Melissa
North Stonington,#2Consumer Comment
Fri, July 08, 2005
My husband and I also fell for this stupid scam. I had put up an ad to sell one of our dogs (as we are moving very soon, and can only keep 2 of the 3.) My husband also had an ad out for something else, and soon we were INUNDATED with offers to send us (such and such amount) via cashier's cheque or money order, and we were to send the remainder to some school for the blind in Africa. (Another is to go to some church construction project in the UK.) This person is also going by the assumed names "Janet Marcus" aka "Luis Urena", aka "Shannon Fikes", aka "Larry Harry". Well, instead of cashing ANY of these checks outright, I got smart and deposited them into my bank account, and waited for them to clear before sending ANYTHING on to ANYONE. Indeed, they are worthless. See, this is a pretty smart scam. Much better thought out and original than the "My (family member) was a respected politician and was murdered, now we need help transferring milions to YOUR bank acct in the US...." scam. This one promises seemingly real, tangible money upfront. Please, for the love of god, do NOT fall for this crap. It can land you in jail. The key tipoffs here are that you will get emails from a few different people, all wanting money to go to the same place in West Africa. Under the guise of helping the poor. However, when the "cheques" come in, they are from a completely different person altogether. They all start out the same way "Hello Dear,..." This was a tipoff for me, as english speaking people usually start with "Dear (so and so)..." Also I had mentioned to my husband a few times...why on earth would they send said amount, and not just send the rest on by themselves? Why is ALL of this going to the same place? At first I thought the money was going to fund drug runners or terrorists, but nope, there IS no money in the first place. Anyone who cashes these checks will be charged with bank fraud and have to come up with the amount out of pocket. Depending on the amount, this could be a felony against YOU. So, yeah. Don't even give these bastards the time of day. Forward their emails to the FBI and INTERPOL. Anything that seems to good to be real, usually is.