The remitter and signature are different. I sleep well at night knowing that I cause the scammer to part with his $5. At this point our buddy Richard has spent at least $5.25 to ship me the flat rate envelope.
#GARBAGE TRUCK FOR SALE CRAIGSLIST CODE#
The “From” address is real and it looks like a company that was probably used at random, but it’s not located in the same ZIP code that the package was sent from. Lo and behold – a few days after Richard sends the message with the tracking number, the package arrives. Richard asks me to take down the listing (probably because he doesn’t want to make a fool of himself and accidentally scrape the result again and message me asking the the same thing). Richard provides a tracking number, and follow up to see if the package arrives
#GARBAGE TRUCK FOR SALE CRAIGSLIST FREE#
That is because he’s probably using a free online VoIP phone like Google Voice, because the phone number he is using is easily replaceable and can be changed incase his number becomes associated with scams. Better safe than sorry.) By now you should realize the weird formatting of his messages, cutting off words at random places. But for the sake of the story I provided a fake name and an apartment address without a specific apartment number. He asks for my shipping address, and I gladly provide (You should never do this. (But we have to beg the question…why exactly is Richard, a supposed Army officer, trying to purchase a DJ Turntable? Oh well, let’s continue and see how this plays out.) Craigslist scammers usually use personas of people who are in the military, don’t ask me why, maybe it adds another layer of trust, or maybe it fits the story of being overseas. This will be important to remember later.
Of course he will give it to me.Īlso notice how he states he’s an Army officer. Most people will ignore messages like this, but because I want to mess with him, I’ll follow along and even ask for $50 more on top of the original price. So immediately off the bat your BS alarm should be going off because the person doesn’t even ask if the item is available, he is probably using a web script to go through each Craigslist listing and scrape the title of the post, then message the owner of the item in hopes of a response. With a text message that mentions the item and a introduction. The Craigslist scam starts off simple enough. I’m going to re-word that: You should never accept anything other than cash on Craigslist. You should never accept a cashiers check from someone on Craigslist. These scams are usually violating multiple laws including Forgery, Mail + Wire Fraud, and Check Fraud, which is a felony in most states.īefore you read this story, you should keep in mind that any person who tries to use a cashiers check is usually scamming you, even if the check looks legit. Note: Scams like this are illegal, although it is very unlikely the perpetrators will ever be caught because they usually originate overseas. To most people, falling for something like this can be avoided due to the “too good to be true” principle, but for people who don’t use Criagslist that often or are generally too trusting of other people, consider this a guide to avoiding this type of scam in the future. I ran into one of these scammers a few weeks ago when I was trying to sell a DJ Turntable, so I went along with it to see what would happen and I documented the whole process below to show people what really happens when scammers try to trick you on Craigslist. I use Craigslist all the time – usually it’s painless and I meet with the buyer in person and complete the transaction, but other times I get weird text messages from strangers who want to send me extra money to cover “shippers fees” or other ridiculous charges that you wouldn’t normally have to worry about.
0 kommentar(er)
