Hi I Got This Message On Craigslist?

1. Anonymous Says

   It’s a SCAM
   Craigslist is ONLY for face to face CASH transactions. You NEVER give your full name or home address to ANYONE on Craigslist for any reason – don’t you know how many people have been targeted for home invasion robberies after giving this info to a fake buyer. And you notice how they NEVER mention what you are selling – because that same email is sent to everyone selling anything on Craiglist. And ONLY a scammer would ever offer MORE money — real buyers always try to reduce the price
   Read Craigslist’s scam warnings – -they can’t be any clearer. The check they send you will be stolen or counterfeit and will bounce 3-4 weeks later, long after you sent off whatever you are selling, and you’ll owe your bank the FULL amount of the bounced checkhttp://www.craigslist.org/about/scams
   “You can sidestep would-be scammers by following these common-sense rules:
   DEAL LOCALLY WITH FOLKS YOU CAN MEET IN PERSON – follow this one rule and avoid 99% of scam attempts on craigslist.
   NEVER WIRE FUNDS VIA WESTERN UNION, MONEYGRAM or any other wire service – anyone who asks you to do so is a scammer.
   FAKE CASHIER CHECKS & MONEY ORDERS ARE COMMON, and BANKS WILL CASH THEM AND THEN HOLD YOU RESPONSIBLE when the fake is discovered weeks later.
   CRAIGSLIST IS NOT INVOLVED IN ANY TRANSACTION, and does not handle payments, guarantee transactions, provide escrow services, or offer “buyer protection” or “seller certification”
   NEVER GIVE OUT FINANCIAL INFORMATION (bank account number, social security number, eBay/PayPal info, etc.)
   AVOID DEALS INVOLVING SHIPPING OR ESCROW SERVICES and know that ONLY A SCAMMER WILL “GUARANTEE” YOUR TRANSACTION….”
   Don’t bother writing back or you’ll end up on a spam list. Instead relist whatever you are selling and be sure to put something like CASH ONLY, LOCAL BUYERS ONLY, NO SHIPPING, NO EXCEPTIONS
   and ignore everyone wanting anything else
   Only sell to people who can meet you in a public well-lit location of your choosing. Places like Starbucks, McDonalds, mall food court, hotel lobby, public library, bank, etc are all good options as there are plenty of people around and there are usually security cameras in case this person tries to do a grab and run. I always meet at my local Starbucks and have never had a single problem or scam attempt in person

2. Barkley Hound Says

   It is a scam. The give away is that he will make pick-up arrangements. The scammer always sends extra money for the shipping and then asks you to wire it to the “shipping company”. He receives the money and the check bounces in a month.
   ℬ ℋ

3. Multivit Says

   It’s bulk mail. Ignore it.

4. Buffy Staffordshire Says

   100% scam.
   There is no buyer.
   Notice how the scammer doesn’t call what you are selling by name? He uses the generic word “item”, that is because he sends the same stock copy/paste email to anyone selling everything that he can find and he has no idea what you are selling and doesn’t care.
   There is only a scammer trying to steal your hard-earned money.
   He is not interested in your identity or bank account, only your cash.
   The next email will be from another of the scammer’s fake names and free email addresses pretending to be the “secretary/assistant/accountant” and will demand you cash a large fake check sent on a stolen UPS/FedEx billing account number and send the money via Western Union or moneygram back to the scammer posing as the “shipping company”. When your bank realizes the check is fake and it bounces, you get the real life job of paying back the bank for the bounced check fees and all the bank’s money you sent to an overseas criminal.
   Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever.
   When you refuse to send him your cash he will send increasingly nasty and rude emails trying to convince you to go through with his scam. The scammer could also create another fake name and email address like “FBI@ gmail.com”, “police_person @hotmail.com” or “investigator @yahoo.com” and send emails telling you the job is legit and you must cash the fake check and send your money to the scammer or you will face legal action. Just ignore, delete and block those email addresses. Although, reading a scammer’s attempt at impersonating a law enforcement officer can be extremely funny.
   Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his ‘potential sucker’ list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of being the perfect buyer, great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram.
   You could post up the email address and the emails themselves that the scammer is using, it will help make your post more googlable for other suspicious potential victims to find when looking for information.
   Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don’t bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn’t worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash.
   Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer.
   If you google “fake check buyer scam”, “fake Western Union buyer fraud” or something similar and you will find hundreds of posts of victims and near victims of this type of scam.

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