Fraud alert

See coffee shop.

That’s kind of a broad notice, the coffee shop thread has 447 pages when I looked, saw nothing on the last page. Post your info here so others won’t have to wade through all of the posts.

Bob Boudreau

I’m not sure where the fraud alert notice belongs so I posted it today’s(5/5/05) coffee shop. Just scroll through today’s postings, not all 447 pages.

do people actually fall for scams like that ?
yeah you don’t need to tell me , i know they do , it still astonishes me

It’s actually the 3rd post down on page 448.

But for a change I actually agree with Bob, in that the Coffee Shop probably isn’t the best choice of places to post it, just because of the volume of different posts over there.

Just as a suggestion to make it simpler to read, you might consider copying the text of the post (from the Coffee Shop) and edit your original post here and paste the text in the original post.

Regards

Ed

This link should get you to the correct page in the coffee shop. . .

http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?page=448&TOPIC_ID=15409

Take care,

Bob,did you have any info on 66 ford pickup. You were the only reply and I thought maybe you had a line on one. Been trying to catch up with you. I didn’t even notice the difference in years. SHARP EYE!!! I reposted on layouts to see if I would scare something up. Willy

That’s really the ssame thing as the ‘Nigerian Scammers’ and variations of it that have been in email for years. What I don’t understand is how anyone could fall for it? Who gives change for a transaction like this?

–Randy

It’s a really ancient one - have been hearing a lot about similar scams attempted against people looking to sell a used motorhome/RV of late. Same modus operandi, same result. It would seem that once one “community” becomes wise to them they move on and target another - I suspect that anyone selling a large number of items through classified adverts would recieve a few of these emails over the course of their trading.

What puzzles me is that there seems to be no way of tracking those responsible for these frauds and bringing them to justice - their activities must surely leave a “trail” that could be used to find them by sufficiently skilled and determined investigators. A few high-profile prosecutions would surely reduce the number of these scams?

Extra! Extra! Read all about it: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/carsale.asp

If it seems too good to be true, it is!

I bet if the FDIC (or whoever makes such decisions) passed a rule saying that if YOUR bank decided that the check was good, and paid you the money, then THE BANK was now responsible if the check later turned up to be bogus. It wouldn’t take more than one or two such deals before the banking community figured out a fix for this scam.

The counterfeit check hasn’t arrived yet.

With the forum posting I did and over 2,400 views, the perp may have stumbled
across my alert notice.

With regards to helping catch these crooks, there is a police centre dedicated to catching just this sort of fraudster - plus the Nigerian letter guys and so on. Oddly enough, though, it’s in Canada - I have no idea if there’s a USA equivalent. But it’s probably worth sending the information you posted above to the Canadian effort - it’s called “Phonebusters” (because it started as an effort to cut down telemarketing related phone fraud, but it covers all types of telecommunications fraud now). Their e-mail is wafl@phonebusters.com. Website is http://www.phonebusters.com/

Jim