The Observation Deck

In the past 2 months I have posted 2 cars for sale. I posted them on e-bay and in the LakewoodBuzz's free classified site. In both cases I received replies from a buyer that wanted to know where to send a cashiers check and who it should be made out to. Shortly following I received another e-mail asking if it was alright that they added the shipping cost into my check to pay for shipping that they would set up. In both cases the parties stated that they were working over-seas and that an associate of theirs would handle the rest. In both cases I refused the sale, but it got me to thinking. Is there a scam in here somewhere and if so what and how does it work? If anyone has any ideas or has been in the same situation I would be interested to hear your thoughts. Thanks.

Total Scam

The way it works they send you the check for more, you send back the item and the over money. Check is bad, take two weeks to run the course. You loose, car and money. This has been going on for about two years. I have known three people that have fallen for it.




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Thanks Jim, That's amazing. These people must search every classified post they can find? One car was posted on both sites and the other was just posted on the Buzz site. I wouldn't think anybody outside of our little Lakewood existence would read the Buzz Classifieds or are these people local? I guess I can also take comfort in knowing that with my e-Bay experience I never send anything out until the check clears anyways.

Thanks again,

Marty" In God we trust, all others pay cash" Hout

This was taken from http://www.clarkhoward.com = a real good site for general consumer empowerment

Apr 29, 2005 -- Beware of phony money orders!
Over the past four years, Clark has gotten lots of phone calls about phony cashier?s check scams. But over the past four months, those calls have been replaced by questions about a new counterfeit scam that has taken its place. Starting about Thanksgiving of last year, calls started coming into the show about phony money orders. Basically, criminals are using phony money orders to buy items through classified ads, on eBay and from retailers, and the phony forms look perfect. The New York Times published a comparison graphic recently that showed a legitimate USPS money order next to a fake one and they looked exactly the same. The reason cashier?s checks and money orders are so popular with criminals is that they haven?t changed much over recent decades. We need some type of electronic verification with these services before more people get taken.

This may be similar to your scam, because it's based on the check being phony. There are several schemes based on that premise including overpayment.
-JD

Well I e-mailed them back and told them I was willing to go along with their arrangements and they said I should receive a check on the 9th of December so we'll have to see. I guess the question now is, Is there someone I should notify? Local police, postal police or just let it go?

Marty Hout wrote:Well I e-mailed them back and told them I was willing to go along with their arrangements and they said I should receive a check on the 9th of December so we'll have to see. I guess the question now is, Is there someone I should notify? Local police, postal police or just let it go?

Whatever you do do not put it in the bank. Call the bank it was dran on and see if it is real. Local police seem to be swamped with door to door fraud cases and the Feds have been completely swamped with everything going on.


jim

So far, no crime has been committed. There's no crime until the check doesn't go through, but usually by that time, the victim has sent the item and the extra money.

Until a crime has been committed, the police really can't help you, but you could always make a copy of the check, try to put the check through and when it bounces, you could then call the detectives in Lakewood and also talk with the bank. Any time you sell something, you have to wait until the check clears.

I would save all email from the prospective buyers because you can usually look at what is called the "long headers" to help determine the origin of the emails.

It's possible that the scam artists aren't local, so nobody's going to go to Nigeria or someplace to try to track them down.

Thanks, Marty for alerting the community that this type of scam is ongoing. Your warning may help someone else protect themselves.