"Dave Thompson" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...
| Alex Rodriguez wrote:
| > In article <[email hidden]>,
| > [email hidden] says...
| >> I've listed my bike for sale on Craigslist.org a couple of times.
| >> Each time I list it I get someone from outside the US that wants
the
| >> bike. Each time, they want to send me way more than the bike is
| >> worth and the balance of the money is to go to their shipper to pay
| >> for the shipping. The last time, I received a call from an AT&T
| >> operator and 'spoke' to the buyer. The call was being translated
| >> like the person on the other end was deaf...they'd type something
in
| >> and the operator would read it back to me. This most recent
'buyer'
| >> wanted to send me $3,000 for a $400 bike. I was to Western Union
| >> the balance ($2,600) to the shipper who'd come pick up the bike and
| >> ship to ????Ireland?????
| >> Has anyone seen this before. I suspect it's either a way to
launder
| >> money of to get an item that can be stuffed with ???drugs??? or
| >> something before shipping. Anyway, I'd be interested to hear if
| >> anyone has had a similar experience.
| >
| > If you read the warning on Craigs list, you would know what this is.
| > This
| > is a scam. As far as the opertor call goes, deaf folks who have the
| > teletype machine and call someone without one can use an operator to
| > read out the screen to the person they are calling. So the scammers
| > invested in this machine. What you can do is tell them to go ahead
| > and send the money and that you will release the bike only after the
| > funds have cleared your bank
| > in two weeks. You may even want to get your local authorities
| > involved and have them at your house when the 'shipper' comes to
pick
| > up the bike and money. What is usually done is that they use a
fake,
| > or stolen, money order to pay for the bike.
| > ----------------
| > Alex
| Alex: The "shipper" *never* shows up, that's part of the ploy. The
thing
| the scammers try to do is to get the victim to send the "excess funds"
to
| them via Western Union. If this is done, the receiver of the Western
Union
| money is not traceable. The scammers don't want anything *but* the
victims
| money.
|
| So, then there is two ways to play this. One, the best, is to simply
ignore
| requests like the OP has received, they go nowhere. Or secondly, which
I
| personally like, is to play along with the scammers to the point where
they
| will send me the check. They have to spend money to buy these
counterfeit
| checks and spend some relatively serious money to have the checks
FedEx
| Expressed from Nigeria (the base of most of these scams). I have
collected
| $63,000.00 face value of these counterfeit "cashiers checks". Now I'm
trying
| to figure out an artsy way of dispaying them, so I can impress my
friends
| with my casual attitude towards money when they come over. "Oh, I'll
get
| around to cashing those someday, if I ever need the money".
I say play along.t don't cash the checks, and big brother won't care.
Also, someone who has posted here has a web page with pictures of all
these fancy checks, I wish I stil had the url.
