You never want to receive a letter with that on the envelope… make for a very anxious 2-3 seconds while you open it. I can’t tell you how many things ran through my head during the mentioned 2-3 seconds. I’d visited Florida 2 times in the past 5 years … did I do something I wasn’t supposed to? I don’t recall getting into trouble with the law.

I opened the letter to find a cheque for $14.52 enclosed… yep a cheque. Was this some sort of scam or sick joke someone was playing on me? About 3 days later I received a call as a follow-up to the mail. It was legit. It seems that my complaining did work.

About 4-5 years ago I had purchased a portable DVD player on ebay and it turned out to be a scam. Myself and 4 others had sent in payments for similar auctions that we won from this ebay seller. Turned out this ebay seller took our money and bolted. There I was, stuck with no  dvd player and my $$ gone. I had to do something…it’s in my nature.

Not only was it impossible to get help from ebay to track down this scum, it was hard finding a place on the internet that looked after this sort of thing. I couldn’t go to tje local police, since I had no way of knowing where this person lived. At a discussion group on the issue (bad ebay sellers) I was told that the FBI had a site where I could go make a report. By this time the other people that fell for the scam had contacted me. We all filled out the complaint forms at the FBI website (special department that was fairly new). It took some time to complete the forms (there were many) and at the back of my head I could hear myself say..you got ripped off and now you’re wasting time completing these forms.

Fast forward 5 years.. They (the FBI) caught the guy, charged him and the case went to court. Since he was a handicap (not sure what that had to do with it… take him to the gallows) I  was told that he didn’t get jail time. However, he had to work and pay back everyone he scammed. So for the past few months I’ve been receiving these small cheques as partial payment for the money he scammed. ( i think he was alos banned from ever owning or using a computer again..I wonder how well that’s working out? He’s probably reading my blog right now ;)  )
If you’ve been scammed you may complete a complaint form at : http://www.ic3.gov/

Here’s another link with some great tips:http://www.fbi.gov/majcases/fraud/internetschemes.htm.

You should see the look on the faces of the bank tellers when I go in with the cheques every month with “Florida Dept Of Corrections” on it. Everytime I find myself explaining the whole story. Hey… I’ve got a rep to uphold, don’t want them thinking I was in trouble in Florida

Have a great day!
Chris..