How do I get out of the Imperial Majesty scam?

How much trouble can i get in for being part of a scam?

• So this nigerian scammer tried to scam me and i caught on to him. We ended up chatting on yahoo and he asked me to help him. He wants an address somewhere in the US to where he can scam people into sending their products. He asked me if he could use an address near my place. Is it safe to give him this address? He says he's in nigeria (and thats why i caught on to the scam). How much legal trouble can I get into for doing this?

• Answer:

  You can and will be arrested for receiving and fencing stolen merchandise. The next email will be from another of the scammer's fake names and free email addresses pretending to be the "assistant" and will demand you accept packages purchased with stolen credit cards, hi-jacked paypal accounts and spoofed bank transfers, at YOUR home address. Then you are suppose to use a stolen UPS/FedEx billing account number to send the electronics, clothing and jewelry overseas. When the websites, credit card/paypal/bank account owners and UPS/FedEx discover the fraud, you get the real life job of paying back ALL of them. Then the local law enforcement comes knocking asking why are you fencing stolen merchandise for someone you never met, don't know their real life name and have no idea in what country they really live. Another email will be from the scammer and will demand you cash a large fake check sent on a stolen UPS/FedEx billing account number and send most of the money via Western Union or moneygram back to the scammer posing as the "supply company" while you "keep" a portion of the cash. When your bank realizes the check is fake and it bounces, you get the real life job of paying back the bank for the bounced check fees and all the bank's money you sent to an overseas criminal. Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever. Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his 'potential sucker' list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of being the perfect buyer, great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram. You could post up the email address and the emails themselves that the scammer is using, it will help make your post more googlable for other suspicious potential victims to find when looking for information. Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don't bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn't worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash. Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer. 6 "Rules to follow" to avoid most fake jobs: 1) Job asks you to use your personal bank account and/or open a new one. 2) Job asks you to print/mail/cash a check or money order. 3) Job asks you to use Western Union or moneygram in any capacity. 4) Job asks you to accept packages and re-ship them on to anyone. 5) Job asks you to pay visas, travel fees via Western Union or moneygram. 6) Job asks you to sign up for a credit reporting or identity verification site. Avoiding all jobs that mention any of the above listed 'red flags' and you will miss nearly all fake jobs. Only scammers ask you to do any of the above. No. Exceptions. Ever. For any reason. If you google "fake re-shipping job", "fraud money mule scam", or something similar you will find hundreds of posts from victims and near victims of this type of scam. Wasting a scammer's time legally and safely is called "scambaiting". If you google that word, you will find sites where you can read scambaits, post up the emails and email addresses of scammers, post up a fake website, read up on how to alert a hosting company that they are hosting a fake website, ask questions and learn all about the hobby of scambaiting.