When Something Just Reeks of Being a Total Scam

I ran into this type of thing when I was trying to buy an Oasys, occassionally you would find a deal that was too good to be true, you just knew it was bull{censored}.

My radar went off right away with this asshole.

http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/msg/2039183050.html

Hi,

Do you still have the SH-5 for sale?

Where are you located and what kind of condition is it in?

Thanks

Alex

Here is the reply:

James Goodman

thestud_91@hotmail.com

Hello

Yes the unit is available but I am out of USA now because I work at Red Cross and I'm traveling a lot. Now I am in UK with them. This is not a problem because I know a very good shipping company who can help us with this transaction. If you are interested please let me know for I can tell you the details.

Thank you

So why do I think it's a scam?

- Price: These things sell for 2-3k, the $1,300 set of a flag right off the bat.

- His Reply: He never answered any of my questions and immediatly talked about some good shipping company he knew.

Thanks God he knows a 'very good shipping company who can help us".

I wrote him back for fun:

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

Please email me when you return to the USA and we can make arrangments for me to come and pick it up in person.

Thanks

Alex

Besides him asking half of the going rate, look at the guy's email address.

These scam artists make my blood boil.

Ao, if you live in NY and list something on L,people don't list an item and then leave the country for work related reasons, and if they do, they will write you back and say "Hey, I'll be home on such and such date, you can come see it then", and not talk about shipping right away..

I'll let you know what thias POS replies with.

but he is thestud!

These people really deserve a punch in the face... lol.

My opinion is that Craigslist is only useful for local, cash and carry transactions. Craigslist offers no protection whatsoever from scammers, and there are lots of guys in Russia, West Africa and elsewhere who spend their entire days in internet cafes posting fraudulent listings. Sadly some of these pricks have discovered the allure of vintage analog synths.

The "I'm out of town but know a secure escrow/shipping company/broker" is a run of the mill scam. A more recent development are realistic spoofed Paypal emails "confirming" that you've received a payment for something you've sold but telling you that your account won't be credited until you either ship the item (if the scumbag is trying to steal the item from you) or pay shipping/customs fees via Western Union (if he just wants to get some cash).

If Western Union required any sort of verification when cash was picked up a lot of this activity would dry up. Given concerns about money laundering and terrorism I find it hard to believe how unregulated wire transfers are.

So, I shouldn't bid on Keith Emerson's Modular?

His description of the SH-5 is directly from the Vintage Synth site:

http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/sh5.php

And it looks like his pics came from here:

http://matrixsynth.blogspot.com/2010/05/roland-sh-5-vintage-monophonic.html

Well, that's common with a lot of auctions. They usually get the descriptions from there, more often than not.

Still, the drop shipping crap is clearly a sign of fraud.

Tell him your on a business trip as well, and you need it shipped to Lagos, Nigeria & could he possibly accept a money order for over the amount & wire the rest back and you will take care of shipping!

I wrote and asked him when he will be back...

He replied with:

not for 6-7 months.

So I said, that's too bad because I really wanted to buy this today.

LOL

We'll see what he says.

Just don't bother, unless you really don't have anything better to do (like playing with your awesome synths).

Even the Craigslist disclaimer says "always deal locally".

I know you're right bro, but I suffer from OCD, lol

Email back and tell him you're the guy sat on the right hand side of him in the cybercafe in Nigeria :poke:

Although most of these scammers are young men hustling up a living in Nigeria or Russia and aren't likely to personally confront you some of them do have local accomplices. (This is how the "my agent will pick up the item" scams work.) They can be dangerous criminals, so I wouldn't suggest having too much fun with any scammer who knows your identity. Anonymously tormenting scammers by wasting their time and convincing them that other scammers have cut in on their action (i.e. "Scambaiting") is a popular internet sport.

I don't want to derail this thread, but just last week I got real temporarily excited....

An Ebay ad somehow completely vanished after being up a few days, but it was for a Prophet 5 synth. The seller didn't have a BIN, but in his description he said his "target price was 2k" and to contact him for details. He had very legitimate photos of the unit including a photo of a receipt from Wine Country with recent work done.

Other than the comment about contacting him now for an immediate sale of 2k, and the fact that he wrote "Hello dear friend..." the ad looked legitimate. He did have a long history of Ebay buys, but absolutely nothing as a seller. I also wrote a question on Ebay but it didn't post so others could read it. I asked the seller if the unit was available for local pick up. He never replied. Strange huh?

Keep in mind the ad said he would sell this through PayPal which brings up another question after reading too much PayPal information...

1. If you send the money and don't receive the goods, and the seller vanishes, after filling a claim with PayPal, will PayPal really reimburse you 100%?

2. Does it matter how old the product you are buying is? In this case it's over 30 years old.

3. I have heard of deals where the buyer didn't receive the goods, filed a claim through PayPal, but PayPal only reimbursed the buyer the amount of money that was in the sellers bank account...which was a fraction of the total sale.

PayPal continues to change their policies so it seems impossible to really know what they will do. For myself I NEVER let them take money from my bank account, but go through my Visa. Therefore I have another layer of protection, and I could file a claim with Visa instead of PayPal if I chose.

Anyway by the time I replied with my cell number to ask more questions, the bids were already over 2k. So of course he never replied to my second email.

A couple days later the advertisement completely vanished. I checked completed listings and nothing exists there either. It's like the advertisement never existed except for a copy of my question to him asking if the synth was available for local pick up. When I click on my email link it says "This listing (110604153305) has been removed, or this item is not available"

I'm more nervous than ever with Ebay, and I would love to know anyone's RECENT experience with PayPal and if they actually reimburse the buyer 100% or just whatever the seller has available in his bank account?

Knock on wood Greg, I've never had a bad experience on Ebay buying anything. I am extremely careful and choosy about who I buy from though.

I've bought a $5,000 diamond ring from Ebay, and I was a tad nervous, 5k is a lot of coin for anyone, but I took my time and really researched the seller as best as I could.

The sale turned out great, ring appraised at $14,000 and a happy ending was had (wifey was happy) that's all that matters.

I've had one bad experience as a seller, although I don't sell too much.

When I do sell something, I always take a photo of the package right at the post office and email it to the buyer...small little added touch people seem to like.

This one chick bought a DVD from me for $5.99 + $2.99 shipping.

Cost me $4.04 to ship it to her, and then she clamed it never arrived.

Is it possible? Sure, but it was such a small amount, I just instantly credited back her $8.98 and took the loss.

I'm not going to risk my perfect rating over 9 bucks because someone most likely swindled a free movie from me.

I wonder if I didn't give her a refund what wouldve happened in that case?

Tat's why I don't like selling because people are such the lying douches, I don't have the stomache for it.

I do like buying stuff from Ebay!

The Prophet V listing was most likely a hijacked account. The warning signs of this are that the listing insists that you contact the seller at a non-ebay email address for a special "Buy-It-Now" deal, and the ebay account has hundreds of transactions but has never sold a musical instrument. For a while Kurzweil PC3Xs were a popular target for these cretins, but since I constantly watch Kurzweil items I would immediately report the listings and get them taken down. While Paypal offers some protections you would have most likely received spoofed Paypal emails and somehow you would have ended up being required to send funds via Western Union.

haha i usually just write, "ha. SCAM someone else @#$%#"

I've purchased a number of items from Ebay. Often I buy from "Ebay stores" which I suspect may be a bit more serious/experienced sellers, and I do prefer "Buy it now" rather than auctions. I think a lot of the problems on Ebay have to do with the private seller listings (ie, scammers tend to try to fly under the radar, and setting up an Ebay store is not that), and auctions (ie, sellers bidding on their own items).

But I've also done some non-store auctions. Majority of transactions have been good, but I know to avoid the most notable scams. (ie, Auction items that start with a ridiculously low amount such as a penny. Any mention of contact, and especially payment, outside of Ebay. Etc) I've had one questionable transaction. I bought a Yamaha KX77 (terrible instrument, unfortunately). The seller's description wasn't entirely accurate, and a have a suspicion that he was bidding on his own item since the only other bidder happened to be located in the same small town he was. I've also had one auction where my item was never sent after payment via Paypal. I had to initiate a Paypal Resolution Center "case", and then immediately escalate it after a couple days of no contact from the seller. You do have to know how to deal with Paypal's resolution process, because Paypal's attitude seems to be "this is between you and the seller. I don't want to get involved at all until after you exert a lot of effort with the seller and still get nowhere. In other words, YOU do all the work, sucker. It's YOUR problem; not mine". It turns out that the seller was hospitalized and didn't have anyone managing his business, so lots of his orders went unfilled. Fortunately, he also didn't remove any customers' payments from his Paypal seller account during that period. Paypal made a lot of his customers, like me, wait about 3 weeks before Paypal finally released our own money back to us. If the seller had run off with our money, we indeed would have gotten nothing back. It appears that Paypal has no "insurance" to cover this sort of situation. So no, there is no guarantee that you'll get 100% refund from a Paypal dispute settled in your favor. That's because the refund comes from the seller's paypal account, and if he empties the money from his account and refuses to put it back in, Paypal has no funds to reimburse you. In that case, Paypal's response is pretty much "We've terminated his account so he can't swindle someone else -- well, until he opens another account with a different contact and pulls the same stunt next week. But you've been swindled. Here's the contact info. Good luck in small claims court. What? You paid by credit card, and you're gonna issue a charge back to Paypal??? Dammit! We tried to trick you into letting us put our hand directly into your bank funds.".

In conclusion, Paypal offers almost no protection whatsoever from scammers. You definitely need to pay by credit card, so you have the option of issuing a "charge back" via your credit card company. Never, never, never let Paypal directly deduct funds from your bank account. Do not pay for anything over the internet except via a credit card. The force of a credit card company is the only protection you have, and that especially is true for Ebay/Paypal.

i looked into a CS-80 that was listed on Peoria IL Craigslist.

the guy didn't return my first email, then on the second claimed that it was actually located in Bozeman MT and that his son "listed it on a bunch of sites" for him, and i was welcome to come and check it out.

uh yeah. cool story bro.

So numbnuts replied again, which I'm glad he did because at least now I can share with everyone the complete details of the scam, and maybe prevent someone from getting screwed in the future.

So last thing I wrote him was this:

From: xxxxxx@hotmail.com

To: thestud_91@hotmail.com

Subject: RE: Roland SH-5

Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 14:12:20 -0500

That's too bad because I'd really like to buy it now.

Thanks anyway

Alex

and this morning he replied with this:

From: thestud_91@hotmail.com

To: xxxxxx@hotmail.com

Subject: RE: Roland SH-5

Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2010 05:08:51 -0500

Hello

I use uShip for the deal.You can check their company on www.uShip.com is 100% safe for both of us .I need your full name and address for I can start the shipping to you and they will send you an invoice in which they will mention all the transaction details The shipping is free for you. The transaction is pretty simple : you will receive the invoice from them and this mean that I sent the unit and after you receive this invoice you must send the money through Western Union . Immediately after the transfer will be checked you will have the unit. Nobody can't take the money until you receive and decide if you keep it or not. If the unit has a problem or something that is wrong the agent from uShip will take the unit from you and he will give you all the money back Everything is through uShip and Craiglist for it can be secured for both of us. I wait for your mail.Also you will have a 30 days money back guarantee and you will have 5 days and in this 5 days you can check the unit and see if it's ok.

Thank you.

Imagine my good fortune.

I get an SH-5 for only 1300 bucks + free shipping, and I get a chance to try it out for 5 days, and if I dont like it, I can return it for a full refund, today is my lucky day, lol

What a dick, the guy deserves the beats so bad.

I'm often not sure they send actual replies or even understand much if anything of what you email them with, i think they might just have a folder of responses they cut and paste.

You know, when I'm travelling internationally for my job with the Red Cross, I always bring my vintage synths with me in case I want to sell them.

I've had a bunch of gear up for sale on CL lately- a couple power amps, bass bins, some monitors. I'll get these emails back replying to the ad that will say "monitors?" or "power amps?". Like it's a probe to see if they get a reply.

I got one where they wanted to do the shipping thing. With 2 120lb bass bins. Yeah right.

J E F F G...

This is what I thought. But it's difficult to read through pages of PayPal terms & conditions. The bottom line is that unless the seller has money in his account, you won't get a cent. PayPal isn't insurance, and it's certainly not an internet escrow service.

IMO their marketing is extremely misleading.

And I'm sure the P5 ebay advertisement was a hijacked account.

check this out on SF Craigslist:

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/msg/2051608666.html

I wrote to the seller and received the following response

Wow they are so popular - you should really go for it!