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The Five Nigerian Gangs Behind Most Craigslist Buyer Scams
itwbennett writes Five Nigerian criminal gangs are behind most scams targeting sellers on Craigslist, and they've taken new measures to make their swindles appear legitimate, according to a study by George Mason University researchers Damon McCoy and Jackie Jones. In a new innovation, they're using professional check-writing equipment plus U.S.-based accomplices to not raise suspicions among their victims. McCoy and Jones will present their paper on Sept. 24 at the IEEE eCrime Research Summit in Birmingham, Alabama.
Craigslist provides seven tips for avoiding fraud. The scam in this article involves ignoring three of those tips. The funny thing is that those three tips have nothing to do with the ambiguous "too good to be true" line that people throw around. All of those tips involve how (not) to conduct transactions on a site that provides minimal protections for fraud.
I was selling off an ATI 9800 high-end model (was old by then though) & sent me $5,000 in money orders (wells fargo type): I was only asking for, iirc, $100 or so for the videocard too...
Right then, This crook began to attempt to "push me" into going to the bank immediately after I wrote him back via email & called him stating "Hey buddy - you sent me a *wee bit much* for this vidcard!"
He stated "It's a gift for your help"... lol, "yea, right"
So, right then, I called WellsFargo & they determined the money orders were part of a scam online + a known "bad" run of them that were stolen &/or duplicated...
Did this by their "MICR #'s" / "Routing Numbers" (for lack of a better expression - it's what I used on checks to do that in my old job back in the 1980's is why & it's similar enough here too) when I went to verify the funds being actually available or not!
They weren't, needless to say... however, were *I* to cash in on them? I WOULD HAVE BEEN LIABLE!
That's WRONG: Banks ought to be the ones doing THAT part of it, NOT I, as a depositor in good faith!
Now, I have a background in my past as a loss prevention mgt. figure & I had to verify personal checks A LOT on that job - that's pretty much HOW I did it too (bank calls, & verify funds etc. - et al) - so I did the same here.
Glad I did.
The bank it was drafted on THEN instructed me to call Wells Fargo to verify funds!
AGAIN - THE BANKS THAT ACCEPT FUNDS OF ANY KIND IN CHECK OR MONEY ORDER FORM SHOULD HAVE DONE THIS, as well as my OWN bank too, upon receipt of myself attempting to cash them in & deposit them!
However - Apparently, NOWADAYS @ least, THEY DON'T... & THAT, people, is TOTAL BULLSHIT!
Why?
Heck - It puts the depositor @ risk, & all it TAKES is a phonecall to the bank or money order company involved to check for funds being actually present, OR, if the money order or checks involved are stolen, or counterfeit, etc.
To me @ least?
It seems like banks are "in on the scam" by dodging THEIR DUTIES here, in not verifying check or money order funds being present OR if they are legit (not stolen or counterfeited etc.).
APK
P.S.=> In the end, I went to the local FBI office with the forged/stolen checks, with the email information the crook (a "reverend" out of Atlanta, no less) gave me, along with his phone number (disposable cellphone) - needless to say, the crook stopped calling me RIGHT after I did that... apk
cash can be checked for legitimacy with a counterfeit detector pen
"Counterfeit detector pens" don't exist. They're just iodine: they have no special detection properties whatsoever.
"Counterfeit pens are fairly accurate and save a lot of time, but they aren't foolproof. For instance, if the counterfeit is printed on paper with a low starch content, the pen won't detect it. If someone managed to steal a roll of unused currency paper and printed it themselves, the pen wouldn't detect it. If someone washed a $1 bill until the ink was gone and re-printed it as a $100 bill, the pen wouldn't detect it. All the pen really detects is whether the paper is made from wood pulp or an alternate, less starchy fiber."
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This isn't your usual 419 scam. They're not offering millions of dollars to suckers.
What they're doing is buying stuff from Craigslist sellers with bogus checks that look awfully real. There's another step where they send a too-large check and ask for a partial refund. The checks are so good that they clear, and the fraud isn't discovered until weeks later, at which time your bank yanks the money back.
There's still hints of the usual 419 stuff in there, but you don't have to be either gullible or greedy. You simply have to misunderstand the idiotic system under which checks are processed, which is most of us. The idea that a certified check could fail, a month after you deposited it, is baffling to the majority of people who think of a certified check as practically good as cash.
The checking system is so screwed up that most sellers need to treat all checks with suspicion. But credit cards are expensive to process, and Paypal... is Paypal.
If the buyer is not able to meet in person (I don't care why), a US Postal Money order is available anywhere, up to $100 per m.o. If the buyer or his agent) wants to pick up in person, cold cash. If they can't or won't agree to either of the above payment methods, sorry, but I won't sell to them. I've never had a legitimate buyer unable to pay in one of those two ways, and everyone I've bought from on Ebay will accept a Postal MO.
I don't have an experience with this, but my identity was stolen once and I got the same impression about the credit card companies and credit agencies. If your identity is stolen, it's no big deal for them. They just push back and bad charges to the companies they came from. e.g. If Crook steals your identity, opens a credit card in your name, and goes on a spending spree at Electronics Hut, Electronics Hut will be caught having to pay for all of that equipment that Crook "bought."
The same seems to be true about this check fraud. The bank doesn't care if the check you deposit bounces horrendously. After all, if it does, it doesn't hurt them. It hurts you. Since they aren't hurt, they see check fraud as something for their customers to worry about instead of something that they could work to reduce. Now, if a "cleared" check gave the person that money, the money couldn't be yanked back once the bad check bounced, and the bank was stuck covering the deficit, you can guarantee that banks would have a fix in place for this scam within a week.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
This isn't your usual 419 scam. They're not offering millions of dollars to suckers.
What they're doing is buying stuff from Craigslist sellers with bogus checks that look awfully real. There's another step where they send a too-large check and ask for a partial refund. The checks are so good that they clear, and the fraud isn't discovered until weeks later, at which time your bank yanks the money back.
There's still hints of the usual 419 stuff in there, but you don't have to be either gullible or greedy. You simply have to misunderstand the idiotic system under which checks are processed, which is most of us. The idea that a certified check could fail, a month after you deposited it, is baffling to the majority of people who think of a certified check as practically good as cash.
The checking system is so screwed up that most sellers need to treat all checks with suspicion. But credit cards are expensive to process, and Paypal... is Paypal.
True, and that is what scam artists depend on to run their con. Banks in the US have to make the funds available after a set period even though the check has not cleared; i.e. the issuing bank has not yet accepted the check and verified that it was a valid check and the funds are available in the account. Most people think that because the bank has deposited the funds in their account that the check is good; a not unreasonable expectation because most checks do not bounce and thus they never realize the bank may not have actually cleared the check before the funds were made available. The law was designed to prevent banks from putting excessive holds on checks but a side effect was to give scammers a new way to cheat people.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.