My question involves collection proceedings in the State of: Georgia.
First a bit of background. in 2005 (around May) a lady I had met online asked me to help her with some ebay stuff. I had known her through this forum board we frequented for quite sometime and I have never had a problem with anyone on the website and didnt really think that this woman would con me. I talked to her on the phone, even talked to her kids on the phone. She had me believing all was legit.
Well she had me use my paypal & ebay accounts to list items for her (she said because I was faster at listing than she was) and she would give me a percentage of what she sell. I started listing and the money started rolling in. She convincedme to get a paypal debit card and give her the account number so she could make purchases and I wouldn't have to worry about sending her the money in the mail as she didn't have a bank account. All was good for the first month until I started receiving e-mails after e-mails stating that people didnt recieve their items. She swore she sent them. Even gave me fake tracking numbers.
Well right before I found out about her not sending items she went on a spending spree at HSN (Home shopping Network). Everything she ordered she ordered from her house and had sent to her house. All except for a computer which she had sent to me saying that she needed me on a faster computer to get stuff done quicker. Well she put this all on deferred pay so she would be able to make 3 small payments for everything and they would go ahead and send the merchandise. The total for the merchandise sent was over $1,200.
Of course none of this got paid because shortly after she made the purchases my paypal account was put in the negative because people began requesting their money back from paypal because she didnt send the merchandise.
When i finally figured out i had been scammed I went to the police. Not only had she bought all this stuff but she also had me signed up for multiple at home company's (Avon, Discovery Toys, ect--they have since been dealt with). I live in a small town and the police here were not knowledgeable about situations like this and were absolutely no help. They said they couldnt do anything. My dad contacted HSN and spoke with one of their investagtors. My dad said we would send the computer back but the investagtor said there was nothing they could do with it and that they would handle it, even stating that this happens a lot, and I would recieve no more bills from them about this merhandise. I never did until recently.
Here it is almost 4 years later and I now have a Lawyers office contacting me (i believe they're really just a collection agency). I sent them a letter explaining the situation and told them what the investiagtor at HSN had said and I'm awaiting their reply.
Am I going to be within the statue of limitations? What can they do? I have no job. I take care of my husband whos on SSI. My problem is i didnt keep the investiagotrs name at HSN because i thought this was all handled. Plus I cant go after the woman who scammed me because shes in a federal prision for scamming Avon and mail fraud. Are there anymore steps to what I should do about this??

