Be careful of fraudulent replies to advertisements
Be careful if:
- The person offers you far more than you have asked
- They seem more interested in your contact or bank details than the item
- The English is poor or stereo-typed.
The most obvious and frequent fraud is where a person promises to send an amount far in excess of the asking price and to send the balance somewhere. Here is an example:
Subject:
[SPAM] Payment and shipping arrangements
Hello [name removed],
Thanks for the mail
response,i will like to have them all the {deleted}.i am okay
with those {£95} but i will still have see those pics Okay.and
i want you to delete the ads from the website, i have a reputable shipper
that will take care of shipping from your end i want to let you know
i have a client in the state that is oweing me a sum of (£2,500)
, i will instruct him to issue you a cheque on my behalf and as soon
as cheque arrives, you hold out your amount and send the difference to
my shipper for the pick up in your location, i hope i can trust you for
my balance and also you will be contacting my shipper with all neccesary
information needed for pickup in your location i.e the actual weight
and exact dimension of the{ Bickerton).I will compensate you with (£20)
for the stress and time taken if this terms are okay by you, do get back
to me with the following details wicth payment be made out to you like
this
Home Address... Full Name on cheque... State...
Zipcode...
Country...
Telephone Numb er...
Mobilephone number... Fax Number...
Do get back to me asap with this details for payment to be made out to
you immediately. Waiting to hearing from you.
thanks.
Best Regards....
Jennifer.........
What you need to know is that even after a cheque has "cleared" these days it can still bounce (and it surely will) but by that time, the balance you have sent somewhere will have disappeared for good.
Notice in this case that even the person's email spam checker suspects something and has inserted [Spam] in the header. The poor English is also often a useful clue.
It doesn't have to be as blatant as the example above. Consider the following:
Thanks for your feedback,The payment is via certified
banker's cheque, I will instruct a client to issue out
the payment to you on my behalf via certified banker's
cheque..Meanwhile, he will include the shipping fees
to it which will be a little bit higher than the
price of the (Bike)..all you just have to do is to
deduct your asking price which is £100 out of the
payment and forward to balance to my pick up agent
which i told you i will arrange for the pick up.
I will also want you to re-provide me with your full
name that the payment will be issued out to and your
address in which the payment will be posted to
including your contact phone number for further
communication..
I will be waiting to read from you soonest.
You may miss this if you expect the difference to be a few pounds. It is more likely to be similar to the first case.
From: bill jackson
To:...
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 10:18 AM
Subject: purchase
Hello, i saw your ads about selling of your mentioned item...
i will like to know the best price of it...with the best condition and pics of it...
ok thanks
This was sent in answer to an ad offering 3 items and may be more traditional "spam" - wanting to check the validity of an email address in order to sell it. It may have been produced by a "spambot" - a program scanning the web, capable of recognizing small ads.
Another example of possible fraud is when the person wants your full bank details and seems uninterested in the goods offered. We don't currently have an example of this and would be glad to receive one.
If you receive any email you suspect is fraudulent, do not answer it, but please send it to the webmaster
We have considered a number of possible ways of protecting you further but don't have enough evidence to adopt any strategy. So if you receive a possibly fraudulent offer, please send it in.
For further information, have a look at this Office of Fair Trading advice.
