WARNING - SCAM TARGETING CLASSIFIED ADVERTISERS

I am currently advertising a Tormach Duality lathe in the for sale column on this site and I got this response to it.

 

Thanks for your swift response and it's Good to read from you today, I will urge you to keep these ( Duality Lathes  for me and also consider it sold to me.

 

Also keep off all buyers and I don't know if it is possible for you to delete the advert from the internet so that other buyers will not contact you for the item till the arrival of the mover/shipper.

 

Your contact information will be needed so that I will Instruct my Secretary to issue out a Bank Cheque in your Full Name and total amount of £150.00 with immediately effect.

 

Please email me your contact information for the cheque to you be delivered such as:

 

Name and last name on the cheque:

Home address:

Phone number:

 

Thank you and God bless.

J.Patterson.

Who do they think they are kidding. Anyway he wouldn't be able to afford to ship it to Nigeria.

Yet another scammer......there are so many errors in the text....for starters...and who has a secretary? Unless thats what he calls his missus? 

If he can afford one of them he can afford to buy new ?

As Mrs Brown would say...'idjit'......

Edited By John Rudd on 24/06/2016 14:02:20

"Bank Cheque in your Full Name and total amount of £150.00 with immediately effect."

And you were asking for £380 !

It is 100% the scam I keep warning people about.

Neil

I've had a similar message today and looks the same name for my staking tools told him cash only on personal collection.

Seems this adverts site is being scammed

Edited By Windy on 24/06/2016 14:35:44

Please PM me any email details you have of this person, I need to find pout what username they are using so I can nuke them with extreme prejudice.

Neil

I am worried as Windy's ad is two months old. I have emailed every advertiser since the beginning of April, but I have no way of knowing how far back the scamming rat will go:

Dear Forum User,

I am an administrator on the Model Engineer website and editor of Model Engineer.

I have become aware that a scammer is contacting advertisers on this website using the name Patterson and saying they will get their secretary to send a cheque, in a rather badly worded email.

This is definitely a scam. Do not reply, just pass any information they send you direct to the police using this website:

www.actionfraud.police.uk/report_fraud

Please treat any response to your classified ad with care.

Regards

Neil

OK, at some cost to my sanity every single for sale advertiser (as far as I can tell) has had that email sent to them.

My apologies to anyone who gets it more than once.

I'm going to change the thread title to make it easy to find.

Neil

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 24/06/2016 15:44:45

Hi Neil,

I have sent a report to the Actionfraudsquad. Unfortunately I will probably have Mr Paterson asking to buy it again because I am pulling the advert so that I can re-list it at a realistic price, having seen just how cheaply you can buy a C3 lookalike these days. Mind you that could change soon, given the way the £ has gone.

I don't need to do that, I see the price has come down to that shown in the text of the advert.

Hi Neil,

Is there any reason why the classifieds could not be made visible to the forum registered users only?

Ed.

just humour me....how does said scammer make any money unless you are daft enough to part with goods without cleared funds?

I had one on wenesday,all it said was could you send me photos and whats your asking price,and that was it,deleted straight away.

Only registered users can access the contact details. The scammer had an account with no location details on it, fortunately someone has helped me identify the account and I have suspended it.

Neil

Search for threads with 'scammers' in the title and its all explained, it's a well known scam that hits you in several ways.

Neil

Have found same name has targeted many sites.

Thanks to those who have replied to my email, it seems that a fair few people have been contacted, and not always for high-value items.

My worry is that this person will come back, so if anyone gets a suspicious response to an ad, please let me know.

Neil

I had a more "interesting" scam that is highly likely to have come from this site in a round about way. I mentioned something I had recently bought. On here and no where else. Some one contacted the supplier complaining that it was faulty and arranged for a replacement to be sent - not to my home address of course.

My fault really because I am usually cautious about what I post on the web. Must admit though that having this particular trick tried out on me was very surprising.

John

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Neil as anyone can register without our approval would it be safer if only members who have had a first post approved or better still made say 5 posts before they can get access to the classifieds? This is quite common on other forums. Though doubt if the sofware wil stretch to that.

I have already asked the question, but Katy will still be on holiday until next week.

Neil