If any of you market your work online, you might want to read this. It’s not an original scam, but it had me hooked for a little while.
I got an email from someone with an American sounding name who wanted to buy a couple of pieces on my site- a mirror and a clock, total price $815.00 Yippee, I thought, since I don’t sell a whole lot this way. She wanted to know if I would ship internationally, to Malta. I wrote back that I would and spent a fair amount of time researching international shipping rates.
The mirror was a little too big to ship USPS, and UPS and Fedex would have cost over $400.00. I suggested that I build a new mirror a little smaller so that it could go postal.
She then wrote back saying not to worry about the size, just box it for shipment. She would send me an American Express money order or cashier’s check for $2000.00, have me send her “agent” in Chicago the difference ($1185.00!) and then her “agent” would arrange to pick up the box and ship it.
That’s when the light started to flicker on. I wrote back, telling her that it would really be better for her to just send me the purchase price and pay her “agent” separately for the shipping. She responded by saying that this was to be a special surprise gift for her husband and didn’t want him finding out about it, so she would send the $2000.00.
Now the light bulb was on full force. I told her that that would be fine. As soon as my bank cleared her money order into my account (about 7-10 business days) I would package the pieces and her “agent” could contact me for pickup of the box and I would send her the $1185.00 overage for shipping.
Needless to say, I haven’t heard back from her- or him- or whomever. My first clue should have been the fractured sentence structure, poor grammar, spelling, etc. from someone sounding American or English. You know, like the Nigerian heir who wants to share his late uncle’s wealth. Her insistance on sending me more than twice the purchase price sealed her fate. I haven’t been inhaling that much sawdust to not see what was going on. This was a pretty obvious scam, once I got past the first couple of emails.
This advise may be obvious, but here goes anyway. If you get an email with all kinds of errors in it, be wary. If someone wants to send you a cashier’s check or money order for way more than the amount owed and wants you to send someone the difference for “shipping cost”, run away very quickly. Your bank may initially deposit the check, but if it’s a phony, you’ll be held liable for the full amount. My bank says it takes 7-10 days to verify a check or money order and that they can’t validate its authenticity on the spot. These con artists are counting on you thinking a cashier’s check is automatically good and you’ll send them what they want right away.
Most email transactions are legit. I’ve sold some pieces this way and gotten some commissions and they’ve all been very positive experiences. I certainly won’t let this one incident keep me from marketing my work on line, but I will be a little more vigilent in the future.
Alan
Replies
Alan
Just this morning I received a similar email from a guy claiming to be a British barrister(lawyer) informing me of my inclusion in the will a "very wealthy late client who's final wishes were to include you (me) anonymously for the sum of 9,900,000.00 GBP. All's I needed to do was send him my social security number, personal information, and bank account to wire me the money.
Hilarious!
Jeff
Hey Jeff,That's funny! Got an email, must have been the same guy. He told me that he tried to give a kazillion bucks to some Jeff guy who turned him down so he wanted to know if I'd be interested.I told him sure and now I'm off to Tahiti for retirement!Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Send me a pinia colada. Yikes, is that how you spell it?
Jeff
I ran into the same type of scam when I was trying to sell my last car. It started off with an offer to buy, and some questions regarding the car's condition and history, then followed up with the same "I can only get a check for more than the amount, please forward the balance to my agent" kind of thing.
Even if you had waited for the check to "clear" you might still have had trouble. Counterfeited overseas checks and money orders can take months to be identified, and even if the bank has released the funds to you after two weeks, once they find out that the check was fake they come back to you and you are left holding the bag. Snopes has an article on this very thing.
Rizzo the Rat, A Muppet Christmas Carol
Alan: Ah! welcome to the world of "new age schemers". Sounds like no one is going to pull a fast one on you. If I was in the same situation I might have strung them along and got the authorities in on it: it might have nabbed the "agent" and at least would be an exciting little side show.
Duke
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I really think the pattern is the same when corporate America sends out millions of credit card offers with fine print that will eventually send you to the cleaners.
It's still robbery, but nice and legal.
Sas: Hardly the same. Virtually all of us use credit in one way or another. Credit cards are voluntary, fine print lets all who can and do read what the deal is. In fact there are a lot of good credit card deals out there. Just like alcohol, driving, and power tools: used properly and judiciously they are safe and useful.
DukeSupport the Troops, Support your Country
Support Western Civilization:
Fight Islamofascism
The mechanism is the same.
You are the mark and you are approached in a friendly way, like the way the OP was approached, except it is not a foreign individual, rather a corporate marketing arm.
They are not there to do you a favor; neither is the foreign scammer.
They are there to get as much money out of you as they can, as much as the law will allow. Their language is deceptive. As pointed out by Elizabeth Warren of Harvard, even with a team of lawyers working on exposing corporate credit card operations, they were not able to figure out how much interest the consumer would be paying on a recent marketing offer.
You (or me or anyone) think the nice folks at corporate are sending you dozens of offers per year because you have good credit.
This is not the case.
Anyway, just like the offer from the foreigner, the trusting consumer takes the bait and the result is lots of eventual pain. The pattern is similar and the goal is to separate you from your money. The difference is the legality.
yes, yes. We all know corporate=evil. OK
I see that you are an intellectual. Pardon me if you thought I was trying to educate you.
Sasquatch, at the risk of "piling on:" The fine print isn't what sends you to the cleaners, it's irresponsible use of credit.
If you spend more than you can afford, of course you're going to have high interest expense, and everyone knows the interest is in the 20% range. If you don't pay your bill on time, you're going to have late fees, and everyone knows those are expensive.
Yes, the credit card companies are counting on the fact that quite a few people will carry large balances and/or pay late. But that doesn't make it even remotely like the scam under discussion here.
Bruce,
Or, as Woody Guthrie wrote, some will rob you witha gun, some use a fountain pen.
Ray
I think you are missing my point.
Imagine what life would be like without credit cards. I've managed to survive all these years without one and have no plans of getting one either.Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
If you had been a greedy man, the scam might have worked. Greed causes many people to forget -“if it sounds to be good to be true, it usually is”.
Most of us doing business online have had attempted scams. International money transfers take much longer. One scam involved something like a 24 day back charge on a money order which most people believe is guaranteed and clears in 10 days. It was for the sale of a Honda Motorcycle engine.
Check with your bank as to when they guarantee the funds to you not just when they claim the MO has cleared.
•••••••
Exo 35:30-35
Thank you for sharing your experience. We all need to be on our toes and watch out for the snakes in the grass as we walk the path to our dreams.
Hey that was poetic
Rich
Alan,
This is a good repeat of what happened to me a couple of months ago. A woman claiming to be a Staff Sgt. in Baghdad had seen a chippendale lowboy on the web and was asking if I could make three of them and ship them to the US Army war college to her dept. The grammar, spelling, etc was a little iffy, like yours.
I really wanted this to be true, so I quoted 15k to her along with a long lead time, and she responded quickly that she was fine with it and would send me a cashier's check of 19,000.
The buzzers were really going off at this time, I couldn't understand how she could send that kind of money without any other details that I would have expected. So I emailed several questions and haven't heard back.
The classic "Overpayment" scam has burned many people. Thanks for sharing it with the rest of us.
Cal
My wife's E-bay business had a similar experience, they were going to send extra money for some contrived reason and we were supposed to send the excess on to a third party. In her case the purchaser was from eastern Europe. For fun, google the scam artist's name, usually they have a history.
John W.
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