FTC Complaint Number/Junk Mail

On today's Behind the Badge portion of the Breakfast Club, Officer Rich Woodruff and Julie Sylvester discussed senior scams, methods of prevention,etc. Officer Woodruff gave out the toll-free phone number for the Federal Trade Commission if you should have complaints, I.D. theft, credit card issues, etc. If you missed the number, here it is:

1-877-438-4338

Also, Julie passed along an address to help eliminate some junk mail from polluting your mailbox. You start by sending a postcard or letter to:

Mail Preference Service
Direct Marketing Association
P. O. Box 643
Carmel, NY 15012-0643

You need to include your complete name, address, zip code and a request to "activate the preference service". For up to 5 years, this will stop mail from all member organizations that you have not specifically ordered products from. The Direct Marketing Association estimates that listing with their mail preference service will stop 75% of all national mailings. By the way, they process 50,000 requests a month so it may take up to 6 months for your request to be fully processed.

Hope this information helps you out. If you need further assistance, call Officer Woodruff at the Fond du Lac Police Department.

Behind the Badge 3/31/06

On Behind the Badge, we enjoyed a visit from Officer Dave Zittlow of the Fond du Lac Police Department with some very important information about computer oriented scams and frauds. I asked Officer Zittlow to forward to me some information regarding websites that he mentioned on the program, and below is his reply. Check it out.......it could save you, or someone you love, a lot of money and/or headaches. Thanks for listening.

Show Notes from Behind the Badge March 31, 2006
Special Guest:
Officer Dave Zittlow – Computer Crimes Specialist
Fond du Lac City Police Department
920-322-3713
e-mail: www.fdlpolice.com/email.htm


Computer Crimes Trends:
We have been seeing a lot of fraudulent documents being sent from overseas these include Wal-Mart money orders and United States Postal Money Orders. If you think that you received a counterfeit money order go to the place that so called issued the money order. They will be able to immediately verify the authenticity.

Below is a link to verify postal money orders:
http://www.usps.com/postalinspectors/moalert.htm

If you think you are getting phishing e-mails or fraud e-mails you can go to the below sites to verify if they have been seen before and are indeed frauds.
www.snopes.com
www.hoax-slayer.com

Examples of the Nigerian Fraud Letters and bogus lottery letters can be found below:
www.potifos.com/fraud
Illegal Lottery and fraud by mail can be found at:
www.usps.com/postalinspectors

Security Announcements on e-bay fraud can be found at:
www.ebay.com/securitycenter

To keep updated with the latest frauds and crimes in the Fond du Lac area please subscribe to the Police Departments Newsletter at:
http://newsletter.fdlpolice.com/