I was almost SCAMMED...
May 21 '05
The Bottom Line Watch out for sophisticated scammers!
I recently heard about and started using craigslist.com. It's a terrific way to sell items in your local area, much as you would put an ad in your local newspaper want ads. Better yet, it's free. I listed a couple of small things I've been wanting to sell and I also listed my old car too.
The subject of this review is about how I was almost scammed through my car ad.
I placed the ad for my 1985 Camry on craigslist.com a few weeks ago. The ad basically said that the body had a new paint job and the car's interior was very clean, but the car is not currently running. (There is something wrong with the engine and I don't want to put anymore money into it, so have decided to sell it.)
To get to the point, I had someone from England email me and say that they wanted to buy the car, sight unseen, and had already made arrangements for picking it up and shipping it. The person never asked me a single thing about the car's condition or even where it was.
What his e-mail did say was that he had a client in the states who owed him money ($2,750) and that he would tell his "client" to send me a check drawn on a U.S. bank, since that would be much faster for me than having to wait until his cheque from England cleared. The man from England said that he "trusted me" to deposit the entire check from his client for $2,750 into my bank account, wait for it to clear, and merely send him the difference, keeping $500 for the sale of my car. I was to write him a check for the balance ($2,250) and send it to him from my account. But why did he trust me? He didn't know me from Adam!
This was starting to sound very fishy. First of all, the guy from England didn't ask me a thing about the car. He clearly was not interested in it at all. I wrote back and told him the car was no longer for sale.
About a week later, (after I thought the matter was closed) I received a check to my P.O. Box that I have and it was made to me for $2,750. I could see how it might be tempting to run out and deposit that or cash it right away. The check looked real enough, but it had a stamped signature, not a real signed signature. (There is a statement on the check above the signature line saying that the signature was not required. ("The depositor has authorized this payment to payee. Payee to hold you harmless for payment of this document. This document shall be deposited only to the credit of payee.") It came from an outfit called Qchex.com and there was a disclaimer attached to the check.
The check was drawn from a real bank in Richmond, VA. I then googled the name on the check from the account and found out it was from a corporate lawyer from a large law firm. The large law firm's website was impressive and looked legit. Next thing I did was to call the lawyer to find out what was going on. He answered his phone immediately and when I said a few brief words about having received a check from him, he merely said that he had closed that bank account and knew about it and had an investigation going on. (Identity theft comes to mind.)
After my brief phone call with the lawyer, I thought that might be the end of it, but the more I thought about the lawyer, the more I started to wonder about him too. It said that he was born and raised in Uzbekistan, but he didn't have any accent. He also answered his own phone...don't all lawyers have office help? Wouldn't he want to have that check or at least the e-mails from the guy in England as part of his investigation? Well, maybe not.
I consider myself fairly savvy of the ways of this cruel world, but after all of this, I don't know what was real and what was not in this incident. I am just writing this as a warning to others that there are creative scammers out there waiting to pounce on innocent people and rob them.
If it hadn't been for horswispr's comment on bonniesayers excellent review about craigslist.com, I might have been taken in by this creep. Be careful and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Let me make it clear that my warning is not about craigslist.com, which is a great website; it is about being careful on any website of this type (including EBay) where money is exchanged.
DISCLAIMER on Qchex note: "Because user authentication on the Internet is difficult, you must make your own independent determination regarding the statements and representations of the other party and the party's ability to pay for the delivered good(s) offered for each transaction commenced through Qchex.com."
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