Possible buyer scam?

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Drizzt

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This will likely end up as a very long message so please bear with me. To start things off, let me give the background details. I am attempting to sell my now old Mac G5 computer on www.secondhandmac.com. I have used this website in the past to sell old computers when I've upgraded to a new one, and it has worked out fine for me....until now possibly. I have listed my computer at $900 before shipping. The description of the item is limited to 400 characters, so I was not able to include that buyer pays shipping in the description along with all of the other details of the computer. My email address is available for any interested buyers to contact me first and ask me questions before they commit to a purchase. The problem is, unlike eBay, there isn't as much seller protection with secondhandmac.com since no registration is required to post an ad, only a name and email address.

So to cut to the meat of this, I received an email from a "stan williams" using a yahoo email address asking the following:

Is this unit still avaialbael for sale?Let me know as soon as possible.
Click to expand...

Note the bad spelling. I can understand a few spelling mistakes though, so I let him know that it was still available for sale. I then received the following reply from him next:
Thanks for the response,
I am very much interested in this item & Requiring my payment method i
will be sending you Western Union Money Order and it will be handled
by USPS .So for the payment to proceed all i need from you is your
full name & your payment address , where you want the money to besent
to by USPS and you will recieve a confirmation of payment
immediately my payment has been approved by USPS and for me to be
the winnig bidder i will offer yoU ($980) for the Power Macintosh G5/1600 so
that we can end the auction earlier.So for the
shipping i will be
responsible for that, and i will be picking up the item with my
personal fedex account upon reciept of confirmation of
payment order approved.So get back to me to me on time with the
information needed for the payment to commence.
I await your reply.
thanks
Click to expand...

Now I know I'm not perfect by any means, but it almost looks like an illiterate person typed up that reply. Also the mention of the word "auction" confused me since secondhandmac is not an auction website. Now that was HTML display of my email. I forwarded the email onto a family member asking for advice and since that forwarded a text only copy, it revealed another email exchange in between my own and stan's. I have copied the text only version below:
Thanks for the response,
I am very much interested in this item & Requiring my payment method i
will be sending you Western Union Money Order and it will be handled
by USPS .So for the payment to proceed all i need from you is your
full name & your payment address , where you want the money to besent
to by USPS and you will recieve a confirmation of payment
immediately my payment has been approved by USPS and for me to be
the winnig bidder i will offer yoU ($980) for the Power Macintosh G5/1600 so
that we can end the auction earlier.So for the
shipping i will be
responsible for that, and i will be picking up the item with my
personal fedex account upon reciept of confirmation of
payment order approved.So get back to me to me on time with the
information needed for the payment to commence.
I await your reply.
thanks
- Show quoted text -



\n\nOn 3/27/06, fashionX X wrote:\nHello,

To purchase this Digitalrise MP4 Player, please postal
money order for bid amount to:
\n
Receiver: Darrin WEAVER
Address: ADDRESS INFORMATION EDITED OUT IN THE INTEREST OF DARRIN WEAVER'S PRIVACY.

Regards

--- francis martins wrote:
\n
>
##########################################################################
> # craigslist Advisory: Fraud and Scam
> Warning! #
> # Please read our scam advisory page before\n
> replying to this message: #
> #
> http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html
> #
> #
> #
> # This warning is automatically attached\n
> to #
> # ALL craiglist forwarded emails
> #
>
##########################################################################
>
> Is this unit still available for sale?\n
>
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------
> this message was remailed to you via:
> [email protected]\n
>
------------------------------------------------------------------


______________________________",1] ); //-->

Drizzt Do' Urden wrote: Hello Mr. Williams,

Yes the unit is still available for sale at this time.


On Tue, 28 Mar 2006 12:35:34 -0800 (PST), "stan williams"
said:
> Is this unit still avaialbael for sale?Let me know as soon as possible.
>
Click to expand...

I am not Darrin Weaver, however I felt the need to take out his address information just to be safe. I can confirm that he was listing a US address though if it makes a difference. However this makes Mr. Stan Williams appear somewhat shady to me, as I'm not sure how that other email exchange slipped in there. At the same time it almost appears as if Stan Williams is using another yahoo account trying to buy something else using a money order as well.

Now I did some quick research on money order scams, and while Stan Williams' emails don't match what I've commonly read, I'm still very wary at this point. I don't sell online very often, so I was wondering if any of you all have experience dealing with money orders. At this point, I'm considering taking this computer sale to eBay anyways, as stan's emails are the only ones I've received thus far. But before I did that, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't being too paranoid over what might be a legit buyer. Thank you for your time, and for any advice you may have :)
 
Yep. You'd get a fake e-mail confirmation of the money being sent after which the seller would put on the full court press for you to ship the mac immediately.

Only thing that is somewhat atypical of these scams is that the guy didn't offer you way more than you were asking/the thing is worth. I guess he's going for more plausible offers with his scam vs. enticing a greedy jump for the money out of the seller.

USPS doesn't handle (except if they are mailed USPS of course) or confirm Western Union MO payments AFAIK as well.

Tell him you'll need a USPS postal money order and you won't be able to ship until the MO is in your hand, if you want. But he'll either come back with an explanation of why his method is better or give up on you. Either way I wouldn't give him any personal info.
 
Yea - as the seller i wouldn't send anything until there is cold hard cash in your hands.
Also surprised that he didnt offer a lot. One of my coworkers once sold her car on Ebay and someone tried to scam her. Sent her a bogus money order for $2000 over her asking price, then asked her to send the difference back via Western Union. The sad part was that the only reason she didnt get scammed was because the WU teller warned her not to go thru with the transaction when she was about to do it....
 
Wow, he used the name Stan Williams? As in Stan "Tookie" Williams who was recently executed in California (crips founder)? How brazen. Yeah, just send back a nice little "fuck you" or a picture with your "american" salute. You should also check out a website at www.419eater.com . They specialize in scamming the scammers and you can find out a great deal of information just by perusing the site.

Note: I'm too lazy to read over the guidelines and whatnot, but if I'm not allowed to insert swear words, please just edit the word and delete it. Don't just delete the whole post because there is some good information here. If you can't delete just the word, PM me and I'll edit it.
 
As long as you don't play with your lettering to do an end around the built in word filtering, no worries (generally).
 
[quote name='edavis0780']Wow, he used the name Stan Williams? As in Stan "Tookie" Williams who was recently executed in California (crips founder)? How brazen. Yeah, just send back a nice little "fuck you" or a picture with your "american" salute. You should also check out a website at www.419eater.com . They specialize in scamming the scammers and you can find out a great deal of information just by perusing the site.

Note: I'm too lazy to read over the guidelines and whatnot, but if I'm not allowed to insert swear words, please just edit the word and delete it. Don't just delete the whole post because there is some good information here. If you can't delete just the word, PM me and I'll edit it.[/QUOTE]

hahahaha reminds me of the time i got a scam email like this from a man by the name lionel richie... which was an odd alias to choose...
 
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