Mail fraud

Mail fraud refers to any scheme which attempts to unlawfully obtain money or valuables in which the mails are used at any point in the commission of a criminal offence.

Non-delivery or misrepresentation of mail-order merchandise

This scheme exists in various forms; order an item, make payment, receive nothing is the simplest form of mail fraud. Other variants include misleading descriptions (advertisement says an expensive camera is available by mail-order, when the item arrives it turns out to be a toy camera), deliberate sale of defective merchandise or even stolen merchandise. High-ticket items such as computer hardware are particularly tempting targets for scam artists.

The same scams now exist online; non-delivery of auction or mail-order merchandise advertised on Internet sites is a common complaint.

Promotions selling services or data delivered entirely online are particularly high-risk; if the "send a money order to Texas, we'll make a few 'phone calls and tell you what your employment references have really been saying behind your back" refuses to deliver as advertised, a fraud may be much more difficult to prove than if the seller is obligated to ship a parcel which requires a signature at destination.

Internet fraud and online auction fraud

Internet fraud or wire fraud schemes may also qualify as mail fraud if the mails are being used at any point in the scheme, including a request that a money order be sent to pay for non-existent or undelivered auction merchandise. Many of these schemes are merely variants on the fraudulent mail-order scams in which the merchandise is never delivered as described or delivered at all.

Online schemes claiming that "a hot female escort will give you access to her entire pornography collection on some Internet site if you send a money order to a drop box in Barrie", if payment is accepted by postal money order and the product never received, would also qualify. The original solicitation is made online, the supposed product claims to be delivered online, but use of the mails at any point (such as to receive money or negotiable instruments) could easily qualify such a scheme as mail fraud.

Impersonation

A number of schemes misrepresent the identity of the sender, delivering forged documents or bogus requests for personal info (see Bank Fraud, Phishing), have been done by mail; one version involves sending bogus forms which claim to be from taxation authorities requesting banking info in order to collect tax on deposit interest. The information is then used in other frauds or in theft of identity schemes.

Promotional cheques

It looks like a coupon and is formatted to appear like a cheque; "oh look, XYZ long distance company wants to send you $10". Look a little more closely and this supposed "cheque" contains slippery fine-print wording which authorises the company to change your default telephone long-distance carrier or incurs other obligations on your behalf.

Solicitations in the guise of an invoice

This is not an invoice. This is a solicitation. You are under no obligation to make any payments on account of this offer unless you accept this offer.
--- PLEASE PAY THIS AMOUNT --->

So begins the wording on some rather slippery documents which look like they're bills or invoices even though they're not. The wording of the disclaimer is taken directly from the US Postal Service Domestic Mail Manual; the intent is to be able to claim that this document is not a fake invoice while still retaining a format which allows a small percentage of recipients to mistake it for a bill and send payment. If the amounts requested from businesses by these "solicitations" are in the hundreds or thousands of dollars, even a fraction of a percent response rate suffices for the scheme to be profitable.

Get-rich-quick schemes

These take a number of forms, such as the Ponzi scheme or pyramid scheme in which the addressee is invited by a "chain letter" to send money to the first of a list of names and addresses before forwarding the letter to several more people. The person starting the Ponzi scheme claims to have become rich (the infamous Dave Rhodes letter with its claim to have made $50000 is an online variant of this) but the people at the bottom of the pyramid receive nothing. In some cases, every address on the chain letter will be a drop box controlled by the person sending the letters or by one or more accomplices.

Another common get-rich-quick scheme is the Nigerian 419 scam which claims that someone wants to transfer some large amount of money out of their country (or is making a deathbed effort to donate it all to your church or charitable organisation); all you need to do is send all your bank account information and some inflated advance fee to pay for the cost of the transfer or the cost of legal counsel. Of course the massive fortune in foreign money never arrives; the scheme exists to victimise the greedy and the gullible.

Theft from the mails

Sometimes the mail itself has been the target of thieves; parcels containing merchandise or envelopes with "pay to the order of..." visible in the window are prime targets, as are credit cards or payment cards mailed by banks to their depositors. The most notorious incident of theft of mail was the Great Train Robbery, in which a gang of robbers stopped an entire mail train by tampering with railway signal lights, then robbed the train of registered mail containing valuables being sent by local banks to their head offices.

External links

[Better Business Bureau] [US Federal Trade Commission] [US Postal Inspection Service]