scam?

[Steve J Murray]

Hi folks,

I'm selling a lens and this is the reply I received today from a fellow who gives me a somewhat supicious plan for payment:

"FurtherMore, He is in debt with me and he is ready to make payment to me. So i will ask him to send the payment to you. Once you recieve the Money Order Payment, you will deduct the cost of the Lens, you will then have the rest of the money sent back to me via Western Union.

You will deduct the cost of shipping via a registered mail and the express cashing charges at the bank from the money left.

If this is okay by you, I want you to furnish me with your details"

What's going on here? Does this sound legit? He's given me the phone number of this person in the US that is supposed to send me a money order.



Thanks for any advice, Steve Murray

[Nick_3536]

SCAM.

You'll find out later the money order is fake.

[Ron Marshall]

It is a Scam. If you want to test that, ask for the money to be sent to you by Western Union. They probably will decline that.

[roteague]

It is a Scam. If you want to test that, ask for the money to be sent to you by Western Union. They probably will decline that.

Either that, or tell him that your bank will put a 45-day hold on it. :D

[Greg Miller]

Scam. And even if it wasn't would you really want to expect payment from someone he can't collect from himself?

[Steve J Murray]

Thanks for the heads up. This smelled like a scam right away but I thought I'd get some opinions from you guys. Thanks for confirming my suspicions.

[Adam Kavalunas]

Definately a scam! I was selling a lens before on ebay and got the exact same message from a possible buyer! Needless to say, i didnt go thru with the sale.

[Ken Lee]

I had the same person kill a sale I was making, because he took the "buy-it-now" option.

Contact eBay.

[andrew vincent]

Exact same thing here with a lens I was selling last month. Sob stories about daughter dying, house fire, really over the top. I got a check for $10,000 for a $800 lens with the expectation that I forward the sum on to his associate. Called the bank, and found out that they had had dozens of cases like this already. He was persistant and sent a second bad check too - this one looked printed out of a home inkjet printer...

[Brian Ellis]

This is the classic Nigerian money order scam. The message you received is a little more intelligible than the Nigerians used to be but it's the same scam. You could have some fun by stringing him along for a while but I'd just tell him where to put his money order and forget him.

[S. Preston Jones]

While much is made about the Nigerian scam, I recently received one "from an English lady" whose husband put Twenty million Pounds in his bank. She is dying from cancer and a stroke and wants me (someone she does not know) to take this money and set up a fund for the upkeep of widows, widowers, orphans, and other down-trodden. Her husbands relatives are wealthy and she want this money misused or invested in ill perceived ventures. She has a lawyer, but she is not letting him set up this fund. Lots of different scams are out there.

[Capocheny]

Steve,

This scam is older than the hills... stay far, far away and don't touch it with a 10' pole!

Cheers

[Michael Graves]

That actually sounds perfectly legitimate to me. But I will better his offer. Simply send me your lens,properly packed, along with your bank's routing number and your account number, and I will have my lawyer wire 20 percent of the inheritance my late uncle left me.

[Michael Kadillak]

What absolutely kills me is how many folks are so friggin greedy that they continue to fall for this in any number of variations in staggering numbers each and every day. If that were not the case, the scammers would give it up.

And when it dawns on them that the check was bad and they do not have that big windfall in their bank account and are personally liable for $20,000+, the crocodile tears start flowing. As Forrest Gump said "Stupid Is as Stupid Does".