Heads Up!

joeyangel · Post by **joeyangel** » Sat May 28, 2005 7:02 am

Dear Folks,
I received the following email from someone who saw one of my ads for two effects units I am selling in Vintage Guitar Magazine. Obviously, these guys hit the magazines and the sites looking for unsuspecting sellers. Take a good look at the grammer in the text and EXPECIALLY their payment information. And please, I am not putting a bad rap on Asians or anything like that as I am half Asian myself. I believe this to be one of those unfortunate overseas scams and though most of us are hip to how these things work, any newbes might want to take notice.
Joey

Hello seller
We are in need of this item and we will like to purchase this item imediateley for our company(mac-inc limited) we will be buying 6 of the item and we will be paying you via Money gram and Western Union and offering you the total sum of 50 USD for the item so as to Make the purchase immediatly and once you received this mail pls notify us and send us your address and we will appreciate it if you can send us a sample so as to know what we are buying. We will be handling the shipping Our self Via The company Fedex Account.
Thanks
The secretary Mac-inc Limited

admin · Post by **admin** » Mon May 30, 2005 3:58 am

Thanks Joey. This email is part of a growing trend to pull as fast one. In this case, the wording and spelling is a give away, however, in more sophisticated cases one may be fooled. Thanks for the warning.

clearblue · Post by **clearblue** » Mon May 30, 2005 5:15 am

I get several of these types of emails for items I sell. It is indeed a scam.

brammy · Post by **brammy** » Mon May 30, 2005 1:21 pm

On Ebay there have been a number of scams from Indonesia in particular. I've been warned from other ebayers about this and once received a (similarly worded) email from there asking if I'd be willing to sell my guitar listing to Indonesia. Naturally I said "NO" (and added some extra comments as well).

I gotta admit that I was once fooled on Ebay... really stupid on my part. I sold a guitar (Gibson LP) and immediately got an email from the "buyer" who was all friendly and asked to confirm mailing addresses and so-forth. Unfortunately this was not the real buyer and in my haste I didn't doublecheck that these emails were coming from the actual buyer.

A long story short..... I send the guitar to the scammer's bogus address but the Idaho police had already caught on to this guy and were intercepting all packages to that address. In the end,the guitar was sent to the correct person (who I'd finally heard from).... and the scammer --- who turned out to be 17 years old --- got a a short time in jail, a fine, and a years probation. Apparently he'd done this a number of times already. Thank You, McCall Idaho PD!

janglebox · Post by **janglebox** » Mon May 30, 2005 2:35 pm

A few months ago, a very persistent Brazilian tried to scam us out of JangleBox. In an effort to appear "authentic," I suppose, he loaded his e-mail with a lot of detail about the box, where he purchased it, etc. Problem was, every detail was wrong, right down to the brand of 9V batteries we put in the units before shipping them. LOL! He must have been desperate... he literally wrote us for weeks before finally giving up.

brammy · Post by **brammy** » Mon May 30, 2005 3:03 pm

nowadays it's SELLER BEWARE!

joeyangel · Post by **joeyangel** » Mon May 30, 2005 3:57 pm

AND IT CONTINUES:
I told the buyer how much I wanted for said effects and that PayPal would be the only accepted payment that I would accept.
I just got this in my email:

Fund Notification Inbox
paypalconfirmation
<[email protected]> to me
More options 4:55 pm (1½ hours ago)

Hello Seller
This to tell you that we have prepared the Money of $775 USD sent to us from Our Client Mark Philip and it has been sent to you.
Note Once you received the Mail print out the document and tender it on collection of funds and this will be done until the item has been shipped and the money will be delivered the same day

Thanks
Mac.F.Brown

Yeah, sure buddy! joey

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Mon May 30, 2005 4:16 pm

I was quite saddened to learn that, unfortunately, my second "home", Brasil, is the world capital of a number of scams (credit card number theft and cell phone cloning tops among them). It's sad also, but not surprising, to learn that they are moving in on other areas.

The Janglebox story brings a grin to my face, though. Brasilians are as a group, lovely people and if I had to characterize them, I would call them optimistic and a bit childlike as a result. But there is an entire subculture there of grifters who operate worldwide now, thanks to the 'net.

Business there can be dodgy because it is not as litigious a society as the USA, leaving a much wider gray area in which to deal while skirting the law. There is virtually no prison sentencing on white-collar cases.

Another characterization: I've met a lot of these grifter types over there (one comes into contact with lots of them in daily business), and generally they are not too good at detail management. Hence my grin.

ozover50 · Post by **ozover50** » Mon May 30, 2005 4:21 pm

"Grin" is so much better that "chagrin", eh Paul?

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Mon May 30, 2005 4:40 pm

Yeah, Howard, but the "Cha Cha Grin" is the best of all.

doctorwho · Post by **doctorwho** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 11:33 am

I've gone one step further in the past with some of these criminals by forwarding their scam message to the ISP providing them e-mail service (found by looking at the full headers for the IP address of origin and then searching the IP address in the appropriate whois database for the ISP contact info). Most e-mail providers do not allow criminal activity to be done using their systems, so this means that the criminal usually gets dropped as a customer and has to go find another e-mail service.