Nigerian Scammers (1 Viewer)

[DaveNel]

Be alert that there are scammers from nigeria, They act interested in your items for sale offer you more than what its worth the send you a phony cashiers check, After the check arrives they email you and you tell them there is a 3-5 day hold on the check. They state that they cant wait that long and say can you pay the shipping now for your item.
you send them money by wired fund to pay shipping you will never hear from them again ever. I was selling a TV and A Tom Berg was interested in it, He said he has a client interested in the TV. So I said ok. he sent a Cashiers check and of course its a bad check. If I would have cashed it before checking it out, I would have been paying charges for a bad check. How many other people has these scammers tried this on.

On the Internet do a search for the nigerian 419 scams

What cought my eye about this is:

(1) The check was not very well done.
(2) The adress on the envelope was from washington
(3) The bank is in Texas
(4) The UPS overnight was originated in Michigan
(5) The original emailer was in Lagos, Nigeria
(6) He was emailing and calling contstantly
(7) The check had James Norman who sent the check
(8) The letter sender was Regina Beggs from Seattle
(9) The person emailing me was Tom Berg from Africa
(10) They offered me more than I was asking



If it looks suspicious it most the time is Fradulent.

 

[Jay H]

Not just from Nigeria...

I had a guy not from the USA try this on me when I was selling brake rotors for an E36 BMW:


http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...&highlight=BMW

I didn't even go as far as having him send me a check. When he refused to even tell me where he was and wasn't answering my questions, I terminated the deal right then.

Jay

 

[Patrick_L]

old. :

 

[brentl]

Just get him to send you something and then thank him for wasting his money.

Old, but fun to read.

Brent

 

[TonyD]

this line confuses me.
why would i send money to someone who was buying something from ME?
THIS Is the first thing i would say to the buyer then the second would be NO!

i also have to wonder how dopey someone has to be to do that.
isnt that the first gigantic clue that something is wrong?

 

[Nathan_R]

On that note, if you have a few hours to spend: http://www.419eater.com/

 

[Christ Reynolds]

it isnt exactly new material, but just because you know about these scams doesnt mean everyone else does.

CJ

 

[Patrick_L]

it's quite surprising that some people haven't had an email from these scammers or at least heard of this yet. iirc, it's a couple of years old.

 

[Philip_G]

Even car dealers often times won't take cashier's checks or money orders unless the bank is open and they can CALL and verify their validity, just too easy to forge.

 

[Eric Kahn]

I never knew I had that many obscure relatives that live overseas that have died recently

 

[Patrick_L]

hahaha

 

[Christ Reynolds]

it is a couple years old. however, this isnt common knowledge. maybe it is for people who have experience with the internet. i told my parents about this type of scam yesterday (i'm looking at a used car today, and the guy told me he was contacted by a similar scam), and they had no idea what i was talking about, i had to go into detail about the scam. i'm not saying we should re-post everything in order to educate everybody, but there is no point in just saying saying "old :/"

CJ

 

[Patrick_L]

how about:

old :

 

[DaveNel]

Since the last 4 days since I have advertised a few things on here and 2 other places, These scammers have sent me 20 emails with there scams, Do they make that much money from
Naive americans that dont know what is going on..

Since I email them back with no out of country sales and all funds will have to clear my bank 1st, They dont bother emailing a 2nd time..

But there is a couple that said well we have Guaranteed
cashier checks.. I said it will have to clear my bank 1st..

That ended that

 

[Glenn Overholt]

A couple of years old? No, much longer than that. I think 60 Minutes did an article on it in the early 1990's.

The scams since then are just variations on a theme. The UN actually went in and cleared some of it up, but it just started up again. Nigeria and Spam are one and the same to me. I guess the sad part is that if someone over there really does need help, they'll never get it. I hope that Nigeria will be the only country that ever does that..

And don't climb all over my arse by me saying that the whole country is corrupt - the government officials there - that aren't doing anything to stop this problem; well, you don't really think that they got elected honestly, do you?

Glenn

 

[DaveNel]

Nope, Do a search its all over the world, .. The scamming has spread like cancer..

But it will shock you how naive people are to this. I kinna fell into there scam with something I was selling. Luckily all I lost was $8.00 So They lost more than I did whatever it cost to overnite a bogus cashiers check to me. Now I watch for signs and tattletales when I get email about something I am selling..

Most of the scammers leave pretty long emails, Most legit people will say how much you want for it and if you still have it.

 

[Cees Alons]

Most, if not all, of them don't originate from Nigeria at all. They forge the reply address, but most of those scammers are gangs and safely sitting in highly civilized countries. So you really need to direct that question to administrations like the US's, the UK and countries like mine.

I read in the news-paper how they arrested a gang who appeared to have 25 or so PC's and telephones in line (and on-line) on large tables, with notes next to it saying which "persons" they represented, and so on.


Cees

 

[Kirk Gunn]

Now they are starting to pretend they are Tsunami victims....

 

[DaveNel]

I did forget to say this, I did make a police report with that Bogus cashiers check and took all the info to the police. The bank of the check was in Houston, The address was from seattle, The check was overnited from Michigan, And most the emails said they were in Lagos, Nigeria..

The police told me that they probably wasnt in Nigeria, They were probably here in the U.S. acting like they were in Nigeria...

He said with the check that was overnited came from
Michigan, I done a tracking check to see where it originated from.

So Its not just the Foreigners doing this, Its here as well..

 

[Kirk Gunn]

I do a lot of bogus e-mail analysis at work and what kills me is that almost every one of these 419 scams has such poor grammar I assumed they HAD to be foreign....

I thought the locals had switched to phishing (i.e pretending to be Citibank, Paypal, Smith Barney, etc) as it appears more profitable. Payment from phishing is almost instantaneous once a victim has forked over their account numbers.