Craigslist & Western Union Scam

I was almost duped by a buyer and shipper from craigslistLA who were posing to buy a couch I had for sale on the site and ship it to the UK .

There were two users: Laura Anderson - [email protected] and Allen Jones - [email protected].

They sent me a business check from a company called Air Liquide out of Houston, TX banked on JPMorgan Chase. The company and bank account do exist, but the checks were stolen from this company approx. 6 months ago.

They wanted me to have the couch shipped to the UK and included extra funds in the check to do so.
Luckily, I was very suspicious from the start and became very cautious as the emails progressed due to too many inconsistencies, wrong spelling and grammer, and the inability to find these people through 411.

When I contacted the CFO of Air Liquide, he told me that they have had approx. 200 people contact them regarding similiar scams using their checks. In the beginning, several of the checks were cashed by JPMorgan Chase, but since, the account has been flagged. They have tracked the scammers to Canada and the Canadian government, as well as the FBI are involved.

Due to my intuition, I was saved $4500.00+.

Look out Craigslister's. It's no longer safe to use the site to sell.
For details, send me an private email.

Well done for spotting the scam, Deja!
Thank you very much for posting your story here. Hopefully, it will help someone else spot an overpayment scam before it is too late.

Welcome to ScamWarners!

Deja, welcome to ScamWarners. Thanks for posting information on this scam, and especially for including all the details, which will make it much easier for others to find it on a search. And well done for spotting it so readily.

Hi Deja.

I'd just like to say something about your last sentence.

Look out Craigslister's. It's no longer safe to use the site to sell.

The truth is, no internet selling site where you deal with people who you don't know, is 100% safe. But Craigslist isn't really much different to other sites (ie: ebay). If you're selling on any site you should automatically assume that you may be targeted by scammers.

The best way to stay safe and to not fall prey to scammers when selling is to recognise the tactics that they use and to look out for the tell tale signs. Education is definitely the key here.
And as you've shown so well, intuition is also a good indicator - if something doesn't feel right, don't go with it. Or at the very least, check it out as you did.

Hi Chris,
Hope I haven't offended anyone with my last comment.
What I meant was, it was relatively safe to post on craigslist before recently.
As my friends and I have discussed, more and more of the topics there seem to be attracting lowlifes and scammers.
It's really too bad, since craigslist has been one of the cooler sites to visit and be part of.
I'm normally cautious anyways. I just didn't expect it from this site, I quess.
For all craigslisters, it's still a great site to visit and I've notified them of the situation that I went through. Don't let my comment deter you from visiting the site.
Deja

Hi Deja.

I'd just like to say something about your last sentence.

Look out Craigslister's. It's no longer safe to use the site to sell.

The truth is, no internet selling site where you deal with people who you don't know, is 100% safe. But Craigslist isn't really much different to other sites (ie: ebay). If you're selling on any site you should automatically assume that you may be targeted by scammers.

The best way to stay safe and to not fall prey to scammers when selling is to recognise the tactics that they use and to look out for the tell tale signs. Education is definitely the key here.
And as you've shown so well, intuition is also a good indicator - if something doesn't feel right, don't go with it. Or at the very least, check it out as you did.

Thanks for sharing your experience Deja - hopefully it will be a useful warning to other people being targetted by these scammers. Your intuition is often a powerful weapon against this kind of thing as you have discovered.

Experience with other scams has shown that craigslist (and eBay for that matter) are absolutely infested with all kinds of scammers and although both organisations do their best to monitor and deal with the problem, it's almost impossible. So the standard advice when buying/selling/advertising on this type of website is to proceed with extreme caution. A legitimate trader won't mind at all if you do some basic background checks.

Scammers are an inventive bunch. Any financial transaction that can be used for an overpayment scam WILL be used by them.

I seem to remember that Craigslist has some very useful pointers for what to look out for when selling anything on their site.

Of course its not just goods but services ( babysitting, nannies, etc) that can be used for overpayment scams.

People need to start being more credulous. Does the transaction actually make economic sense?

[Michelle]

craigslist, just like other On-Line small ad sites do publish warnings about scams and frauds, although not prominently in my opinion.

You have to look hard to find them.

http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html

Hi,

My Name is Jackie, new comer and i would like to share my experienced with you and if you have any commend please feel free to enlighten me.

I received a call from one Banker name Tim Brooks suppose to be the head of Debit and Credit for HBOS in UK. He told me that my father left a huge fortune in millions for me and my dad's name and phone number was right.
After ding-dong for more infos all of a sudden he told me due to security reasons he had transfer the millions into this off-shore account for me(feel free to visit this website www.afexlondon.co.uk abd there is a catch you have to key in the ID.7777 and password 7777 in order to visit the site, only the previlege like me (so call) can assess to the site.

The Afex London Bank Manager Steve Cherrone sent me an email to key in my particulars and said the money is ready for my used. Of course they have my name i keyed in but most other particulars are false as i felt something not right but give a go and do some testing. I did a TT of 20k to an account and see what happen. Suddenly an email from AfexLondon Steve email me that i have to pay 10k pound in order to effect the transfer and i was given 3 days to do the transfer as it's the rules of EU. I called the so call HBOS manager Tim to asked him why and same answer given to me.

I decided to tell them my sad stories, i have no money , not working since my dad passed away i have paid for his funeral expenses. There they came out with they can get me an Investor but i have to pay half of the 10k. The next day Afex Bank Steve called me and asked me to quickly pay up to a bank in Cyprus under the EU.

I decided to check on them and the bank. I called the HBOS HQ in London, no such Tim Brooks working for them, get a friend in UK to check Afex Bank address in UK, not such Bank,l when i question Afex Steve told me that it was written in the site for payment to be effected and i when i read, no such wordings, than he send me a long list of the EU banking procedures.

I decided to play punk with them to buy time, as they gave me new bank accounts to put in with companies name and i went and do a search. Guess what i search for a company name in the website call Worldero Limited in Hongkong and there pop-out the SW site which stated that the bank account given was a scammer account.

Now they keep calling me but i refused to answer their call but they email me and i told them i am going to see them in UK because i do not trust their banks, they gave me excuses such as for secuity reasons they cannot meet me but i told them for the 5k they cannot meet me but they only can meet me when i have my millions. I told them that they can have my dad's million but they told me only i can withdraw and nobody else. I told them that they can have my password and enjoy the fortune.

Now they are very impatient with me, keep bugging me to pay up and enjoy the fortune. I am playing their games now and see how long they can take my nonsense.

I would like to end this note by thanking SW for this opportunity to open my eyes and especially SlayerFaith who help me thru and did further search.

Jackie

Welcome Jackie - I am glad that you discovered this was a scam before you became a victim. As you have discovered, with a bit of background research you can usually find that the scammers are giving you totally fake information and that all they really want is to steal your money.

It is very common for scammers to deal with people who 'ask too many questions' to try to rush or panic them into paying up the 'fees' as quickly as possible because of some bogus deadline or security proceedure. They don't want to give you enough time to take a step back and think about the deal they are offering and perhaps start alarm bells ringing.

And once they think you are about to back out of the deal they will send you a deluge of phone calls, emails desperately trying to keep you interested and cooperative. The best way to deal with this is to completely ignore them and do not respond in any way. It's inconvenient and sometimes a little intimidating if they become abusive but if you continue to ignore them they will eventually give up and move on to another victim.

You did really well not to get caught by this one Jackie. It seems they were making a lot of effort to snare you.