Craigslist Scam??

[ronarthur]

So, I am trying to sell my dirt track race car and I decided to list it on Craigslist. Shortly after I posted the add, I got an
e-mail from a guy that sounded like he was interested. The second e-mail sounded a little fishy but I figured what the heck, I'll respond. The last e-mail was a real joke. I'm glad that I didn't just fall off the turnip truck. What are these people thinking?

This is the first e-mail,

Hello,

Please respond back if your vehicle is still avail with more specifications.

Thanks.

Here is the second e-mail,

Hello,

Thanks for your response to my inquiry concerning your vehicle for sale. Please i have a client who is very much willing in purchasing your vehicle and have it shipped.

His wife died recently so he left the country for the moment and i also tried giving you a call regarding to this very transaction but didn't go through. So please tell me exactly about it's present condition although it's all stated in the A.D but i need to know the actual condition, any mechanical faults/other necessary details and please kindly state your rock bottom (bottom price) is required too.


I look forward hearing back from you soon.

Thanks,
Bryan Williams.


Here is the third e-mail,

Hello,

After evaluation and due to time constraint on the fact that we are running short of time for the purpose, I'm delighted to tell you that my client has recommended your vehicle with full interest and has instructed me to carry on with this transaction.

However, my client made out a certified cashiers check of ($9,000) before he left the country( His wife just passed away), for a previous vehicle and its shipment charges etc but it was unfortunately sold. The amount on the check he deposited for the vehicle is bigger than what should be paid to you now, so the check is now meant for the total expense which includes the purchase, the pick up (shipping of the vehicle) from its present location and the shipping charges/other necessary shipping arrangements.

So you're required to deduct the cost of your vehicle ($4,000) and send the balance of ($5,000) to the agent (our shipper) for him to be able to offset shipping & tax charges.

After payment has reached you and balance sent to the shipping agent, pick up (of vehicle & signing of any papers) will commence immediately and some cosmetic touch will be done before shipping to my customer. Meaning, you don't have to bother about the pick up and shipping arrangements.


Please confirm this whole arrangement and provide me with:

1. LEGAL NAME IN FULL..........
2. CONTACT ADDRESS............
3. PHONE NUMBER...............

For check payment to be delivered to you via FedEx courier.

Thanks,
Bryan Williams.


It's a shame that you can't attach something to an e-mail so that when they open it up, you could track their location and hunt them down and beat the *^*&^&*&^% out of them!

[narfire]

I often wonder why if these people put just half of the effort in working in a legit buisiness or job,they would likely be just fine. Must be ego or something where if they can rip someone off they feel good... yea its sick and perhaps a little "tune-up" is requred for these people.
Chris

[Kevin1]

Contained in the header of the email is the senders IP address. You may have to change your view settings to see it. Then, unless they have gone through the trouble of trying to hide their location, you can see where it came from with http://www.iplocation.net
My first guess is Nigeria.

[So Cal Mark]

scam, no doubt about it

[azruss]

Ok, campers, this is how the scam works.
I listed a piano on a free ad site and got a response. same tale as above in terrible english. The buyer claimed he is a dealer and has a shipper in the US and he owes the shipper some money. because i seem like an honest guy, he will send me a cashiers check for more money and then i will send the difference to his supplier who will pick up the piano. I kept moving forward with the transaction knowing that i would have his money and the piano at the same time. Soon a check arrived for $9700. (was selling the piano for $1700). I told him i would be happy to send the money as soon as the check cleared and he was ok with that. I took the check to the bank and asked to be notified when it cleared. the teller said this scam was run on 3 of their customers that month. The buyer asked that the difference be wired to his shipper. It only takes 24 hours for a wire transfer to clear. in the meantime, it takes 3 weeks even for a cashiers check to clear. by the time you find out the check is no good, you've lost your money.
Here is the kicker. The check he sent me was from a business in SF that sounded like a mortgage company, but was postmarked out of houston. So i find this business and call up the owner. My guess was right. this was a small mortgage company with 10 employees. the boss signs all checks personally and would know if he spent $9700 for a piano. He checked with his bank and found 2 other checks that were the same check number. one for $6500 and the other for $3900. He put a stop payment on all checks and had the bank hand check all his checks. So here the scam was that they were writing checks from a legit company and those checks are scanned by a machine, so he wouldnt have seen the checks until the end of the month. If it was a big company, those check could have gone under the radar forever.
What did i get out of all this? I free dinner from a very grateful owner for saving him 15 grand.

[CajunMike]

Yeah happened to me also when I was selling some old furniture. I bet they scam thousands of people like this. They even called me and used some kind of third party operator to tell me what they would pay, etc. It was bizarre. I told them that unless someone showed up in person with cash I wouldn't be shipping my furniture anywhere. Never heard from them again.

[ronarthur]

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Message-ID: <AANLkTik60wXTgwKYKSS+4d_FaZfRVn7S6c0Vtk_sZsN2@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: VEHICLE PAYMENT.....REPLY
From: Bryan Williams <bryaannwills0005@gmail.com>
To: ronarthur44@comcast.net
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ko9

any of this mumbo jumbo tell the technology proficient the origin of the e-mail? Is that Emeryville California?

[jimincalif]

Classic scam. Looks like he's using a gmail address. This would be a violation of gmail's terms of service. I'd suggest reporting it to them, at least make the scam artist go thru the trouble of setting up a new email account.

I've done this a couple of times with hotmail and I actually got a response both times that they deleted the user account.

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/requ ... type=abuse

[BenjamminsFiat]

You already know it's a scam, so I'm not sure if this helps.

But I've had some experience managing SMTP e-mail servers and while the e-mail headers help to block the source of the scammer (or spammer) e-mails, it rarely helps actually identify or catch the offending parties.

From the quick research I did, it looks like the e-mail was just sent from a random comcast internet subscriber. While there's no way to be certain, I would guess that they have no idea these e-mails are being sent from there machine. Have you ever had a computer virus? Trojan Horse? something similar? Those computer hacking programs are meant to do exactly this, blast out a million e-mails to a list of e-mail addresses with a return e-mail where they can receive the reply. However, when they reply to YOU, they will always use someone else's compromised computer. This is done for two reasons:
1) So you can't do what you're doing and track them down and
2) So they can switch to another computer once this one is blacklisted

Eventually, this random subscriber's computer (ip address) is going to be blacklisted for sending spam and he won't be able to send e-mails through his Comcast account anymore.

This is all pretty complicated and I hope I'm explaining it correctly. Just know that most of the reason this works is built into the fact that e-mail was meant to be open and available to everyone. Scammers/Spammers capitolize on that fact. There's no verification that you are who you say you are. I could cook up an e-mail in 30 seconds that looks like it came from Elvis... it's just the nature of the game.

Wish I could help nail this sucker, maybe I'm wrong and others can track it down somehow. But I think the best you can do is report it to craigslist, gmail and your ISP if you felt like it.

[NJFIAT1981]

Hi Ron,
You would be surprised how many people fall for these scams. Most likely from Nigeria. Plently of scams going on here to. It's usually something the victim could avoid but greed sometimes overcomes common sense. George

[divace73]

What you mean that I'm not going to be a gazzilion air from that Nigerian dude? Damm better get back to work...
I love how a lot of these emails are so generic and not actually addressed to anybody and you can see it is a group email but they want to believe you have been magically singled out as the lucky one?

I often wonder why if these people put just half of the effort in working in a legit buisiness or job,they would likely be just fine. Must be ego or something where if they can rip someone off they feel good... yea its sick and perhaps a little "tune-up" is requred for these people.
Chris

I agree with this, all that effort, they could do well if they but their energy into a legit business.

[spiderverde]

This came in this Morning... I love the reference in the end to "Bill Gate" ....Jeez if your going to use the guys company for a scam..... at least get the mans name right...!!!!

Ray


MOTTO: FIGHTING POVERTY ROUND THE WORLD

CONGRATULATIONS ,

MICROSOFT COOPERATION MANAGEMENT WORLDWIDE ARE PLEASED TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU
ARE A WINNER OF OUR ANNUAL MS-WORD LOTTO LOTTERY CONDUCTED IN AFRICA BEING THE
HOST OF THE EVENT FOR THIS PRESENT YEAR MEGA JACKPOT LOTTO WINNING PROGRAMS HELD
ON 4TH February 2011.
YOUR PERSONAL E-MAIL ADDRESS OR COMPANY EMAIL WAS ATTACHED TO MSWLL. WITH
SERIAL NUMBER S/N-00168 DREW THE LUCKY NUMBERS 887-13-865-37-10-83, AND
CONSEQUENTLY WON IN THE FIRST LOTTERY CATEGORY. YOU HAVE THEREFORE BEEN APPROVED
FOR LUMP SUMS OF 1,000,000 ( USD ONE MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS) PAYABLE IN
CASH CREDITED TO FILE REF NO: MSW-L/200-26937 THIS IS FROM TOTAL PRIZE MONEY OF
25,000,000 USD, SHARED AMONG THE TWENTY-FIVE (25) LUCKY INTERNATIONAL WINNERS IN
FIRST AND SECOND CATEGORY.
ALL PARTICIPANTS WERE SELECTED FROM WORLDWIDE WEBSITES ESPECIALLY YAHOO MAIL
THROUGH OUR MICROSOFT COMPUTER BALLOT SYSTEM DRAWN FROM 21,000 NAMES, 3,000
NAMES FROM EACH CONTINENT (CANADA, ASIA, AUSTRALIA, UNITED STATE, EUROPE, MIDDLE
EAST, AFRICA AND OCEANIA, AS PART OF INTERNATIONAL "E- MAIL" PROMOTIONS PROGRAM,
WHICH IS CONDUCTED ANNUALLY FOR OUR PROMINENT MS -WORD USERS ALL OVER THE WORLD,
AND TO ENCOURAGE THE USE OF INTERNET AND COMPUTERS WORLDWIDE.
YOUR FUND (CERTIFIED CHEQUE) HAS BEEN INSURED WITH YOUR REF NO: MSW-L/ 0-26937
AND WILL BE READY FOR DELIVERY. IT WILL BE DELIVERED TO YOU BY ONE OF OUR CLAIM
AGENT IN CHARGE OF YOUR ZONE (MR ROLAND HENRY, . YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS SHOULD BE
USED IN ALL CORRESPONDENCE WITH YOUR CLAIMS OFFICER, PLEASE NOTE THAT, YOU ARE
TO CONTACT YOUR CLAIMS OFFICER VIA EMAIL AND PHONE AS WE ARE PROMOTING THE USE
OF E-MAIL. ALSO YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO CALL HIM TO CONFIRM YOUR WINNINGS AND
GOVE! RNMENT TAX PAYMENT THAT IS ALL, AS HE WILL PROVIDE YOU WITH THE NECESSARY
DETAILS ON HOW TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE.
AS PART OF OUR SECURITY PROTOCOL YOU ARE TO QUOTE THIS SECURITY CODE
MSW/FEB/XX011TO YOUR CLAIMING AGENT. THIS IS TO PREVENT SCAM .
PRIZE CLAIM

CLAIMS AGENT NAME: ROLAND HENRY
PHONE: +447024010207
E-MAIL: r.henry11@msn.com

REMEMBER, ALL PRIZE MONEY MUST BE CLAIMED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. ALL FUNDS NOT
CLAIMED ON OR BEFORE THE FIXED DATE WILL BE RETURNED AS UNCLAIMED AND DONATED TO
CHARITY ORGANIZATION IN AFRICA.
NOTE: IN ORDER TO AVOID MISTAKES, PLEASE REMEMBER TO QUOTE YOUR REFERENCE AND
BATCH NUMBERS AND YOUR SECURITY CODE OF MSW/FEB/XX011 IN ALL CORRESPONDENCES
WITH YOUR CLAIMS OFFICER. DO NOT REPLY ANY OTHER MAILS LIKE THIS ON NET, AS THEY
ARE A LOT OF SCAM ARTIST OUT THERE PRETENDING TO BE US. YOU MAY SEE MAILS LIKE
THIS DO NOT REPLY. DO CONTACT YOUR CLAIMS OFFICER DR AT ONCE YOU WILL BE ASKED
TO PROVIDE SOME DETAILS TO ENABLE THE OFFICE PROCEED WITH YOUR WINNING
CERTIFICATE AND FILE KEEPING.
CONGRATULATIONS, ONCE MORE FROM THE ENTIRE MANAGEMENT AND STAFF OF MICROSOFT
COOPERATION TO ALL OUR LUCKY WINNERS THIS YEAR. THANK YOU FOR BEING PART OF THIS
PROMOTIONAL LOTTERY PROGRAM. OUR SPECIAL THANKS AND GRATITUDE TO BILL GATE OF
MICROSOFT AND ALL HIS ASSOCIATES FOR ALLEVIATING POVERTY ROUND THE WORLD.
SINCERELY,



LOTTERY SPONSORS: CHIEF SPONSORS;

MICROSOFT CORPORATION UK, MICROSOFT CORPORATION AFRICA,
MICROSOFT CORPORATION USA, MICROSOFT CORPORATION ASIA.


FROM: THE DESK OF THE E-MAIL PROMOTIONS MANAGER INTERNATIONAL PROMOTIONS/PRIZE
REFERENCE NO: MSW-L/200-26937
BATCH NO: 2011FEB#22
WINNER NO: 5
ELECTRONIC MAIL AWARD WINNING NOTIFICATION
AWARD PRESENTATION CENTER: UNITED KINGDOM
AWARD DEPARTMENT, MICROSOFT CORPORATION WORD LOTTERY
UNITED KINGDOM.61-70 Southampton Row,
Bloomsbury London United Kingdom WC1B 4AR.

[mx266]

These scams are funny sometimes, Iv'e been looking for a small tractor for a while, found one on craigs list good pictures and all. E-mailed the add and the tractor was half way around the world from where it said it was! WITH FREE SHIPPING! Like i told the responder on the other end, cash in hand, and if I can't touch it , It's only a dream