S/O Beggars, Moochers and Scammers

[Acadianna]

I received an interesting email stating that I was an heir to Princess Diana's fortune.

I'd be thrilled just to inherit her wardrobe -- though her clothes would be a few sizes too small for me.  Even so, the hats and shoes would be worth having!

[JoW]

A chap turned up at my door one afternoon syhaing he had been told to meet someone in my street re: getting a shipping order to send a car to Nigeria. He had been given the street name but no number of house, and a mobile phone number which rang out. Did I know anyone form Nigeria living on the street? I said no. Were there any persons of colour who did? Yes, but not from Nigeria. I told him to contact the police, and shut my door. I did an internet check, and it was a scam, pay me the money, and I'll arrange shipment. I wonder why he diid it, you can surely buy a car in Africa?

The way that scam works, the scammer pays for the car with a cashier's check.  The check includes a large amount for shipping the car.  The seller deposits the check and wires the shipping fee to the shipper.  The shipper never shows up.  The cashier's check is a well-made forgery.  It bounces, but not for several weeks.  The victim has to repay the bank for the bad check plus a bounced-check fee.  The scammer and his friend the shipper split the shipping fee.   

[VorFemme]

Someone tried to scam me through Craigslist.  I was selling a locket and someone from NY wanted to buy it if I would send it to them.  I said sure if they could pay by paypal.  I was emailed a very realistic looking fake payment email "from paypal" with an address to send the locket to Nigeria.  I can see how easily someone might think it was a legitimate payment into paypal.  It wasn't and I did not mail the locket to Nigeria or NY.  But I did get a laugh out of them emailing asking for me to send it right away. 

I got that same fake email from someone wanting a laptop computer mailed to Nigeria - PayPal was not amused when I forwarded it to them.

Over the next few days, I got more email from someone asking about the same laptop - but she couldn't keep straight if it was for her husband, son, or brother...I didn't respond to those except to say that I would meet someone for cash - I would not ship it to a Craigslist buyer.

[Sirius]

Two or three years ago my sister legally changed her name to something not even close to her birth name.  Then, American Express either was hacked or robbed by persons unknown who got a bunch of client information, and my brother-in-law was affected. 

Then, about six months later, Sis got a call from a store in New York state (she's in Texas) asking for her under her former name.  Apparently, someone was using her former identity to try to buy a bunch of high-priced gift cards, and the store was double-checking.  She told them, "Call the police.  They're trying to scam you.  I haven't used that name in over a year after changing it legally, and I changed it on all my credit cards."  I don't know if the person was arrested, but she said she didn't tell them what she changed her name to and said they didn't ask, so it doesn't sound like phishing.

I also got one of those "We can't find you to deliver a package.  Use this link to go to our website to update your information" type of e-mails, but I wasn't expecting anything and the poor spelling and grammar made it obvious that this was a phishing expedition.

[Starchasm]

Here's a facebook note I wrote up after a scammer hacked my friend's e-mail account:

"I received this e-mail today from Amy:

"Hello,

   Am sorry for this odd request because it might get to you too urgent but it is because of the situation of things right now, I am stuck in Wales,United Kingdom right now, i came down here on a vacation, i got robbed, everything was going fine until last night when i got mugged on my way back to the hotel,all cash,phones and credit card were stolen off me but luckily for me i still have my passports with me, i have been to the Embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all they asked me to wait for 3weeks but i can't wait till then and my flight leaves in few hours from now but i am having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let me leave until i settle the hotel bills please i need you to loan me some money, will refund you as soon as i am back home.

Thanks.

Amy"

Now, I knew she wasn't in friggin' Wales but I e-mailed her husband just in case.  Nope, not in Wales.

Most people would have left it alone at that point, but...I'm a jerk.  So I wrote back.

"Honey of course I'll help!  Let me know what you need.  If you give me the hotel's number I'll call and get the room taken care of.

Star"

It's like a scammer's mating call. "I have money!  And I am willing to part with it!"

I was intrigued.  I had just offered money paid directly to the hotel - which was the problem the scammer claimed to have.  How would they sidestep that offer so they could get cash?

The next e-mail came within seconds:

"I am glad to hear from you, i am in a tight situation over here i just really need your financial assistants with getting on a plane back home, $1,650 is all i need more,you can get the money to me here using a western union, you need just my name as written on my passport and the location here, i can get on a plane in the next 3hrs if i can get the money, Its not just safe here, i am really freaking out.

Here's the details :

Name:Amy Winder

Location: 164 Malpas Road NP20 5PP Newport , United Kingdom

Amount: $1,650 Dollar

Kindly reply me with the confirmation number as soon as you are done with the transfer.  Thanks alot, i am really glad you can help and will surely get the money back to you as soon as i get back home.

Thanks alot

 Amy"

Yes.  You are horribly unsafe in the untamed wilds of WALES.  Girl, we live in New Orleans.  Sometimes Haiti is safer. (well...Amy defected to Jefferson Parish, but still).  I'm not impressed. 

Professor Google tells me you want me to wire money to a hotel while there is a bank with Western Union capability not far away.  Lets use this information.

I posted to Amy's husband's FB asking for fake Western Union numbers and he came up with pi.  I thought that was brilliant, so I sent this back:

"Sure, go to the Lloyds at: 42 Commercial Street in Newport .  The Western Union number is 314159265.

Are you flying out of Cardiff ?"

I don't give a crap where the scammer pretends to fly out of, but I did want to see what interesting lie they could concoct about the "flight in a few hours" when they were in a city with no airport.  Sadly, they sidestepped the question.

 The reply came back:

"Thanks, do reconfirm the mtcn number, it is nine digit instead of ten.

~Amy"

I was thinking that pi would be a dead giveaway, but apparently not.  You'd think an even BIGGER giveaway would be that I had no idea how many numbers were in a Western Union MTCN.  I was wondering if they were trying to trick me up, but again Professor Google confirmed there were 10 numbers in a Western Union MTCN (which I learned stands for Money Transfer Control Number).  So I looked up the 10th digit of pi and sent the following:

"Whoops!  Sorry, when I typed it in I left off the 3.  The MTCN is 3141592653."

At that point I had to go to lunch.  I sent the above at 9:04.  At 11:39 they sent:

"ii was unable to confirm the money from the western union outlet, can you send me the payment scanned receipt.

Thanks

~Amy"


They then sent the exact same e-mail at 12:02.  Since they had been responding pretty quickly before then and there was a two and a half hour gap I am PRAYING that they actually went to the dang bank to try to pick up the money.  Amy's gotten in touch with g-mail now so they probably wouldn't get any responses, but I hope I made some jerk's day a little darker."

[Lorelei_Evil]

I like your style, Starchasm.

[nutraxfornerves]

A side note. One you have a WU number, you can pick up the money at any WU office. You can also verify that the money is available by going ot the WU web site.

There are a number of websites devoted to baiting 419 scammers, which is where i learned this about WU. One of my favorite is the guy who was conned into making an obscene phone call to Buckingham Palace.

On a travel web site where I hang out, in the last year we've had two people innocently asking about how to get US dollars to someone who needs a "Basic Travel Allowance" to leave an African Country. There is no such thing. The victims were both victims of a sweetheart scam and thought they were assisting a long-distance lover to come to the US.

If you ever get a PM out of the blue on a web forum from someone who has seen your profile and just knows you are destined ot be soul mates--they are trying to lure you into this one, or other 419 versions.

[Iris]

A side note. One you have a WU number, you can pick up the money at any WU office. You can also verify that the money is available by going ot the WU web site.

There are a number of websites devoted to baiting 419 scammers, which is where i learned this about WU. One of my favorite is the guy who was conned into making an obscene phone call to Buckingham Palace.

On a travel web site where I hang out, in the last year we've had two people innocently asking about how to get US dollars to someone who needs a "Basic Travel Allowance" to leave an African Country. There is no such thing. The victims were both victims of a sweetheart scam and thought they were assisting a long-distance lover to come to the US.

If you ever get a PM out of the blue on a web forum from someone who has seen your profile and just knows you are destined ot be soul mates--they are trying to lure you into this one, or other 419 versions.

My favourite was the guy who scammed the scammer into *getting a tattoo* for a fake church... Definitely retaliatory rudeness and GoodIris agrees that it was a bit OTT but sometimes EvilIris needs her chuckles.

[JenJay]

A side note. One you have a WU number, you can pick up the money at any WU office. You can also verify that the money is available by going ot the WU web site.

There are a number of websites devoted to baiting 419 scammers, which is where i learned this about WU. One of my favorite is the guy who was conned into making an obscene phone call to Buckingham Palace.

On a travel web site where I hang out, in the last year we've had two people innocently asking about how to get US dollars to someone who needs a "Basic Travel Allowance" to leave an African Country. There is no such thing. The victims were both victims of a sweetheart scam and thought they were assisting a long-distance lover to come to the US.

If you ever get a PM out of the blue on a web forum from someone who has seen your profile and just knows you are destined ot be soul mates--they are trying to lure you into this one, or other 419 versions.

My favourite was the guy who scammed the scammer into *getting a tattoo* for a fake church... Definitely retaliatory rudeness and GoodIris agrees that it was a bit OTT but sometimes EvilIris needs her chuckles.

No way! Do you have a link? I need to read that! 

[Iris]

A side note. One you have a WU number, you can pick up the money at any WU office. You can also verify that the money is available by going ot the WU web site.

There are a number of websites devoted to baiting 419 scammers, which is where i learned this about WU. One of my favorite is the guy who was conned into making an obscene phone call to Buckingham Palace.

On a travel web site where I hang out, in the last year we've had two people innocently asking about how to get US dollars to someone who needs a "Basic Travel Allowance" to leave an African Country. There is no such thing. The victims were both victims of a sweetheart scam and thought they were assisting a long-distance lover to come to the US.

If you ever get a PM out of the blue on a web forum from someone who has seen your profile and just knows you are destined ot be soul mates--they are trying to lure you into this one, or other 419 versions.

My favourite was the guy who scammed the scammer into *getting a tattoo* for a fake church... Definitely retaliatory rudeness and GoodIris agrees that it was a bit OTT but sometimes EvilIris needs her chuckles.

No way! Do you have a link? I need to read that! 

http://419eater.com/html/okorie.htm

Warning: There were a few times when even EvilIris was squirming and thinking "Dude. Let it go, you've done enough"

[NyaChan]

  Wow.  That was masterful.

[nutraxfornerves]

The obscene phone call to Buckingham Palace. THE MR T EXPERIENCE. Since it was an obscene phone call, there is some indelicate language. But it is interesting to watch a scammer who genuinely thinks he's working with Mr. T.

[Hawkwatcher]

I received an interesting email stating that I was an heir to Princess Diana's fortune.

hmm, you would think one of her sons would be a more logical heir, but what good luck to you!

Then you will share with all of your eHell friends, I'm sure. Thank you.

Of course.  I'd be happy to share everything I got from Princess Di's estate.   

[sunnygirl]

I had a fun one recently. I don't even know what this woman was doing because her story was all over the place.

I was walking home from the station one evening, on the very busy main road I live on and a woman approached me because her car, which was stopped in a very quiet side road about 20ft from the main road, had "run out of petrol (gas)." There is a petrol station almost directly opposite the side road. She told me she needed to buy some petrol to get home, but the nasty people in the station wouldn't sell it to her as she'd taken her own container to be filled with petrol and they'd said it was a safety hazard, and that they would only agree to sell her a sealed container of petrol. So that's a Sweet monkey fritters! right to start with - her car was only a few feet away and could easily have been pushed to the petrol station if she only wanted to put a tiny amount in. Plus this petrol station is a supermarket with petrol pumps outside, not a proper like service station, and I don't think they sell sealed containers of petrol.

So it's this big story about how she tried and was willing to buy a small amount of petrol, but they'll only allow her to buy a big container and she doesn't have enough money for that, and can she please borrow some money because the eviiiiiil Tesco Express employees are forcing her to buy the more expensive item.

I very kindly offer to help push her car to the petrol station so she can fill it directly from the pump and thus put only a very small amount in it, without needing to buy an entire container. But oh noes!! She can't do that because she forgot her wallet at home. Oh but I thought you did have enough money for the small amount you originally tried to buy? Hmm forgetting your wallet and to fill up your car, bad luck!

I ask her where she lives, she says Putney (5 mins drive away). I ask where in Putney as I know it well, she says just off the high street. I tell her there are buses that go from the bus stop practically next to us to the high street, and that I'll wait with her for a bus and use my Oyster card (like a debit card for public transport) to put her on the bus so she can pop home to get her wallet.

For some extraordinary reason she prefers to decline my very generous and helpful offer and seek assistance elsewhere. 

[25wishes]

I do a lot with Craigslist (I put ads on for neighbors who do not have the internet). I NEVER enable email responses. If they are not offering you extra money for shipping (even on a $20 item!) they are harvesting your email address for spam.

 I once put an ad on looking for a seasonal rental and the scam I got was, rent my fabulous house for a low price PLUS have a part time job "processing" payments for the owner who is out of the country. No thanks.

I did once offer a free, very old printer on Freecycle and was contacted by someone about 1000 miles away who offered to pay me for shipping it to him. He did, I shipped it, it was legit. Still can't believe someone wanted it. Apparently he was using some MS-DOS program and this printer would work with it.