Tuesday, June 28, 2005
New Internet Scam
I was trying to sell my 1.5 year old Dell Inspiron 1100, since I have bought a new Inspiron 2200 with a lot more memory and hopefully faster CPU. So I did thousands if not millions of people did, put an ad on Craig's List, and pray for a buyer to show up.
Surprisingly quickly, within 1/2 an hour of my ad, I got 'an interest buyer' with this message:
URGENTLY NEEDED Dell Inspiron 1100 Laptop/Celeron 2.3G/256MB/30GB/DVD+CDRW/14.1TFT
Soon after that, I got similar replies like:
Hello Sir,
I saw your item place on craigslist and i have being looking for this type of product for a long time for my business oiutfit, so i want to know if it is currently available for sales and i want to
know the actual price . So pls get back to me if you are willing to Transact with me.
Furthermore, I live in Alaska but i will be shipping it ternationaly to my boss whom the company send on a course adroad.
Moreover, i will be organising the payment through via POSTAL MONEY ORDER UPON DELIVERY. So please keep in touch.
Thanks,
There are just too much similarities between those replies, and THAT helped me a lot. This feels too much like the Nigeria Scam. What did I end up doing? I forward them to abuse@yahoo.com, and got this reply from Yahoo:
Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.
In this particular case, we have taken appropriate action against the
Yahoo! account in question that was reported for fraudulent activities,
as per our Terms of Service (TOS).
Basically it means they were zapped.
Surprisingly quickly, within 1/2 an hour of my ad, I got 'an interest buyer' with this message:
URGENTLY NEEDED Dell Inspiron 1100 Laptop/Celeron 2.3G/256MB/30GB/DVD+CDRW/14.1TFT
Hello,
Am so glad to meet your items here on line,i hereby inquire to purchase your item if you are willing to ship to my client in African, i will be making payment via paypal,greenzap, or if there is any other method you will like me to use,i will like you to mail me your paypal account to effect the payment.And the total cost of the item including shipping cost to African, so i can make the payment immediately.
Regards.
Soon after that, I got similar replies like:
Hello Sir,
I saw your item place on craigslist and i have being looking for this type of product for a long time for my business oiutfit, so i want to know if it is currently available for sales and i want to
know the actual price . So pls get back to me if you are willing to Transact with me.
Furthermore, I live in Alaska but i will be shipping it ternationaly to my boss whom the company send on a course adroad.
Moreover, i will be organising the payment through via POSTAL MONEY ORDER UPON DELIVERY. So please keep in touch.
Thanks,
There are just too much similarities between those replies, and THAT helped me a lot. This feels too much like the Nigeria Scam. What did I end up doing? I forward them to abuse@yahoo.com, and got this reply from Yahoo:
Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.
In this particular case, we have taken appropriate action against the
Yahoo! account in question that was reported for fraudulent activities,
as per our Terms of Service (TOS).
Basically it means they were zapped.
