The old conventional wisdom is that "There's a sucker born every minute." The new wisdom has to have the scammer birth rate way higher than that.
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The old conventional wisdom is that "There's a sucker born every minute." The new wisdom has to have the scammer birth rate way higher than that.
We just encountered what Mr. S is describing. My DH has had his old MTB for sale in the classifieds on a local website. He got an email out of the blue from somebody from out east with just a couple of general questions, claiming he was buying the bike on behalf of someone else, in California. Many emails, saying he'd send instructions. Would send a check for the amount of the bike, shipping, + a little extra for DH for "not selling the bike to someone else", and to send him back the rest. The whole thing screamed scam to me, as soon as I found out it was somebody from so far away - it's not exactly a rare bike, but DH wanted to pursue it. Well, the check came, and it was for $3000 - DH was asking $750. The check looked like a printed business check, with a name and address on it. DH Googled the name, and found somebody in California by that name, and got a phone number. Tried calling it a couple of times, but kept getting a machine with that standard robo-voice recorded message that comes pre-recorded. Anyway, he was positive by that time, but we couldn't figure out how the scam worked. He took the check to the bank to ask them to check it out, and they verified that it was bad.
By that time the scammer had emailed a couple of times, asking why he hadn't gotten his cut yet. DH responded, telling him he knew what was going on, and had given his email address to the police. He also heard from the supposed private shipper, and told him the same thing. It wasn't until afterward that we figured out that the bank would ultimately have come back to us looking for the whole $3000. We knew it was all wrong, but couldn't figure out how it all worked.
This guy had send the check overnight, with a return overnight envelope. However, the return address was Vonage, at an address close to what I could find online. I'm thinking it was a Vonage employee with access to their shipping system, so he could overnight his scamming stuff and have his employer pay for it!
I was telling somebody about it at work, and one of our students came in and said exactly the same thing had happened to him on Ebay, twice on the same item.