con alert

[marpacifica]

Sorry if my post got taken the wrong way. What I should have said is that the information in the original post was very helpful, and that maybe others in another forum, not just us in photography, could benefit from it, such as classifieds where sellers could watch out for this scam.

 

[pilot fish]

Quick question. This might be a dumb question but why don't peolpe WAIT till the check clears before doing anything. It just takes about 4 days for a check to clear.

 

[justleesa]

leesa

this is a very real scam that has been run and its a nasty one as the documents look real and start to process it until it a fake and they nail your account. I do alot of transactions online and see alot of scams on a regular basis and my way is any payments have to clear my account and transferred to another account before anything ships, because im not going to lose a dime even if it means a package taking 3-5 days longer so i dont get the short end of the stick

in any case if it sounds to good to be true it probably is.

Tooth

I have no doubt that it, or things like it, can happen. I just feel that the story was fishy to begin with...keep $600 and send the $4400 to someone else? Why didn't the guy that sent the check just do it himself, I mean send the other person the $4400?That's the fishy part, it would have alerted me right off that something isn't right.

 

[justleesa]

Sorry if my post got taken the wrong way. What I should have said is that the information in the original post was very helpful, and that maybe others in another forum, not just us in photography, could benefit from it, such as classifieds where sellers could watch out for this scam.

I guess I am a bit naive and think the world is full of good people, never thought that someone would do this in other branches too. That is why I posted it in this forum as the one I heard of was related to photography.

 

[pilot fish]

I have no doubt that it, or things like it, can happen. I just feel that the story was fishy to begin with...keep $600 and send the $4400 to someone else? Why didn't the guy that sent the check just do it himself, I mean send the other person the $4400?That's the fishy part, it would have alerted me right off that something isn't right.

That's just it, why would anyone send their $4400 when they don't know if their funds have cleared yet? This is a stranger on the Internet? I'm missing something here. :06:

 

[marpacifica]

Leesa,

Yep, I thought the world was full of good people, and for the most part that's true. It's just the small percentage out there that we should watch out for. I've been scammed a few times, nothing big, a few dollars here and one time forty bucks. The first incident was some sad looking girl who asked me for 5 bucks so she could get back home on Greyhound -- she'd mail me the money when she got home. Turns out I saw her a few days later trying the same thing on somebody else. The forty buck scam (moving up in the world...) was when I was working in Africa and a local asked me to help him sell some gold nuggets during a trip back to the States I was taking, and that he would just ask me for $40 as a good will deposit so he knew I would come back and give him the proceeds from the nuggets. Well, the nuggets weren't gold, I found out rather embarrassingly. In both situations the scammers took advantage of my desire to help them out. I normally give people the benefit of the doubt, but when my radar starts acting up with the "fishy" things like you described, then I get a bit cautious. I tell myself that I won't fall for another scam, but the scammers seem to find new variations on the old scams.

Check out some other EBay scams you should watch out for:

http://scams.flipshark.com/ebayindex.html

 

[justleesa]

Thanks for that link...pretty interesting!!

I once was witness to something simular to your $5 scam. This happend quite a while ago, but while traveling I stopped to have a cup of coffee at a gas station along the autobahn. There I saw a couple that went from car to car, asking for 5 DM so they could put gas in their car in order to get home. I thought it strange that they would go to so many cars, get money and I had yet to see them fill their tank (nor did I see a car). Not long after that there was a report on TV, a show simular to 60 minutes, about a couple that does just what I witnessed. Taking a closer look - it was that couple!....Seems they make a very good living doing this as they had a pretty new looking Mercedes hid behind the gas station....

 

[getwet2]

So what is the real scam here, the story about the "cheque" or maybe it's the button at the bottom of the page where people who feel sorry for the dummy, (or is he?) can make a donation.

Oh sorry, that button is only for his "family". Ya right!!!!

I wonder how much he has actually made by his "family" helping him out?

Makes you go HMMMM doesn't it!

 

[Charlie99]

That's just it, why would anyone send their $4400 when they don't know if their funds have cleared yet?

As I posted above, there is a difference between funds becoming available in your account, and the check actually being honored by the issuing bank. Many banks will make the first $5000 of a deposit by certified or teller's check available immediately. Normally, you won't ever find out when it actually cleared.

 

[pilot fish]

As I posted above, there is a difference between funds becoming available in your account, and the check actually being honored by the issuing bank. Many banks will make the first $5000 of a deposit by certified or teller's check available immediately. Normally, you won't ever find out when it actually cleared.

You can call your bank and ask when that check has cleared. You can draw on that check if you have the funds in your acount to match but that is not the same thing as a check clearing. Since this is an Internet "transaction", of dubious worth, [one has to be suspicious if you have to send money and that bank check has not fully cleared]one should be more diligent, especailly if its Internet related, and wait till the funds are collected, has cleared. It just seems so obviously risky, is my point.