Law/fraud procedure advise please, my wife was a victim of fraud from California, we called your police

[Bruce_T_Laney]

I think you should contact your police. Then they will tell you what to do (and maybe they could contact local police in California)

Our police don't have jurisdiction though, and the police basically left it up to my wife to decide what to do. Sounds like they have far too many of these to deal with I suppose, probably far more rampant there than here, especially with all the online ordering.

Seeing it deals with two countries ( U.S. and Canada ) it should fall under Interpol jurisdiction seeing the hackers are most likely using a drop location and someone to fence the merchandise and then send the money via Western Union or other means to another country to fund a criminal operation or possible terrorism.

Now some will go " WTF " but when I read what you wrote it came across as international hackers using stolen information which will fall more under Interpol...

Financial crime

Financial crime threatens people in every aspect of their lives: at home, at work, online and offline.

www.interpol.int

So contact your local authorities and file also with the Federal authorities and also file a complaint with interpol...

That is the right course of action, but with the dollar amounts being so small, they don't do much to stop the petty crime, so the criminals can hit a lot of people for small amounts with minimal risk.

It is the reporting that will help the Federal Authorities in Canada and Interpol and if enough reports come across then flag will pop up and authorities will take notice and the Op'er low amount may not pop up a flag on it own but they could be the one case out of many that triggers an investigation.

 

[Porter Rockwell]

You are right. Most people won't report it when they have to look up the proper authorities. I do, however. And I join you in urging people not to let things like this go unreported to the right agency. Your call might be the one that makes the authorities actually do something.

 

[Biff_Poindexter]

So, long story short, wife noticed a charge in her account which she never made. She called the company (it's a large one) to tell them she had been defrauded, they are reversing the charge as it was clear to them also it's fraud (especially since the mailing delivery address is in Cali).

As circumstances were, they didn't ship the order yet, but, they did tell my wife to call the police in California, give them the Fed Ex account number and have the police call them back for the details as they have their name and address.

I thought it was an odd approach, so I told my wife, "do what they say, but I think they should call them not you". Regardless, my wife called the police in Cali, and the officer she spoke to told her "it doesn't work like that" and advised her to call OUR police in Ontario (why?). They even went so far as to say "unfortunately, this person might not be caught (huh?)"

We are concerned of someone else being a victim of fraud because this company had been hacked in the past and this account information is what they probably used to make another order (quite a large one, different items surely).

Does contacting OUR police for a fraud case in California make sense to any of you? I have to say, it doesn't make sense to me.

You should have called the covert police instead...they handle those things

 

[Bruce_T_Laney]

You are right. Most people won't report it when they have to look up the proper authorities. I do, however. And I join you in urging people not to let things like this go unreported to the right agency. Your call might be the one that makes the authorities actually do something.

In the Op'er case just contacting local authorities will not be enough and they should file their complaint with:

Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) - CLEO Connect

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) is the central agency in Canada that collects information and criminal intelligence on such matters as mass marketing fraud (e.g., telemarketing), advance fee fraud (e.g., West African letters), Internet fraud and identification theft complaints.

cleoconnect.ca

Then their Federal Authorities once they have enough cases will contact Interpol and see where the investigation will lead them.

In the end if more people did their part on combating this then the amount of cases will lower but seeing the criminals usually target small amounts mean that authorities are less likely to act until a certain amount of cases have been reported.

I have been studying this for decades and feel sorrow for the Op'er and understand their angst about how to deal with this...

So I hope I helped them and hope their case will be the one that triggers an investigation and catching those that are doing this...