posted on February 17, 2006 02:00:22 PM
Received an email this morning re: a widget I have for sale at $1000.00, OK, this joker wants to send me a money order for $4500.00 & I an to send $3500.00 to his brother. Yeah, I wrote back & told him if really wanted this widget send me $1035.00 no more than that. I'll bet I never from him again.
posted on February 17, 2006 07:15:13 PM
A few months ago. I stood in line at the Post Office behind a women who was delighted to send her art work sold via eBay to a Nigerian gallery. She also tried to cash a money order at the Post Office, explaining that she needed to purchase a money order to refund the difference. The postal employee and his supervisor were very nice. They explained that although the money order 'looked good', it was not on their list and she should take it to her bank. She agreed, all was fine and she shipped her art work. I am so sorry now that I didn't speak up. I assumed that the bank would refuse the transaction immediately, preventing the purchase of a money order from the funds, but I have since learned that is not always the case, they can reverse the deposit later.
posted on February 17, 2006 07:30:21 PM
Sanmar...You should have agreed. When he sent the counterfit money order, you could ship him a counterfit widget. Send the "brother" a rubber check for $3500.00 and endorse the money order over to Ebay to prepay your fees for the next couple years. Then, just sit back and wait for the phone to ring
If Murphy's law is correct, everything East of the San Andreas Fault will slide into the Atlantic
posted on February 18, 2006 07:23:24 AM
Good one ToMWiii. Check out the 5th course down on this page. I think they mispelled the course title. It should be phishing 100 not fishing 100.
Fishing 100 ( CRN: 44683 )
This course will teach you the skills and techniques of effective bait and switch programs. The most profitable of these is advertising that people can make millions of dollars by helping you transfer money to their country. We will teach you how to hook them with this technique and then change the offer so they actually end up paying you. We have also added a new section to this course that teaches you how to liquidate your customer's bank account in the event they don't accept your baited offer. Either way, we can now guarantee your success.
And here's one specifically for us ebay types.
Ebay Buying Strategies 419 ( CRN: 92456 )
If Ebay is going to claim it is the world's marketplace for everything bought and sold, don't you think you should be there too? Any American idiot can make money by selling something on Ebay. But it takes a graduate from the University of Nigeria to know how to make money, NOT by SELLING, but by BUYING. Yes, this program teaches you how to make instant money with each purchase you make on Ebay. Thanks to the numerous loop-holes in the American banking system our graduates have obtained cars, trucks, property, expensive equipment and even cash for absolutely nothing! Have you ever saw something on Ebay you wanted? Take this course and we will show you how to get it for free.
They say your memory's the second thing to go, I just can't remember what the first thing is.
[ edited by mikes4x4andtruckrepair on Feb 18, 2006 07:30 AM ]
posted on February 18, 2006 10:05:48 PMmcjane innocently asked: There should be a way the bank could instantly tell if a MO is legit or not so as to protect the customer as well as themselves.
Plenty of ways - watermarks, valid routing numbers, magnetic ink, phone number of issuing bank... plus the old standby: ask the customer what it's for. BTW the bank is never out of pocket as they'll recover any loss from the seller's bank account or assets.
Most non-US banks are well aware of the Nigerian 419 scams and fake MOs, so they would likely warn any customer trying to send money to that country. Central banks send out routine warnings to most domestic banks with updates on the latest scams. In the US, the Treasury Dept. sends these out.
sanmar, bad enough they want to steal your item, they want your money too.
Actually they usually don't want the item (unless they can resell it). The whole scam runs on the honest seller sending a refund (many times larger than the item purchased). By the time the seller's small-town bank wakes up that the money order is fake and reverses payment from the seller's bank account, the larger refund by legitimate check or MO has been cashed. Seller has lost the item and large sum of money with no hope of recovery. Nigerian's (and others most notably Romanians) also run similar scams on eBay via PayPal using hijacked accounts and cards. Of course, if it sounds too good to be true...
So why is Nigeria such a hot-bed of thieves more so than other countries?
Endemic fraud from top to bottom in the ruling regime and civil service. Nice country, shame about the people. See CIA fact book for more details...
posted on February 19, 2006 02:16:51 AM
Here's an article in our morning paper:
---------------
Old scam nets new victim ---
N. Canton nurse says e-mail from Nigeria looked `completely legitimate';
now she owes $135,000
By Rick ArmonBeacon Journal staff writer
NORTH CANTON - Bridget Gossett thought she'd be rolling in dough now.
Instead, she's in a whole lot of financial hurt.
The 31-year-old was duped as part of one of the oldest Internet scams around -- an e-mail from Nigeria requesting help in sheltering money and promising her $6 million in return. Despite years of warnings from U.S. authorities and media stories about the popular scam, Gossett said she had never heard of it.
``I'm a single mom, and I guess I saw this and it looked completely legitimate,'' she said Thursday. ``I asked them over and over if they were going to scam me. And now that I think about it, they aren't gonna come out and say, `Oh, we're going to scam you.' ''
Gossett, who works as a nurse, received the e-mail last November and began talking with the con artists. They informed her that a wealthy Nigerian had died and if nobody claimed the money, it would be forfeited to the government. They needed her help in moving the money out of the country.
To handle the fees involved, they sent her a check last month for $47,000, which she in turn deposited in her account at a Charter One Bank branch in North Canton. She then wired the money to a business in London. Gossett said she was wary about the transaction, but figured everything was OK when the bank accepted the check. Another check for $89,100 arrived and she deposited that, too, she said.
As she waited for the second check to clear before the money could be shipped to a business in Japan, the bank determined that both checks were bogus.
And now Gossett said that Charter One says she's responsible for paying back the $47,000 and that her account is $88,000 overdrawn.
``I'm screwed,'' she said, adding that her bank account has been frozen and she doesn't even have money for groceries. But she also said the bank shares some of the blame.
``If the check wasn't good in the first place, why did they put it in my account?'' she asked.
Charter One spokeswoman Carrie Carpenter declined to comment on Gossett's case.
But in general, she said the depository bank doesn't determine whether to pay a check.
``If a customer deposits a check and spends the provisional credit, they are responsible for those funds,'' she said. ``If the drawee bank pays the check, those funds are made available to the customer.''
The fact that Gossett fell for the scam was surprising to those in law enforcement.
``You just keep thinking that this has been done for how long and people still fall for it,'' North Canton Police Chief Mike Grimes said.
Police referred the investigation to the U.S. Secret Service, which noted that such scams have been taking place for about 20 years. Despite warnings, people are still duped, said David Lee, resident agent in charge of the Secret Service office in Akron.
Gossett said she's learned a valuable lesson.
``Just don't trust anybody,'' she said. ``Just don't trust anybody.''
"And then that little jerk Ralphie convinced all the sheep-herders to build a roller-skating rink!"