below is the text of an email i received in relation to a flute i have for sale on the internet - i don’t understand much but the gist of it seems to be that i send him money (equal to $5000 minus the cost of the flute) and will in return receive $5000 - have i got this bit right? - whoever is behind this seems to be trying it on with people selling pets over the internet (puppies?). - any comments?
Hello Sir/Madam,
I am *****,i buy and sell musical instrument,a very nice
friends of mine that stay very close to my house here in austria ask
me to
help her in getting some nice and musical instrument like yours,so i
decided
to contact you as i came across your advert for puppies on the
internet and
I decided to contact you that am interested in buying from you worth
of $600
dollars.
The husband of the woman is in canada and his is the one paying
for all
the musical instrument including the shippment and we need to collect
some
other goods in london that we bought for him and his about sending an
america cashier cheque of $5,000 for the musical instrument and other
things
bought in london,so i will have to direct him to address of the
cheque to
you simply because sending down an american cashier cheque to london
take
longer periode at least 30 working days to clear and is very very
urgent but
with you,it will take less than three working days since it’s an
america
cashier cheque.
All you have to do is just deduct your cost and send the balance
to
london via western union money transfer.Concerning the shipping,we
have
freight company that handle our orders,i will pay the freight company
down
at their local office.After which they will come for the pick up
(asap).So
you can send me the beneficiary including your phone number,where i
will
direct the husband to forward the america chashier cheque to.Thank
you so
much as i await your responces,Best regards and God Bless
That’s a pretty poorly done scam if they can’t even remember to change “puppies” to “flute.” Idiots. But yes, it is a scam. Brad Hurley even has a warning about this very thing on his website where he lists flutes people have for sale. I would suggest that you either delete it or forward it to the FBI. They say they like to get these messages to help their investigations, although the one time I tried to forward one to them it bounced.
Well, unless I’m completely misreading this (and I may be) - it seems that this person wants to send YOU this cashier’s cheque… so that you can deduct the cost of whatever it is that they want to buy (how does one confuse puppies and musical instruments? ) and then forward the balance back to them. This person seems to trust you a lot, seanny! Unless they’re just looking for phone numbers… ?
It’s crazy.
That’s what I think.
Deirdre
I think the fishy part is that sentence is in good English but the rest is in very broken English. Throughout the rest of the email they couldn’t conjugate a verb or execute proper syntax for the life of them but here it was no problem.
Looks like a money laundering scheme. I would forward it to the FBI.
This is a scam. The cashier cheque will prove to be worthless, but he hopes you won’t find out until after you send the “change”. A lot of people who advertised flutes on Brad Hurley’s site got targeted by this scammer, forcing him to start “encrypting” the emails there.
looks like you’re all well aware of this sort of thing - it’s lucky that whoever is behind it is so clumsy/incompetent because i’m not that good at spotting con artists
chances are that the cashiers check is counterfeit, the way it works is that they send you the fake check and then you send them a real one, a couple of weeks later you find out that the cashiers check was a fake and you get busted for fraud.
These guys make me sick! My husband and I are involved in a nonprofit medical organization, and I regularly get emails from “Nigerians” that want to “donate” money to us. There’s usually some sort of sob story, like the person is dying of a terminal illness and wants to give all their money away, or a wealthy widow that’s recently converted and wants to “donate her money to the Lord’s work.” I just delete them from my spam folder.
) and then forward the balance back to them. This person seems to trust you a lot, seanny! Unless they’re just looking for phone numbers… ?
