a price of $62.50 with shipping, but instead I received a fake paypal email notifying me $150 was deducted from this guys "bank account" and that I would receive the funds in mine once the shipping information was confirmed!
I did not reply for 2 days and then received another fake email, but this time it had all these FBI logos on it along with some nasty text accusing me of "merchant fraud." At this point, I think I now have enough evidence to at least negotiate with his ISP and notify them of whats happening through their service.
This whole time, I was emailing the guy through yahoo. His emails concerning setting up the transaction came from his yahoo email, but the emails appearing to be from both paypal and the FBI came from a gmail address that was masked so it would appear as something along the lines of "
[email protected]" and "
[email protected]".
I decided to look at the full email headers that contain ALOT of meaningless junk, however they also contain the IP of the sender - and they matched (the emails from his yahoo and the fake emails from gmail)! After doing a simple IP trace, I found his location and ISP whom I then contacted.
After A few unsuccessful attempts, I finally got through to the right person who asked me to forward copies of the emails I received. I sent the emails, but did not hear a single word back for about a week - at this point I just figured case closed...what a waste of time.
Out of blue, I get a call from the ISP I contacted with someone from their legal department asking me to meet them at a law office to sign a few papers. When I asked what this was all about, they told me they had been tracking a ring of scammers using the exact same techniques as this guy and that in order to use the emails I received as evidence, I would need to confirm that I did receive them and that the forwarded versions I sent weren't modified in anyway.
Several months later I received a thank you letter from both the ISP and the office of their attorney. There was a short paragraph in it explaining that they cannot reveal the entire details of the case, but that "justice was served" to the individuals involved in the scam ring.
