Running the long con, eh?
One easy way to check out suspicious job offers, etc., is to just go to Google, type in the name of the company or other relevant data (in this case, “overseas money order” and then “ripoff” or “scam.” You will find many, many descriptions of what you described in your Google results. Hell just “money order” and “scam” will do the trick.
This is the essence of the scam. In order to collect your $100 you must cash the fraudulent money order, keep your $100 and then make a new, real, money order to forward.
The first money order is a fraud, but your bank will not discover this before you send off the second, real money order from your bank that will be tied back to your account. And you will be liable.
Due to the Check 21 act your bank must clear the money order swiftly unless a problem is obvious. So your bank cashes the fraudulent MO, you send a real MO out of your bank account, and during the gap between the time your bank finds the original MO to be a fraud and the time you send a real MO, the scammer is gone.
If they really existed at all. They could be a guy in Ukraine just laughing his ass off.
http://www.fdic.gov/consumers/consumer/alerts/check21.html
This is where they broke the chain of accountability and made you responsible for the next transaction. You are responsible for everthing that follows.
Scam (a fairly common one, too). I’d take it to the police. They probably won’t be able to do much with it, but it might help them building a case against this guy.
Every legitimate independant contractor has to be licensed by the state. Check your state’s website and if this person’s name and company do not come up, forward all emails to the state.
They will kick this person’s ass to hell.
I worked real estate for 26 years, and I had to verify all conractor’s licenses.
Got the money order today, it was issued via USPS. Neat little thing - USPS has a money order verification hotline. I verified that it is not real (actually two money orders, $999 each). I spoke to a representative, they told me to take it to my local post office and turn it over to the inspector there. That’s probably what I’ll do, since I figure that they have further reach than local law enforcement.
I’m hoping that’s enough to cover my ass, but I’ve done nothing wrong, so I shouldn’t have to deal with it in the future.
On the website, it gave ways to tell if the money order was fake - there were two glaring inconsistencies. I then called the verification number to double check that they weren’t real. The guy has been blowing up my email and even sent texts through Yahoo (of course he couldn’t use a real phone number). I’m going to ignore it to a certain point, then let him know that I know they aren’t real. I really want to scam the scammer, but I don’t think I have the means. Oh well. He should’ve caught on by now that I’m not going to do this for him.
You might want to consider notifying your state’s licensing bureau. They take this kind of shit very seriously.
Deal with it head on so no more of your time is wasted.
Send him a text saying when you did the verification process with the USPS, they came back as fake so you turned them in to the postal inspector as directed.
Umm, No. Take it to the Postal Inspectors and follow their instructions. Do not make contact with this guy again, unless they say it’s OK.
This. The Postal Inspectors are government officials, no? They know what to do with this, I assume.
I would also contact my email provider and Craigslist and tell them what’s going on with this guy; they may or may not do something about him, but companies like Yahoo or Google have lots of experience dealing with people who mis-use the internet.
It seems like someone may have already done this. The original email address was AOL, he then switched to Yahoo (same username, just @Yahoo.com) claiming he was having issues with his AOL account.
I’ll follow the advice and just ignore him. I won’t be able to go to the post office until tomorrow, hopefully it won’t be too much of a hassle. But if it helps stop this guy then I really don’t mind the hassle.
Yeah, that state licensing bureau, they are right onto guys in Istanbul. They’ll be on a plane and exercising every bit of their well known Turkish law enforcement capability shortly.
The government entity I work for, as well as every business I know in the bay area- including Kinkos, Inc, back before they became FedEx Office, advertises in Craigslist.
This is in response to the “several thousand” fake business listings on Craigslist.
So she should just sit there and be on the receiving end of endless e-mails and text messages rather than telling him that she knows for a fact they are fake and she turned them in to the postal inspector???
Yes. The postal inspector should know what action is most likely to catch the scammer, so once you’ve brought them in, just leave it to the experts.
Has anyone ever asked this question and wasn’t being scammed?
I doubt it. I guess I was going for conversation on the point & confirmation of what I already believed. I always thought that internet scams were something overhyped, not that I’d become the mark.
I don’t want to be a chicken little, but do not fuck with this guy and do not tell him you’ve reported him.
You are dealing with a criminal here, who has your name and your address.
Chances are he’s just some small-time crook in Turkey, but there is a non-zero chance that he’s part of an organised gang, who may have people in the US. The fake money orders had too have been sent from somewhere in the US, I’m guessing?
Can you view the header of any emails he’s sent you? I believe Yahoo still shows the originating IP of the email. Find “view headers” in your email client and look for the “x-originating IP” - it’ll be four numbers separated by dots. Then paste that number here and it’ll hopefully tell you where the email came from.
I sort of thought that, too, then I got the call from the guys who wanted to help us fix our computer. I had already heard of the “give them access to your computer over the phone” scam, so I basically laughed at them, but scams seems to be ubiquitous these days.
I second not confronting this guy, too - go to the post office tomorrow, and if they can’t tell you what to do about the scammer, go to the police, too. If no one is interested in tracking this guy down, then I’d just get him blocked from your email and phone, etc.
Hes’ a crook but he’s not out for revenge, he’s out for money. Once he realizes he can’t get any out of the OP, he’ll move on to his next mark.