Being scammed from my ad
 

I placed ads in a couple of places online to sell my two miniature donkeys. I finally got a bit. Or so I thought.

--I'm located in Maryland
--I need to buy the jennet as soon as possible
--Send me photos
--What is your bottom price?

So I reply with my bottom price and ask what she will be using the donkey for: driving, riding, show? I also include what the additional fee would be if she wants the donkey bred.

She replies to me with-- she wants the photos, but is buying the donkey without seeing any, so I should take the ad down. She refers to the jennet as "it", when obviously a jennet is a "she". She does not make reply about breeding. Does not respond to the question of what the donkey will be doing at her place.

And the kicker, will send me a check for $7500 (an extra $4500 on top of the purchase price). You know the rest.

I've forwarded the e-mails to the sheriff's department. He'll probably want me to just ignore the offer, but I thought I'd put it out there in case they are involved with tracking this sort of thing. Imagine, loosing $4500 and my lovely little jennet. [thecheat On the other hand, she said I was to give the money to the transporter before he picked up the donkey, so maybe I would only be out the money. :flame:

yeah, they don't want the donkey. just the cash. there would be a trail right to them if they actually picked up the donkey. there is no transporter.

Tell them you need to meet them in person At your place of choosing. To verify if they are A suitable Family to place your Donkey with. I bet they stop sending you E-mails..

I'd play a while.

Heh, heh, heh, maybe I will string them along.

Somebody posted about this in the goat forum recently - you should read some of this site - SO funny.

http://www.bustedupcowgirl.com/scam.html

People used to send mail like this to my wife concerning animals she had up for adoption. I don't see why law enforcement doesn't do anything about these things. It's pretty close to stealing IMHO. They could at least manage some kind of conspiracy charge. Throw a few in prison and I bet these things would become very scarce.

Id play them soooo hard. When she sends the check just keep saying nope I havent gotten it. Never arrived lol. Oh what fun that would be.

You should get in touch with your local postal inspector since I'm assuming the check was sent through the mail.

There's a man near my work who doesn't read very well and frequently asks me to read his mail and determine what is junk. Within two weeks he received two checks totalling over $9,000 along with a letter stating he'd won a sweepstakes and he needed to contact the sender to retrieve the rest of his money. I told him to inquire about it, but to give out no personal information. When I next spoke with him, he said they wanted his SS# and bank info, but he refused to give it. The funny thing is that the money was supposed to be in Atlanta, GA, but the letter was sent from Canada with no return address. He turned the letters over to the local postmaster who forwarded them to the inspectors.

My goodness, how funny that was. That scammer got his just deserts I think. ROTFLOL!!!

This same scam is used in ads for cars for sale. It happened to me several months ago when we were tryng to sell one of our cars through a classified ad magazine here in Maine. They're very careful not to use the mails, usually. The one they tried to run on us involved a money order that supposedly had already been purchased for another vehicle. The sale fell through, so they offered to buy our car for full price. We were supposed to give them the car plus the balance of money order in cash.

All the communication was by e-mail, and English was definitely the "buyer's" second language. The usage was very similar to what you see in those Nigerian "send me your bank account number and I'll send you $45 million" scams. So I assumed the buyer was a member of the African immigrant community somewhere in New England.

The ad magazine folks run warnings about just this scam all the time.

Have some fun
 

Right now I just sold 20 tons of hay to a dip stick-----he is go ing to send same kind of deal. Iplay them out then give them the number of the sheriff office to call me. I even tell them to ask for Mike--our local sheriff.

For these kinds of scams you should contact the FBI Your local law enforcement doenst care and doenst have the time. The FBI usually checks up on the scams where heres a little extra money on the check you can keep the rest or just give me back the rest when i pick up the donkey. Which the check is of course no good.
This is the same as many Nigerian scams.

This web site is great. I posted about the same thing on the goat forum.They must find enough people that respond to make it worth their while or they would quit.

Personally, I don't think it's worth the time making a phone call, or email, especially not a letter. Contacting the 'authorities' is a waste of time. Reporting a Nigerian Scam wastes the time of officials. This type of scam is perpetrated probably hundreds of thousands of times each month... if not more.

For the FBI to investigate each case, they'd need to hire millions more agents.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

I never give anyone my ss#. I still have checks from accts. I closed over 20 years ago... if I were really mean, I could give out one of those bank numbers.

I have read of people playing these scammers out, claiming hardships, death in the family, etc. and finding no money in the bank... dire straits... and could the scammers please advance some small amount of money before the big deal goes through. Scamming the scammers...

My sister got caught in this kind of scam 3 years ago. That time it was in response to an ad for a roommate. The gal sent her "my monthly last paycheck, if you could cash it take out whatever you need for rent & deposit, wire me the rest." She took the check & didn't cash it but put it in the bank. Told them IF it cleared call her. 5 days later the bank called Said it was legit, & everythng looked right, the money was there. She was out $3500 before it was over. The bank never admitted responsiblity.

It is a matter for the FBI and they know all about it. I had the email and have sent them the scam emails I received. What I was told is any check/money order they send you is stolen and you cash it and then when it is reported they money is removed from your account. So if you spent it you are SOL.
Or they say they sent you too much and ask for some of it back. So later when they theft is found out about you loose that money and the money you "refunded" them.
I have found them to be on petfinder.com the most and are quite stupid. Who in this country says "advert"? Or "I am asking you for the last condition and price of you animal?" I had a goat on there for pete's sake and they must not read the ads since they were acting like I had a dog for adoption!

I found their the email address. You just forward them scam emails to them. Hopefully the address is still good it is over a year ince I emailed anything to them : 419.fcd@usss.treas.gov

the key is to never respond in the first place...

IF you do fall for it, and take the counterfeit (nice fakes, rarely if ever actually stolen) MO, and cash it, and send along a portion... well, yea, a crime has been committed, and it should be reported. Most folks that fall for simple con games are too ashamed to actually report it.

The too good to be true saying is still in force... why would a stranger in a far off country want something that they could get locally for next to nothing, want whatever it is you have, and want to send you a ton of money........on trust... RIGHT!!!

Please don't fall for it. Momma Was Right. IITGTBTIS If it's too good to be true it is

Well, law enforcement is not interested in following up on this matter, but he did agree it is a scam. I think I will play along a little while, just to see what happens.

In the meantime, I'm going to be helping a Nigerian prince who is trying to claim his inheritance.

When I get the Nigeian emails, I usually respond with....Get a real job!!!!

I told them that I trusted them very much and loved talking to folks on the internet that were trustworthy as well... I played along and actually got a check from the scammers. That I posted on my office wall (well, until my boss made me take it down -she was worried about me and my $5,000 or so cashier's check)...

The scammers threatened to send someone to break my legs if I didn't return the check.

Seeing as how they were being so polite? I told them that I turned it over to the campus police and they could collect it from them. THAT way they could get it at ANY time they wanted? I thought that I was being polite as well.

Don't think they ever contacted the police for it, so the police probably have it on THEIR wall... I was amused. And the police were amused also...

And I ended up selling the hinny at auction for $50. She probably went for meat.

I get seven or eight a week when I'm running ads online. :rolleyes:

I've been tempted to toy with the scammer, but I don't have the time for that. If someone, anyone, emails me and they want to buy something sight unseen or especially if they want my address right away to send payment, I delete the email without a second thought.


The eBay and Paypal "phishing" scams are even more insidious.

Here's how it works: You get an official-looking email from someone who looks very legit (they usually even have the right email address, like "service@paypal.com") and they tell you that your eBay or Paypal account has been compromised or suspended or whatever and you need to sign in to your account and fix the problem. The grammar is perfect, the email has the correct logos and copyright marks. It's very convincing.

But there's a catch. The email will ask you to click on a link to be taken to eBay's or Paypal's website to sign into your account. The website also looks official. But it's not. In reality, the link in the email takes you to a copy-cat website designed to look EXACTLY like the company's true site. If you sign into your "account", you've just given the scammer your eBay/Paypal username and password, which gives them access to your credit card numbers and financial information. BANG! Your goose is cooked.

So if you have an account with Paypal, eBay, or a major financial institution, how do you spot a fake email? For me, the biggest clue is the address of the website the links within an email take you to. Put your cursor over the link without clicking it and the address of the website the link takes you to will pop up. If the address doesn't start with "www.ebay.com" or "www.paypal.com", don't click on it!

Some scammers have found a way to make it look like you're going to a corporation's official website, but most of the "phishing" emails I get want you to go to some website from who knows where.

To protect yourself even further, don't click on the links in any official-looking, financial-related emails you get. If you think you are having problems with your eBay or Paypal account, go to their official website to sign into your account. Don't follow a link in an "official looking" email.


Getting off my soapbox now. :)

I was contacted because of an ad I had running for puppies. Not through email at first, but through the relay operator. For those who aren't familiar with it, the service helps hearing impaired folks communicate with those who can hear, with the help of an operator who reads the hearing impaired person's communication to the one who can hear, then types a reply back, and so forth. Surely, no one would use this service for something criminal, right? WRONG. After asking if I still had puppies, the man said he could contact me by email, and did. Over a period of about a month, I played along with him, knowing it was a scam. No one ever buys one of our pups without asking at least a few questions about them, age, sex, color, temperment, etc. When I started asking him if he was aware of the quarantine regulations regarding sending a dog to England, where his 'transporter' was located, he told me to not worry about it, they had everything under control.

Eventually, he did send me the money orders, which looked very genuine. I still have them. They were mailed from a small province in France, but were purchased, supposedly, by someone with an address in New York City. Yup. Too many fingers in the pie for it to be legit, even if you were born yesterday!
The man gave me a big sob story about being deaf because he was injured in an explosion trying to evacuate hostages in Afghanistan, too. I checked with the TTY operator's supervisor, who told me they are obligated to complete the calls, even if they think it's a scam, and since they are routed through several internet providers, there is no way to trace them. Local law inforcement said they have no juristiction over the scam, because there is no law against it in the country of the person who is the scammer. Just don't be fooled, and don't send them your money. Jan in Co