MTFCA Forum

Here is an email I received . I have a tractor conversion listed on Craigs list. This guy was willing to buy it at my price sight unseen. I should have known, no real Model T guy pays full price. Now today I get this email. I know it is a scam but I forget how. Sadly I have already given him my address. I asked him for contact information for the person picking up the tractor.

I told him not to mail me anything and if a certified came to the house I will decline it.

HIS EMAIL::::
Hello, thanks for the information,i will need your honest and trust to end up this sales. I will like to know if i can trust you with my money, since the payment will be mail out to you tomorrow, please i want you to remove the item from sales list i will get back to you with the tracking # so that you will know when to receive it. I include the mover funds along with your payment because they need to pick some valuable item for me in your area. So when you receive the check you will deposit the check at your bank and the mover will come for pick up at your location to pick up and deliver directly to my house. Let me read from you asap...........................Phillip

Tell me how this scam works.

Helo

I can tell you scam works now if mail
to me you will $105.43 US monies.


FJ

The language in the reply tells you all you need to know. (Or should I say, "The laungage in the replie tels you all you ned to no" ?)

Even though I don't know what the next stage of the scam is, I know that is has "BOGUS!!" written all over it. If it was an email, you can switch "view headers" to "all," and often see what country it originated in.

Dick

Thanks. I cant figure out how he could make money out of this unless the check he sends is for "to much" and he asks me to send the "extra" and in the mean time the check bounces.
He said in another email he would send a "cashier's check and I could wait for it to clear"

Maybe he's just a jerk who likes to get peoples hopes up ..............anyway, mine are not.

Tom,
He is adding the movers $'s to the amount. Next he will tell you the movers need the money upfront before they will come there. He will ask you to send the movers amount by check to an address which will be an unwitting elderly person doing a "favor" for someone overseas who can't get a US bank account.
The unwitting will either put the whole envelope with the check enclosed in the mail to another party or deposit the check and then the guy has the ability to transfer the funds out of the account.
If they forward the check they have your routing number and account number, then look out your account will be emptied.
As a Police Officer we see this often.
Just had one elderly taken for over $70,000.00 before family found out.
Brian

And don't answer any of the emails - not even to tell them to buzz off. The reason is current technology can set up automatic response for the next step in the scheme regardless of your response.

Thanks all.

Lots of good advice in this thread. The poor English and the odd times on the email are red flags. When they send you an email at 3 AM there's a good chance they are somewhere like Africa. A variation of this scam is where they offer you more than your asking price, but they ask you to ship it immediately, before you get paid, because it's a gift or something.

TRDxB2 wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 25, 2020 8:43 pm

And don't answer any of the emails - not even to tell them to buzz off. The reason is current technology can set up automatic response for the next step in the scheme regardless of your response.

And they don't like too many questions. Asking them makes them buzz off.

ALWAYS watch out for the poor english, poor spelling, and one of their favorite "song and dance" is "Well, I'm buying this for a friend or relative who is overseas in the Military". Yeh right. Like they CAN'T buy anything while they're there! How stupid do these asshole scammers think we are??

Here is another scam to watch out for. As you know, when your purchase is conducted through eBay, the sale is covered by eBay’s money back guarantee, if something goes wrong, such as if you change your mind, the item is not as described, arrives broken or just does not show up at your door, etc. The number one goal of a shady, dishonest seller is to separate you from the protection of eBay by getting you to deal with them directly with private messaging and paying by check or money order sent directly to them, instead of paying through PayPal.

Last year, I was looking at a very elaborate Lenskirch Balcony clock that never sells for less than 10k. The clock was located in Russia and I was mostly just admiring it. I wrote to the seller and asked what was the best price they could do and they asked me to make an offer. I offered $1,200.00 and they accepted, sending me an invoice, which I immediately paid with PayPal. After making my payment, I received payment instructions asking me not to pay by Paypal and my payment was reimbursed back to PayPal. I told them I do not pay the seller directly because of the protections ebay provide to buyers. They said I could trust them because they returned the money I sent them back to PayPal. I told them to either accept my payment through PayPal or cancel the sale. After this, I received several threats from them and I reported the scam to eBay. Ebay investigates by reviewing the back and forth e-mails between the seller and buyer, which go through eBay, so eBay knew exactly what transpired and banned the seller from eBay. Just before their account disappeared, I looked at the seller’s items for sale and discovered a dozen pictures of the same very rare clock.

When buying on eBay, never allow a seller to separate you from the protections provided by eBay by getting you to do a private sale. Never send messages to an e-mail address provided by the seller, because eBay cannot follow private e-mails if something goes wrong. Always send your messages through the eBay system so, if something goes wrong, eBay can review the e-mails and reconstruct the transaction in order to make their decision on whether or not your complaint is valid. Lastly, always pay by PayPal, for if a problem occurs and the seller refuses to cooperate after eBay decides in your favor, ebay will reimburse you whether the seller agrees or not.

Although my experience occurred with a clock, this also applies to all eBay purchases, including Model T parts. Jim Patrick

Whassamatter wid the ‘poor’ englisch? He sounds lik all de Model T/traktor conversion peoples I no???

We am not understanding, he seems like good and honest person to buying the your car or truck or wagon etc.



I will send $125 of your thousands dollars, my agent, Barrister King Nkruma Smythe Esq, will to pick up and you give him balance, keep $3000 for you troubles...

I ran into a different, yet related, problem. I'm both isolated by distance, plus my other half is in one of those groups susceptable to "that thing going around", so I do most of my buying / selling at a distance - yeah, it stinks not being able to do swap meets, tours, going to check out car deals, etc... and I'm sure it's cost me one or two cars. I tried to do a distance deal on a car I wanted (pretty badly, actually), but the seller was pretty insistant that I come to his location in person to look at the car... Not sure if he thought I was a scammer or what, but with 2 family members in the "at risk" category for the "Covidsiosis thing", one being my other half, until they have this thing under control my family has to come first.

I was OK trusting the seller with his description of the car, and the pix checked out, but I got the feeling the seller wasn't, for whatever reason, unless I went up there and did a face to face thing. --shrug--

You can't protect some people from themselves. Someone I know let me know that he could get any movie he wanted from a Russian website and he could burn me a DVD of it for free. He also complained to me that he was losing money from his bank account in $20 to $40 amounts every time he got paid, so he said he had to move fast to pay his bills before it was gone. I agreed to check his computer and as soon as I got rid of his Russian movie app, his money stayed in his bank account.

A few months later he was having money problems again, and I discovered he had reinstalled the Russian free movie app. He said he missed the free movies. I can't be friends with such an idiot.

The normal way for this scam to work is the check has included extra money for shipping.

You ship the item and deposit the check right away, as requested, and then send a check to return the extra shipping money.

A day or two later, the bank calls you and tells you the check was bogus.