Scammers on the Internet

[h20man]

Originally Posted by boasun

Tell you what; Lets make a swap. My deed for the Brooklyn bridge for your London bridge. Sounds like a fair trade to me......

@boatman and @boasun...

Not to worry. I did get my inheritance from my rich uncle in Nigeria. It is in the form of 2 checks. $500,000 each...

I shall get them out to you guys, and you guys wire the balance... (100K) to my cousin in London and cousin in NY.
They shall set up the toll booths....


ok?

When can we do this deal?

I also need xeroxes of your passports, bank details, and......

[delmarrey]

I have my boat up for sale on a few web sites and I keep getting scammers trying to profit off me. Here's the latest today that I was suspicious from the get go. If they will not meet you in person, it's most likely a scam.
See also page 2.....
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[delmarrey]

Second half, over lapped...

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[john61ct]

Can you fill in the blanks for us noobs, how would they have tried to scam you?

Actually take possession of your boat before their payment cleared?

[chris mac]

Originally Posted by john61ct

Can you fill in the blanks for us noobs, how would they have tried to scam you?

Actually take possession of your boat before their payment cleared?

I have seen this one. The response I got was they will send you the money including delivery cost. Then you pay the delivery company. (usually all done on line) Of course the delivery company wants to deposit their payment before picking up the boat.
Typically they don't actually ever come get the boat.
Then you find out the original payment was sent from a fabricated source, no actual money to back up the electronic transfer.
Now you are out the delivery cost with no real options for recovery.

[skipmac]

This pretty much sums it up. The supposed buyer typically mails ypu a cashier's check that looks really good but is counterfeit. You deposit the check then you wire money to the shipper or his bank or some other place. The wired money they get immediately in cash and disappear. Then a week later your bank informs you the cashier's check is bogus.

Originally Posted by chris mac

I have seen this one. The response I got was they will send you the money including delivery cost. Then you pay the delivery company. (usually all done on line) Of course the delivery company wants to deposit their payment before picking up the boat.
Typically they don't actually ever come get the boat.
Then you find out the original payment was sent from a fabricated source, no actual money to back up the electronic transfer.
Now you are out the delivery cost with no real options for recovery.

[john61ct]

Well with big-ticket items, even dealing with someone in person, I'd wait for whatever non-cash payment medium to clear before releasing the goods.

Them asking me, as seller, to arrange any payments on their behalf would raise a huge red flag.

[chris mac]

These scams run on a volume type system. They contact thousands of people if not more. As long as some fall for it, they make money and keep going.
My wife works at a bank, and sees a lot of cases of people falling for it. It sucks, because it is really difficult to trace and charge these low life's.

[Reefmagnet]

I sold a Hobie cat once and a Malaysian scammer tried the advance fee fraud. I amused myself by corresponding with him, even sending him a fake bank transfer receipt.


They don't even bother sending a fake cheque these days. They'll just email a fake PayPal transaction. Then they'll make up some reason why they cannot pay the "shipper" and request that the seller pay's the shipping fees directly. If the seller falls for this, next in line will be customs fees, export taxes, port fees and so on until they've cleaned you out as much as possible.


I should note that the easiest way verify a possible scammer is to make some obvious error when describing more details about the item being sold. The easiest is just to add an extra few thousand to the price. These guys do play on low percentage returns so they have little idea of what they are "buying" if you reply to their initial inquiry.

[belizesailor]

Used to get scam charter inquiries. Played some along just to see how they work.

In the end they offered to pay some outrageous amount of money for a charter, but ask you to pass the bulk of it on to a 3rd party in exchange for a %. Thats as far as I took it. If in the end it were to play out that way then you likely just got involved in money laundering...something they could hold over you next time they called.

[Aswayze]

My favorite way to do this:

Always insist on cashier's checks.

Always insist that they be sent FedEx overnight

Always give them the address to the local FBI office.

Never give anyones actual name.

Never give a phone number.

Always converse via Craigslist email relay.

Change the item every time you respond. Example: "What is the condition of the engine" (scammer asking about a sailboat). Response "The engine is in very good condition, we have only used it for one season of cutting and it's always been taken to the Cub Cadet dealer for maintenance. If you would like, I can have the blades professionally sharpened prior to shipment".

Always insist that you did not receive the FedEx package. Act confused that tracking shows delivery to "mail room" "Front desk" etc. Make them send another...

Call them scammers and they will just move along. If everyone who recognises scams for what they are actively frustrates them and causes them to spend resources they will soon decide to get a real job.

[SSgtPitt]

Wife an I wrapping up a scam involving an online job scam.
She answered an ad for a job with RAM International Tools. Over the course of several weeks she was interviewed via Google Chat, offered and accepted the job but the online job training never happened.
She was sent a cashiers check to purchase thosands of dollars of software. Soon as the check arrived the harrassment started as they looked for a deposit slip with our bank info on it to prove we had made the deposit. I absolutely enjoy the process of messing with the scammers so we started.
We contacted the owner of RAM and the company the check was drawn against AND the bank that issued the check.
Both companies confirmed they had not done this, the bank on the otherhand said it was a legitimate check and if we cashed / deposited it we would have been able to get the money.
We contacted the local FBI.........crickets. (No responce)
We continued an online conversation with the scammer until I think he gave up.
We still have the check.

[Group9]

I used to be suspicious whenever the wife of a deposed Nigerian prince wanted to send me 14 million dollars. But, I answered them all, and here I sit on my 300 foot yacht I bought after receiving my fifth or six multi-million dollar cashier’s check.

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