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Watch out for this scam

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Aug 14, 2019
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I put my Inspire 1 V2 up for sale on Craig's list. Very quickly, I got a response and as the communication went forward, it got more and more suspicious. I just want to put this out there so that no one on here falls for it.

1. Communication was answered quickly on Craig's list, but immediately switched to another account and went outside that environment. That part, I fell for.
2. Person contacted me with a story that he or she would send a check by FEDEX overnight and that I needed to cash the check, but it was going to be for more than the price of the drone to pay for shipping some other items to "her" new apartment. (It was here where I recognized the scam). I replied that no, I wasn't interested. The scam works by getting the product and the delay between when you cash the check and when the bank finds out it's a forgery. You are stuck losing the product and the money you paid out of pocket to "her" "shipping company".
3. Person still sent me a Cashier's check anyway by FEDEX. It was sent from Naples Florida and the Check was drawn from a Kitchen Equipment company in Kentucky. The check was a forgery, but a pretty good one. I called both the company (which did exist) and the bank on the check to notify them. Both had apparently seen this before and from this location.
4. I notified local Police, who wasn't interested because technically, there is no victim since I recognized the scam and didn't fall for it. I did file a report with the FBI, since it was an interstate crime attempt but since it was just less than $5K, don't expect to ever hear back from them.

I would have posted in Classified, but apparently don't have enough posts to do that. I'm posting here, because they only go for expensive products, like you would sell from this site. I would really hate to see someone here fall for it.
 
Usually, you can pretty much count on the first 3 Craigslist responses being scammers. As you have discovered, there are LOTS of easy ways to flush them out. Their M.O. sticks out like a sore thumb. That said...

I have sold many items very successfully on craigslist. But I owe to two standard statements I put in every listing:

"All questions that are already answered in this ad will be ignored."

"Price is firm. No low-balling."

Most of the time I ignore low-ballers or questions that I have answered in the listing. Why? Because DUMB customers are BAD customers. They don't understand what they are buying. They don't understand what "Price is firm, no low-balling" means. It's been my profound experience that SMART customers are BETTER customers.

I also include a Scammer Warning, which serves two purposes:

1) To ward off scammers.
2) Any customer who comments on the scammer paragraph I know read the entire listing.


"Scammers: I will happily send you on a wild goose chase unlike any other you have ever been on before. I am merciless. I will lie to you and give you some ridiculous price like $8,000 for my "item." I will make you waste your money on a check sent to me via UPS. Once I have your check, I will act stupid and make you explain 10 times how to send a Money Gram. I will then lie to you and tell you I sent it. After 3 or 4 failed attempts, I will ask you if Western Union is okay, at which point I will send you on yet ANOTHER wild goose chase with false Western Union numbers. All this time I will be laughing and sharing screen captures of your email, text messages and bogus checks on Facebook. We will all laugh our asses off at your expense. When I am done I will toss the check and the UPS envelope into a large pile that I use to teach my computer class students how transparent your stupid scam is. So if you really want to go through all this crap, please feel free to text me that you want to know "the condition of the item." I will be happy to tell you that "the item" is in mint condition. Go ahead. Make my day."

I have made good on my promise to scammers many times. I usually have phun with it.

Good luck.

D
 
I was not aware of this scam until two months ago a person contacted me through our web site and commissioned a job that had to be done "this month" starting next week and everyday for a month... (large $contract) - I was jazzed... then came the request (after we sent him his estimate) that he needed to send $6,000 to his surveyor and could he include this in the amount he would transfer (via SQUARE) to our account. This raised the hairs on the back of my neck, but thinking it through I thought, well if I just keep the 6,000 in my account until the transfer clears I should be ok, so agreed.

Sure enough two days later $19,000 was deposited into our SQUARE account... WOW - maybe this is legit... I didn't touch the money and sure enough the transfer was put on hold then denied and I had to reverse the charges... SQUARE said the payment was fraudulent using a stolen credit card...

I haven't replied to any of his subsequent emails.

Then another hit with a similar request from SANDRA $%^&* - goggled her and she is all over the internet with her scam...

Pathetic.
 
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One of the companies I worked with, had a request for me to map a property (relative, not absolute), then provide 4 direction pictures and come back every day and monitor progress on a house being built. The company sent him an invoice, but he came up with all kinds of reasons why he couldn't use Paypal for payment, which at least buffers that sort of thing somewhat. It sounds like it was going the same way, but he hadn't brought up the overpayment and/or reasons yet.
 
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I was not aware of this scam until two months ago a person contacted me through our web site and commissioned a job that had to be done "this month" starting next week and everyday for a month... (large $contract) - I was jazzed... then came the request (after we sent him his estimate) that he needed to send $6,000 to his surveyor and could he include this in the amount he would transfer (via SQUARE) to our account. This raised the hairs on the back of my neck, but thinking it through I thought, well if I just keep the 6,000 in my account until the transfer clears I should be ok, so agreed.

Sure enough two days later $19,000 was deposited into our SQUARE account... WOW - maybe this is legit... I didn't touch the money and sure enough the transfer was put on hold then denied and I had to reverse the charges... SQUARE said the payment was fraudulent using a stolen credit card...

I haven't replied to any of his subsequent emails.

Then another hit with a similar request from SANDRA $%^&* - goggled her and she is all over the internet with her scam...

Pathetic.

Great story. That's a new one. This world we live in....geeze....

D
 
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I was selling a refrigerator on Craig's and got the same check scam, as soon as "she" proposed that I cut off all communications with "her"
 
Funny...I'm selling a commercial 1200 AMP 3-phase switch on Craigslist. I get an email from a housewife with a sob story about how her kids aren't eating, and how she can't pay in full but she'll send a partial check and I'm to send money to the shipper, yada, yada. I mean, the scam was transparent as hell. But what made it funny is why would a housewife with 3 kids need a 1200 Amp, 3-phase switch? Freakin' hilarious.

D
 
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It's hard to believe that they actually get people to fall for it, with all the red flags all over the place. Mine also used the "I'm worried about whether I can trust you" angle. I'm not sure it's because people fall for it because of a tendency to compassion or their desire to get a quick sale. They tend to use both routes.
 
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This is another one - info below from google support


The scam:
  1. You put your own personal telephone number (mobile or landline number) out in public somewhere (on a classified ad, or a dating website, or wherever).
  2. Some scammer contacts you via text or email about your ad. They tell you a story about how they need you to prove you are real person, or a legitimate seller, not a bot, and that they are using a special phone service that requires that you give them the six-digit code number that will be played to you by an automated verification call or text message you will receive from Google.
  3. The scammer is, in reality, going through the Google Voice setup process. They tell Google Voice to call your personal number, and then the call speaks the code, or the text message supplies the code, along with a warning to not share the code with anyone. Somehow, you ignore that explicit warning and give the scammer the code number. When you do that, THEY, not you, are issued a Google Voice number, using your personal number as the forwarding number for their account.
The fix:
  1. You must take your personal number back, away from their Google Voice account. Detailed instructions are below.
  2. You do that by (re)adding your personal phone number to either your own existing Google Voice account, or, if you don't have a Google Voice account of your own, then
  3. You need to create your own Google Voice account, and add your own, personal phone number to it as a forwarding phone number.
At no time do you enter a Google Voice number as a forwarding number.

In many cases, the scammer has already removed your forwarding phone number from their account already. Their goal is not to forward calls to your personal phone number, but merely to use it as an "admission ticket" to get their own Google Voice number, use it to scam others, get rid of that number, and then repeat the scam over and over.
  1. Go to https://voice.google.com and, if you have never created a Voice account, click the "Get a Voice number" link, and then follow the instructions to get a Google Voice number. When asked to link a forwarding phone number, don't enter your number that the scammer stole. Instead, enter some other phone number, at which you can receive one verification call from Google. It can be any non-VoIP home or office or mobile number, which hasn't been previously-used to obtain a Google Voice number. You can remove it later, after you recover your stolen number.
  2. This time, do answer the verification call or read the text message, and then enter the six digit verification code from Google. Never do this under any circumstances, other than when you initiate this procedure yourself.
  3. After your account is set up, go to this page: Voice
  4. Click the rectangular box, that says "+ New linked number" to link another number. Now, enter your scammed phone number as the forwarding phone you wish to add. If the reclaim process for this number hasn't been used repeatedly in the past, you will get a warning that the number is currently in use on another account (duh!), and would you like to reclaim it. Respond yes, of course. This will remove the number from the scammer's account.
  5. Note: if you do not get a warning that your number is in use, this simply means that the scammer had already removed it from their account, and you now have nothing to worry about. Please don't post more questions, asking if you need to do anything else. Your number is safe, and you are finished. Understand: your own security has not been compromised; this scam only leveraged your personal phone number as an “admission ticket” for the scammer.
  6. Please be cautious of fraud when interacting with strangers on online sites, especially on Craigslist, which is a frequent target of scammers. Never, ever share verification codes with anyone. No legitimate business will ask for that information. This is an example of the clear warning to not share verification codes with ANYONE.
 
I put my Inspire 1 V2 up for sale on Craig's list. Very quickly, I got a response and as the communication went forward, it got more and more suspicious. I just want to put this out there so that no one on here falls for it.

1. Communication was answered quickly on Craig's list, but immediately switched to another account and went outside that environment. That part, I fell for.
2. Person contacted me with a story that he or she would send a check by FEDEX overnight and that I needed to cash the check, but it was going to be for more than the price of the drone to pay for shipping some other items to "her" new apartment. (It was here where I recognized the scam). I replied that no, I wasn't interested. The scam works by getting the product and the delay between when you cash the check and when the bank finds out it's a forgery. You are stuck losing the product and the money you paid out of pocket to "her" "shipping company".
3. Person still sent me a Cashier's check anyway by FEDEX. It was sent from Naples Florida and the Check was drawn from a Kitchen Equipment company in Kentucky. The check was a forgery, but a pretty good one. I called both the company (which did exist) and the bank on the check to notify them. Both had apparently seen this before and from this location.
4. I notified local Police, who wasn't interested because technically, there is no victim since I recognized the scam and didn't fall for it. I did file a report with the FBI, since it was an interstate crime attempt but since it was just less than $5K, don't expect to ever hear back from them.

I would have posted in Classified, but apparently don't have enough posts to do that. I'm posting here, because they only go for expensive products, like you would sell from this site. I would really hate to see someone here fall for it.

This scam is as old as the hills. Back before social media, I actually posted this type of scam to my personal website circa 2005.


D
 
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I was not aware of this scam until two months ago a person contacted me through our web site and commissioned a job that had to be done "this month" starting next week and everyday for a month... (large $contract) - I was jazzed... then came the request (after we sent him his estimate) that he needed to send $6,000 to his surveyor and could he include this in the amount he would transfer (via SQUARE) to our account. This raised the hairs on the back of my neck, but thinking it through I thought, well if I just keep the 6,000 in my account until the transfer clears I should be ok, so agreed.

Sure enough two days later $19,000 was deposited into our SQUARE account... WOW - maybe this is legit... I didn't touch the money and sure enough the transfer was put on hold then denied and I had to reverse the charges... SQUARE said the payment was fraudulent using a stolen credit card...

I haven't replied to any of his subsequent emails.

Then another hit with a similar request from SANDRA $%^&* - goggled her and she is all over the internet with her scam...

Pathetic.
Had almost the identical scam attempted here in SoFla. Instead of the surveyor, they need extra cash to pay the architect. Didn't go as far as you did- just told them I would need a $50K deposit to get started. Then a week or two later, I had the same thing again. This time, I said, yeah, sure, I can do the job. Just need a $500 cash deposit. Haven't heard from them since.
 
Just few hours ago I made a post about helping people learn more about Crypto currency exchange without paying anyone and some folks turned it around for advertising their investment lol it's really getting old seriously.
 

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