:: Tags:
Rants,
Scams
I’ll start off by saying that I use Craigslist quite a bit and truly believe that it is a very useful resource for both buying and selling of goods online. However, there are people in this world who choose to use the site for the reason of illegal personal gain… yes people, we’re talking about scam artists!
Just recently, I posted an underwater camera system for sale on Craigslist and I was truly taken in by the results. For every good response to the ad, I received at least ten emails from scammers who wanted me to ship the camera system overseas to a third party; Most often stating they would include a large sum of additional payment for the shipping and all of them requested to pay via Paypal.
Maybe you’ve heard of this scam before… these people target Craigslist sellers by using Paypal to initiate payment and then canceling (or disputing) the payment once the item has been shipped off to West Africa. My understanding is that the scammers have people working for them in the USPS office’s in Nigeria and they make sure that the packages don’t get returned to the sender when the deal falls through! This is a warning to anyone who uses Craigslist to sell items! It seems that the scammers mostly target the ad’s for expensive electronics (laptops, cameras, cellphones, etc.)
NOTE: Be advised that scammers most often use fictitious names for their email correspondence, but they have also been known to use real individuals names, like yours and mine, they have stolen from the Web. For this reason, the names and email addresses contained in this article do NOT represent real law abiding individuals!
Here are a few examples of actual emails I’ve received from scammers: (View Photos, Slideshows, Videos & More»)