Thank you Jacadette and rmesmer. What you both describe lead me to believe that this scammer is still involving innocent victims in 2 ways in his scams:
1/ Jacadette, he is trying to use you as a mule. He wants to get you to cash checks that have been sent by real victims of another type of scam and then send the money on to him/his associate (accomplice) or another innocent mule. You have done the right thing by not cashing the check as this would have made you an accomplice. He needs mules in order for his other scam to work. (Detailed below)
Jacadette, please contact me by personal message on this forum or by my email: [email protected] if you are able to. I will ask you to send me the original emails plus a copy of the header. (I will tell you how to do that when I hear from you.)
Another type of mule recieves payments by bank transfer Western Union or MoneyGram and then sends payment on again by the same means, or by personal check, or by bank transfer to another party - usually another mule or the scammer himself by some anonymous means. All these steps in the scam serve to further distance the scammer himself from the scam and make it increasingly difficult for law enforcement to trace.
Most arrests connected with this type of scam are not of the scammer himself, but of the mule (accomplice) as these are very often the only people who are in the jurisdiction of law enforcement. Law enforcement in West Africa where many of these scams originate are almost useless.
2/ rmesmer, I would say that for certain that the first mail you list looks like this scammer's script. This is his primary scam. He contacts sellers on classified advert sites such as Craigslist and expresses interest in buying their "item" for sale. He then offers to make payment by PayPal - often encouraging those who don't have an account to open one. He then sends "payment has been made subject to condition that you forward payment to his mover" from a faked PayPal email address - be assured that this is definitely fake, PayPal does not offer the service of holding funds in escrow until the payment is made to a third party.
Sometimes in this scam he has used the idea that his wife requires this payment for a vital operation/surgery/treatment.
He asks for your PayPal email address - the one that you use to make and receive payments with - a genuine buyer would need to know this in order to make a payment. There is no way that I know of that he can directly remove funds from your PayPal account, he would need to trick you in some way in order to make the scam successful eg. by using the above method of faking an email from PayPal claiming they are holding funds in escrow - and then you make a payment by bank transfer/Western Union/check/Money-gram in good faith that the funds would then clear in your PayPal account - which they won't of course.
rmesmer, please contact me by personal message on this forum or by my email: [email protected] if you are able to. I will ask you to send me a copy of the header for this mail. (I will tell you how to do that when I hear from you.)
1/ Jacadette, he is trying to use you as a mule. He wants to get you to cash checks that have been sent by real victims of another type of scam and then send the money on to him/his associate (accomplice) or another innocent mule. You have done the right thing by not cashing the check as this would have made you an accomplice. He needs mules in order for his other scam to work. (Detailed below)
Jacadette, please contact me by personal message on this forum or by my email: [email protected] if you are able to. I will ask you to send me the original emails plus a copy of the header. (I will tell you how to do that when I hear from you.)
Another type of mule recieves payments by bank transfer Western Union or MoneyGram and then sends payment on again by the same means, or by personal check, or by bank transfer to another party - usually another mule or the scammer himself by some anonymous means. All these steps in the scam serve to further distance the scammer himself from the scam and make it increasingly difficult for law enforcement to trace.
Most arrests connected with this type of scam are not of the scammer himself, but of the mule (accomplice) as these are very often the only people who are in the jurisdiction of law enforcement. Law enforcement in West Africa where many of these scams originate are almost useless.
2/ rmesmer, I would say that for certain that the first mail you list looks like this scammer's script. This is his primary scam. He contacts sellers on classified advert sites such as Craigslist and expresses interest in buying their "item" for sale. He then offers to make payment by PayPal - often encouraging those who don't have an account to open one. He then sends "payment has been made subject to condition that you forward payment to his mover" from a faked PayPal email address - be assured that this is definitely fake, PayPal does not offer the service of holding funds in escrow until the payment is made to a third party.
Sometimes in this scam he has used the idea that his wife requires this payment for a vital operation/surgery/treatment.
He asks for your PayPal email address - the one that you use to make and receive payments with - a genuine buyer would need to know this in order to make a payment. There is no way that I know of that he can directly remove funds from your PayPal account, he would need to trick you in some way in order to make the scam successful eg. by using the above method of faking an email from PayPal claiming they are holding funds in escrow - and then you make a payment by bank transfer/Western Union/check/Money-gram in good faith that the funds would then clear in your PayPal account - which they won't of course.
rmesmer, please contact me by personal message on this forum or by my email: [email protected] if you are able to. I will ask you to send me a copy of the header for this mail. (I will tell you how to do that when I hear from you.)