I have seen this many, many times.
The check will be fake. It can first clear (since banks must clear check by a certain number of days), but it will bounce later.
Again, the check will be fake.
Sometimes they even have the nerve to require you to wire money back.
They say they overpaid you by mistake.
It's a Nigerian scam - typical check overpayment scam
Just google "am ok
with the price as seen on the advert, I'll proceed in issuing a Check
out to you and when you received the check , I will make arrangement
for pick-up"
http://www.scaminformer.com/scam-report/...
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/priva...
They are using the same email to buy all sorts of things
Yes, it is a SCAM.
The person (who is probably in West Africa) is trying to get a fake check inot your hands.
The check will be made out for more than you are selling the tanning bed for. He will claim that it was his "secretary's" error and that you should cash the check, keep an extra couple hundred for your trouble and send the rest back to him via Wester Union.
Then.......2-3 weeks later, you are notified that the check was fake and they you are now responsible for covering it. You could even face criminal fraud charges yourself.
If her or her son is handing you the cheque first then it might not be a scam.
But then again, paying with a cheque is always a bit strange because there's no guarantee that the cheque will go through. If there are not sufficient funds in her account and you've already handed over the tanning bed, you've been scammed.
100% scam.
There is no buyer.
Notice how the scammer doesn't call what you are selling by name? He uses the generic word "item", that is because he sends the same stock copy/paste email to anyone selling everything that he can find and he has no idea what you are selling and doesn't care.
There is only a scammer trying to steal your hard-earned money.
He is not interested in your identity or bank account, only your cash.
The next email will be from another of the scammer's fake names and free email addresses pretending to be the "secretary/assistant/accountant" and will demand you cash a large fake check sent on a stolen UPS/FedEx billing account number and send the money via Western Union or moneygram back to the scammer posing as the "shipping company". When your bank realizes the check is fake and it bounces, you get the real life job of paying back the bank for the bounced check fees and all the bank's money you sent to an overseas criminal.
Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever.
When you refuse to send him your cash he will send increasingly nasty and rude emails trying to convince you to go through with his scam. The scammer could also create another fake name and email address like "FBI@ gmail.com", "police_person @hotmail.com" or "investigator @yahoo.com" and send emails telling you the job is legit and you must cash the fake check and send your money to the scammer or you will face legal action. Just ignore, delete and block those email addresses. Although, reading a scammer's attempt at impersonating a law enforcement officer can be extremely funny.
Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his 'potential sucker' list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of being the perfect buyer, great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram.
You could post up the email address and the emails themselves that the scammer is using, it will help make your post more googlable for other suspicious potential victims to find when looking for information.
Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don't bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn't worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash.
Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer.
If you google "fake check buyer scam", "fake Western Union buyer fraud" or something similar and you will find hundreds of posts of victims and near victims of this type of scam.
I don't think you should take the risk. It's better if you just arrange a meeting spot if you're not too urgent about the money.
It sounds more like a scam to me. Be careful, and don't send the info to him. Find someone else to buy it, even if you have to wait longer.
Yes it is. I got same message from a person once on Craiglist
A couple of days ago, I posted an item up for sale on Craigslist and have only received one response so far that ended up in my spam folder. First the person wanted to know if the item was still available. I emailed them back and told them it was. Then they sent me this message:
"Hello! let's do like this, actually now I'm not in town for now, I
came to visit my son so i wont be able to meet with you but am ok
with the price as seen on the advert, I'll proceed in issuing a Check
out to you and when you received the check , I will make arrangement
for pick-up. So get back to me with below details asap.
Name:
Address:
City:
State:
Postal Code:
Phone Number:
And as soon as this is provided, the payment will be overnight to you
and i will let you know when its mailed out. I need you to be honest
with the sale as I am a God fearing person.
Thanks"
This sounds odd to me. The item would be frequently used (it's a tanning bed), and I don't understand why someone wouldn't want to come check it out first. Do you think this is a scam? This is the first time I've ever tried to sell anything through Craigslist.
