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Any kind of fraud is a serious matter. There are a lot of scammers who use the U.S. Postal Service to conduct their crime, even though under the United States Code, using the postal service to conduct fraud is a federal offense which is punishable by a hefty fine as well as several years in prison. In most cases mail fraud is not that easy to nail down, post reviews and complaints can be used to prove the fact. If you suspect yourself being a victim of mail fraud, it is very important to report the case and to garner as much attention as possible to it. For that the next steps are recommended to be followed. First of all, it is better to decide if the complaint you have falls under the category of mail fraud. By definition mail fraud is the attempt to procure money or valuables during which the U.S. postal system is used. Bogus charity solicitations, get-rich-quick schemes or chain letters, false checks that give scammers access to bank accounts and failure to deliver promised goods through online retail or auction sites such as eBay.com are among common types of mail fraud. After identification of your case, it is necessary to file a report. That should be done through the U.S. Postal Inspector Service's website. Doing that, you will have to supply your personal information, as well as a description of your complaint. The information about the individual or company you are accusing of fraud is very important to be provided too. It is also possible to report the fraud offline, for that you will need to print out a copy of the form or obtain one from your local post office, afterwards send it through the mail. One more variant is to file reports with other agencies, which is also possible. Those agencies should be relevant to your case of fraud; those can be the office of your state's attorney general or office of consumer protection. You can easily find them in the government listing pages of your phone book. Another variant is to send a message to the Federal Trade Commission spam@uce.gov, as well as it is possible to contact local law enforcement, in case when the fraud seems to come from local sources. If the fraud happened when dealing with such a major online company as eBay.com or Amazon.com, you are recommended to alert a company through its channels as well. The next step is to contact your credit card supplier or bank if any payments to the suspected defrauder were done. The bank might be able to stop payment and save you from losing money. With credit card companies, in such cases clients can dispute the charge and ask them to start their own investigation into the fraud. Afterwards one is welcome to share his or her mail fraud story with local media sources, such as the town newspaper or the consumer reporter at your local television station, for example. If they broadcast your story, other victims of fraud might be compelled to report it too. According to post reviews, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service bases its investigations on the volume and patterns of complaints, so it will definitely more likely that your problematic case will get some attention.
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