Interesting Scam

[Mike Jackson]

Hi all,
We had a story in the local paper about a scam. It might be worth hearing in case anything similar comes up.

A guy finds a bike on Craig's List and agrees to buy it. He sends a check for twice the agreed upon amount. The seller contacts the buyer. The buyer realizes his careless mistake. He asks the seller to go ahead and refund the balance when he ships the bike.

The seller got suspicious and took the check to the bank for review. Of course, it was a bogus check. So, if the seller had sent the money and the bike as the buyer asked, he'd be out the bike and money out of his pocket equal to the original value.

MJ

[Rob Schramm]

Mike,

I live on Ebay and Craigslist and that one is very very old, if I started telling you each scam that happens ever day on those boards you'd be shocked.

Heres one: When I lived in Florida after the hurricanes a guy stating that he lived out of state was offering no credit check housing, he posted pics of the house, the amount you needed to pay in a bank draft check and said as soon as he got the check, they would get the keys and the 6 month lease in the mail. Well he was going on FOR SALE BY OWNER and taking pics, addresses and so on and posting that stuff on craigslist. Once the check was sent there was a set of keys sent and a siz month lease but low and behold he didnt own the house, the keys were not right and he was no longer avalable. From what I remember he got away with well over 150K and never got caught!

[Roderick Treece]

I find this posting very interesting.News travels slow out the the colonies.A few years back when I had my Citreon for sale on line I got an e-mail from someone in europe that wanted to buy it. They sent me a check for the car and the shipping and asked me to send the shipping amount to the shipper via Western Union. Well I went down to WU to do it and when they told me I had to do it with cash only I knew something was up. I took the check to the bank and deposited it. I then e-mail the guy back and told him he had to wait until the check cleared my bank.He actually called me screaming that that wasn't the deal we made.I told him there were alot of scams out there and when the check clears he'll get his money.
Well it didn't and I was out the bad check fee.I called the local FBI office and they said this scam had been going on quite awhile now.

[Danny Baronian]

'News travels slow out the the colonies'

Rod, how did you post the reply, on a Remington? The news is delivered in the same manner.

Book mark this site:

http://www.snopes.com/

I was directed to Snopes long ago, though long ago in the computer world could have been 6 months ago. Or 2 weeks.

Snopes seems to be the truth standard for legends, frauds and scams.

Danny

[Mike Jackson]

I got scammed a long time ago on some collectible toys. The guy called telling me he worked at a storage unit where the old guy had stored his collection. He died and the daughter had to clean out the unit. The storage unit guy was helping her sell the sets. It all sounded legit to me, and he knew enough about them to know which ones were valuable and part of the group, but he was also very vague. I sent him the money through Western Union, but of course I never got any of the sets.

I made a post on a collectors BB about it one time and I got a call from another collector with a guy offering a similar deal to him. We called the Denver FBI to see if they could do a sting to catch him when he tried to pick up the money. They woudn't deal with a scam under $1900 (at the time). The agent said they just didn't have the resources to prosecute crimes under that amount. Then he went on to say the crooks know it and would always scam Bronco tickets at $1800 or less.

I got burned for $600.

I've also seen some of my own photos (of my collectible toys) used on eBay auctions. They use my photo but obviously don't have the piece to sell. That's similar to Rob's story of the houses on Craig's List. If I start getting wierd vibes, I sometimes ask them to photograph a yellow pencil in front of the set for me. If they have the set, they can do it with no problem.

Mike

[Rob Schramm]

Man I must spend way too much time on the net as I know all the scams and I live by the rule if it sounds too good to be true it probably is!

[Roderick Treece]

Here's the latest one I received.
Hello, Sir / Madam
My name is Steven and i will like to know if you do sell glass mirror which i need Mirror in size 1/4 60 x 84 so i will be glad for you to let me know the rang price for each one included sales tax but without installation and let me know the type of payment you do accept okay thank you very much and i hope to hear from you soon ?

Best Regarding

Steven Kevin,

Actually i would be glad for you to get me New mirror okay ?

Steven,

Hello, Roderick
Thanks for the respond back to me also i want you to order me the new mirror in quantity of 18 pieces of them and i will be glad for you to quote me for the total cost of them include sales tax but without installation also let me know the type of payment you do accept and do add your direct contact phone number that i can reach you at okay ?

Best Regards

Steven Kevin,

Hi, Roderick
Thanks for the quick respond back to me for my mirror's order also this my credit card that i want you to run it for the deposit on it then you can get my order inn.


Also i want you to go ahead and run this card for 3500.00 on it first because i have a limit on that card that's why i want you to run it so and let me know the confirmation on it after when it went through for the charges then i will get you the rest of the balance remain okay ?

Best Regards

Steven,

When I started asking for Bank names and phones he disapeared. The red flag go's up for me when the english is that bad.

[Roderick Treece]

I would say this go's way beyond interesting into scary ! I received an alarming e-mail from a friend that has had a tuff past so the first thing I thought was he was in trouble again. Come to find out his e-mail account had been hacked into. This is the e-mail I recieved.

"
How are you doing?. Am in a great sorrow writing you this note, just wanted inform you about something very important, I could barely think or type straight at this point, I hope you come to my aid. Something very terrible is happening to me now, I need a favor from you urgently, and I had a trip here in Nigeria for a Seminar. Unfortunately for me all my money got stolen on my way to the hotel where I lodged along with my Cell phone, bag where my passport was and since then I have been without any money, I am even owing the hotel here. So I have limited access to emails for now, I urgently need your financial assistance. The total sum of money that I would need would be $2,700 to sort-out my hotel bills so I can make arrangements and return back, I am full of panic now, the police only asked me to write a statement about the incident and directed me to the embassy, I have spoken to the embassy here but they are not responding to the matter effectively, I will return the money back to you as soon as I get home, I am so confused right now. I wasn't injured because I complied immediately. I will be waiting to hear from you so I can send you the western union information to use in sending the money."


Bottom line, Heres the FBI internet scam web site to file a complaint. I just bookmarked it.

https://complaint.ic3.gov/default.aspx

[erik winkler]

Although we have lots of antispam filters every now and then we get some of those Nigerian spams.
At the moment it is their main omport/export bussiness. They even had a number one hit song that was about their proudly internet frauds and those dump westerners....
The FBI should kick some ....

[Mark Summers]

And just because you get a bank draft it's good, right?
Guess again. My brother got burned for $8k.
Make sure ANY check clears first.

Mark

[erik winkler]

I delete every Nigerian email at once.... and check every bill that is comming in....
8K?!..... that is terrible...
How did that happen?

[Mark Summers]

My brother got a bank draft for his trailer and the mistake would
be that he assumed a very official looking bank draft was all too
good as it looked. Guess not. I would even clear a money order.
The only thing you can count on is those numbers when they
are actually in your bank.

Mark

[erik winkler]

Will that happen to you now?
Can't the bank return the money?
In the Netherlands 'customers' are somewhat protected if their is a reasonable doubt.
Forunatly I was brought up that nobody and nothing is for free. It makes me somewhat sceptical and negative, but when you live in a big city like Amsterdam it safed me a lot of times. On the other hand it gave some unfortunate miscommunications on the forum, because "free sharing of knowledge" and the "foreign style of jokes" is new to me.
It will allways be a balance between a hard no and the maybe yes.

[David Slade]

Living overseas I have imported gobs of stuff; a car, motorcycles, Atkinson Sign Painting...
1. I do not usually buy if I cannot contact the seller directly on the phone.
2. I always ask lots of questions.
These two simple steps can save a lot of sorrow.

David Slade

[Roderick Treece]

I am not sure you guy understood what happened here. Getting a bad check is one thing. The Nigirians hacked into his e-mail address book and sent that e-mail out from his e-mail account. Everyone he knows got one. I they would have know alot more about him. Like facts about him we know then it would have made the emergence look very real.
The only reason they don't get away with it now is everybody is hip to them and their english is so bad.With this new scam ( New to me) they have gone to a new level. I find it kind of scary.

Buy the way if you do sell something or get a check call the bank it was drawn on to see if it's real. When it happened to me I had to pay a NSF charge of 12.00 just because I deposited it.

Roderick

[David Slade]

I stopped using Outlook because you are downloading programs into your computer with that kind of mail editing software. I check, write and send all e-mails from my server's site or use the Yahoo mail. Just to be sure I also went back to using my old G4 Apple for the internet!

What do you-all do for security?

I would be interested to know what your friend was using for mail, Rodrick.

David Slade

[Roderick Treece]

David,
I beleave he uses Yahoo. Now if those Nigirians started using phrases like "you-all" and "about" ( Canadian) Cool dude ( California) we might be in trouble.

I like the idea about using your old G4 .

I was thinking I might try to sell them my services as an English speaker so they would sound more authentic. There on there own for grammer and spelling though.