How to Report a Fraudulent Businesses (for Americans)
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More than likely, you have been ripped off, scammed, or defrauded by someone online or in person. This is a list of agencies you can file complaints with to try and get your money back, get your issue resolved, or at least make the person who ripped you off get listed in all sorts of scam directory sites.
⭐ Report the fraudulent behavior to the FTC via their website https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/
⭐ File a complaint with your State's Attorney General. Unfortunately, this rarely does much, but it's worth a try. https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/
⭐ File a complaint with your state's consumer protection board: https://www.usa.gov/state-consumer
⭐ File a complaint with econsumer.gov, which focuses on online scams: https://www.econsumer.gov/#crnt
⭐ Report the company to the Better Business Bureau (BBB). They are often your best bet as they will contact the company and help work with you to get a resolution.
https://www.bbb.org/consumer-complaints/file-a-complaint/get-started
⭐ Also try the BBB ScamTracker: https://www.bbb.org/scamtracker
⭐ There's also a BBB in Canada https://www.bbb.org/ca/categories
⭐ Report the business's website to MyWOT (My Web of Trust) and give the pages a negative review. This will let other people know that these sites and companies are untrustworthy. https://www.mywot.com/
⭐ File a Report with RipOffReport.com. Posting a Rip Off Report is often considered a scuzzy move, so only do this as a last resort.
https://www.ripoffreport.com/go/login?n=file-report
⭐ Report a problem with a dietary supplement to the FDA:
https://www.fda.gov/food/dietary-supplements/how-report-problem-dietary-supplements
⭐ If you paid by credit card, here's how to dispute the charges
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0219-disputing-credit-card-charges
⭐ If you paid with a debit card, here's how to dispute the charges on it
https://www.valuepenguin.com/banking/how-to-dispute-debit-card-charges
⭐ Write a report about the company on Yelp
https://www.yelp.com/writeareview
⭐ Report to Scam Advisor:
https://www.scamadviser.com/
⭐ Leave a Negative Review on TrustPilot:
https://www.trustpilot.com/
⭐ Leave a negative review on sitejabber:
https://www.sitejabber.com/
⭐ Leave a Negative Review on ScamAdvisor:
https://www.scamadviser.com/
⭐ Leave a Negative Review on Scamner:
https://www.scamner.com
⭐ If it's a very serious crime that took place, report it to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center at https://www.ic3.gov/
⭐ Report Scams and Frauds - Resources for reporting FEMA & coronavirus scams, general scams and frauds, fake IRS agent calls, social security scams, and more.
https://www.usa.gov/stop-scams-frauds
⭐ Report Fraud to the US Justice Department - Consumer Fraud and Identity Theft, Disaster-Related Fraud, General Fraud and Other Criminal Matters, Health Care Fraud, Medicare/Medicaid Fraud, and Related Matters, Internet Fraud and Lottery/Sweepstakes Fraud by Internet, Mail Fraud and Lottery/Sweepstakes Fraud, Securities Fraud, & State and Local Fraud.
https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/report-fraud
⭐ Reporting Scams to the American Bar Association - similar to the above website, but with some more resources
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/senior_lawyers/resources/reporting-scams/
⭐ Report Common Scams to The National Consumers League
https://fraud.org/
Reporting Fraudulent or Scams from Online Retailers
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⭐ If you bought something from Amazon and got scammed or see something listed that looks suspicious, you can file a report to Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GRGRY7AQ3LMPXVCV
⭐ If you bought something from eBay and it never showed up or a seller looks fishy, you can file a report to eBay at https://www.ebay.com/help/buying/working-sellers/seller-fraud?id=4024
⭐ If you bought something on Etsy and it never showed up or the seller looks fish, you can file a report to Etsy at https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000344568-How-to-Report-an-Item-or-Shop
⭐ How to Report Fraudulent Sales, Scams, & Buyers to the Faceboook Marketplace
https://www.facebook.com/help/196126404168290
Got any more suggestions of online marketplaces for me to add? Scroll to the bottom for contact information.
There are, of course, plenty of other shops you can buy from that have suspicious/fraudulent/con artists on them and all you need to do is Google "How do I report a scammer on XYZ?" I recommend installing the browser plugin ✨ FakeSpot https://www.fakespot.com/ ✨ it will automatically look at vendors on Amazon, eBay and other sites and tell you if the seller is valid or if they have some problems. It's a very helpful tool.
🚨🚨🚨 SUGGESTION: Freeze your 4 credit reports. It's completely free to freeze and unfreeze your credit reports. This will prevent any problems related to identity theft, fake credit cards being taken out in your name, and more. Here is a great guide from Brian Krebs: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/09/credit-freezes-are-free-let-the-ice-age-begin/
You can also sign up to stop getting credit card and other financial offers in the mail by visit https://www.optoutprescreen.com/ Finally, you can check your credit reports once per year for from the FTC at https://annualcreditreport.com/ (if your reports are frozen you won't be able to access these.)
You can also hire Abine to remove your online presence from data brokers and people who want to do background checks on you. Use this link for 20% off https://tinyurl.com/DeleteMePermanently They also offer a DIY Guide if you don't want to pay: https://joindeleteme.com/help/diy-free-opt-out-guide/
The problem is these databrokers will constantly readd you to their services, even after you opt-out. DeleteMe will constantly monitor these sites for you being readded and remove you immediately so you're fully covered.
If you paid with cryptocurrency... you're SOL. Best thing you can do is contact the owner of the site via email as many times as you can. Look up the domain at https://centralops.net/co/ and send an email to the abuse department for the domain, letting them know that they are accepting fraudulent purchases.
If you know the name of the business, visit your state's secretary of state website and look up the business. Sometimes you can find details about the owner and their information and try and contact them directly, or at least get more information to report to anti-fraud websites.
Finally, there's other things to do like hiring a collection agency on the company and trying to get your money back to filing lawsuits, but that won't be covered in this guide.
⭐ I've even hired a collection agency against a company and you can find out how to do so here:
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7811-choosing-a-collection-agency.html - You want what's called a contingency debt collection agency, which means they only get paid if you get paid. The downside is they charge a higher rate.
Thank you and please share this with your friends/family/and anyone else who has been ripped off by a company.
If you would like to get in contact with if you found an error, an update, or anything else of importance, feel free to post in the Disqus comments below, or you can find my email here http://scr.im/poguetwitter and I would prefer if you used a PGP key, which you can find here: https://bitbin.it/vuu4W8xG/
Thanks!
@pogue25
https:/twitter.com/pogue25
How to Report a Fraudulent Businesses © 2021 by pogue is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
