With the recent spate of emails pouring into the VA industry from scammers who want to take advantage, either by literally stealing work in the name of 'providing samples' or asking VAs to launder money, etc. I went in search of a few solid options any VA can pursue if she's the victim or even just the recipient of a scam email.

If anyone has any resources to add to this list please reply to the thread and I'll update:

FIght ID Theft "What should you do when you get a scam email or end up on a scam website? We're going to teach you who to report the scam to, or how you can track down the scammers yourself and work to help shut down their scam-collecting ways, at least temporarily. We've seen scams targeting companies like eBay, Washington Mutual (Wamu), Wells Fargo, Amazon, Citibank, and PayPal."

FBI IC3 unit (Yes, that's the Federal Bureau of Investigation!) "The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C). IC3's mission is to serve as a vehicle to receive, develop, and refer criminal complaints regarding the rapidly expanding arena of cyber crime. The IC3 gives the victims of cyber crime a convenient and easy-to-use reporting mechanism that alerts authorities of suspected criminal or civil violations."

FTC (Federal Trade Commission) (FTC Consumer Complaint Form) First review the FTC tips for fighting spam, and then file your complaint.

USDOJ (United States Department of Justice)

Visit the Network Abuse Clearing House page. "
The Network Abuse Clearinghouse is intended to help the Internet community to report and control network abuse and abusive users. Since the best place to report abusive activity varies from one system to another, we're trying to keep a master database of reporting addresses for users throughout the net to use."

You can also contact your Attorney General.

By utilizing these resources when you receive a scam email you *will* help put a stop to this!

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Thanks! I am going to bookmark these sites for future reference. It's AMAZING how many scam emails/offers we receive!

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Lily Chambers, The Virtual Office Goddess, LLC
Author "How to Do Your Own Small Business Bookkeeping"