I did learn something today. that I will share with you all. Granted it's a bit more towards my situation but it's something to be aware of if your ever taken advantage of by others.
From State Attorney General Office
For Federal Tax Purposes:
Everyone who has had a loss because of a situation with some type of scammer needs to file a police report. The purpose of the police report is two fold: 1. It gives the police a better scope of just how extensive this situation is. 2. It give you a police report #.
The police report # is the most important item of all.
Then your tax preparer needs to use IRS publications: 4684, 548B, and 547. These will help with doing what is called a Theft Loss. But ONLY if you have a police report #.
The State Attorney Generals office highly recommended that police reports be filed whether for federal tax purposes or not. Paper trails are also highly encouraged as is using IC3.
Because most scammers, hope that people will say that their dollar amounts were to small or it was just a little bit of product. In fact they are banking on people simply being too embarrassed to say anything at all. They are also banking on those who are strong enough and brave enough who do report it being too few in numbers and to far part for a paper trail to be built up.
Believing that someone else will report it so I don't have to, caving into the embarrassment and watching silently in shame, or what's the use nothing will happen to them are all other avenues that the scammer is counting on so that they can pick up where they left off and go after a new set of victims using the same scam that worked so well for them of course changing the details just enough to make it fresh.
Yes, in a lot of situations there is nothing done to the scammer. But with numerous reports, sheer volumes of back up in the form of documentation be it emails, bank statements, credit card statements, Pay Pal/RME statements, conversations, ads, etc. etc., high #'s of people saying "This is what happened to me", and being the proverbial squeaky wheels; something can be done. If nothing else, a paper trail is established, more people are aware of what to look for, and regulations begin.