Craigslist = Scammers

[Charlie Self]

I thought I'd give Craigslist one last try. I put a tool up, gave all the specs, price, my phone number, said I had a couple photos, etc. I also posted, at the end, that spammers and scammers should save their breath.

It has been up about three hours. I just got my first scammer, supposedly up in Vianna, VA, but unable to write English really coherently. He wants me to take a cashier's check, to which he'll add

50 bucks for my inconvenience. Is "inconvenience" another word for getting screwed out of money?

I emailed him back, telling him to check the notes on scammers at the end of the ad.

I probably should have agreed to the deal, waited until his agent showed up, and hammered the shit out of him just for practice. Except the agent is probably some DC doofus without a real idea of what's going on.

[Leon]

Tell him to make it easy on himself and just sent the exact amount of CASH.

[Lew Hodgett]

What they want is a home address.

Accept the offer.

Ask them to send check to local FedEx station (give address) marked "Hold for pick up".

Trust me, they will go away.

BTDT

Lew

[David Nebenzahl]

On 9/8/2009 6:36 AM Charlie Self spake thus:

You already made a mistake there.

I advise all my friends and clients to follow the #1 rule when posting to Craigslist: never ever give out *any* contact info in the posting. No phone #s, certainly no addresses!, no real email addresses, nothing.

If you use their email anonymizing feature, you're safe and can then use discretion and common sense to filter out the scammers from the legit buyers.

[Charlie Self]

Probably true, David, but it doesn't bother me a whole lot to tell scammers to go piss up a rope.

The oddity is, I've never once gotten a phone call from one of them. It's always email, through the anonymizing feature.

[nospamanobama]

same here - last friday i put up a home gym for sale (to make room for my inherited woodworking eq) and all i got was the generic "i wish muchly to purchases your item" and will send a cashiers check, and someone will come pick up the "item".

yeah, right - a 4-station home gym, buying it sight unseen, and they will just come and "pick it up".

craigslist could be so great if it weren't overrun by these guys.....

[Casper]

Exactly David. Never give out any personal information and use the anon email feature only. I've sold a ton of items on the crailist this year including an entire living room of furniture, no problem. Of course I don't give out any personal info and I merely delete trash emails that are obviously spam/scams. Why even respond to them? `Casper

[David Nebenzahl]

On 9/9/2009 4:28 AM Charlie Self spake thus:

Well, the thing is, this type of scamming is more than just an annoyance. 'Round 'heah in Oakland recently there was a string of home robberies (or burglaries, forget which) by thieves who answered Craigslist ads for vehicles for sale, where the sellers had stupidly given out contact information in the listings.

[Charlie Self]

We don't get too much of that around here. For one thing, there are fatter pickings near Roanoke and Lynchburg, and inside the cities. For another, stealing from people living in the country isn't really safe.