There were 4 other people involved in this crime. They are still to get their day in court. They were also scamming other hobbies and businesses. Our Frank Cummings had about 10 different aliases.
What happened with respect to our scam was this:
Alias Frank Cummings had put an ad in the local Virgina paper looking for someone who was interested in part time work doing mailings. He then hired an old lady (who was really a victim herself) to collect all the checks/mail and forward it to a South Carolina address.
He then started to reel everyone in by advertising on all the popular websites. He did a great job at setting up a website with the parts for sale and copied pictures from the web and published them as his own when people asked to see pictures of the product. People would then send the money to the little old lady in Virgina who would forward everything to an address in South Carolina.
There, an accomplice would cash all the checks. He was in Utah all that time running the scam from there. We were on him quickly enough and got the police enough evidence and leads which resulted in the arrest and guilty plea. It is expected that he will get at least 10 years.
This was proof that victims can do something about internet fraud.
Hylton Jorssen