Could I possibly get suggestions on the most effective organization to report illegal activity?

More specifically, we have found a site on our servers that is being used for fraudulent activities (the fake 'online bank' scam). Twelve hours of monitoring the site activity has convinced us that the activity is indeed fraudulent and has claimed at least one unknowing victim.

Reporting the activity to local authorities is in the process, but I am hoping to find an effective place to report in the UK as well. The account holder appears to be UK-based and our past reporting to local law enforcement has proven to be less than effective.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Carl

I used to report stuff like this to online authorities but they don't seem to be that interested. If I find anything like that on our servers I simply remove the offending account. Occasionally I may report it to the relevent network abuse address (and I may send the account holder a 'scare' email). I had a Paypal phishing scam recently but they just sent me a standard reply that they would send to a normal user telling me not to provide information to that address!

I wish I could be more positive but I have never heard back from any company/law enforcement agency so I don't waste my time reporting them anymore :(

ZeroSixty,

That is typically our response as well, but during our due diligence I learned that the scam appears to have actually claimed at least one victim prompting me to at least attempt a reporting.

Report it to whoever you feel necessary and suspend the account immediately, don't want anymore victims!

Where abouts in the UK is this person? There are many different teams around the UK that deal with Internet Fraud, if you can let me know where in the UK they are, I can tell you who best to contact.

Joseph_M,

Thank you for responding and I aplogize for the delay. His signup information is apparently incorrect but he was connecting from an IP address in the range of '213.255.248.128 - 213.255.248.191' which is assigned to Skyvision. I do not know if their service encompasses a large area or not.

I just learned that he has requested payment from several 'victims' to be sent via Western Union and specify a London address.

If you happen to know the most responsive organization in or around London on such matters I would appreciate that information.

Thank you.

Have you got in touch with the bank that they are spoofing? A direct call from the fraud department of a major bank to the police should have the desired effect.

The person doesn't appear to be spoofing an existing bank or phishing for existing bank information. They appear to have created their own 'bank' and are targeting those outside of the UK primarily with the old 'You won the British Lotto' scam.

You want to contact the National High Tech Crime Unit.

I know that they are very overworked though (read computing last week, they want businesses to provide a million quid to fund more officers!)

You can report crime here: http://www.nhtcu.org/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=12347

or contact them directly http://www.nhtcu.org/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=12291&tt=nhtcu

In my experience they are worse than useless.
We had someone caught red handed who had been emailed at one of our accounts by someone who used his real name.
I managed to track the guy down and the police were not interested.

Their attitude is that no crime ahs been committed until a victim has made a complaint and (of course) they never do or they are in some far off country.

If the person is indeed based in London (according to the address that people are mailing cheques to), then contact the Met Police Fraud unit either directly or via the IWF:

http://www.met.police.uk/computercrime/index.htm


However SkyVision is a Nigerian company. So the fraudster is either using an open proxy on a skyvision connection, or alternatively is actually on one (thus being in Nigeria).

Hope this helps!

Joe.

He will have a friend sitting ina n internet cafe in Kilburn High Road with a drop box for collecting the cheques.

Thank you all for your assistance. One of the victims was scammed into sending money via Western Union to a name and address in London. The name and address that the money was sent to does not match any of the names or addresses that are otherwise associated with this scam so I am inclined to believe that this may indeed be an actual name of the scammer. I am not 100% familiar with the procedures of Western Union but I do believe that you need to present ID to receive the funds.

Regardless, I cannot do anything except encourage those that have been victimized to report the incident to their local law enforcement and then they can contact UK officials. I just wanted to be proactive in this incident to avoid any potential adverse effects on our current customers.

Thank you all again.