Big Craigslist scam called the Nigerian scam! BEWARE! (Office, format, communication)

[wCat]

Originally Posted by majormadmax

Still, you have to be careful, the enemy is sneaky!

WARNING! This is a somewhat lengthy post, but there is a valuable lesson to be learned at the end so it might be worth reading! .....

Anyhow, so I get this chat message from this person, which is odd because we've only exchanged emails in the past. No biggie, I thought, he must've just caught me online; so I ask how things are going. I get the 'not so good' response, so I inquire what is wrong. I get this story that he is vacationing in London, was robbed, and now he has no money to get home. Red flags go up, but I proceed to ask if he's been to the US Embassy. I get the "they were no help" reply so I tell him to email me and we can continue the conversation.

Cheers! M2

I just posted about this exact scenario about a month ago here on CD. Same story, London BS, been robbed, embassy no help (actually was on federal holiday, so the embassy was not even open...one of many BS clues).

This isn't a Facebook thing.....although Facebook is being used. My friend is not on Facebook. She had a Yahoo email account in which they hijacked it and sent this note out to everyone in her address book. From there they got more emails and the cycle continues. Yahoo addressed it, she had to close her account and get a new email address. No one sent money to her knowledge, but it caused her a LOT of headaches collecting and notifying every email, business, and personal contact of the changes....not to mention the cost of new business cards and the embarrassment to clients.

[teallovesyou]

i believe ive been scammed by this, this past week. ugh is there anything bad that can happen once these scammers have your paypal email?

[synch390]

The only advice I would give you is to change your paypal password to something hardcore, something with upper and lower case, numbers and a couple of special characters in it.. if you have paid them via paypal, I have no idea what paypal can do, if anything. Anyone else have any ideas? - diana

[TXtrkgrl]

remove all credit card and banking info from your paypal account.
I have a paypal acct which I use once or twice a year. I don't keep any info on there, when I want to pay someone I put my credit card on there, make my payment and then I immediately delete my credit card.

Just last week I encountered a scammer on craigslist. I emailed about a travel trailer and sure enough the response was I couldn't inspect the trailer because he was out of town but he had a third party shipper and once he rec'd payment he would ship the camper and then I had 14 days to return if I didn't like the camper and he would return my payment. blah,blah,blah......

What pissed me off the most is he said that he is selling cheap because it belonged to his son who was killed in Iraq and he couldn't take looking at it any longer.

[BamaSailor]

Here is a recent attempt (obvious scam) I got from a Craig's List ad:

From: renemyson@gmail.com

Hello,

Thanks for the swift response to my mail,as the item is still
available, I will send a check to cover the cost of my purchase as am
completely satisfied with the advert.I will need the details of whom &
where to mail the draft.It will be delivered by the United Parcel
Service within 2-3 days.Please note 'United Parcel Service' do not
deliver to P.O.Box addresses.

1.Name to be on the check
2.Home address
3.Mobile #

Kindly delete the advert on Craig's List as am totally committed to
buying from you to save me cost, My mover will be coming over for the
pick up right only after the payment as been delivered and I want you
to understand that, I would have love to call but am a deaf and only
uses a hearing impaired phone relay, So please send me an email only.

Regards

[HillCountryHotRodMan]

Apparently he is not only deaf but spelling challenged and full of !@#$

[BamaSailor]

Originally Posted by HillCountryHotRodMan

Apparently he is not only deaf but spelling challenged and full of !@#$

And isn't the purpose of a "hearing impared phone relay" to allow someone with hearing issues to be able to use a phone?

[HillCountryHotRodMan]

Originally Posted by wc2005

And isn't the purpose of a "hearing impared phone relay" to allow someone with hearing issues to be able to use a phone?

Well, hell, wc2005 ... if I was hearing "impared" I would probably know how to spell the damned impairment. Point being, the scammer isn't "impared" and is full of it. We're talking about a scam here, not some charity event.

[Littlelu]

Originally Posted by CameraGirl

Last week we got scammed on Craigslist for nearly $2,400. We are professional photographers and had 2 cameras that we were interested in selling and were contacted by someone saying they wanted to buy the cameras for their son in Nigeria and asked to have it shipped there and they would even pay extra for shipping- they asked to pay us via paypal. They even provided a fake document (it looked official) that showed us Paypal had the money in the account and simply needed the tracking number to release the funds to us. After shipping the camera's via United States Post (at their suggestion) we came home to put the tracking number in and our first clue that things were amiss was there was no place to put a tracking number. So we call Paypal and they say, "Oh no, where did you ship the stuff to because there is a Nigerian scam that is going on that is similar to this". We about fell out of our chairs- our package had shipped to Nigeria! After that we googled Nigerian scam and hundreds of entries pop up. Earmarks of this scam is that the emails read like foreigners are responding to your posting, they offer to pay more then what your asking and they want it shipped out of the country or not necessarily to their own homes. They have even found a way to forge money orders, cashiers check, paypal documents on & on....even when your bank cashes the check and the forgery gets caught eventually- you are out the money and not your bank. So now you have no money- lost your product and paid for crazy high shipping (in our case $110). Please be careful everybody- this extends beyond Craigslist and they can even burn you on houses, services etc. Google "Nigerian scams" for yourself. Only deal with locals and ask for cash only and meet people at a neutral location or be sure and try to have someone with you. After we had already shipped those cameras we continue to receive several offers a day from Cuba, California etc.... It has totally freaked us out and also shows you that it is not just limited to being shipped to just Nigeria. It seems that other dishonest people are on the band wagon too- willing to rip you off. But, Nigeria still remains the largest part of the scam. We tried to contact the local news stations here in S.A. about this story and none of them contacted us back. But, I worry for other people and wouldn't want this to happen to anyone else. It was just so heartbreaking for us.

So beware and be careful and lets try to hang on to all of our hard earned money. With the economy being so bad I have heard that more and more scams of this sort will be creeping up!

Never ship anything you sell until the money has posted to your bank account. Just because someone gives you a document means nothing. Was the money in your Paypal account and showing completed?
I sell on ebay and these vultures have tried to scam me in the past....but I do not ship anything until I have the money in hand...period. Sorry that this happened to you and good that you let others know.

[Littlelu]

I forgot to mention if I was selling something on Craigs list I would only do it locally and only for cash. Nowadays, one must question everything!