Craigslist.com
Complaint 19313 Details

I replied to a Craig's List ad for a job last week (I sent my resume and a cover letter) and received a reply from a person who said they were David B Summer, CEO of DackTech. The person wanted me to remove some viruses and upgrade operating systems on 7 laptops. He said my fee was okay and that I was going to receive a cashier's check in an amount larger than my fee and that I was to cash the check, deduct my fee, divide the remainder and wire transfer it to two separate people in Alameda, CA. I was skeptical of the cashier's check so I asked the teller (who I always talk to) what the process of a cashier's check was and told her that I did not have an existing relationship with this client so I was not sure if the check would go through or not. She usually avails the funds to me immediately, but she said she was going to place a two day hold on the check to verify the funds were good. She said if the funds weren't good then I would be liable for it. That was fine with me, so I notified David of the news. He emailed me as soon as the funds were available on the 18th so I went to the bank and withdrew $2,770.00 from my account and went to the Western Union to make the wire transfers. I made two transactions of $1,075.80 each. The amount transferred was $980.00 and I paid an extra $86.00 to make the funds immediately available for each transaction. I sent a total of $2,151.60 at 11:54 AM. I went home thinking this was a little odd, but the money was there and everything seemed legitimate because the hold validated the transfers validity. I wrote code until 3:30 PM and headed out to Home Depot to get some items. I arrived at the Home Depot about 4:00 PM when I looked at my phone and realized I had a missed call and a message. I checked my voicemail to find an urgent message left by a person from the Bank Legal Department to return his call. I immediately returned the call and was informed that the check had been cancelled and the funds needed to be returned to the bank immediately. I told him what had happened and he asked me a few questions regarding the incident and told me he would not be in the next day but to talk to another person if I had questions. He told me that I might be able to cancel the Western Union transactions if I called in time. I called 1-800-325-6000 and talked to a woman in the fraud department about the problem and she managed to stop the transaction with the MTCN Number 592-847-1110 that was supposed to go to Jota Jeanpierre in Alameda, California. She gave me a new MTCN number for the reversed transaction and told me to pick the money up at the same place I dropped it off. I gave her all the information I had about the person who I was corresponding with and she said she found similarities with another incident report and created a new case number. She told me that the other sum had already been picked up in Temecula, CA (this is the same place the check shipped from in the FedEx tracking log) and that nothing could be done about it. I went home pretty frustrated and got on my computer to see if I could find any other identifying information about this David Summer person or where the e-mail originated. I checked the mail headers in the messages he sent me and found that the gmail cluster he using resides in or near Mountain View, CA and his account uses the same farm to send mail from (the mail headers are also included in this message, below the e-mail thread)I then called the Edmond Police Department to find out how to file a report. I was told that an officer would call me back so I waited a while for a phone call. An officer called me and asked me what had happened so I explained it to her. She told me that she needed to verify if she could take the case with her supervisor (jurisdictional validation I suppose) before proceeding and asked if she could call me back. I received a final call from the officer stating that she was allowed to take the case and asked me to go into detail. I Explained the story (this same one) to her and also that I had logged all details of contact with this person. She asked me to bring the notes by the department and drop them off before eleven that night. Before we hung up I informed the officer that I was capable of tracking this person’s location via the digital fingerprints they left behind. I asked her if it was realistic to expect law enforcement to do the same thing or if it was more realistic to expect this report to be files away and nothing to come of it. She validated my expectation by stating that the report would be sent to the FBI and nothing would happen because “they had better things to do than work on Craig’s List scams”. I dropped the documents off and am awaiting a call from a detective (which could take a week she said). After arriving home I wrote an e-mail to the Temecula Police Department asking if they would look into my case and provided them the Western Union case number. I still have yet to receive a response. In mean time I decided to call the Bank Legal Department back to discuss the details of how this occurrence affected my relationship with the bank. I spoke with someone at the Bank Legal Department and began discussing the incident with him. He said that my case was rare because the checks normally come back as insufficient funds instead of signature mismatches. I asked him if that meant the signature on the cashier's check was not the same as the one on the signature card for the account holder, and he said yes. But then he said that it wouldn't match anyway because a person from the bank signs the cashier's check, not the account holder. He stated that he thought the person who sent me this check may have a check printer and be printing these checks. He said that he was going to call me back after discussing the issue with the credit union in California. I received the rep’s call at 4:00 PM 08/19 and he verified that the person who sent this check was printing them and sending them out. The credit union said multiple people got “hit” by this one. I decided to snoop around a little bit and found a job listing in Arizona (http://azgig.com/2011/08/17/desktoplaptop-pc-technician/) that is similar to the one I responded to and even uses the same company name (Dacktech). This ad was published two days ago meaning they are probably going to get more people to do the same stupid thing I did. I could probably catch these guys if I had the resources; which is why I am baffled as to why real law enforcement has told me that it is of minimal priority. This is an easy catch! All you have to do is reply to the job posting with a resume and wait for a response. The response will probably include a description of a problem and a request for a quote. Respond with a quote and await another response. The next response will say the fee is agreeable and that a cashier’s check will be sent if you provide mailing information. When the check comes in you’ll have the fraudulent check in hand along with a set of instructions to send money to people in California via wire transfer. Go to a western union and transfer some money as requested and work with western union to find out which location in Temecula, CA the money is being picked up in. As soon as the request is made, pick the person up and you’ll probably find out how this whole thing has been working (If you find $1,075.80 laying around I would like it back).