Interview With A Craigslist Scammer (infoworld.com)

snydeq writes: Ever wonder what motivates people who swindle others on Craigslist? Roger Grimes did, so he set up a fake Harley Davidson ad on Craigslist and requested an interview with each scammer who replied to the ad. One agreed, and the man's answers shed light on the inner world of Craigslist scamming: "If you mean how often I make money from Craigslist, it depends on the day or week. Many weeks I make nothing. Some weeks I can get five people sending me money. But I respond to a lot of ads to get one email back. I'm not only doing Craigslist -- there are many similar places. I haven't counted, but many. It takes many emails to get paid. That's what I mean. Some weeks I lose money. It's harder than most people think. But I don't have to go into a place at a certain time and deal with bosses and customers. I can make my own time." Grimes asked the scammer a number of questions ranging from "How do you know when you have a good victim?" to "What country do you originate from?" and everything in-between. He ended the interview asking the scammer for any words of advice for readers. The scammer responded: "It's getting harder for business people like me to be successful, but if they [the victims] follow the rules it would be very hard for me to be successful. That's one of the surprises. My friends and I thought we would not be successful for so long, especially with how Craigslist is different now. But there is always someone looking to sell something who doesn't know the game."

Comments

No value

[Anonymous Coward]

>But I don't have to go into a place at a certain time and deal with bosses and customers. I can make my own time.

And if you're lucky, you might also _do_ time.

Re:No value

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was an interesting remark. So our sick workplace atmospheres are fostering crime...
I guess we shouldn't be surprised, but I hadn't thought about this before.

Re:No value

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA:

No one ever gets caught. And if I ever got caught I would pay money and walk away. That is the way of the world.

In Third World countries anyone can bribe their way out of anything. In the US you need to be politically well connected to get away with crimes.

Re:No value

[TheRaven64]

Also, criminals are well aware of the risks they take

If this were true, then setting penalties at 50% more than the reward of the crime divided by the probability of being caught would eliminate crime, yet time and time again we've seen that increasing penalties has a negligible effect on crime rates.

Re:No value

[Edzilla2000]

Yep, because chain gangs made sure that there was no crime, it's only in "polite societies" that there is crime...

Re:No value

[jellomizer]

No it is just a normal criminals self rationalization.
Just like "If the victim really cared they should had been more careful", "People are always scamming me, so I should be first"...

Most people rarely consider themselves a monster or the villain, they will feel quite justified to themselves on what they are doing.
That is why we have a court of law, to judge peoples actions beyond the point of view of the criminal and victim because often both sides are too focused on their point of view then what is considered right and just.

Because often the victim of a crime does have a degree of responsibility too. Trying to acquire and illegal product. Avoiding working around the system to avoid taxes or extra fees... Often the victim isn't completely innocent, however the crime committed against them is far worse than what they were doing. However all this needs to be factored in.

Money from people who want to sell?

[bickerdyke]

Could someone wrap up in a few words how you could scam money from people who want to SELL something?

From buyers, yes. You could simply ask for advance payment and refuse to deliver.

Or is this the old "I'll overpay you $500 when I'm paying for the bike and you give $400 to my old friend Vladimirostowzitschzky, but have to do that before you see any money from my side"? Do people still fall for that?

As another advanced reading about how successfull scamming works, I'd suggest the Most von Lipwick books in the Discworld series.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[Lumpy]

Yes people still fall for that crap. Because most people are really stupid. and get more stupid when you trigger their "greed" center.

It's why the Here is a $100,000 check, can you cash it and send me the change.... I'll let you have an extra $1,000 for your trouble, obvious as hell scam works. Most people brains shut off when the greed center in their brain is triggered.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[Tx]

Could someone wrap up in a few words how you could scam money from people who want to SELL something?

I was wondering that. There's probably a lot of different scams, but a commonly documented one seems to be that the "buyer" will send you a fake cheque for a larger value than what you are selling the item for under some pretext or other, and ask you to cash it and send them the difference via various hard to trace means. Often banks will cash the cheque and not discover the fraud until later, when you will be on he hook to pay the bank back the full value of the cheque.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[jurgen]

Follow the second link. That page has cear info (with examples) of various types of common scams.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[Kjella]

It's why the Here is a $100,000 check, can you cash it and send me the change.... I'll let you have an extra $1,000 for your trouble, obvious as hell scam works. Most people brains shut off when the greed center in their brain is triggered.

The main problem here is that people think the bank has verified the authenticity of the check when they've "cleared" it and given you access to the money, and that any failure to spot a fake check is now their problem. Like if I go deposit some cash I got from a yard sale I expect the bank to either accept it or reject it. Not accept it now and two weeks later say "Hey, those bills you gave us a few weeks ago were counterfeit we're deducting $200 from your account". And you never get a second "real" confirmation that your bank got their money from the intra-bank system you only know when they don't. The system is pretty rigged against the somewhat clueless and gullible person who goes to a professional money handler that appears to say everything is okay.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[Anonymous Coward]

I once overheard a conversation in a bank where someone went to deposit a check for seven times the asking price of an old moldy trailer that she was selling to someone in Slovakia who just had to have that very trailer. This was in a Swedish bank. The cashier was gaping in awe at what an amazing deal the customer had gotten. Another customer who heard it tried to tell both of them what was going on, but they didn't want to hear any of it. This was about one week into a massive flood of news reports about this type of scam, in all major news media in the country.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[JeffOwl]

I wonder what would happen if you just went to a check cashing place. Obviously they wouldn't take a check for $100K, but say $1K.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[Registered Coward v2]

It's why the Here is a $100,000 check, can you cash it and send me the change.... I'll let you have an extra $1,000 for your trouble, obvious as hell scam works. Most people brains shut off when the greed center in their brain is triggered.

The main problem here is that people think the bank has verified the authenticity of the check when they've "cleared" it and given you access to the money, and that any failure to spot a fake check is now their problem. Like if I go deposit some cash I got from a yard sale I expect the bank to either accept it or reject it. Not accept it now and two weeks later say "Hey, those bills you gave us a few weeks ago were counterfeit we're deducting $200 from your account". And you never get a second "real" confirmation that your bank got their money from the intra-bank system you only know when they don't. The system is pretty rigged against the somewhat clueless and gullible person who goes to a professional money handler that appears to say everything is okay.

In the US, banks have to make the funds available shortly after deposit, before the check clears; which makes people think the check is good when it isn't.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[houghi]

Same as some people who think that if they send you a proof of payment means that the payment is done. It isn't. It is when it is on our bank account.

With automatic payment there are rules that they can get the money back within a certain amount of time and when they follow certain rules. So even AFTER it has arrived on our account. Luckily almost nobody knows how to do that and if they do it for the wrong reason, it will be fraud and the payment has to asked for by the receiver, not send to by the person doing the payment.

As a European we do not use checks anymore. So no "the check is in the mail". What we are dealing with now is that when a person does a money transfer it take several working days (not even calander days) before the money is with us. Technically this could be done almost instandly, like a credit card payment. However due to some laws it takes 3 working days (to businesses).Not going int detail, but the reason is that the Americans are not working on the weekend when they want to look at the transactios.

The issseu as a company is that when people say they did a payment, they show they did a payment we still can not handle it as if the payment was done and you have customers that are pissed of and thing we are stealing.

So no, this is NOT because the banks can make money from those two days. It is NOT because we want to make money for a few days. It is even NOT the customer who want to pay a few days late and says the payment was done while it wasn't. It is because the Mericans need to know because of terrawrists.

Unfortunately many banks employess do not know this and give the wrong info to their customers, because they do not deal with companies and mainly with payment between private persons within their own bank where the payments DO happen almost imediately.

Private person to company at the same bank? 3 working days.

In general I do like the banking system. It works, exept for this where the US had to meddle because they want all the data they can get their hands on.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[drinkypoo]

The main problem here is that people think the bank has verified the authenticity of the check when they've "cleared" it

Is it? I think the main problem is how slow and incompetent the banks are. Why does it take more than a few seconds to verify (or not) a check?

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[jtownatpunk.net]

A friend's mom fell for the "cash our totally legitimate [wink wink] checks and money orders for us and you can keep ten percent" scam. They cleaned her out. I feel a little bad for her (more for him because guess who had to step up and cover bills and mortgage payments). But I don't feel a lot bad because she wasn't old and senile. She got greedy tunnel vision.

If some company has tens of thousands of dollars in legitimate checks and money orders to deposit, they can get a bank account. The bank will assign them a personal banker who will stroke their egos (at the very least) every time they walk in the door. They won't need to find random people on the internet to cash the checks for a 10% fee. That's ridiculous.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[Anonymous Coward]

They would have the information from your ID, which is likely real since you think you're being honest. Thus when the cheque bounces a bailiff will show up at your door for cheque fraud (a little more serious than just not paying debts, thus the bailiff rather than annoying collections agencies).

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[Rei]

There is a good bit of diversity in scams, however. I've been reading up on the different varieties as I've been looking to make some sizeable purchases from China and the number of scammers operating among the legitimate manufacturers/service providers over there is disturbing.

  For example, one involves freight forwarders. They actually do have your goods shipped to your port of destination - but they don't send you the bill of lading, so you can't prove that you actually own the goods and thus can't collect them from customs. They then demand huge sums for the bill of lading so that you can actually collect your goods.

A common one with legitimate manufacturers themselves is exploiting any terms that you didn't specify, especially "price inflation". Unless you have it spelled out, they'll charge you for all sorts of unexpected costs (after you've made your initial deposit, of course) on top of the agreed-upon price. And more common than actual scams are quality issues. It's usually easier for them to just decide to lose you as a potential repeat customer than to spend a lot of money ensuring quality or to fix production errors.

With actual scammers, and sometimes legitimate manufacturers, one's in big trouble if they don't use a service that allows them to dispute the charges (paypal, credit card, legitimate escrow service, etc) and instead get tricked into using western union or other non-contestable source. Even if you're dealing with a legitimate supplier, once they have your money, they have relatively little motivation to follow through. Few have any sort of reputation that they need to protect; they can always just rebrand. And sometimes the company is legitimate but an employee is acting rogue.

Verification is made harder because sometimes the people buyers are supposed to be able to trust are in cahoots with the crooks - for example, there was a scandal a while back involving Alibaba with this sort of thing. An important part of working with foreign manufacturers is ordering an inspection (to see if you're dealing with a real factory that can actually make the real thing you're ordering, and to inspect produced goods before making the final payment). But there's no legal requirements for a person to meet in order to be able to classify themselves as an "inspector" or an "inspection company".

The whole thing is a minefield :P

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[Rei]

Why do people still use checks in this day in age? The mind boggles.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[Kierthos]

An online friend of mine was doing book editing work for a "customer from hell", who kept demanding change after change after change, and when they finally told the CFH that they could no longer work with/for them, the CFH did chargebacks on all the payments they had done through PayPal.

PayPal was of no help whatsoever in the situation.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[Sarlok]

It's the law. The maximum hold is 9 business days, but that's only for new accounts; accounts older than 30 days can hold funds for at most 7 business days.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[TheRaven64]

While I don't disagree with your first point, your second assumes a legitimate company. Most of these scams let the victim think that the person needing to move the cash is not able to work with the banking system. A popular one involves someone needing to get money out of a failed state quickly. They make up all sorts of plausible sounding reasons why a bank wouldn't deal with them (in some cases, hinting that the money was acquired illegally, so you shouldn't feel bad about taking 10% for a few minutes' work because you're just stealing from a criminal).

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[Sique]

You don't have much clue about banking, do you?

A check is just an order to pay from a certain account to either the specified person or the person cashing in the check. If the account is not with the bank the check is presented to, you have interbanking transfer. And you have transactions (read an RDBMS manual to learn about transactions!). Basicly one bank has to lock the account at the other bank, check the balance, withdraw the money and then credit it to its own account. For security reasons, no bank can simply lock an account at another bank. Instead, the transaction is split into two transactions between the banks and a clearing point. The bank the check is presented to is booking against that account at another bank at the clearing point, creating a short time debt. Then the clearing point is performing all transactions with the other bank, and thus creating a short time credit voucher. The debt and the credit voucher are then cleared at the clearing point, thus the name. If they don't match, both transactions are rolled back the next time the banks and the clearing point contact each other. A copy of the check is mailed to the other bank. So it takes at least three transaction runs just to get money from one checking account to the bank to cash out a check. For security reasons, the transaction runs are done several times (I know of one bank which does it at least five times with five different ways to transfer the transaction file, just to make sure the transaction file is complete, not hampered with and authorized).

Now the other bank has an account where money was withdrawn. The owner of said account has a certain time limit (depends on the Terms of Services, but can easily be two weeks) to dispute the withdrawal and to cancel it. If he says that the check is fraudulent, the original check will be inspected at the other bank, and if there is anything fishy about the check, the transactions are reversed. So it can take easily more than two weeks until a check finally clears. And it has nothing to do with incompetent and slow banks.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[Ol Olsoc]

Most people brains shut off when the greed center in their brain is triggered.

Its the old confidence man thing.

And for the silliest things. Here's an example.

Old Toyota RV's. These were made from the late 70's to the early 90's. But they have become popular in recent years. I have a mid-80's version.

But people have become so enamored of the things that Craigslist and eBay get scammers regularly. With crazy stuff like telling the marks that the Mini-RV is wrapped in plastic in storage at an airport warehouse, or ripped off photos of other people's RV's posing as the scammer's own. With the owner of the RV warning the marks that it is a scam. The marks do not care.

Belonging to a group involved with the Toyhomes, you can see the greed and scamming at work. I'd seen dozens of people ripped off, flying to another state with the intention of buying the RV and driving it back. And if you try to talk people out of it, you'll get attacked for it by other people who are future marks, and what can only be some of the scammers.

Then after being taken to the cleaners, the marks come back and moan about it. But there have been a few who have a greed center so strong they have been scammed more than once.

All over 30 year old RVs

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[mrchaotica]

In the US, banks have to make the funds available shortly after deposit, before the check clears

The real issue is that it's 2016 and checks don't fucking clear instantly yet!

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[MrKrillls]

Why still use checks? Because it seems that too often online accounts are not properly secure. One company I deal with will not allow signins over 12 digits - and only alphanumeric, no other characters. They are a very big company with no excuse to be back in the 1990s level of sorta secure.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[Archangel Michael]

I prefer "Monica's Ex Boy-Friend's Wife"

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[cob666]

Could someone wrap up in a few words how you could scam money from people who want to SELL something?

The most common scam aimed at sellers is the potential buyer (scammer) sends you an email that they want the item but they're out of town and will have their shipping company pick the item up. You're selling a guitar for $500, they tell you they'll send you a check for $550 to cover the guitar plus the $50 to give to their shipping company when the pick up the item. They send you a check for $650 and an email that the check was accidentally sent for the wrong amount. They ask you to cash the check at your bank and then Western Union the remaining $100 to them. Your bank will most likely 'clear' the check in 3-5 business days so you THINK the check is good because the money is in your account. You send them their 'extra' $100. 4 days later you check your bank account to find that the $650 deposit was reversed because it was in fact NOT a good check.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[myowntrueself]

Why do they *have* to? In the UK thats the banks discretion - many don't credit the account until the cheque or payment has cleared, so why do US banks have to do it that way?

Checks are way more commonly used in North America than they are in the UK. I hadn't seen a check book for 25 years, when I came to North America I basically had to have one.

The banking system in North America is pretty antiquated, as are many things (taste in music for one thing, the only music you hear in public places is golden oldies. Motorbikes are just toys. Don't get me started on toilets).

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[taustin]

Not as much as being evicted because your rent check bounced, because you bank held your paycheck deposit for three weeks to get the "float."

There's a reason it's the law.

Re:Money from people who want to sell?

[codeButcher]

This is one of the things to look out for when selling in my locale at least:

Seller wants to sell some not-too-cheap, but easily tradable item. E.g. mobile phone, TV, or even car. Buyer contacts him, sets up the payment (e.g. check deposit or EFT) and sends "proof of payment" to Seller (often, the Seller's bank will do this automatically, e.g. text message to mobile, or e-mail that a deposit was made). This often happens on a Friday afternoon. Then Buyer begs to take delivery of the goods "for emergency use on the weekend" or some other soppy story. Ignorant Seller agrees, because he has proof of payment. In the mean time, the check bounces while being processed (insufficient funds), the credit card gets cancelled by it's original owners somewhere in America or Japan, the EFT gets reversed (not sure how this is done, but it has been done), etc. etc. The Buyer now has some "free" goods to be sold by his fence for a net profit.

Basically theft, just they do not come into your house to see what you've got, since you advertise it for everyone to see. More or less with the same difficulties of fencing the loot, which may be difficult but not insurmountable.

Easier in the UK

[Chrisq]

"From the end of the sixth working day after we receive it, if the Cheque is returned unpaid by the paying bank, we cannot take the money from your account without your consent unless you have acted fraudulently" Form TSB Cheque clearing process, but it is the same for all retail banks. Smaller building societies have a couple of additional days as they pass the cheques to a bank to clear.

Wild guess

[Hognoxious]

Ever wonder what motivates people who swindle others on Craigslist?

Could it possibly be money?

self-justification

[gsslay]

This interview is full of classic self-justification;

"I like to think I am a businessman. Not a criminal."

"I like to think my victims are rich and won't miss the money I'm stealing."

"I like to think those I'm stealing from had the opportunities I didn't. This makes us even."

"I like to think that because scamming is hard and takes time, it's like a real job."

"I like to think it's my victim's own fault I'm scamming them. It's not my fault they don't follow the rules and don't know the game."

Re:self-justification

[Gilgaron]

The cognitive dissonance may also be why he consented to the interview.

Re:self-justification

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Just an observation.... I spent a good amount of time traveling in parts of the ex-USSR in the previous decade. I speak good Russian (not fluent, but pretty good) and I've been to places off the tourist track. Got to know several people there on a personal level. I can tell you that the justifications the scammer gave are exactly what someone from that part of the world would use to justify what they did. That doesn't mean that the scammer is from there, but if I had to bet on it, I'd bet that they were. You would not believe the tortured logic they can use over there to justify all kinds of immoral, illegal and unethical behavior.

Re:"Business people like me"

[CRCulver]

Did you read the article? Don't assume that he's a "little", "low-rent" conman. He may well be in a country where the scams he is pulling off, net him an income that allow him to live very comfortably and have considerable pull in local society. And in many developing countries, the line between "businessman" and "conman" is far more blurry than people in North America or Western Europe might think.

Scambait them

[DidgetMaster]

The only way to fight these scammers is to waste their time. Make them think you are falling for their scam so they lose time and money trying to pursue you for nothing in return. This scammer even admitted that he loses money some weeks. It is because he didn't get anyone to fall for it. If the typical scammer had to chase down 1000 dead-ends instead of 10 before he got someone to fall for it, the whole thing would not be worth it. It's like telemarketers. Ignoring their calls is not what you want to do. You want to answer it and give it to your 2 year old so the guy on the other end spends 5 minutes trying to get the toddler to "give the phone to mommy". Waste their time and they will eventually stop.

House rentals

[YrWrstNtmr]

House rentals are another big CL scam. My ex-neighbors house was being actively scammed.
It was up for rent, and this young woman shows up at my door asking about it. She had been in contact with some dude on CL.
"$900, all utilities included."
Of course, he was out of town (had to move to California suddenly). He had the key in hand, and wanted her to send him the $900 + $900 security dep. In return, he sends her the key, blah blah.

This was a house that actually was being rented for $1100, with no utilities. From a valid real estate agency.

I told her in no uncertain terms..."This is a scam. You will never see the key, nor will you ever see that $1800 again"
Young single mom, but she did have the smarts to ask around.

Re:Why all mass scamming works

[DidgetMaster]

Email and Robocalling works because scammers can send out a million emails or call a million phone numbers for nearly free. Most are ignored but a few respond and out of those few who respond, a few victims can be easily scammed. The answer is to force the scammer to waste too much time trying to find the few gullible victims. If every email blast got a million responses, but only one or two of them were going to fall for the scam and the other 99.999% of them were just bogus responses by people pretending to show interest; then it would cost them too much to find their victims. Same with phone calls. If you answer the phone and pretend you can't hear them or just put the phone down for a few minutes while they read their script to nobody, you are part of the solution. Making it super quick to rule you out means they can contact/bug 10 other people in the meantime. Waste their time!!! Buy or fall for NOTHING!