Flynrider
Phoenix,#2Consumer Comment
Fri, September 09, 2011
Let's face it. You did an idiotic thing by wiring $7K to someone you didn't know, just because they promised to send you a motorcycle. Hopefully, in hindsight, you realize what an incredibly naive move that was.
Now on to your complaint. It seems you think that Capital One should just give the money back. Well sorry, but it doesn't work that way. There are regulations that govern bank wire transfers. One of them is that they cannot be reversed without the approval of the beneficiary (i.e. the scammer). The scammer obviously knew this and you didn't. Legally, there is no way that the branch manager in Houston can reverse this transaction. Those are the rules, and that is why businesses (and scammers) insist on wire transfers for large monetary transactions. Once they are made, the paying party cannot backout.
What you're dealing with is someone who commited fraud. Your only real avenue is to get the police in the scammer's location to follow up on this. If you can get them interested, they can subpeona the bank for the scammers personal information and go from there. Once they know who he/she is, they should be able to proceed quickly. Your problem will be to get the police interested enough to get off their butts and follow this up.
If that fails, you'll just have to eat the $7K loss and chalk it up to an expensive education. Your transaction was basically the same as giving the money to a stranger on the street and hoping he'd come back with a motorcycle. The only difference is that Capital One probably has identifying information that the authorities can use to track this person down.