Tell it to the FBI!

We had a man of Kuwaiti citizenship contact our company awhile back. This guy wanted every dangerous weapon and substance know to man shipped to him at his address. We told him we’d get back to him. I discussed this with my partners in crime (fighting) and decided to work the guy for whatever info we could get. This was post 911 and pre-Iraq days. We felt like the knives, stun guns, mace and steel batons would be used against our guys or to torture and hurt innocent people.

How did we come up with this decision? It was quite simple, the man gave us his “shipping address” (same as his billing address) and told us that the price we quoted was very acceptable. It wasn’t, since we added a few hundred $’s to the actual price, but he never flinched.

We then dissected this guy with a plain old PC. Started with a reverse address check and XYZ company was listed. Who’s XYZ company we thought? We then type XYZ company in to the Google search box and found them. Their address was identical to the one the Kuwaiti customer gave us. What now? We read their whole XYZ company web page only to discover that they were a company that procures goods from USA dealers and buys them with a USA credit card, USA listed address and then sends them to their clients in the United Arab Emirates. Countries listed as being able to use their procurement service were Iraq, Iran, Libya and the list of “bad guys” goes on and on.

We saw this as a perfect front for Arabs to purchase the types of goods that USA vendors sell, but w/o the hassle of having to reside in the USA, or even present their International credit cards which would have cancelled on the spot. What a “workaround” hustle. (You know that early explorers used to sail all the way around the bottom of Africa to reach the “far East” for trade purposes – they couldn’t stand the passage through the “middle east” and all the nutty, dishonest merchants along the way any longer.)

We wondered for a full day on what to do about this and decided to inform the FBI about the order, the Arab fulfillment company with US based warehouses, and our suspicions. We contacted our nearest regional office and left some sketchy info with a secretary, and 24 hrs later a real FBI Agent called us and we discussed the info in this post with him, along with our fears about this company and what they were doing. He asked us to email him all of the info we had put together and he’d investigate. After a couple of weeks he emailed that they were appreciative of our contact and were investigating the whole thing. We apologized in case we wasted their time and he reminded us that we did the right thing, and to continue to do this in the future. He was very cool and very comfortable to chat with, nothing like I expected from a “G-Man”.

So, if you are privy to info on dangerous criminals, or fraudulent activity, just look to your right – there’s a link to the FBI home page, just click on it and look at the upper, left hand corner. There is a list of “Contact Us” links. Use them to find an office, to report a crime or fraud, and there’s one for internet crime reporting too! Don’t sit on your hands next time – report them to the F.B.I.!!