How I caught a scammer

[Paul]

I recently have been trying to sell a few things via the wonders of the interwebs, some of my transactions have gone well, others havent gone so well. I've caught a scammer in the act, and have chronicled it on my website. You can read my post here, I'm not going to repost it because it is HUGE. Watch out for anyone who wants to use western union

 

[Squintz]

Glad you were wise enough to catch that. I sure hope the burn him. The post office may be able to atleast give you a general area of where the check came from. I have contacted BoA fraud department before and I have a feeling they don't do much to try and catch the guy. You might want to go to FBI.gov and write them a letter to see if they are interested in your info.

 

[Guy Lavoie]

The ole "overpayment" fraud. Glad you saw it coming. Btw, if anyone else is looking for some old windows, I have several Win 95 CD's lying around...

 

[Paul]

the windows ARE still for sale btw

 

[JohnWPB]

Woah!!!!

I had almost the EXACT same expierance when selling my car! My car was stolen, I purchased a new car. Two weeks later the stolen car was recovered. I decided to sell it cheap (as it was prettu trashed) in a weekly auto book here called Auto Trader. A few days after the car was listed, someone emailed me. Explained that he wanted the car for a client of his, and wanted to know my bottom line price. We settled on the price of $1500.00 After a few emails, here is one that he sent me:

My client informed me that what his going to make payment to you is Bank Certified Check, and also he informed me that the payment will be in amount of $3,500 USD, so on reciept of the payment you are required to cash it and deduct the cost of your car and also send balance of the money to the shipper as my client instructed.

Here is the next email from him:

Hello,
From postal delivery,it is comfirmed that your payment should have arrived.
Kindly check your mail box to pick up your payment. Follow the instructions sent to you.
Thanks and have a wonderful day.

The major difference in this case is that payment never arrived, and I had no further contact with him.

There are a LOT of scams out there, and we all think that we can tell. I had no idea at the beginning that this was a scam, but after a couple days, the little red flag started waving.