Friday, September 18, 2009

Craiglist Scammers continued

A variety of other people contact me through Craigslist to buy stuff offering to pay by check while they wanted the item to be posted within the United Kingdom.

Having heard stories about fake checks that the bank and the police is coming after you and not after the one who gave it to you, naturally I denied, although I offered them the option to pay by Paypal or deposit money in my bank account, or pay on collection, which I would prefer.

After my answer, they vanished :)

"james scout" jascout002@gmail.com
1st Email

hi,
i saw your listing on craiglist and i am interested in it. Let me knoe if
it is still available.

2nd email

dea seller,
thanks for your response. Let me have the shipping cost to
northampton and also your full contact address for me to send you a
cheque for the payment.



"dforsyth90@yahoo.com"

requested about the item's condition and vanished (my guess is to make sure I had posted the item for a friend of his, in Nigeria which of course I hadnt)

"Jonathan Lescott"jonathan_lescott@yahoo.com

Good day Dear Seller,
How are you and hope you had a lovely weekend? I am writing you this mail as regard your item placed oncraigslist.org,you indicated you had this camera for sale at the offer of £145,before i continue,i am Jonathan Lescott,i am interested in buying this item from you,but i would like to confirm it the item is still as described as i will buy from you,hope to read from you soon.

Hello Thank you very much for the mail and i so much appreciate your mail and the fact that this item is still for sale,i would have loved to come by and see the item for myself,but i would not be chanced to do so because of my tight and busy schedules,but you can call me on my mobile phone number so we can talk better on this and also discuss on the payment terms (+44)70359****,i await your call soon, or you can email me the payment details so i can make payment available.bye and have a splendid day.


Jonathan.


hello i am located in London and would make payment via a check.let me know if this will work out for you as i will make out payment soon.

jonathan

Joe.

Another one send to me the following:

"Reuben Lawson" holy4land00@rock.com

I'm interested in your item which you displayed on site.I want to get it for my Pastor daughter as a gift.Kindly get back to me if it's still available for sell,present condition and the major reason why you want to selling it and if you accept PayPal service Payment ?
Your reply will be highly appreciated,God Bless.Your reply will be highly appreciated,
regards and God Bless.

Craiglist UK scammers

For a cable that costs 2$. someone told me the following:

"emmanuel junior" emmajunior10@gmail.com


1st email

Hello Customer, i would like to know if this item is still available for sale? if yes i would like to know the present condition of the item, the payment method, and the shipping cost of the item....asap.......hope to hear from you soon...........thank you......

2nd Email

Nice to hear from you, i am very very interested in this item and i just want to present this item to my son as a
birthday gift, and right now i am not in the state for some travelling business. I have a PayPal account that I use for my business and send out money without delay to my customers since it's good for business payments.i will offer you $350 for the item and the shipping cost, so Send your PayPal email account to this email address in order for me to have your money sent on time as soon as possible.so i will offer you $350 for the item and the shipping cost. So try as much as possible to ship the item immediately and get back to me as soon as possible. Thank You.


For the same item, a second scammer showed interest. Different email, same shit:

"emmanuel messi" emmanuelmessi@gmail.com

Hello Customer, i would like to know if this item is still available for sale? if yes i would like to know the present condition of the item, the payment method, and the shipping cost of the item....asap.......hope to hear from you soon...........thank you......

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Gumtree UK scam

Having a digital camera for sale in gumtree.com in the UK

more than one different email accounts asked me if the item is for still sale also asking about the condition of the item which I had already stated as brand new.

"Is your item available for sale and how is the conditions of your items???? your regards Devon........."
then the next step after my reply, it was to send me the following typical for this situation email:

"Hi,Thanks for getting back to me,just to let you know that am showing my interest in buying your item,so i will want to know more about it.
I will want to know the recent condition of this item and its total amount.I 'm sending it to a Friend in West Africa as a surprise package,via Royal Mail or Parcel Force International Signed For,but unfortunately I'm not opportune to come down to get the item myself due to work transfer,so i will really appreciate if you can kindly post the item for me which i will offer you the sum of 50 for postage and packaging of the items Abroad.
I will want us to sincerely deal with each other through PayPal Online Auction,cause i believe its safe for both of us..I will love you to get back to me with all the answers and also your PayPal email and full name with the total amount plus p&p,so that payment can be made asap and i can get back to you with the postage address.
I await your quick response
God Bless You"

Having heard about the Nigerian scams before, I was alerted by the high price of the postage he was prepared to pay and the fact that he wanted to send the item in Africa.
Similar situations before this one, the next step after I gave them my details to send the money in Paypal, I received a strange letter of confirmation form paypal for receiving the funds, but when I logged on in my paypal account, there was no money there.

Little bit after, the "buyer" send me an email, saying that he had send the money and I received a paypal email!!!


I just made the payment for your item and when you have received confirmation mail from PayPal and you have posted out the item get back to me and the shipping address for the item is below:

Adewale Emmanuel
108 Akerele Street
Surulere,Lagos
23401
Nigeria.

Thanks for your support

Regards...........


Mr Davis Davon, you are a big piece of pig.

The bogus Paypal email I received, was surprisingly similar to original paypal emails, but was send by hotmail :)

babalomo@hotmail.com on behalf of PayPal service (payserve_post@consultant.com)


PayPal

Dear
,

You have an Instant Payment of
£195.00 GBP From Davis Devon(davisdevon77@yahoo.com)

Payment Details

Purchased From:
Transaction ID:5NS50308X5606661C



Item Number
Item TitleQuantityPrice Subtotal



Olympus 1040 digital
camera
1
£195.00
£195.00
Postage & Packing via Global priority (ROYAL MAIL SIGNED FOR):
(includes any seller packing fees)

£0
.00
Postage Compensation (not offered): --
Total:£195.00

Payment Information:

The payment for Gumtree.com item has been verified and confirmed. But due to security reasons on both sides of the buyer and the seller the status of the payment is pending. Most sellers do not ship out the exact items as they have listed on Gumtree Ad and we are keen on securing the Gumtree Ad community.

You will be required to post out the item and email us its shipment reference number (payserve_post@consultant.com). We will then verify the status and contents of the shipment within 10 minutes with the courier service its been shipped through. Once we have completed verification, your account will be credited instantly.


Should you have additional questions or need help with your PayPal account or these transaction,Please feel free to email or call our Customer Service Representatives at +4470 2408 3722 to provide the shipment reference number or for any questions contact us via: immediately with the shipment reference number so we can credit your account immediately without any delay.

Note: Do not send the shipment reference number to the buyer until we have confirmed the status of the shipment and credited your PayPal Account.




Delivery Information
Address:Adewale Emmanuel
108 Akerele Street ,
Surulere,Lagos,
23401
Nigeria.


Address Status: Confirmed


Thank you for using PayPal!
The PayPal Team



Roman" >PayPal Email ID: Roman">PP315
Copyright © 1999-2009 PayPal. All rights reserved.
PayPal (Europe) Ltd. is
authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority in the United State as an electronic money institution.
PayPal FSA Register Number


the motherfuckers send me a second email confirming the authenticity of the first! Again from hotmail! babalomo@hotmail.com


PayPal

Dear
,

This is to confirm payment in the amount of £195.00 received From Davis Devon(davisdevon77@yahoo.com). The payment was made today for your item and is thereby recorded in our Database.Due to the high rate of fraudsters on the Gumtree website, we have devised a means of protecting both the buyer and the seller should in case either parties do not want to send the items paid for or send money for the item bought. The buyer pays for the item through our secured website and the transaction is recorded but the sellers account cannot be credited until he/she has shipped out the item paid for and send the details from the post office to us for verification. You can take a look at the following websites as to type of fraud recorded on eBay:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4386952.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4385956.stm

You are in no way advised to send a copy of the shipping reference to the buyer once the item has been shipped out by you. The shipping reference is to be sent to us for further verification and thereby your account will be credited immediately as soon as the shipping reference has been confirmed.
We hope you do understand our plight as we at PayPal hope to serve you better in future. All emails and Enquiries to be sent to
payserve_post@consultant.com


Thank you for using PayPal!

The PayPal Team


Copyright © 1999-2008 PayPal. All rights reserved. PayPal (Europe) Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority in the United Kingdom as an electronic money institution. PayPal FSA Register Number: 226056



PayPal Email ID PP275

Sign up for PayPal and start accepting credit card payments instantly.



Because this has happened more than once with supposedly different buyers, other names the scammers use, are:

Ashton Batty (batty.ashton@yahoo.com)

Abiodun Lawal
9 Badaru Street
Alhaji Masha
Surulere Lagos
23401 Nigeria

and

farellino@hotmail.com
on behalf of paypal service (shipping_postman@representative.com)



Actually i want you to know that i am buying this item to my pastor daughter in London as a gift. Kindly get back to me with your PayPal Email Address Or you can send me PayPal Money Requested from PayPal to my email address (holy4land@rock.com) for immediately payment.and don't forget to send me the amount of the item.payment,because they are fast and reliable and secure with no stress of all payments.I'm offering you £200 for this item plus the shipping and handling cost via Royal mail post.I would have prefer to come and pick up the item but unfortunately i have been transferred to Canada for missionary purpose and i will not be available to received the item my self.Your reply will be highly appreciated.

Purpose

Being a frequent online seller and buyer, I have come across a few individuals trying to steal what ever I had for sale. Most usually expensive equipment, such as mobile phones, laptops, or digital cameras.

I decided to post their details online here for others to avoid them.

Of course since email addressed are a dime a dozen, there might be not much point in making the addressed they use public. However even if one person avoids the scam due to that, my purpose is served.