I love scammers.

zingo

My newest love has been beating scammers at their own game. The way I figure that I have won is communicating back and forth until the scammer gives up. Here are two examples:

#1: I read a CL add listing a 50" plasma TV for $300. I emailed the guy and normal response, "The TV is in holding at a UPS in New York. If you send me the $300 to cover shipping, I'll ship it to you ASAP since I need it gone".

So I thought about what was in front of me for a while. I assumed that the scammer didn't actually have a TV, but would treat him like he did of course. I emailed him for more information and he sent me all this junk about the "term and conditions" and how he'd get his money yada yada. I thought it was funny that he wanted me to trust him with my money, then trust that he would send me the TV after he got his money. It was then I came upon my genius idea, if he wanted me to trust him with my money, why wouldn't he trust me with his TV?

So my email back to him was a question, "Why don't you send me the TV first, then when it comes in the described condition, I'll forward you the money. It's no different then sending them in the other order". The reply back I got was very short. "You are trying to scam me. Please don't contact me again."


#2:

Surfing the car ads on CL, I find a 2005 Cadillac CTS-V for $4000. Great deal! I email the seller and he tells me that the car is located outside of Fort Bragg. He gives me a story about how his kid is sick, needs money quick, and his brother works for a freight company, so he can ship it for cheap. I promptly emailed him back with the good news! I have a Ranger friend stationed out of Fort Bragg (which is true). I will forward him the money, he can check out the car in person for me. Then if it checks out, pay for it with cash and hold it until I can come down a pick it up!

He emailed me back some junk about how the whole thing would be done through ebay so that it's "legit", and he would rather my friend not come over since it would be second hand to me and what if anything happened. At this point I realized that I had found a pretty good BS'er, so I threw down the gloves and sent the following email:

How about this and it will make the process easier for both of us,

I was planned on flying down to Fort Bragg at the end of October for a visit, but I'll just move my trip up to the beginning of the month. When I come down that first week of October, I'll just come over and look at your car myself. Then when it checks outs, I'll just pay you the $4000 person to person (cash, money order, whatever your prefer). That was it is an easy, personal transaction and everyone is happy. Let me know what weekend works best for you in the first part of October and I'll checkout flight information. (Which I was fully able to do)

I never heard anything back from the guy...


The moral of the story, scammers hate people with resources and opportunities.

MikeC78

Yep, I had one email me stating that he was a CPT in Marine Corp stationed in Baghdad and came across funds that he needed to get rid of.:rolleyes:

I emailed him back stating that is great news! I'm here in Baghdad too, where do you want to meet up? Haven't heard back from him since...

dkg999

There is a group out of the UK that takes on scammers as a hobby. They've got a pretty good network set up. I think the link to their blog is on my home PC, but when I looked at it some of the replays of them playing with scammers were absolutely hilarious!

hearingimpared

When I come across a scammer I just harass the **** out of them until they pull their ad(s).

vlam

dkg999: Are you refering to this site? Some of the reverse scam is hilarious.

http://www.419eater.com/

zingo

Those guys are awesome!

dc55110

vlam wrote: »

dkg999: Are you refering to this site? Some of the reverse scam is hilarious.

http://www.419eater.com/

The did a story on these guys on "This American Life" on NPR. Good stuff!

The ENFORCERS

sucks2beme

There's some A-hat here in Dallas that was listing ads in CL for NEW
polk speakers 30% under any web price WITH WARRANTY.
He would meet you anywhere with the speakers, including the police
parking lot in case you were worried about getting robbed.
I flagged his ads. After about 10 of them, he suddenly had a warehouse
full of Paradigms. White van guy, for sure. Take off of the one where they
show some cheap Chinese speaker for sale listed as Polk. I flagged it.
HE then listed it as Paradigm, I flagged it, etc. There's a lot of
that BS lately. The full scam, out of state location for goods.
Bait and switch. EMAIL pfishers looking for responses.
There's no shortage of guys looking to pull a fast one. Kind of
like the 1 post wonders inquiring about "is this still for sale?"
Bottom line, most too good to be true stuff is really too good to be true.