Scams and fraud emails:

A couple days ago we sent an laptop on ebay to a guy who said that his daughter needed a birthday gift after a while this guy got more and more suspicious after reading his way too polite emails and then he said : Please send the amount of (300 some dollars) to this address: ... via Western union
After a while we wondered why we hadn't got the money in our account and the freaky thing was that he actually sent false fraud paypal emails saying that he made the transaction when nothing happened on ebay at all! Inotherwords: It was an illusion that he bought it when it was still on ebay having 0 bids. We thought the most obvious thing is that he bought it and it was NOT a buy-it-now item. So how did he?? Simple. he DIDNT! He faked it and almost won!! HEre's the email we reported to ebay :

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After putting an item up for sale on ebay, we recieved some emails from kkellypomo@yahoo.com We now understand that he was fraud and we almost sent him our laptop ,of course, we didn't send him money through western union.
Here are some of the emails:


I was just coming in now when i got this email and that one from paypal as well.I checked my account and there i say i was over drawn of extra $250.I have submitted my daughter's address who just left for Egypt for the money to be sent to her via western union.I have had this same kind of issue before and it was well resolved.As soon as you make the transfer,just send the information to them and then they will resolve it by crediting your account with the total money.I hope you understand this and i am very grateful for your understanding.Thanks and God bless.

Next one:

Thank you so much,

I had to take permission and make the payment right away since it was needed urgently and i must thank you cos it got me at the point of my need cos i had it presented as a birthday gift.I have been a member so i know how it works so well.I hope this explains well about what you want to know.Thanks

And then

Thank you for your email.I want you to know that i am not presently able to make use of that and i have directed it to my daughter,and if you re considering the western union charges please i will want you to send $220 to her and i believe the $30 will be enough for the western union charges.Please let me know asap when this is done.Thanks

and:

Thank you for your email.Please thank you for your consideration.I want you to know that i trust western union and i will be responsible for any thing that might occur.I want you to just go send the money through western union now to the information,i mean the address i submitted with paypal and get back to me asap so i may forward it to my daughter now.Please try to understand and take urself to be in my position.I am presently in a conference now and if not for that i would have love to do that myself.I will be waiting to get back the details as it will be on the western union receipt as soon as that is done.Thanks so much for your understanding and God bless you...never mind please are you a Christian like me too??

SO we now know it was a scam and we're just reporting it.

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Freaky huh? I just wanted to share that with you guys so you can watch out for people like that. I also about a year ago, when I knew nothing about frauds, I got an email about a girl in a country I've never heard of in AFRICA about her parents in jail and how they escaped this and that as if some drama story and asked me to be her friend and wanted me to send her money to help her, at that point I just deleted it.
Anyone else have experience with scammers? What I think is the wierdest is that the paypal emails were fake but the email address wasn't.

Don't mind me posting to a 3 month old thread

I have a LOT of experience dealing with scammers. I used to work as a relay operator for the deaf. Deaf/HOH people can access a website and enter a phone number. This information goes to a relay operator who dials the number and reaches a hearing person. The operator then types what the hearing person says back to the deaf person, and reads what the deaf user types to the hearing person.

Unfortunately this system is notoriously abused by scammers...usually from Nigeria and Ghana. I have become quite keen at identifying scams, and there are a lot of them. One of the more common ones I saw was using (I presume) stolen credit card information to buy a whole lot of random products (which can then be resold). This is one that businesses in particular need to be on the lookout for. If you look up "419 scams" you will find a lot of info on this (419 refers to the Nigerian criminal law/code that deals with fraud)

A very common one is the cashiers check overpayment. In which they will buy something from someone...say whatever they buy is $500. They will then send out a check for way more than this amount...say $1500, and they will say to cash it, take what is needed for delivery, and send the rest back. So a person will go to their bank, cash the check and get money, and send the money off...the only problem is the check is fraudulent and does not clear which the person finds out a couple weeks later when they find that they now owe the bank $1500.

I have seen a similar situation happen with paypal...where someone will send money on paypal, and the person will send the item off (and/or the overpayment money)...but the transfer remains in "pending" status...and eventually just disappears because it is fraudulent. By the time it disappears the person has already sent off the item/money.

This is why I always tell people that if you are at all unsure about who you are selling to, and they are using paypal or a money order/cashiers check....to ALWAYS make sure the the paypal transfer gets out of "pending" status and into "confirmed" (or whatever) status. And to always wait for a check to clear at a bank before sending out an item or money

These are the more common ones, but I am familiar with many others. Of course there is the "you won the UK lottery" emails...or the "you are related to such and such king and he wants you to hold money for him" etc... People are, generally, more familiar with these.

There is also what I call the "love scams" which I would see now and again using the deaf relay system. African (usually) scammers scour the online personal "looking for love" sites and become aquainted with as many woman/men as they can, pretending to be a love interest for a few weeks. They will call these people using the relay system, and will usually eventually ask these people (their supposed "soul mates") to send them money so they can buy a plane ticket to visit. Some people do send them the money I would guess, and never hear from their "soul mate"/scammer again. The scammers will make call after call to different people saying "i love you, etc..." to every one of them.

Before you say "why don't you say something to the people getting scammed"...let me say...i wish! There are too many laws and restrictions that the FCC places on relay companies and their employees. Relay operators are not allowed to make judgements, observations, opinions, etc... on any call. We are meant to be a virtual machine that merely relates information from one party to another. (There are some criteria that if a call fits there is a small way we can intervene, but I won't go into that here). Suffice it to say that it can be a very discouraging and depressing thing for an operator to deal with every day.

I have not had that job for a few years now...but I think it has made me a very paranoid person.

Well isn't this a cheery first post from me! lol