CanadaNews’ Reporter Notes

Washington, DC is known for many things:  organisational national conferences are often held here, the beauty of the national monuments, the President of the United States resides here, and even the stoic charm of the Smithsonian.  But the nation’s capitol is also known for one other thing:  scams!  Today in the District of Columbia, a Washington woman was sentenced  to two years in prison and five years of supervised release for her role in an Internet counterfeit check scheme.  Some of you might find that hard to believe in such an awesome city, but it’s true.

In March, Edna Fiedler pleaded guilty to attempting to defraud U.S. citizens in a scheme known as a Nigerian check scam.  At some point in time, you might have even received either an email associated with her, or some other email with basically the same concept, or desire:  t0 defraud you of your money!

Her involvement goes as such:  Fiedler helped her accomplices in Nigeria send fake checks to people who had agreed to cash the checks on behalf of the sender, keeping some of the proceeds and sending the rest back.

This a far cry from just sending a fake check in the mail after the person being scammed as sent a real one.  Also this particular scam is harder to catch since the person receiving the scamming check too legitimate to banks and other financial institutions.

The Nigerians found people willing to cash the fake checks via e-mail.

They would send their names as well as fake documents that looked like Wal-Mart money orders, Bank of America checks, U.S. Postal Service checks and American Express traveler’s checks to Fiedler. They told her how to fill out the checks and where to send them.

The recipients most likely thought they were helping out someone who needed a person in the U.S. to cash a check for them  They were able to get the money by cashing the checks, and sent most of it to either Fiedler or her Nigerian accomplices. However, once the checks were discovered to be fake, the people who cashed them were responsible for the full amount.

The banks would cash the checks and a few days later, would be discovered to be fake.

All told, Fiedler sent out $609,000 (US) worth of phony checks and money orders. When U.S. Secret Service agents investigating the case searched Fiedler’s house, they found additional fake checks worth more than $1.1 million that she was preparing to send out.

At a recent conference in Seattle, a representative from the U.S. Postal Service and Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna described ways they’re working to shut down these kinds of scams, particularly because they often involve people who don’t realize that they’re taking part in illegal activities.

The U.S. Postal Service recently sent 15 postal investigators to Lagos, Nigeria, and during a three-month period there, they helped intercept counterfeit checks, lottery tickets and eBay overpayment schemes with a face value of $2.1 billion, Chris Siouris, a cyber investigator at the U.S. Postal Inspector, said at the recent conference. Siouris, McKenna and others are pushing for ways to better educate Internet users so that people don’t unwittingly help out in these kinds of e-mail scams.