So I was trying to sell my laptop on Craigslist and received an email from a guy named David who “lives” in Waco, Texas and wanted to buy my laptop for his son who was doing work in Africa. The offer was a good one and he even said he’d put in an extra $150 for the shipping costs. He said he’d pay through PayPal and said I should be getting a confirmation of the payment soon. I was trying not to get my hopes up because this deal sounded a little too good to be true. Well, I did get a PayPal confirmation and it had a nice PayPal logo, confirmation number, and everything else. However, the “From” address didn’t have the @paypal.com domain; it was @accountant.com. I logged into my PayPal account and sure enough, no money.
I looked into it a little more and this “David Collins” was trying to get me to send my laptop to his “son” Fowowe Ademide Ezekiel in Nigeria. Also, a short while later I got another offer on my laptop from this girl name “Maria” who also wanted the laptop sent overseas for an extra $200.00. Wow, what a scam. Here are the email messages I was sent. Take this as a reminder to always be careful when dealing online and never send out goods without having the cash in your hands.
Email 1 (Building a relationship):
I would like to know if the above item is still available for sale if so please do get back to me with the asking price
and probably more pictures….
Thanks
david.
Email 2:
Thanks for your response.I am located at Waco,tx i gat my cell fone stolen,if not would av rung you,This Item is a replica of what i want for my son who is in Africa at the mo. sorting out his project …I will add $150.00 as shipping charges confirm from http://www.usps.com for international shipping making it a total of $1,350.00 …….I will make the total payment if you’ll kindly help me handle the shipping.You can send me the paypal info and i’ll make the payment right away.
Email 3:
Thanks for the message, i will like it shipped to my son in Africa,here is his address:
Name: Fowowe Ademide Ezekiel
Address: Left out for the security reasons–why protect a scammer? Because two wrongs don’t make a right)
I will let you know when the payment has been confirmed made,Thanks for the help………Dav.
Email 4:
Thanks so much my friend,Paypal just contacted me that the payment has been confirmed made,you can check in your paypal email address for the confirmation,as i have got my confirmation here to……Thanks,Get back to me soon.
The “PayPal” Confirmation:
-click on the image for a larger view.
The internet can be a dangerous place if you’re not careful. Let this be a reminder to always double-check and verify claims. It’s sad to say that you can’t really trust anyone, but sometimes this may be true. This experience also brings to mind the phrase: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
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9 Comments
This truly saddened me. I have been using craigslist.com for buying and selling stuff and THANK GOD I haven’t been scammed. Thanks for informing I would be more cautious next time.
Total scam! Thanks for sharing this with us. Hopefully it will prevent someone from falling in the trap themselves.
Yeah–you have to be really careful on the web these days. My sister recently was the victim of an email scam and had to cancel credit cards, bank cards, etc and get new ones. It’s a real pain. At least she caught it early. These scams always involve fake emails. If you make it a point to not click to sites from emails, then that’s half the battle.
Good thing you caught that from the start. Nigeria is probably the best known hot spot internet scams are happening right out of. Look up “Dateline: To Catch a Con Man” on YouTube, if you haven’t already seen it. It’s amazing.
About a year ago, I was at a bookstore coffee shop when I overheard a lady (who runs an online business/Ebay store) talking with her friend about a “strange” e-mail she received. The e-mail was from some potential buyer from Dallas, Texas wanting to have the digital camera sent to his parents in Nigeria as a gift. I jumped out of my seat and went up to her. “I’m sorry Ma’am, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but you say “Nigeria?”
“Yes,” the lady said. “Do you know anything?”
“I think it’s a scam.”
I told her about that Dateline special I saw on television just nights before about overseas internet scams, most of them being conducted right out of Nigeria. The lady showed me the e-mail from her laptop monitor, and what I saw was atrocious. The e-mail from a “Steve Ferguson” contained poorly written English, numerous punctuations errors, and misspelled words such as “chashier’s check,” and Texas was spelled “Taxes.”
If you’re going to sell online, assume anything that looks like a scam or “sounds too good to be true,” is. You’re a smart man, Pat.
Wow, I hadn’t heard of that that special, but I will definitely YouTube it. I’m glad I caught this one. I’m usually pretty precise when it comes to this stuff because I know there are these types of people out there, but I know there are also tons of people who probably wouldn’t think twice about double checking their PayPal account for the money.
I was kind of stuck on whether to be really pissed off about this or whether to feel sorry for the people doing it. Obviously the conditions that push people to do these sorts of scams are not pleasant and I wonder what I would do to get by if I was in that position. Sure, it doesn’t make it right but I believe that people generally don’t want to do bad things unless they feel the need to or have been lead to believe so.
The same thing happens to me when I posted my listings on ebay.
Whatever you try to sell or buy on the internet, stick to the golden rule : “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is!”
Thanks for sharing.
Damn nigerian scammers, there are actually a bunch of them that live of this stuff just sending out crap emails and stealing money. I guess they think that because they are so far they can’t be caught …
Nigerian scammers should just be sent to jailed. They have scammed many innocent people
Nigerian scammers sucks. They should all be jailed. Why don’t they do anything productive in place scamming people for they hard earned money.