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Just got Scammed with Counterfeit money.. how do I track down this guy?
Double_Faces
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So here's the story. I sell my Macbook on Craigslist, and I meet in a starbucks, the agreement is all cash. I have his phone number, email, and myspace- plus some other random bits of info and his picture.
Turns out when I checked the cash, 400 of the 800 bucks I was selling it for was fake. I've gone to the police, who are treating it as a theft, and I've just relayed the info to them.
What are my options? Is it legal to reverse search the cell number to get his address to give to the police?
Help?
Turns out when I checked the cash, 400 of the 800 bucks I was selling it for was fake. I've gone to the police, who are treating it as a theft, and I've just relayed the info to them.
What are my options? Is it legal to reverse search the cell number to get his address to give to the police?
Help?
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Indeed. How did you know it was fake?
Maybe it was a $400 bill.
Seriously though, I really doubt the police would let him have the counterfeit bill(s) back to scan them.
Yeah they kept the bills. I went to the counter of Starbucks right after he left to check them with their pen. I realize I should've done this while he was there, before I gave him the macbook, but they felt legit.... until I saw all the barcodes were the same on the 20s...
Owned.
yup
MWO: Adamski
Naw, he doesn't seem that smart, as I know that his phone is with the local phone company and their are records of where he lives attached.
I have to pay for such info of course..
Prosecute all the way. Let the police do their job.
Honestly, I've had the opportunity to see how the police work behind the scenes and while there isn't some magical criminal database, they do spend quite a bit of time compiling usual suspect lists. Counterfeit jack isn't something that some random kid on the street can get and use with no worries. I'd imagine that if you let the cops do their thing it will get sorted out- he might have fenced the Macbook already though...
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Which if they have reason to believe it more then just $400 they'll get the secret service involved who have a lot more lenient rules they have to follow.
Well... it's possible (though honestly unlikely) that he didn't know it was fake and was just passing on fake bills someone else had paid him with.
Though perhaps a more reasonable theory is that if only half the bills are fake it may take a person longer to realize it. If Double_Faces hadn't checked the bills with a counterfeit pen, but had just stuck them in his wallet he very well may have pulled out several real bills to use before ever trying to pass a counterfeit to someone and realizing he'd been had.
Not really its a common to mix real bills with the fake ones. lowers your chance of getting caught.
Nah that's part of the trick. You give someone 8 $100, the top and bottom 2 are real. You flip through them to count, and nothing on the ones that are fully visible look "weird."
I mean, this guy didn't expect to get scammed. That's why he didn't check the money right away -- he thought "hmm, is this real?" after the guy left, which is probably when he counted the money again and noticed something was off with half the money.
But yes, as DeShadow pointed out, if they're reasonably good counterfeits, the fed. gov't will get involved under the assumption that this is not a one-time event.
I get a ridiculous amount of fake £1 coins at the moment. The only way to notice is that most machines won't take them, and then when you compare them to real ones, they have a slightly different weight. They need to make them harder to make (like our pretty, 2 metal £2 coins). Not seen too many fake notes though, if any (in the UK).
wtf?
Yes. Weight differently, some are a bit soft and deform.
£1 is still worth $2, so maybe worth the time? I don't know. Our notes are pretty difficult to fake too, lots of watermarks and funny prints and bits of metal stuck in them.
Not directly the only thing he can do is hope to get the laptop back, which pawn shops would be forced to do, or sue the person for the money back.
Don't trust those pens either. I won't say how to do it, but I made a sheet of standard paper "pass" the pen test with about 10 seconds of my time and something that was just lying around in the office. Good catch on the serial numbers.
Unlikely. He can go after the guy in court if he gets caught.
Murphy's Paradox: The more you plan, the more that can go wrong. The less you plan, the less likely your plan will succeed.
I don't think you get your 'money' back, its not actually money. Which is why it is theft, I think. If your TV gets stolen, you dont get a new one as a replacement until they catch the guy. Though that would be pretty kickass.
Here in Canada, counterfeiting, depending on scale, will net you 3-5 on a first offense in a minimum security pen.
It's also pretty common for counterfitters to bleach out a small denomination bill and reprint it with a larger denomination.
The best way to check a bill at glance is to hold it up to the light and look for the inlayed thread that says the denomination of the bill. Those threads also glow different colors under uv light.
I say yes on this one! Did some quick research and below is a link to their field offices. Give a call to the closest one to see if they can help.
http://www.secretservice.gov/field_offices.shtml
The fact the guy is so traceable means he should be busted soon. But who knows, he may have been scammed too.
Virtually all newer bills(excepts 1's I think) have magnetic strips and/or watermarks. Both of those are quite hard to reproduce.
Detective has all the info and is going after the guy today. He claimed, "In cases like these, one fake 20 is one thing, but a slew of fake bills is on purpose."
Also, the Starbucks that was home to the transaction found the tape for me, and has it at the ready, showing the guy and I doing the whole thing.
I know the word is "teh old", but this guy=pwned.
And the detective is right. Usually fake bills that big indicate he intentionally did it, or is part of a ring.
A couple of years ago my mom got a fake 20$ from the bank, went down the street to pay a bill. They tried to have her arrested. Luckily the bank had it all on video.
(She transferred her account the next day)
This is in fact their primary concern. They are organized under the Department of the Treasury, along with the ATF (just a strange fact), and not Justice, which causes a lot of confusion as you would imagine.
Your local law enforcemet will forward on the counterfeit bills to them. They'll log and run the bills. If they have known "tells" they will be cataloged. If they don't and have never been seen before they'll be filed away to see if anymore like them pop up.
If he's brought in by your cops...yep, it's a federal crime.
When I was working at a bank we had a guy try to deposit 10 grand in fakes.
1) Any deposit over a certain amount is reported by the banks to the IRS
2) That much fake cash is a big big flag for the Secret Service.
He was picked up a week later.