Hi everyone,

Well, I am so swamped with all of this that I have barely had a moment to concentrate on our actual business (packing orders etc), so I am going to try and make this brief and give my poor kids some attention and get these orders packed...

Firstly, I need to give an EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA special thank-you to three very wonderful ladies!!

1. Jodie at http://www.lovemum.com.au/ - Jodie has been really campaigning hard for us and has drummed up a whole lot of support. I don't know what we did to deserve her, but Jodie is fast becoming our own personal little angel!

2. Stella at www.littlemissstella.com.au- Stella too has taken us under her wing somewhat and has been busy distrbuting press releases and passing on a GREAT MANY number of invaluable contacts for us to follow up. Stella has put me in direct contact with many of those "in the know" reporters and radio hosts etc and has even put her very own assistant "on the case" for us! Thanks so much Stella, you are a gem!

3. Johanna at www.strawberrycommunications.com.au - This morning I received an email from Johanna saying that she was sending a press release out that she had written. Within half an hour my phone started ringing and did not stop all day. Thanks to Johanna, we will be on the Brisbane Times website tomorrow and have Today Tonight coming over in the afternoon for an interview and story too! Everyone I spoke to today credited Johanna with being the reason that they made contact with us, and from the bottom of our hearts Johanna, we thank you so very much!

So, thanks to the three lovely ladies above and also the MANY, MANY ladies and small businesses that I listed in my previous post, and probably HEAPS more that I don't even know about who have been tweeting for us and Facebooking for us etc, we feel that we just might pull through this!

Logistically, I still don't know how we are going to AFFORD it, but at least we are feeling more optimistic about it.

Tommorrow I have to visit the police station again to add more depth to our story. And we have the Today Tonight stuff in the afternoon so I will be sure to update you all more on this as soon as I know more about it myself.

In the meantime though, I am absolutely aghast to reveal that over the course of today, I have received emails from 15 separate businesses, all of whom forwarded me the EXACT same email that I received from the perpetrator of this fraud. As well as this, there was another 8-10 different businesses who SAID that they received the email but had deleted it!! That is a grand total of almost 30 separate small businesses (most of whom are WAHMS!) that have been affected by this guy, and all of whom, except for us (!) have narrowly missed out on being victims here too!

God only knows how many more people out there have been targeted! These are only people on the Skout Trade Directory, so I am sure that there are many more outside of Skout who have been targetted but aren't aware of it all as they haven't had the opportunity to read the forums at Skout.

And here's the real clincher!! I just telephoned the guy and get this, he actually ANSWERED the phone!! My hubby got on the phone and tore strips off him and then he says to me "oh, I don't like the way your old man speaks to me". Ummm, like, mate, you are so lucky you are in another country, cause its not just speaking that he'd be doing to you!

Then he says to me "oh, you have 5 kids? i am so sorry, i don't want to hurt your family. i will send you $10k back if you give me your bank account details". Ummmmmmm, yeah right! You want our bank account details so you can clean it out too?? Well, I may as well give them to him cause I think we have a grand total of about .25c in it right now!! And what's he going to do rip of $10k from someone else's credit card and forward it to us?!? Not on your nelly sonny jim, don't be sending us any stolen funds, thanks very much, we're already up to our necks in it!!

Then, get this, he goes onto to say that he is homeless and his "friend" in the US had sent him the cards so that he could buy products and sell them to earn a living. hmmmmmmmm.... he's homeless but he has a mobile phone and a computer to send emails?? THEN, I say that to him and he responds with "oh, yes, I visited my friend who let me use his computer to send an email. WHAT?!? Your "friend" let you use his computer long enough to send at least 30 separate Australian businesses emails, some of who actually received the same email, multiple times, over a course of a number of days. I may have been stupid enough to fall for it once mate, but not again, not ever. You can tell me all the lies you like but I am not for a second going to buy into your sordid little web of tales that you are spinning in a bid to get yourself off the hook!!

Phew! Did that feel good! I certainly needed to get THAT off my chest! lol.

Ok, so here's the thing... Whilst I was speaking with him, I could hear others in the background saying the same kinds of things, and they were all male, Middle Eastern sounding voices. I am sure that this is a big, organised ring and that they are collectively targeting whoever they can and funneling money all over the world to feed their drug habits and god knows what else!

The paramount thing now is to stop them and prevent others from falling into the same situation and hopefully Today Tonight will help us to do this!

Thanks again to everyone who is following our story and this blog, we will continue to keep you all updated on any new twists and turns in the saga.

Please keep sending your stories to me as this all helps, and keep forwarding our blog, and facebook page etc to all of your friends and contacts through your tweets and emails etc, we need to get a huge following if we want to a) make the CBA crumble to public pressure and b) catch the mongrels that have done this to us and many others like us!

tan and clan.x.