What I’m writing about are techniques that you can use to recover your money if you’ve been ripped off by a con artist. What I’m about to write here is controversial, and I want to state up-front that I’m not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV. If you have any concerns about what you read here, talk to a legal professional.

This story is a step-by-step method that I used to recover my money from a fraud that happened several years ago. It had its roots in Canada, then continued down into Mexico.

It all started when I posted a request for long-term accommodations on Rentalo.com. While my listing was on Rentalo.com, the information was sent out to various parties; some outside the system.

According to Rentalo, property owners aren’t supposed to forward their listings to outside parties and there’s a system block in place, but it doesn’t prevent people from doing a cut and paste into an email, which is what happened here. Perhaps that’s changed since then; I don’t know.

This is where things went sour, when I was contacted by a woman, who later turned out to be a fraud artist. The woman in question told of a deal “off the system.”

That should have sent off alarm bells, but I was desperate to rent a place and I let that state of mind get in the way of my intuition.

The next mistake I made was to send a mail order for the full amount of the rent ($700.00). I found out later that you should never do that. Far better to make a deposit of only $100.00 or so. If the property owner or agency pressures you to pay the full amount, ditch them. It could be fraud. If not, you may find that the property is unsuitable when you arrive and discover you can’t get a refund.

When I discovered that the property didn’t match my needs in Mexico, I tried to contact the agent, only to find out she’d left for Mexico and didn’t leave a cell number for me. That put my anxiety through the ceiling.

I found a new place and wrote to the agent asking for refund, but I was ignored by email. Also, the agent closed one of her accounts, which upped my anxiety even further and I knew I was in trouble. I was determined not to be a victim. Here’s what I did:

First off, I filed a formal complaint with Rentalo even though their terms of service claimed no responsibility for problems with agents and/or property owners.

I also posted compliants to the following sites in Canada:

Report Economic Crime Online

Phone Busters: The Canadian Anti-Fraud Call Centre

They went nowhere. After awhile, I finally realized I was going about this the wrong way. While the fraud happened in Canada, the woman who started it went to Nuevo Vallarta, only a 20 minute ride from where I was in Bucerias.

I decided to up the ante and do everything I could to take the fight into her front and back yard, if possible. Looking online for help I came upon: “The Ripoff Report” which offered a place for me to post my complaint (since then I’ve heard this site isn’t the greatest place, but it was a major ace for me at the time).

The end result is I recovered most of my money, but it took some time. What triggered this, I’m not certain, but shortly after filing my ripoff report. First off, I sent a copy to the fraud artist. She responded the next day, saying she wanted to pay me back.

But she ignored the deadline I set, so I upped the ante with an extensive media blitz using every method I could think of.

Note: Here are a few things I learned about scammers. They count on you to feel embarassed, humiliated and ashamed and to go away. That’s one of the reasons that fraud goes on undetected for so long. Also, they count on you to be law abiding and use the authorities for help. Unfortunately, that’s largely ineffective, as I found out the hard way.

Another realization was this: Scammers cannot stand it if you turn a spotlight on them in their own neighborhood, which is what I did, but this can be dangerous. In my case, I was so angry that I was determined to nail this woman.

During this campaign I sent out about 60 email messages to all sorts of sources (including a real estate company in Mexico which forwarded my message to their list. 6 months later I was still getting messages). I also reported my story on several forums in the Puerto Vallarta area.

It created a huge wave of support and I started to get a lot of emails. One was from a realtor in Puerto Vallarta who was tired of foreigners ripping off the locals.

24 hours later, I had a frantic message from the scammer, begging me to stop my media blitz. The next day I met with her in downtown Puerto Vallarta and recovered roughly 90% of my money.

I have to tell you that chasing her down was incredibly hard work, but something inside me would not give up and be a victim. I was determined to keep after her and it seems to have worked.

A big problem with fraud is that the government in Canada (and the US in my opinion) are ill equipped to deal with this problem. The standard practice is to report the problem and wait for the authorities or government to take action. That could take years, if it happens at all. Meanwhile, all your money is lost and there can be a deep sense of violation.

Worse, there are few resources on the Internet to help you recover your funds, only articles telling you how to protect yourself. There is almost nothing to help you after the fact. Another factor (in Canada at least) is the privacy act.

When I tried to track the woman down, I found out what bank my money order went to, but not in which city, nor could I get any information on her activities. I was told by the bank manager that all this power to act lays in the hands of law enforcement officials or with government. The message: “You’re screwed.”

Fortunately, I found the Ripoff report and used some of the techniques I read about.

As a postscript, by the time I left Mexico, my posts on one forum alone had been read over 2,000 times.