> which is not per se illegal though it is misleading of course
Actually most of these scam letters ARE illegal and you CAN and SHOULD report them to the police. The bigger problem is that most of them aren't based in Germany and vanish as quickly as they pop up.
We actually fell for one of these scams because our bookkeeping was of course extremely messy when we just started out (and we bootstrapped, so we didn't have any mentoring other than the worthless IHK). However we lucked out: although there was no way to reverse the transaction (manually wiring money is not easily reversible) the scammer's account had already been frozen by that time, so the transfer bounced and we got to keep the money.
I have to admit the IBAN number even started with the country code "ES" because the bank was in Spain but we didn't notice it because the bank's part of the code started with "DE", so it was just close enough to trick an idiot in a hurry.
This actually changed my perspective on why phishing works: you don't have to be legitimately stupid -- they just have to catch you in a situation in which you're likely to be careless and distracted enough to be that stupid.
EDIT: To clarify: the reason people often believe they're not illegal is that they're not actual forgeries -- they use carefully crafted wording and official-looking seals that aren't actually official. But they're still obviously trying to trick people, which is illegal of its own right.
Actually most of these scam letters ARE illegal and you CAN and SHOULD report them to the police. The bigger problem is that most of them aren't based in Germany and vanish as quickly as they pop up.
We actually fell for one of these scams because our bookkeeping was of course extremely messy when we just started out (and we bootstrapped, so we didn't have any mentoring other than the worthless IHK). However we lucked out: although there was no way to reverse the transaction (manually wiring money is not easily reversible) the scammer's account had already been frozen by that time, so the transfer bounced and we got to keep the money.
I have to admit the IBAN number even started with the country code "ES" because the bank was in Spain but we didn't notice it because the bank's part of the code started with "DE", so it was just close enough to trick an idiot in a hurry.
This actually changed my perspective on why phishing works: you don't have to be legitimately stupid -- they just have to catch you in a situation in which you're likely to be careless and distracted enough to be that stupid.
EDIT: To clarify: the reason people often believe they're not illegal is that they're not actual forgeries -- they use carefully crafted wording and official-looking seals that aren't actually official. But they're still obviously trying to trick people, which is illegal of its own right.