Hello, firstly let me say I’m new to the community but have appreciated the content I’ve dug through on here and Zeep’s youtube channel. I apologize if this is the incorrect place of this thread I’m making but nevertheless, here’s the story.
A few months ago my boss asked me to sell a few small cases online for him because we’re trying to make room for expanding our vape store. In Las Vegas businesses are always coming and going, so it was my idea to try placing the items for sale on Craigslist and Offerup. I had some normal replies and sold the first one with no issue. The second larger case was actually my nightmare for a few weeks. I had received a reply on Offerup for a buyer interested in the case, he said his wife was interested in the case but couldn’t come down to take a look at it because they were just setting off on their honeymoon to Maryland. It was weird, but I rolled with it. I sent them pictures and they took a day to reply back. They had asked me to “kindly remove the listing from Offerup” and in doing so they’d pay an extra 80$. I did and then they had asked me to text the supposed wife so we could set things up. The story is they lived in California and would pay movers to come and collect the cash but they didn’t have time to pay them. Instead, they wrote me a check out for $1950 which was way more than I had asked for on the case. I was supposed to go and cash the check and send them a picture of the paystub when I did. I would have to pay the movers with the extra money and keep some for myself. I knew it was very fishy so I told the bank about it, and my bank instantly recognized it as fraudulent and took it into their own hands but left me with a picture of it for my own records. I decided that I wasn’t just going to sit there and let the story end there. Instead, I decided to contact everyone who was roped into the scam unknowingly. The fake check was written under a legitimate company so I decided to contact them with all of the information I had collected and they were very pleased when I told them that their name was, unfortunately, being tarnished from some out of the country scammers. Next, I contacted the bank who was on the check which was also in California (the company who “issued” the check was a plastics company in California). The bank had already been contacted by the plastics company after I had told them what was going on, but now I had two banks in two different states looking in on this. The check was airmailed to me from Ups so I also tried contacting them to see if they could provide any information on who sent out the package; and of course, they couldn’t. I guess the most peculiar thing about this scam is how many unknowing companies were involved in this when you really looked down at the trail I followed. I ended up speaking with a lumber company somewhere in the south when I kept dialing numbers that were associated where the package was supposedly being sent from and even they had gotten calls regarding the same issue. I never knew how easy it was to spoof a physical address where your package is allegedly being sent out from.
here’s a link to screenshots of the message thread and to the fake check. Nothing ever came of this to my knowledge but I felt like sharing my experience here could hopefully help us better understand a scam like this. offerup scam - Album on Imgur
Whenever selling something online, especially in the local area on sites such as craigslist, i follow a strict three strike system.
3.Want to pay via a check that's been sent through mailing services.
As it is, systems already heave various loopholes and exploits to ensure buyer protection during purchases, even if said person is fraudulent.
But for others new here, or new to this business of Scammer prevention etiquette, this is a very good lesson, however i feel it has a better place in General discussion? Either way, thanks for sharing your story, this community is dedicated to driving people like him to the brink of insanity, or into the slammer, so we prevent future occurrences like this happening
1877 700 0262 e mail scam