Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Oregon
Ok, I hope I can make this make sense without sounding like a paranoid child. Just so you are aware I am 24 and this isnt a question from a little child. Here we go. My mother starting talking to a guy online a few weeks back. Well recently the guy started sending packages here. Every single one of them, both the shipping address and the billing address were in my mothers name. All in all nearly a dozen packages arrived at our house in the course of 2 week. They contained stupid things like shoes (several pairs), shirts, jerseys, flip-flops, etc. Well all of a sudden the guy tell my mother that he wants her to send all the stuff to him. She told him unfortunatly she wasnt able too. We are barely scrapping by as it is and we do NOT have the money to send these packages to this guy. She told him he is more then welcome to come and get them. He called her a theif and said he was going to call the cops on her, for stealing his stuff. I told her that since the stuff was shipped in her name and the billing address and everything was in her name that technically the stuff is hers. Who is right here, me or the online boyfriend? Thank you for your help in this situation.
1 Answer from Attorneys
The online boyfriend is a scam artist. It is a well-known scam. He orders stuff using stolen credit cards and has it delivered to an innocent person, your mom, and gets your mom to forward the stuff to him. Then, after the credit card charges ultimately get reversed, the merchants come after your mom to get the stuff back. But by then she has sent it to her boyfriend, who disappears.
Your mom can keep the stuff and wait for the merchants to call. Or tour mom can look at the shipping labels and/or enclosed invoices to determine who sent each piece of stuff. She can contact those merchants (maybe using their 800 numbers) and tell them about the scam.