Craigslist bank check scam
 

Oh man. I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. I've been trying to sell a U-line ice maker on Craigslist for a couple of weeks. One of my clients had it left at his house inexplicably. The contractor banged the back end of it up a tad in a rough unloading, ordered and installed a new one, and never came to reclaim the original one, all of this before I began working for him.

My client claims he tried in vain to get the guy to come pick it up. He is eminently trustworthy and is making way too much money to be interested in scamming anyone for a $1600 ice maker. He and his wife are masters weight lifting champs with many deep pocketed clients (personal trainers) in Silicon Valley, some of them famous Hollywood folks. They conduct their business primarily out of their secluded home and don't have any interest in adding extra traffic to their scene by trying to sell this thing. He says I sell it, I get half.

I took it to my shop, was able to straighten out the tiny bit of cosmetic damage on the rear corner, hooked it up to water, power, and a makeshift drain, and it makes ice like a champ. I've installed this model 7 times in houses in the area, IIRC.

I've gotten several nibbles (asking $1,000 -- it still has the protective film coating it, I've got the owner's manual, the thing is literally brand new) recently an offer for $700 came in, sounds solid.

Then one guy who'd answered previously e-mailed back saying he wants it, full price, will send certified check and have his shipper pick it up once the check clears. I mail back "OK."

Today I get this:

Hi , How was your day ?I want you to understand thatthe deal as my secretary as posted the paymentalready, but there was a slight error i guess we canhandle with care, instead of the actually amount $1000for the item ,she made out the check for $4000 sheclaim that was what i requested but she didn't getthat straight.So once you have the check please cash it and deductthe money for your goods plus $100 that for your runaround expenses.The excess fund should please be sent to my mover viawestern union,this fund will be use in offsetting thecost of the shipment he as undertaken for me recently.**Please email at once to let me know that i can trustto have the excess funds sent to my mover**

My first move was to begin an e-mail with various creative profanities finished with instructions for him to first fly out here so that he can kiss my a$$.

I decided not to mail it and instead played the rube, writing:

I suppose that will work. How soon will you be sending the check?

He had said that his secretary posted it already, I wanted to lay on a little "I'm an idiot" flavor.

I'm utterly unworried by this character -- my address is at a UPS store, a private mail box. I know I won't be able to scam this guy for anything, at least I don't think I will be able to, I'm just hoping there's some way I can put the law on the arse of this waste of my time.

I think I'll e-mail the guy who offered $700 and say I'll let it go for eight. :P

Nigerians - we had a rash of them on our website. These people must believe the American media and think that most of us really ARE stupid.

You can end it quickly by telling him the check is bogus once it arrives or if you are sporting email him back and tell him there never was an ice machine and that he got scammed

When you get the check just keep it as a souvenir, it's not worth the paper it's printed on. Get the guys address if you don't have it and tell the guy you will handle shipping and put a cashiers check with the package for the amount difference.

Here's the kicker..... Ship him a refrigerator box of garbage!....... COD! :D

I've seen this work many times. Give it a try!

Here's a fun one. Not exactly like yours, but it's good! http://www.zug.com/pranks/powerbook/

My buddy just got scammed when he was trying to sell is Jeep on eBay. He is not the brightest bulb in the box to begin with so he didn't think twice about what we was doing. The guy mailed him a fake check, he went to cash it and withdraw the difference. Thank god the bank teller caught it and he was only out $100 for a bounced check. He could have been out about $2700. Chalk one up to experience.

If he sends the check, hand it over to the police for check scammin....1600.00 for an ice maker? I have one that cost .89 cents from the Safeway.

Maybe you can sell it for $800 on Ebay...

And get offered a check for $4000.

That's not bad for a start, the sporting one that is.

:D What? That same model costs me $1.49! :mad:

The house I worked on for the doctor I liked so much had 4 of the same model. One in the basement game room one in the wet bar outside his bedroom, and two on the main floor.

We joked amongst ourselves that he never wanted to be more than a few steps away from fresh ice for a drink.

I think I'm dreaming that I'll get $1,000. 7 or 8 hundred may have to do.

Interesting story, I'm going to do a little research, though I'm not sure it would be worth the hours of investment for a slim chance of digging a few hundred real dollars out of the nit-wit.

Can you ship him a box of rocks COD?:D

Not sure what the laws on COD are. What if the guy never showed up to claim the package? Assuming it was mailed to some sort of POB for example? Would I then be liable for all charges?

I think the guy just wants me to forward the extra funds to him and **** the ice-maker.

Not to mention, I don't think I'll ever have a shipping address for him. He said I'm to western union the funds to his shipper who will then come by to get the ice-maker.

I wonder if the FBI cares...

These scams are so old and well known that I'm amazed they still work. Some people must just be dumb.

UPS's rule is that if a COD is NOT accepted, they ship the rejected merchandise back to you and you pay the shipping charges both ways.

That's what they do if you have a UPS account.

And you can't ship to a POB.

I think they care, but may be exhausted. They prosecuted a whole slew of these types a while back and got nowhere. Nigerian gov't didn't comply with anything like extradition, information, returning phone calls etc.

Ever notice there's always some new angle to the same scam? Like the idiots that set up fake escrow companies (with just a website). It worked like this:

You advertise something on Ebay for say, $5k. Like a diamond ring or something. They end the bid as won, pay your full price. You're immediately contacted by the fake escrow company, where you're assured there's $5k in cash sitting there for you. Hey! You can see the account right online on their website. You're also asked to send fake escrow company a good-will and handling fee, usually 20% or so which will be refunded.

You send the check, wait 10 days for it all to clear then send him the ring. Usually a motel room in New York. Now he's got your ring, your $2k dollars and that's that.

You complain to ebay, they cancel his account and post bad-feedback. You threaten law suits, pay a lawyer another $3k to write nasty letters, then the whole thing dies. You're out a total of $10k.

Go to ebay "safe harbor" and look at all the complaints. I've seen posts where some people threaten suicide and what not over this mess.

I've purchased 2 MB's from Ebay - one was absolutely horrible, been wrecked etc. I had no recourse. But hey, the other one was as-said. Bad shape but I knew it.

BTW- I've heard that Craig's list is notorious for this stuff. MUCH worse than Ebay

I heard a lot of these are run by organized crime, and are pretty big operations.

Still it would be nice to have a Death Note to deal with such people. Sure send me your picture and name with the check. Then write in the Death Note they get killed by a truck running them over or something.:grim::D

they tried that on one of my coworkers over his boat. his wife was gonna do it:eek:

Something tells me that if I try to sting him instead, I'm either wasting my time or asking for grief.

I'm thinking I'll take it to my bank and ask them if they think I should notify some branch of law enforcement.

Could well be that it's so tough to go after, for example, a Nigerian doing this and there's so many of them that they'd just tell me to compost it.

If you get that service up and running, let me know. :cool:

Yes it would be a most usefull service...:D

Anyway I think taking it to your bank is the best course of action. See what they say.

had the same happen to me - he wanted my 380sel.





nope...

They may hit you up with a bounced check fee if you deposit it. The banks I deal with don't but I have heard of many that do. The check is obviously worthless. This is a classic scam. Don't even bother wasting your time unless you want to f#@& this guy over. Which he deserves it. I always play these guys at my leisure. I waste their time for hours with pointless emails. It's pretty amusing. I type stupid stuff like... " I left my wallet in El Segundo and I need to pay for my 50 Bentleys in the West Indies so send the check ASAP!" They still reply back! :D

Well depositing it wouldn't be smart since its fake, I was thinking more along the lines that if they had a contact that delt with this stuff, say in some FBI department...

Yeah, you could get the government involved but they have bigger fish to fry and don't really give a damn. They will document your case and bury it in a digital file cabinet for life. I personally have over $60K in fraudulent copier purchases via credit card on the internet. Every single one of them came out of my a$$. I gladly gave the money back to the cardholder with no questions asked while the looser that stole their card number sold my $10K copier at a flea market for $300! :eek::D Total BS but they will get what's coming to them, I believe in karma.:twak:

BTW: I blame this problem more on the Fools that give out their CC info because their idiots more than I blame the trash trying to steal it. They just say "I'm protected by my credit card company so I don't care".......... So, putting your stupidity on some innocent person is just fine?!?!?!?!? :dizzy2: Ridicules! I think they should make people responsible for fraudulent charges to some extent. I treat my credit cards like a wad of $100's.

What did someone buy stuff from your business with a fake card? People lie and are dumb, I trust no one.

No way would I deposit it, I'd go ask one of the officers for his take on it.

I'm thinking to e-mail the guy something like:

My check cashing service tells me they need $200 cash upfront to process the check. Please western union these funds to me as I know we both want to get this thing moving.

Try it!:D

:P I don't think he'll send it but it'll be fun to **** with his head a bit.

This guy is a total nimrod. He tells me on June 8 that, oh so sorry, his secretary just posted the check made for $4,000 instead of $1,000. On June 28, he informs me that according to UPS, the check has been delivered to my address. I pick it up, it's UPS next day air.

He originally told me he was from Georgia.

Here's the check, with Minnesota address:

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a87/cmaq2012/check.jpg

It looks worse in hand. The letters are fuzzy around the edges. The lady at the bank tells me it would have been cashable had there been any money in the account or had the account still been open. This character apparently uses some check writing software and obtained print-stock used for that purpose at the office supply store, no doubt. I was expecting a much more believable forgery, something that looked like a bank issued cashiers check.

Check the return address on the UPS envelope:

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a87/cmaq2012/m-l.jpg

That anyone could fall for this and ship out $3,000 to such a character makes me fear for our country. People are that gullible?

Nice bit of side news for me, the lady that I talked with at the bank is apparently a supervisor of some sort, I'd seen her there before OK-ing checks here and there, and she's quite the hottie. We had a nice exchange over this and I'm helping her follow up on this (it's a Wells Fargo branch, where the borrowed account info was from) with the info I received from the individual.

Who knows, stranger things have happened.