An eBay scam?

[NineToTheSky]

My daughter is selling her car on eBay, and she received this email:

From: McLarry Morgan <larrymorgan900@yahoo.com>
To: xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: payment and shipping.
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 05:47:24 -0700 (PDT)

Hello,
Thank for your mail, i am okay with the price which is 1500£ for the CAR, But i will offer 1600£ This is how i will want us to seal the transaction cos i dont want any delay at all. So all i am going to do is to contact my associate in the state to issue you a cheque of (5500£ ) which will be for both the shipping and your own money So all i will want you to do when you recieve the payment is that you will deduct your own money 1500£ and also 100£ for reserving the CAR for me and then you will send the remaining shipping funds through VIA WESTERN UNION MONEY TRANSFER to my inetrnational shipping agent who will be coming over to your destination for the pick up, This is highly on Trust, but i believe i can trust you with my money ok, Once my shipper recieves the money he will come over to your location for the pick up, now the money wired to the shipper is his fees for his services, transportation to your location and back to me,
also for all charges that may arise along this transaction cos i will want it to be delivered to me safe and sound without problems, i shall send you my shipper address which you will use in sending the funds to him ok.

So if this is okay by you, i will like you to kindly get back to me with your contact information like this:
Name:
Address:
State:
Zip Code:
Country:
Tell Phone,Both the Cell Phone and the Office or Home Number: which my Bussiness Associate will use in sending the Check Payment to you Via courier service ok,Thanks and God Bless you,
I’ll be waiting for your favourable respones.
Regards,
Larry.

N/B…I will like you to remove the advert from where it was posted, so that you will not receive any offer again from other Buyers.
This is obviously a scam, but how does it work? Does Larry assume that my daughter won’t bother clearing the cheque before sending the money? If she doesn’t have that sort of money in her account - which she doesn’t - where is the money coming from, assuming that the cheque will bounce?

[Garfield226]

@NineToTheSky

This is obviously a scam, but how does it work? Does Larry assume that my daughter won’t bother clearing the cheque before sending the money? If she doesn’t have that sort of money in her account - which she doesn’t - where is the money coming from, assuming that the cheque will bounce?

Snopes has a good write-up of this.

The scam works because the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) requires banks to make money from cashier’s, certified, or teller’s checks available in one to five days. Consequently, funds from checks that might not be good are often released into payees’ accounts long before the checks have been honored by their issuing banks. High quality forgeries can be bounced back and forth between banks for weeks before anyone catches on to their being worthless, by which time victims have long since wired the “overpayments” to the con artists who have just taken them for a ride.

[Baraqiyal]

100% pure unadulterated scam. There seems to be more than the usual amount of these guys on eBay lately.

[Nanoda]

There are certainly many more threads these past few months about it.

Here’s a similar style scam involving hotel bookings, and one almost exactly like the OPs about selling a truck.

[KlondikeGeoff]

Anybody who has placed something for sale on craigslist will get these too, so often that their confirmation of the ad spells out the warning.

One varient I got from an ad there came minutes after placing it. The price was accepted, and “all” the writer wanted to know (so he could send a cashier’s check) was my name, address, phone number, email address and local bank name.

Craigslist uses a disguised email address for responders.

It was well written, so I emailed back (with an anonomyous email address) that I only would take cash, and if he was interested, to let me know. No response.

[MaryEFoo]

The bank will get it out of your daughter. She is the last endorser of the check before it goes to the bank, which does what she told it with the money, so they will treat it as a valid debt from her to the bank.

It’s up to her to go back to the issuer of the check–unknown name, unknown address, fat chance.

[NineToTheSky]

This is getting silly…my daughter has now had three scam emails!

[Fear_Itself]

@NineToTheSky

This is getting silly…my daughter has now had three scam emails!

Ooh, now that’s an opportunity to have some fun. Ask each bidder to supply the address they want the surplus funds to. Then give each bidder one of those addresses to send the bogus cashiers check to, made payable to the bidder receiving the check. Perhaps they will all deposit the checks and spend the money before the checks bounce.

[NineToTheSky]

@Fear Itself

Ooh, now that’s an opportunity to have some fun. Ask each bidder to supply the address they want the surplus funds to. Then give each bidder one of those addresses to send the bogus cashiers check to, made payable to the bidder receiving the check. Perhaps they will all deposit the checks and spend the money before the checks bounce.

What a good idea