Filing a fraud report with the local
police is one of the primary solutions for resolving a fraud incident. Although
many online fraud reporting tools are now available, many fraud victims,
especially those who are trying to recover their losses prefer to also file a
fraud report directly at the police station in order to save time and increase
the possibility of getting back their money.
Most of the online fraud reporting
tool online forward the details of the report that they receive to the local
police station who has jurisdiction over the report. This means that reporting
directly to the local police helps save time by cutting off the mediating process offered by online fraud reporting sites. To give you an idea on how to
file a report with the police, see details below;
●
If you already made a prior report with the Federal
Trade Commission (FTC) regarding the incident, then you must bring a copy of
your FTC report to the local police along with other evidence or supporting
documents relevant to your complaint.
●
The police officer in charge of receiving your
complaints will provide you with documents containing questions that are vital
for establishing a fraud case. Fill up the documents and attach all the
relevant documents you have with you including the copy of your FTC reports.
●
Remember to keep a copy of all the documents
that you have submitted with your local police. Note that a unique case number
will be provided to you after you complete all the required complaint process.
●
Use the unique case number given to you to
follow up the status of your police report. In case the local authorities find
other police complaints that follow a similar pattern to yours, they may
suggest you to join a class suit. A class action suit can be filed by a group
of people who have suffered the same losses or damages due to the same malicious
scheme.
●
There also some instances when there is not
enough evidence to start an investigation of your complaint. In this case, the
police will still accept the details of your report. However, instead of
conducting an investigation your report will become a part of a database
utilized by law enforcers as a reference to map fraudulent scheme patterns that
are causing a menace to the society.
The details provided above are some
of the things that you can expect when you file a report with your local
police.
Online fraud complaint processing
websites follow a similar process when evaluating complaints that they receive.
These websites also have experts who assess and evaluate all the complaints
that they receive, recommending reports with enough evidence for investigation
while keeping informative reports as a part of a database for future reference.
This probably why some local police
station does not accept fraud report and refer complainants to the FTC or to
the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) instead. FTC and IC3 are well known
initial contact point for filing a fraud report.
