Entry bubble Reporting online scams

By: Jess | June 18, 2009 | Category: Money

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Last week I got a rather panicky call from a friend of mine.

"I think I just got scammed on Craigslist," she said. "How can I report it?"

I asked her to give me some more details so I could tell her the best place to report.

Here's the gist of the story.

My friend and her roommate are moving at the end of next month so they have been searching Craigslist for apartment listings. They'd responded to several ads and found one apartment that sounded extremely promising -- good location, reasonable price, utilities included. When they contacted the poster, he sent them back an application form to fill out.

One part of the form required them to supply their credit score. That sounded a little odd. When I moved, my landlord ran the credit check himself, but I figured maybe this guy wanted a ballpark figure and then he would run it himself too. My friend went to Annualcreditreport.com to find her report.

Both girls filled out their forms and were getting ready to turn them in when they noticed something in the email said it was mandatory that they use a Web site he provided to find their credit score because supposedly the guy had been scammed too many times by other sites. They both thought that was very strange.

Turns out the whole thing was a giant phishing scam. The link for his "safe" site looks like the apartment complex's real site, but instead it steals personal information, like names and social security numbers. Thank goodness my friend and her roommate hadn't noticed that link until later or that guy would have gotten all of their personal information.

I directed my friend to scam resources on the Federal Citizen Information Center Web site and told her to check out the links for the Internet Crime Complaint Center and the Federal Trade Commission. USA.gov also provides information on Internet fraud.

Do you know of any other resources for reporting online scams?

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