I've delivered quite a few COD letters from a company that is duping people. They are actually selling Iraqi currency, the Iraq Dinar, to gullible people who are convinced that the Dinar will go up to par with the U.S. Dollar soon. Was actually told by a recipient yesterday that the $250 worth of Dinars he was buying will soon be worth $250,000 USD when the Dinar is valued at par with the Dollar. Absolutely no understanding of currency markets. Wouldn't that be great if you could just hand over some foreign money you were wise enough to buy for chump change and the bank will gladly exchange it for a quarter million or more? I've been delivering one COD a week to one lady for several months now. At $564 a pop for her! Hard to believe FedEx isn't aware of this scam and bothers me to participate in it. Think Tea Partiers are angry, wait'll thousands of people across the country find out they've been scammed.
Certain COD Deliveries
- Thread starter vantexan
- Start date
FedEx also moves a lot of illegal drugs. I'm not so sure it's a scam, per se, as the recipients are receiving exactly what they are paying for. Whether they are gullible enough to fall for the sales pitch about the value increasing isn't FedEx's problem. Anyway, this has been going on for years so it's nothing new.
UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)
Well-Known Member
This does not sound like a scam to me at all. The consignee knows exactly what they are getting themselves involved in. As to whether it is a smart financial move or not I guess they will find out over time.
We had a scam here on the Brown side a few years ago. Scammers had stolen several UPS account numbers and were sending out NDA letters containing bogus money orders, some for several thousands of dollars. To the untrained eye the money orders appeared genuine. I deliver to our local college and somehow the scammers had accessed the e-mail list for that school and sent out money orders to those foolish enough to respond--I think one day I had 20 of them. UPS and SUNY security got involved and the scam went away as quickly as it had arrived.
If it sounds too good to be true it probably isn't.
We had a scam here on the Brown side a few years ago. Scammers had stolen several UPS account numbers and were sending out NDA letters containing bogus money orders, some for several thousands of dollars. To the untrained eye the money orders appeared genuine. I deliver to our local college and somehow the scammers had accessed the e-mail list for that school and sent out money orders to those foolish enough to respond--I think one day I had 20 of them. UPS and SUNY security got involved and the scam went away as quickly as it had arrived.
If it sounds too good to be true it probably isn't.
We still see that from time to time, someone gets a hold of someone else's account number or credit card to open an account with and will drop a whole stack of them in a dropbox. Not usually too hard to spot though, usually internetship labels that don't look quite right or have the shipper's name at the top cut off, and when we pull up the account it shows as either being just opened or potential fraud.....we just forward them straight to security in Memphis.
MrFedEx
Engorged Member
For once, I agree with you. We used to have tons of scams from "boiler rooms" in Las Vegas that were very successful in duping the unwary. I would always warn potential victims, and many of our CSA's will do the same, even though we're not supposed to get involved.
I have seen that too, but it has been a while. Sometimes 20 or so in one dropbox. It was easy to catch as they were all on airbills and they weren't the pre-printed ones either.
But we don't know which boxes carry the illegal drugs do we? We do know that the Iraqi Dinar won't make us rich. These folks want to deal with this through regular mail more power to them. FedEx should take a stand and educate the public, without naming names, that this is a scam, not a legitimate investment. They don't need to name names, and they shouldn't turn a blind eye to it because of the profits. And before you start saying that often we do know which boxes have drugs and we cooperate with the police, most drugs go through undetected. But if we do learn that a pkg has drugs we alert the police. We know people are being duped, and the scammers are using us to facilitate it.
I think you missed the point. You are right we don't always know which packages contain drugs but when we find them, we let the authorities handle them. We also don't know every package that contains Iraqi dinars but it wouldn't matter even if we did. There is nothing illegal about buying and selling currency. Who are we to advise people what they should and should not do with their money? And we don't know for sure that the Iraqi dinar won't make us rich. Isn't that, after all, the concept of investing? Putting money into something that you hope will increase in value. Who is FedEx to say what people should hope for?
It's your opinion that it's not a sound investment and you are absolutely entitled to that opinion. You are also probably correct but that shouldn't stop me or anyone else from doing whatever we want with our money. (And no, I don't really invest in Iraqi dinars).
Bottom line is FedEx is in the shipping business not the investment advice business. Having said that, when a true scam is brought to FedEx's attention, there's often a link on fedex.com advising people of such.
I don't usually post in the Fedex Forum, but I have delivered UPS Money Order CODs for Dinars too. I didn't know that Fedex delivered CODs, I learn something new everyday. I wish we didn't have CODs, the few I have are for people that have bad credit and bounce checks. Anyway, I don't think this is a scam, its just more of an investment gamble. I have a couple of personal friends that are career military and they brought a bunch of them home too after a tour of duty over there. One of them is an Army Colonel who pays all the bills for the National Guard, so I think he is pretty sharp when it comes to handling money. He told me its like buying a lottery ticket, maybe he will win in the long run, maybe not.
The real scams are the ones that UPS used to ignore, but are finally cracking down on. This is where the thief uses a fake shipping account to ship a fake money order under $3000 to try to get the victim to mail back a real check to complete the scam. The scammer will use a prepaid cell phone for initial contact, a generic air shipping document with an out of state return address, and the fake money order will have an out of state address from the return address too. The scammer cashes the victims real check and the victim gets stuck with a bounced check deposit charge and overdraft fees.
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In the early 90's there were scammers calling the elderly, really going after ones that were very weak minded or senile, convincing them that they could win a big cash prize but needed to send some money to be eligible. Sent us to collect the checks. I knew a lady in her 80's who had sent $85k. They kept calling her, saying each time that she was really close to winning but they needed a little more to increase her chances. FedEx was advising us to make the pickups without commenting on whether it was legitimate or not. Had a man in his 50's stick a shotgun in the face of one of our couriers. His mother lost alot too and he thought we were in on it.
As to the idea that Iraqi Dinars are an investment, what a crock that is. Currency markets just simply don't work that way. It may sound plausible, thus the deceit, but you will not be able to hand over a couple hundred Dollars worth of Dinars to a bank in exchange for several hundred thousand Dollars because, to quote my customer, "they now have a legitimate gov't so soon the money will be at par with ours. Heck, it could happen tomorrow." There are hard currencies, the Euro, the U.S. Dollar(still the world's reserve currency), the British Pound, the Swiss Franc, the Japaneses Yen. There are a second tier of respected currencies that are traded in legitimate markets too. All others, including the Dinar, are very weak and have their value determined by major brokers in London, New York, and Tokyo. They don't gain value quickly, and usually will have new currency printed with less zeros to replace the currency that has miniscule value, such as 25,000 Dinars to the Dollar having 3 zeros lopped off so that now 25 equal one Dollar in the new currency. The guy holding 100,000 Dinar who thought someday it would be worth $100k in U.S. Dollars will find out that he has to exchange for new Dinars first. He now has 100 Dinars, or 4 Dollars. I'm not saying specifics here, just generally this is what happens. You will not be able to show up at a bank and say I've got $100k or a million Dinars, give me that much in Dollars. Anyone thinking that has been duped. Why would anyone sell Dinars for relatively little when they could exchange them for millions? It's a scam, and FedEx knows it. But FedEx is making a nice profit on all those COD's so why be a hero and save people their life savings? Gotta love those who say things like I don't know, it may very well turn into a good investment. Yep, I'm just a courier, what do I know? If I see a car with 4 flat tires struggling to get across a railroad track while a fast freight is barreling down on it, do I just cross my fingers and hope for the best? No, I tell the driver to stop and wait for the train to go by, and make him realize what the terrible result would be if he insists on continuing.
As to the idea that Iraqi Dinars are an investment, what a crock that is. Currency markets just simply don't work that way. It may sound plausible, thus the deceit, but you will not be able to hand over a couple hundred Dollars worth of Dinars to a bank in exchange for several hundred thousand Dollars because, to quote my customer, "they now have a legitimate gov't so soon the money will be at par with ours. Heck, it could happen tomorrow." There are hard currencies, the Euro, the U.S. Dollar(still the world's reserve currency), the British Pound, the Swiss Franc, the Japaneses Yen. There are a second tier of respected currencies that are traded in legitimate markets too. All others, including the Dinar, are very weak and have their value determined by major brokers in London, New York, and Tokyo. They don't gain value quickly, and usually will have new currency printed with less zeros to replace the currency that has miniscule value, such as 25,000 Dinars to the Dollar having 3 zeros lopped off so that now 25 equal one Dollar in the new currency. The guy holding 100,000 Dinar who thought someday it would be worth $100k in U.S. Dollars will find out that he has to exchange for new Dinars first. He now has 100 Dinars, or 4 Dollars. I'm not saying specifics here, just generally this is what happens. You will not be able to show up at a bank and say I've got $100k or a million Dinars, give me that much in Dollars. Anyone thinking that has been duped. Why would anyone sell Dinars for relatively little when they could exchange them for millions? It's a scam, and FedEx knows it. But FedEx is making a nice profit on all those COD's so why be a hero and save people their life savings? Gotta love those who say things like I don't know, it may very well turn into a good investment. Yep, I'm just a courier, what do I know? If I see a car with 4 flat tires struggling to get across a railroad track while a fast freight is barreling down on it, do I just cross my fingers and hope for the best? No, I tell the driver to stop and wait for the train to go by, and make him realize what the terrible result would be if he insists on continuing.
For a minute there I thought you were serious. Good one!!
By the way, went to the XE currency exchange rate website, checked on the Dinar. Currently at 1165 to 1 Dollar. They provided link saying Iraqi Gov't is planning on revaluing Dinar at end of year. They will lop off 3 zeros off 1000 Dinar to make new currency of 1 Dinar. However Dinar will still be worth same as before. They will allow the old currency to be used alongside new currency for awhile but eventually if you haven't exchanged old for new it will be worthless. And the new currency won't be worth anymore than before. Guess which currency all these folks are holding now? New currency won't go into circulation until 2011. And the big thing the Dinar investors have been waiting for is a revaluation where 1 Dinar equals 1 Dollar. Doesn't work that way, never has.
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LTFedExer
Well-Known Member
That's the main reason for COD's. Most of the COD's I've gotten, they ask for 'secured payment'.......money orders, cashier check or certified checks. Though I could never understand why, if the recipient had a bad credit history, a shipper would even consider saying a personal check was ok.
UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)
Well-Known Member
Commercial customers have to complete a credit application with each shipper so for a smaller customer it is easier to just have it sent COD. We hate COD's as much as you guys but UPS loves the COD surcharge, which I believe is $10 per pkg. The key is to "train" your customers.
