Been Scammed

I've purchased meds overseas from Mexico, Taiwan, and India. Our blessed government has managed to put the squeeze on Mexico and Taiwan so they no longer ship meds to the U.S. I've never once been snake bit up until now. This week I was scammed by someone representing a large pharmaceutical company in India. Should have been leery when his email said the company couldn't accept PayPal, Credit Cards, or International Money Orders on orders below $2000 dollars. They could only accept Western Union Money Order Telegram.

Okay, still no Flashing Red Light Alert, as I've done this many times. Yep, you guessed the rest of the story by now. I sent the telegram. He delayed six days before emailing me the order had been shipped, gave me a shipping tracking number and the name of the shipper. I put the number into the shipper's tracking site and it came up invalid. My turn to be more dumb then I already was. Figured it was too early for their system to register it. The next day the same thing, invalid number. It still didn't compute in my tiny little fuzzy mind I'd been had, until I received a notice supposedly from the shipper there were taxes pending on the package and I needed to pay up. I replied they needed to contact the company that had mailed the package. They replied it was up to me, not their problem.

Warning lights are starting to turn on in the very small intelligent corner of my brain..., finally. This is where it gets so damn funny I have to laugh at the whole situation. I contact the "gentleman?" I had been dealing with and informed him the shipper needed taxes paid on the product. Pay close attention boys and girls because this is the "ah ha moment". He replied he had forgot about the taxes for export and I had to pay the taxes. He would file a notice with his insurance carrier and they would reimburse me for half the cost. OH YEAH, Red Alert Lights finally came on in my fuzzy brain and dummy finally did her research on taxes for meds coming out of India. The scammers were demanding a hundred and five percent of the cost of the item, $56 dollars, when real taxes would be twelve percent, $6 dollars.

I informed him I'd pay if and when the package arrived. It was the last he would communicate with me. I sent all data in an email to the company he was supposedly representing and to India International Trade Organization, India Mart, he was advertising through. That was four days ago. Today I'm going to send an email of all correspondence along with copy of Western Union Telegram to:
https://www.india.gov.in/official-website-serious-fraud-inve...
https://www.econsumer.gov/

Getting any money back is immaterial. My greatest pleasure would be to put the hurts on this slime ball and stop him from doing this to anyone else. I guess I finally need to start paying attention when I order from anywhere, not just overseas. It was an inexpensive lesson. The idiot could have all my info on my credit card and really milked it dry. LOL, he's as dumb as me.
always,
Barb
Life is too short to take seriously. No matter how bad it gets, it's still illegal to eat us.