Scammers at work

[GaryW1960]

I have a yahoo email and regularly receive this type of trash offer.

If you highlight your address when you receive the rougue email and right button click its shows a list of the addresses its been sent to and it seems to get yours by a process of if its near to yours you get it.

Not all yahoo emails are scams and it is a very good email interface to use.

Regards

Gary

[MrM]

Another type to be wary of is with renting. If you see a flat for rent at really low prices, and they ask you to do a money transfer with Western Union - don't!

[Snarkhunter]

Originally Posted by niceguy

I've had this scam tried on me several times while selling motor cycles bits. It works on some glitch in the banking system to do with cheque clearance times. You will pay in the scammer's cheque and after a couple of days the bank will inform you the cheque has cleared and you will send off the guy his money. A couple of weeks later the bank will tell the cheque has gone bad and you will left holding the debt. Not sure of the details but I was told by a money guy this was how it pans out. As far as I know it's nothing to do with laundering just plain fraud.

If anyone has read "Catch me if you can" (there was a film also made based on the book) this was on of the scams that Frank Abagnale (the author of the book) - pay money (by cheque) into an account then drawing money against it, taking advantage of the time taken for cheque to clear he was long gone before the cheque bounced!

[jet186]

Originally Posted by niceguy

I've had this scam tried on me several times while selling motor cycles bits. It works on some glitch in the banking system to do with cheque clearance times. You will pay in the scammer's cheque and after a couple of days the bank will inform you the cheque has cleared and you will send off the guy his money. A couple of weeks later the bank will tell the cheque has gone bad and you will left holding the debt. Not sure of the details but I was told by a money guy this was how it pans out. As far as I know it's nothing to do with laundering just plain fraud.

I have to agree with niceguy, a year or so ago one of my daughers tried to sell her clarinet on a reputable musical, web site she was contacted via e mail and was sent a cheque, which when it arrived was for £3000 not the sale price, when I saw the cheque I contacted the bank who said " it's OK cash the cheque, my next call was to the Police , who were on our doorstep within 15 minutes ,they explained that this sort of scam is happening all the time, it turned out that the cheque was one of a book of fifty that had been stolen from a filling station in the London area, we were getting e mails for a period of two weeks fom the scammers who were wondering why we hadn't cashed the cheque and sent them the difference, they even had the cheek to accuse us of trying to rip them off, unfortunately the police tried to trace them but their resources are somewhat limited in regards to this type of long disance fraud crime, my only suggestion to anyone who gets these type of e mails is to delete them.