# Don't Get Taken By This Scam



## pashley (Mar 22, 2008)

I wanted to pass along a story to you guys a story of me ALMOST getting scammed, so you don't fall prey either! Being a craft person that wanted to make a sale, I wanted to believe it was real - which could have cost me my shirt. Here's how it went down….

You post (for instance) a side table on your own website, for $1000; maybe you have a way to shopping cart it for payment through Paypal too.

Someone contacts you saying they want "the product" (they aren't specific it seems), and may even buy several. They also indicate they will send their own (or a common) shipper to get the product. You are elated! Not only are you selling one, but several. The guy says he'll send you a cashiers check, or Postal Money order. You think that's fine. You send him your mailing address, and voila! The checks appear. Just one little problem though - he sent you two checks, or one check for more than the amount - let's say $2,000. So, you quickly email the guy, saying, hey, you sent me too much money. He replies back (very quickly) that it was a mistake, but you can go ahead and cash the checks (if you haven't already) and wire him the difference - in this case, $1000, so you do it, and he gives you the directions to do so.

Two days later, your bank, where you deposited those money order, or Postal Money Orders calls you, and says they bounced, or aren't real. In my case, the postal money orders were forgeries - counterfeits, the same as counterfeit $100 bills! However, I never cashed the postal money order checks. Fortunately, I know a postmistress, took them to her, and she's like, "No, these aren't real", and showed me subtle differences between the real and fake. I could have really been in trouble, trying to cash forged federal instruments!!! Not only that, but the money I sent to the con man would have been gone too. I really could have had a bad day.

I contacted the authorities and they were like, "There's nothing we can do; these guys move around so much, we can't catch them. Typically they are overseas, like the Bahamas or Africa."

This is an example of the mantra, "If it looks too good to be true, it probably is."

So, I hope that helps prevent one of you good fellows from getting scammed!


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## jap (Oct 10, 2012)

good reminder


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## Gshepherd (May 16, 2012)

It must be going around…. I posted a scroll saw on CL got the same crap….. Not wantin to be rude I put down the Local Police Department info…..


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## derosa (Aug 21, 2010)

The fun thing is to return the favor and string them along; leave them hanging for several days.


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## TopamaxSurvivor (May 2, 2008)

That is what I do ;-) Have them send the checks to my PO Box. Thye never contact me about their balance due.


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## MJCD (Nov 28, 2011)

This is a classic scam used on Craigslist …

First, I've had great success on CL, and I recommend CL to one and all - today, I had a person pay for and pick-up a Delta 14" bandsaw I was selling. However, last week someone offered me full-price, an offer to send a cashier's check, have a common carrier pick-up the machine one I cashed the check. all of this …

Fortunately, I've been down this road before, and CL warns you at every turn to do business IN PERSON, with Cash.

The unfortunate part is that there are too many people trying to do too many scams - they run ahead of our ability to believe individuals are this corrupt.
MJCD


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## a1Jim (Aug 9, 2008)

This scam has been around for a couple years at least. I get emails all the time saying they want to order ___ fill in the blank, they say they want 10 of them and want to know how much they will be and what kind of payment I'll take.
They never say what wood they want them made of ,size or other details. Of course I never answer the emails.


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## JJohnston (May 22, 2009)

I had a guy try come to pick up a contractor's saw, in person, and try to write a check (ad on CL). I declined to take it; however, the bank it was from was right there in town, about 5 miles away, so I offered to drive him there to get cash. He declined, and left without the saw. To this day, I don't know if that check would have been good or not. After that, I always made sure to say "cash only" in the ad.


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## mojapitt (Dec 31, 2011)

Been there. Same crap. Had to refuse a $3000 check. Painful


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## TedW (May 6, 2012)

I get emails (spam) all the time with a story of how some wealthy person in Nigeria or other far away place needs a trusting person to keep their money safe - usually several million dollars - for which they would gladly let me keep a large portion of it. This is along the same line as buying a product. Very common scam, and they are always trying new angles.

Another scam, sort of along the same line, is responding to your CL ad requesting more information. However, they don't specifically say what item they are inquiring about, or something very general like "the tool you are selling" or car or instument… whatever general category they are spamming at the time. In this case it is not to send you a cashiers check but, rather, to get your email address when you respond. They do this to collect legitimate email addresses, which they then use for spamming and they also sell the lists to other spammers.


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## TopamaxSurvivor (May 2, 2008)

That is why free email was invented. So you can have addresses to answer in case of spammers harvesting.


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## TedW (May 6, 2012)

One other scam worth mentioning involves phone numbers. They run a software against sites such as Craigs List which searches for anything that looks like a phone number, and collect them for soliciting. That's why you'll see a lot of people posting on CL will disguise their phone number, like eight 5 five dash 4 nine nine 2760. (no, it's not a real number that I'm aware of.) It is so the "bots" as they are known, don't get ahold of their phone number.


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## TedW (May 6, 2012)

That's exactly right Topamax. Unfortunately, too many people unwittingly reply. I wonder how may write back… "Oh yeah? Then what am I selling?" thinking they are outwitting the scammers.


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## TopamaxSurvivor (May 2, 2008)

Sometimes I get emails saying there is a problem with a bank account or CC account. 
Sometime they are for institutions I have never dealt with. They must just send them out in volume fishing for anyone naive enough to click their link. They usually look very real and have email addresses with just one little defect. I forward them to the real institutions, but i doubt if they can do much about it.


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## fge (Sep 8, 2008)

I first learned of these scams in 2008 so it is a fairly old scam. They must make money at it off some peopl
I mostly ignore and delete. I will admit, getting tired of this, a couple.weeks ago I got a text on my phone. It was a scam. For the past 2 weeks I have texted and called the number multiple times a day randomly. I have basically gave them a message that I hate people like them. I call but only get their voicemail. I know what I am doing is harrassment, but they deserve it. If only I could come.face to face with one of the scammers.

I know I could probably go to jail for my harrassment, but the harrassee, whom would be.my accuser and ultimately the scammer, would need to reveal themselves. I would gladly spend time in jail if I can have a chance to get a name and face of even just one of these scammers/loosers.


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## TopamaxSurvivor (May 2, 2008)

Now Jerry, name taking only; no kicking a$$ ;-)


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## bandit571 (Jan 20, 2011)

Just another angle to this "dangle", the "infamous" Director of the FBI sends you a email???

Didn't know he had an "office" in Nigeria….


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## oldnovice (Mar 7, 2009)

It is getting ridiculous out there! Where is Diogenes when we need him?

*In today's world he would probabably run out of fuel for his lamp!*


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## bruc101 (Sep 13, 2008)

If you ever get a number on your caller id or cell just go to Google and put the number in and do a search. You may be surprises at how many more are getting calls from the same number.

Less than 45 minutes after we got our 13 year old her own private phone number the scam calls got started. She would Google the number and find them to be scam numbers. We put a recorder on her phone and all the callers would hang up when the recorder answered. One of the first to call was a collection agency from Virginia using an 800 number. 
She found that out by doing a Google on the number and they are known scammers. We reported that number to the FTC. She would also get a fax scam to her number.

We also found out that some of the callers were from other countries and were spoofing US phone numbers.
She started blocking the numbers but still gets a couple a week now. The phone company says there is nothing we can do about it but try to block them.

Her theory…my number is a non published number and if I don't know the number I don't answer it. If it's important the caller will leave a message. She has given her number only to her family and friends and she knows all their numbers when they show up on her caller id.

If you have a web site do not put your email address on it, use a contact form instead. If you use an email with your domain name contact your hosting company and ask them to apply Spam Assassin to your email account or accounts and that should help slow the spam emails down. Never use an [email protected] either. Spam Bots lock in on those first thing and have themselves a party.

Spam Bots crawl the web looking for email address on web sites. If you have been to my plans site then you see a contact form to contact me with no email address on the site.

On the Sawmill Girls site there is no way to leave a message to the Guestbook without going through a contact form. When we check the stats on the site we see 100's of hits on their Guestbook that are Spam Bots trying to leave spam messages on their two guestbooks. Mostly coming from China, Russia and other countries. I would say a lot of hits going to your sites are also from other countries and tech companies gathering information.
This is what their stats looked like this morning for 24 hours. We do know there are people in Russia, Ukraine and other countries reading their book but it's difficult to say if it's readers or spam bots unless they've contacted us.


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## Fishinbo (Jun 11, 2012)

Thanks for the reminder. 
Yes, I have always believed in that mantra. 
Oftentimes, I don't trust something that is too good to be true.


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## RHolcomb (Mar 23, 2010)

Another thing everyone needs to be aware of and take precautions with and my own story. I've been in Law Enforcement for over 25 years and we get targeted the same as anyone. I actually sold a few items on CL and had several spam attempts. These people stop at nothing. Each time I received a spam offer, I played the game. When they emailed saying they would send their carrier who would pay by cashiers check, I said "Great! My house has the Police Car in the driveway. Let me know when you want the physical address". Of course that was the last correspondence from that person but the next day there would be a new attempt. Ok, now what to be careful of….If you don't utilize online banking, I would highly recommend you do. As woodworkers, we tend to buy things online and use our credit or debit cards to do so, as do a lot of people when buying things so pass this along to them as well. Occasionally, you will hear about a bank or a credit card processing website that was hacked and the databases that have your card numbers were compromised. When this happens, banks are very good at canceling the cards and issuing new ones. When it's a card processing company online, you hope you saw the news article about it so you can cancel your card right away if you did business through them. Sometimes though it takes a few days for them to realize what happened and notify you. In that amount of time, your card number is in the hands of the bad guys and they will make real small purchases with your card number. usually less than a dollar. When they see that the sale went through, they use your card number to make a big purchase. The reason for the little purchases is not only to make sure the card works but because most people wouldn't notice it until it's too late. This happened to me but I was lucky. I check my account balances every single day by going online to my bank and checking for transactions. I caught the small sales before they could make the big purchase! Also, check with your bank if you use a debit card online to make your purchases. Even though they have the Visa or Mastercard logo on them, they are not treated the same as credit cards are by many banks. Call your bank and ask them about the protection they offer. Do they reimburse you if a fraudulent charge is on your debit card etc. When this happened to me, I lost the money. It was less than $2.00 total but the bank told me that because it was a debit card, I would have to try to resolve the issue myself first before they would consider reimbursement. Obviously I couldn't do that so I lost the money. I now use a different local bank that has protection immediately on debit card transactions. But the key is to utilize your online banking account to check your balances frequently so you don't get burned and you have up to the minute information regarding any purchases or use of your card.


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## Earlextech (Jan 13, 2011)

Trying to sell my Laguna Edgebander on CL I had the same experience with a scam, actually the same scam twice. After a couple of emails I noticed that the guy that said he was in the military didn't speak the good english, so I asked where he was from. His reply told me all I needed to know. He basically screamed at me in broken english while continuing to insist he was an American. Idiot!


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## jerkylips (May 13, 2011)

I've been 'offered' the same deal when selling stuff on CL - the funny thing was that I had 2 completely unrelated items I was selling (cleaning out the garage) and got the exact same email on both of them - word for word - but were from different senders. hmmmm..

the easy solution is to say, 'no problem - but I'm going to hold the items until after the check/money order/etc clears. Once it does, you can pick up your items. Most non-crooks will accept this. If they don't, you pretty much know they were trying to screw you..


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## ChuckC (May 13, 2010)

This happened to me too on CL. The guy was going to send me a huge check, wanted me to keep more than the asking price, and asked I give him the rest back. The offer was so generous I had to turn it down …


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## Tallone (Nov 12, 2012)

Hello. This is my first post but I have been reading on this site for some time and have learned much from the knowledgeable people here.

This topic is something I know a great deal about so I wanted to weigh in and share some information I hope you will find useful. This is indeed a fairly old scam. Details on this and many other types of scams can be found here: http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3. The good folks at Scamwarners also do an excellent job helping people deal with the situation when they, or someone they care about, gets caught up in an ongoing scam. The effects on victims and their families are often devastating. Many victims have been ruined financially, lost their families, and even committed suicide.

These scammers are evil and utterly ruthless. It is *not *a good idea to screw around with them if they have any of your real life information (name, address, phone #, etc.). What most people don't realize is that many internet scammers are members of criminal gangs. Many of these gangs are international in scope including places like the US, Canada, Great Britain, Malaysia, and many others. Although the chances that some gang member would track you down and do you harm are fairly remote, it is best to just leave them alone if they have any of your real life info.

This is not to say you can't mess with these jerks. In fact, it can be a lot of fun (and beneficial to others) to do so but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. The folks over at http://www.419eater.com (scamwarners sister site) have taken this to an art form (with often hilarious results) but they are always mindful of safety.


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## Dusty56 (Apr 20, 2008)

Same Old Sh%#...I buy and sell a lot on CL and I get these idiots everyday !
Sometimes numerous offers with the same exact wording from different email addresses.


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## Tennessee (Jul 8, 2011)

Many people don't realize that a lot of banks, especially the smaller ones, offer the same protection as companies like Lifelock. About a year ago, I got a call from a guy in Texas on a Saturday morning who was informing me that my debit card had been submitted for a small purchase, like Rob said, then they immediately went for a $34 purchase, followed by a four-digit purchase blocked. He was calling me to tell me that my bank has this plan in place for all debit customers, and they would have a new debit card waiting for me on Monday morning. All my accounts go through that bank, I also monitor my accounts online, and shread everything, including junk mail in a cross-cut shredder.
As far as e-mail scams, after living in Shanghai, I learned that most of them often have a little English mistake, or are just too good to be true. When in doubt delete, is what I always say. Also, if you have a non-Windows Smartphone, you can delete the incoming junk from there, and it will never have a chance to infect your Outlook, if you are a Microsoft user. My Blackberry has probably saved me countless times.

As far as phone calls, I often answer with a stern "YES", which for some reason puts off a lot of these people. If they persist, I immediaely ask to go on the no call list, which is largely a joke in this country. If it is a recording, "You are eligible for interest reduction, blah, blah", I just immediately hang up and don't answer the number anymore. 
I find that CL works best with a typed in phone number, (letters mixed with numbers), and no e-mail available. And of course, cash only please.


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## Dusty56 (Apr 20, 2008)

I might give that "phone number only"method a try , Tennessee : ) I have been posting in my ad's that I would not respond to their emails without a phone number included in their response…cut down on a lot of morons : )


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## alkillian (Mar 19, 2011)

I had something similar happen, but I noticed there name and address where not the same as who I had talked to. Come to find out they do this to get into your bank account. If you ever get one take it to the bank and have them check it. From their they will call the police or fbi .


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