am i being scammed???

[matt_m__toronto_]

i turn to you guys, as you are wise :-)

 

ok, so i have a couple of video transmitters for sale on one of the

cinematography forums. some woman emails me, she is interested, so i

email her a picture. now this is the email i get back:

 

Hello,

Thanks for the response.I will really want to have

it.i don't know whether you can do me a favour .The

payment will be made via Cashiers Check drawn on a US

Bank,cos there is some-one in the United-State who is

owing my client some money,who i can instruct to make

out the check payment to you, but the funds he his

owing my client is $4,000 USD,and he has made me to

understand that he cannot issue a double check for the

payment of a single debt and so i will want the check

issue directly to you( I believe this is the fastest

way the payment could be made,because if the check is

to be sent to me,it will take about 30 days to clear

here in my country, but if it's paid directly to

you,it will take 1-2 days to clear) and so i am

willing and ready to entrust you with the excess funds

on the cost,which you must send to me via Western

Union as soon as you cash the Check in your Bank.

Please give me the name in which the check will be

issued and address also telephone number ASAP!

Concerning the shipment, my shipper "Federal Express"

based in florida will be on ground to pick it up from

you or your location as soon as the payment is made,so

you do not need to worry about the shipping..

Please advise ?

Best Regard

janet

 

i'm no sucker whatsover, that is why i'm asking y'all for an opinion.

being in canada, us certified cheques, still take about 30 days to

clear. i'm wondering what are the various outcomes of following

through with this. on the other hand she(he?) may be very sincere in

their wishes, but since i've never heard of a circumstance like this

before, i'd like to protect myself and ask...is this the new nigerian

email scam??? or am i safe?

 

thanks a lot

 

m

[mark-j]

I would not touch this deal. It sounds like a spin-off of the African letters where you pay to get a larger sum of money. IF I went for this deal (which I wouldn't) I would hold the funds for 30 days or until the funds are confirmed in my account.

 

Cheer$.

[stephen_w.]

Matt,

 

Does she know you're in Canada?

 

But hey, you're getting more money than the selling price AND have the camera in hand. What have you got to lose? I'd do it for her.

 

I don't see any down side.

 

Have Fun

[gerry_szarek]

SCAM!

GS

[joshroot]

I dodn't even read halfway through the paragraph before I decided that I wouldn't want anything to do with this.

 

Is it a scam? Who knows, it sure sounds that way. Then again, she could just be in a strange situation.

 

In either case, I would stay the heck away from it.

[yuri_wolf]

Your situation uncannily resembles the scam described here:

 

<A HREF="http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/carsale.asp">http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/carsale.asp</A>

[bert_keuken2]

Sounds a scam. Steer clear of it I would say.

[beau 1664876222]

The ol' "Fleece the Canadian" scam. Even older than the Nigerian bank transfer one.

 

But seriously, it probably is an attempted scam. Just tell her you're happy to do this once your bank confirms the funds have cleared, and you'll hang onto the gear and the money until then.

[ray .]

Too complicated. Don't even bother. Don't get yourself involved.

People can sound nice as hell in an email and then turn around and screw you.

 

There's got to be somebody who can make a simple payment who wants your equipment.

[lee_shively]

Offer to hold the equipment for her for a few days until the check clears HER bank and she can get the funds to YOU.

[stephen_w.]

Read Yuri's link and changed my mind, thanks. Fortunately, I don't sell much. I wait until it gets stolen.

 

Steve

[bobtodrick]

DON'T DO IT!!! Our company got scammed a couple years ago on something very similar. We were contacted by a school in Asia wanting 30 F100 Nikons. It looked legit because they too said they would send the cheque directly to our bank and we could ship it as soon as OUR bank verified the funds. Everything went smoothly and the cheque arrived. Our bank called and said "Okay". We shipped the cameras that afternoon. Two days later the bank called and said they were sorry, but the cheque was a very, very good forgery (it was supposedly certified by the issuing bank). The upshot....if you read the legalize in your bank contract they are not responsible for their errors in a case like this. After 6 months with our lawyers, the bank agreed to split the loss as a goodwill gesture, still leaving us out about $20,000.00 (CND). STAY AWAY!

[steve_barnett2]

Matt, if you need to ask you are indeed a sucker.

[morthcam]

There are lots of bogus cashier's checks out there. You deposit hers, send her the "balance" she's owed, then you discover that your deposit was a fake -- you're now out the "balance" you sent her.

 

Way too complicated.

 

Give her Lee's suggestion -- you'll send her the balance, but not "as soon as you cash the check", only once you're 100% sure that the check has cleared and is legit. Bet she'll change her mind.

[sandler]

Yeah, I'd be inclined to avoid this deal just because to do it without risking being scammed sounds like a lot of work and I'm too lazy. _If_ I really wanted to sell the stuff to her (i.e., I was having trouble finding buyers) then I'd probably want to:

 

1) Call my bank and explain to them the situation and ask how long it would take to be sure the funds were good to the point where they couldn't come back and take the money away if the buyer was trying some kind of funny business. (I'd make sure of this because I know that the two days it takes for my bank to "clear" a personal check and release the funds isn't the end of the story...they can still take the money away later if the check bounces.)

 

2) I'd let the seller know the results of #1 and tell her that I'd deposit her check right away but that I'd have to wait until it was fully and irreversibly cleared before shipping her the merchandise and transferring her the funds.

 

Of course, she'd probably balk at this (I'd be nervous doing it if I were her), but there's no way I'd be sending out the stuff and the money unless I was certain her check was good.

 

Let us know what happens!

[beau 1664876222]

Maybe call her and tell her you'd be happy to help her out if she could assist you in repatriating the huge fortune you've got trapped in a West African bank account...

[Troll]

I've got a bridge connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn that I'd like to sell you.

[dzeanah]

Yep, scam.

 

You'll find that their "client" either:

 

1) Pays with a money order drawn on a foreign (African?) bank, and it'll take over a month for your bank to know whether it has actually cleared or not. It'll be a forgery.

 

2) Contacts you later saying "where's my stuff?" It'll turn out that the person "buying" your stuff told the "client" party that they were instead selling some stuff, and the "client" thought the payment to you was payment for goods you were never selling.

[h._p.]

It's not even a new idea, this one. I remember hearing about a similar chain of frauds in the UK years ago. All that's different is the use of e-mail to obscure the fraudster's identity even more.

 

There is, regretably, little new under the sun.

[tom h.]

Bill & Beau, lol.

 

Tom

[matt_m__toronto_]

funny bill, beau and steve. now, how am i a sucker, i haven't fallen for this, i'm simply asking your opinions as i don't sell many items that often. this person is located in london (so they say) like i said, sounded fishey from the get go, but i would definately not send a cheque to someone until i knew for sure it cleared. i think i'll take her up on the offer as an experiment...i'll keep you all updated. if her "fed ex" shipper comes, i'll send an empty box. i'll also post all of the emails that she sends to me to you guys...then we'll see what happens from there...sound fun???

 

 

...oh and about that bridge of yours...how wide is it?

[ray .]

No, it doesn't sound like fun.

 

You seem to be insisting on asking for trouble.

[stephen_w.]

I'm the sucker, as i said i would do it, before this thread.

 

Learnt something today, bring on tomorrow.

 

Send her a brick. One epayer got a phone book instead of a note book (computer).

[lex_jenkins]

Go rent the David Mamet movies "House of Games" and "Heist" and the film version of the Jim Thompson novel, "The Grifters."

 

Besides being more fun than a barrel of Nigerian con artists, you'll be well armed against any future scams. And you'll have enjoyed seeing a nekkid Annette Bening in her audacious prime.

[matt_m__toronto_]

just sent her an email asking what area she is in and what channel of transmitter will work best for her. certain channels that work great over here, will not even work in other areas of the world. i'm guessing that she will come back witha hazy response. i also looked in my trash bin to find her first email to me. i said on the forum for anyone interested, to make an offer. she said that she did not know what to offer and if i could name the price. now, what differs in this story from the ones that i've read about (last 15mins) is that she haggled with the price...that must be her schtick to sound more legit.

 

i also just got off the phone with my bank. they assure me that a us money order would take 30 days to fully, whole heartedly clear or not clear. after a confirmation, it's good. so i would not send anything until that confirmation. good yes?

 

my question re: the us banks saying that a cheque is good right away and then re-negging on that a week later, how do they get away with that? what if you cash all the money out and close your account before they can call you and say it's fraudulant? that sounds very amateur hour to me. there's my rebuttal to the small canadian joke up above. ;-)

 

love y'all

 

m