Advance Fee Fraud

Every promise to deliver a product or service after payment can constitute a form of advance fee fraud. Over time, advances became common practice in offers that seem too good to be true. Examples include among others, 419 or Nigerian letter fraud, unexpected lottery winnings, unsecured subprime loans, and more recent, the alleged sale (and non-delivery) of products via online auction and shopping websites. The fraudster always asks for proof of identity and later transaction fees of the victim. As a result, a side-challenge of this type of scam is identity theft.

Advance fee fraudsters often use their collections to finance their lifestyle. Intangible spending patterns are difficult to examine and purchases may lose value on a secondary market. This makes full recovery difficult unless the fraudster is wealthy or a court orders full repayment. Most advance fee fraud takes place in between different jurisdictions and legal systems. As such, a conviction in one country does not necessarily lead to collection in a different country. Therefore, fighting advance fee fraud takes more than legal action alone.

Fraudsters use a variety of techniques and tools to depart victims from their money and other valuables. The deliberate plan to defraud must be proven to enable courts to punish a fraudster via criminal law. For this reason, civil action is often more straightforward. However, to ensure repayment, victims should investigate the feasibility of civil action and criminal complaints. The latter may allow victims of fraud to join the criminal case as a civil party.

The scope and nature of a payment of front fees requires swift action before obscured assets are distributed and become untraceable. As such, victims of alleged advance fee fraud should investigate or act within reasonable time. Assets still in the possession of the fraudster are easier to confiscate. As such, creditors in need of assistance are invited to contact Legal Floris LLC to discuss their case and define an appropriate recovery plan together. Also victims of identity theft that arise from this type of fraud should take sufficient action to mitigate risk and avoid further damage.