Since: Saturday, February 13, 2010

Email Address: ashely.fred8gmail.com

Location: salt lake city

States affected: UT - utah    

Notes:
Responded to my post of child items for sale (a car seat). Wanted my personal info (full name, mailing address, cell #) in order to send me a check for the car seat, plus $20 to remove craiglist ad for the item. I did so & said I'd remove ad as soon as check was in mail. Next am told the check will be for $2,800...of which I was to keep $100 (plus the cost of the car seat & the previously mentioned $20 for removing ad). The $100 was to cash the check, take my cut, and send/wire the rest to her shipper, who was going to pick up the car seat as well as other items that the buyer wanted (conveniently also located in my town).

I never agreed to do this, because as soon as this crazy amount of money came up I did some research on craigslist & found that this was the setup of a scam. (In which a convincing fake check is cashed by the naive seller, the seller then sends actual funds to the phony front 'shipper,' then finds out after a few days that the check was a fake. At this point the seller is responsible to repay the funds to the bank & is out the money sent to the 'shipper.')

The buyer sent a few emails indicating that they were concerned with my lack of response. About a week after the email proposing the wire fraud scam, a check for $2800 arrived via overnight courier. I did not cash the fake check. A few days later i got a very indignant (and all capitalized) email from the scammer, telling me that their lawyer/the police/FBI would be coming to my house if I didn't email back within one day with news that the check had been cashed & the remainder of the money had been wired.

So ultimately I lost nothing, but I easily could have. I just want to warn anyone else out there that this could happen to them. Be careful!

Report to the FTC at https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/