I have a very good friend who is absolutely one of the nicest, giving, Christian guys I know. He is also a complete child sometimes.

He put his boat on Craigslist and received a text message asking a few questions. Eventually the dude offered $10k for the boat...my friend accepted. (No test drive, no personal phone call)

The dude told my friend that he was busy with traveling so he would write the check for an additional $2k so that my friend could pay the shipping company that would be picking up the boat. He could just pay the person who came up to pick up the boat personally.

The check arrived Saturday, made out to my friend, but from a “company” called Mopar Rebate Inc.”. My buddy deposited the check and was going to wait for it to clear before releasing the boat.

I was sitting with him yesterday as he was telling me all of this....just staring at him. Finally I said, “Dude, what the fuck are you thinking? This is a classic scam!”

It took a while, but I finally got him to believe that this was all bullshit. It helped that I found this “Mopar Rebate” via Google where someone detailed a similar situation.

Like I said, he’s a very good dude, and really needs the money; so I supposed that part of his naivety is his desperation to want to believe that it is real.

God it makes me hate people.

Your story reminds me of a question I often think of about such things: How do we learn the things we know?

I often see incredulous comments about young people who can’t change a tire, and then there are all the complaints about people at shooting ranges who don’t know the first thing about safety, much less marksmanship and gun handling. I was present when my brother taught his late-teens daughter to change a car battery, but how common is that? How do people learn about sales scams or Nigerian princes? I admit it surprises me, but are those things some of what people are exposed to during the countless hours they spend watching the teevee? Is that discussed in The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal they read over breakfast every morning?

I’ve actually picked up a lot of life knowledge right on this forum despite having spent decades living before coming here. As for naivety about the wicked people, it’s too bad when that happens, but sometimes I think I prefer being around naïve people rather than the ones who see evil everywhere.

There's a version of this scam that targets lawyers, usually the small and solo practitioners. A new prospective client emails in about handling their will/trust/divorce/business formation, etc., (anything that wouldn't usually be a contingency fee arrangement), and usually quickly offers to pay a retainer. The retainer payment will be in excess of whatever was agreed to, and paid by some hokey business check from a no-name bank. The scammer then says they are traveling, or don't have time to send in a new check, so just deposit the check that is in the lawyer's hands, and refund the difference. Of course, the check bounces the next week or is rejected by the payee's bank as a fraud, after the lawyer issued the refund of the difference.

quote:

Originally posted by ShneaSIG:
There's a version of this scam that targets lawyers, usually the small and solo practitioners. A new prospective client emails in about handling their will/trust/divorce/business formation, etc., (anything that wouldn't usually be a contingency fee arrangement), and usually quickly offers to pay a retainer. The retainer payment will be in excess of whatever was agreed to, and paid by some hokey business check from a no-name bank. The scammer then says they are traveling, or don't have time to send in a new check, so just deposit the check that is in the lawyer's hands, and refund the difference. Of course, the check bounces the next week or is rejected by the payee's bank as a fraud, after the lawyer issued the refund of the difference.

If a lawyer falls for this type of a scam, the state should revoke their ability to practice law,

quote:

Originally posted by scsigs:

quote:

Originally posted by ShneaSIG:
There's a version of this scam that targets lawyers, usually the small and solo practitioners. A new prospective client emails in about handling their will/trust/divorce/business formation, etc., (anything that wouldn't usually be a contingency fee arrangement), and usually quickly offers to pay a retainer. The retainer payment will be in excess of whatever was agreed to, and paid by some hokey business check from a no-name bank. The scammer then says they are traveling, or don't have time to send in a new check, so just deposit the check that is in the lawyer's hands, and refund the difference. Of course, the check bounces the next week or is rejected by the payee's bank as a fraud, after the lawyer issued the refund of the difference.

If a lawyer falls for this type of a scam, the state should revoke their ability to practice law,

Easy to say, now. When these scams first started making the rounds, though, which was when the internet was in its infancy and data wasn't always so readily verifiable, it's more understandable that folks got duped. As a byproduct of being taken by the scam, the lawyer's trust account would likely end up short, which would get the lawyer in hot water with their supervisory and disciplinary body. The rule for some years now is that any time a trust account is overdrawn leads to an automatic notification of the disciplinary authority, and, as far as I know, that always leads to an investigation. Losing client funds is a way to get suspended or disbarred very quickly.

With some methods, like Craigslist, Armslist, and the phone calls, start from the position that it is a scam. One can back off from that as details warrant.

I delete most of everything. If the bank or IRS wants me, they can come find me in person.

Similar thing happened here in OKC last year.

Really naive guy gets a check but he has no bank account so he goes to one of those check cashing places with the intention of just cashing it.

That didn't go to well.

No one tells him anything but within a few minutes the cops show up and haul him off to the jail.

LINK to story

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Steven Childs thought he hit the lottery, but he actually became a victim of a secret shopping scam last May.

Last year, Childs says he received an email about becoming a secret shopper for Rite Aid, Walmart and Walgreens. The email asked him for his background information to see if he was qualified.

When he learned that he was qualified, he thought he hit it big.

The next email he receives was for him to get to work. The company mailed Childs a check for nearly $2,000 to be used for his pay and to buy items at the stores.

However, the catch was that he had to deposit the check into his bank account within 24 hours.

“I didn't have a bank, so I went to a check cashing place and next thing I know, I got swarmed by cops,” Childs said.

The Oklahoma County District Attorney's Office ended up charging Childs with second-degree forgery for attempting to cash the fake check.

As a result, Childs says he had to spend 11 days in the Oklahoma County Jail.

Childs says he tried to show police the emails of the scam, but it didn't seem to affect on his case.

Now, he says he fears he may have to plead guilty for someone's else's crime.

“Next court date is in February when I`m supposed to take the guilty plea because I don't have $10,000 to take it to trial,” he said.

Eperts said scam artists are always after one thing.

“The goal with this is usually for the perpetrator to get some money back,” said Patrick Allmond, with Focus Marketing.

Allmond says the crook will usually give you a check for you to deposit, and they'll ask for some money back. Before the bank realizes the check is fake, you have already given them money from your account.

“When someone wants to transact business with me via a Gmail address, it's a red flag, and the English is not perfect; it's a little bit broken indicating to me it might be an offshore company,” Allmond said.

In the email Childs showed News 4, the company didn’t provide a name or a phone number.

“It costs us and times are already hard,” Childs said.

News 4 reached out the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office but have yet to receive a comment on the matter.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
How do people learn about sales scams or Nigerian princes?

Ok, look: The Dominant Entertainment Media Billed As "News" is generally crap, but here's at least one thing they get right: They cover this scam, and scams like it, on a regular basis. I've seen it on the local "news." I've seen it on network "news." I've heard it covered on NPR. Never mind the number of times I've seen it discussed on-line. It's every-freakin'-where.

If you don't know about this scam by now, you have to have been hiding under a rock. Literally, hiding under a rock. Same goes for the various "Nigerian <whatever>" scams.

And still people fall for this crap. I have an "adoptive"... uh... (tries to calculate relationship...) uncle, I guess, that was showing me photos of his Vietnamese "fiance." As soon as I saw them (some were pretty damn explicit) I told him "Uncle: You're being scammed. Do NOT send 'her' any money." ("She" was asking for plane fare and money to bribe officials so she could come to the US and join him.) Luckily, he did not, and eventually somehow discovered "she" was a he and he was indeed being scammed.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
Ok, look: The Dominant Entertainment Media Billed As "News" is generally crap, but here's at least one thing they get right: They cover this scam, and scams like it, on a regular basis.

Thanks for that, but if that were the only way to learn about them, I would be ignorant because I don’t watch the BS Media in any form unless being held prisoner someplace like a waiting room. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure how I did learn about such scams, but it definitely wasn’t that way, and I can think of a number of friends and acquaintances who wouldn’t learn about them that way either. Despite what many people claim to believe to salve their own consciences, it’s not necessary to live under a rock to avoid watching the teevee, especially the BSM.