Recently, some small family wineries in our area were hit by internet thieves. One small winery was innocently engaged in a fraudulent transaction for $80,000 and 4 pallets of their wine. Then another winery also reported the loss of an entire pallet of wine in a fraudulent transaction. They thought they were dealing with an overseas distributor and so the poor English in the email orders did not alert them. When I got a similar email with shady details, I proceeded to snoop, lie, and cheat my way to answers with the best of the best.
Unfortunately, when I called a law enforcement office to tell them I could actually arrange for the perp to be at a specific place, at a specific time, easily identified, and engaging in crime at that moment, the response ranged from, "this isn't TV," to, "We don't give out our names for security purposes."
So the best I can do for the future of internet safety is publish my rather long account of my voluntary investigation with wine customer 'John Nelson.' I will show you how the wine scam works, why it works, who the real criminals are, and who the front men here in the United States are.
Over the next few days, my 'Inside a Wine Scam' report will be published in five parts:
This scam is making its way around again under the name Tim Ferrone. Be warned
Posted by: Donnie | 06/15/2011 at 05:15 AM