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0 pointsjstarfish3y ago0 comments

You vastly overestimate the degree to which the police give a shit. Unless there's an actual financial loss or threat to life, they don't care. This barely qualifies as identity theft anyway; it's attempted fraud.

They won't take a report of your phone number being spoofed, but they'll deploy SWAT teams to unsuspecting houses at the word of bored teenagers.

Do you know the imposter's actual identity? What would you even report? If the perpetrator is international, what are your local police even supposed to do with this information?

You might have a little better luck with the FBI, but if you don't show up with hard evidence (i.e. do all the work for them), you won't get anywhere with them either.

All of this goes to show you why this sort of scheme remains successful. Nobody cares. Fraud is just an assumed risk.

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toss13y ago

Yes, the police are definitely the wrong group, as their jurisdiction is just local or state, and almost none would have much a clue of how to proceed.

However, the FBI might be very interested. While these situations may be just be a couple of friends scamming, it could also be the tip of the iceberg of an organized crime operation or an espionage operation. Many countries are actively working to get inside American corporations to steal both their technology and anything related to any govt work and secrets. There is not much better way to gain access to the network than to be able to login as an employee.

Even if that one case alone isn't that interesting to them, having the data may very well help crack a much more important NatSec case. Gather the info and report it.

radarsat13y ago

I understand. But you don't really know if you don't even try to report it. And on this case.. I mean, this has to do with taking in income while posing as someone else, which ultimately affects the IRS, so I suspect there might be more interest at the FBI level than you think.

But who knows. I'd be curious to know how common this is / is becoming. It's certainly novel to me.

jstarfishOP3y ago

If you still have faith in the system, more power to you. You seem to think all these three-letter agencies exist to help each other. I shared your optimism before I started having to deal with them on a professional basis.

The most the FBI will do with such reports is, if substantive enough, occasionally tip off industry partners to current trends from two years ago. Useful intel, but woefully outdated.

The hardest part is even getting them to listen to you in the first place-- you need to bring them hard evidence and facts. Like taking on sprint tasks you know you can't achieve, they will not take on cases that cannot be resolved.

viridian3y ago

I really doubt they care, the juice just isn't worth the squeeze for them. Its an incredibly difficult crime to prosecute for, even if the people were operating in the US, which they almost certainly are not. They really only care about the highest of high people cyber crimes (silkroad, anontalk, lulzsec, etc), because it takes a dozen or more agents months to years to resolve a single one.

Generally when it comes to this sort of stuff, if you cant hand them all the evidence with a bow on it, they don't care unless it involves an imminent terror attack, or major drug/CSAM ring. This doesn't just apply to us average joes either, every cop I know (so, 3) who has ever tried to pass something they viewed as important to the feds, has been stiff armed and told that it's not a priority.

mariuolo3y ago

At least the impersonators could land in hot water, if identified.

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