So here's the deal. I recently bought new furniture, a new Sofa and Love seat and a new coffee table. I am now trying to sell my old Sofa/Sectional on Craigslist. I posted up my For Sale and within about an hour, I had several replies. I replied to each of them, but never got another response back. The next morning, I check my email, and I have another hit on my Items. The person was asking if the item was still available, to which I replied Yes. About 20 minutes later, they message me again, asking if I would reduce the price, to which I said Yes, I am willing to negotiate. About an hour later, I get a message stating that the person is very interested, that they are sending me a Certified Check for the amount, once I receive the check, I am to email the person back so they can arrange Movers to come get the item. They stated that they were satisfied by the pictures and my description, to which I did not include any condition information. Right off the bat, at this point, I am thinking something is not right. Would I buy something like a sofa without looking at it? I wouldn't but there are people out there who might. I am also concerned about Movers showing up at my door, and will make sure that I have some sort of protection handy, though I doubt it would come to that. Anyways, I just got home from work, and check my email for the first time today, and I have a message from the buyer that their secretary had a check made out, but that the check was for an additional $3000, and that once I cash the check I am asked to Western Union the money to the Movers. It just keeps getting more fishy by the minute. I replied back that I had no problem Western Unioning the extra money back, just playing along with the scam for now. If I get a check, I will take it to the bank. I am not sure how long a Certified Check takes to clear in the bank, but I will not be contacting the buyer back until it does. No movers are coming for anything until the money is literally in my hands. If it takes a month for the check to cash, I guess if it is legit, the buyer is going to have to wait a month before they can come pick up. PS: I am supposed to keep an additional $100 for the inconvenience. Also, the emails back and forth are not in the best of English, another possible indicator of a scam. Not part of the poll, but if this is a scam of some sort, will me trying to cash the check be a problem? Will the scammer somehow have access to my account number if I try to deposit the check into my account?
It sounds like a scam... but I have no idea how they are going to scam you by sending you a certified check. No sir, I don't like it.
At first I stopped reading at the check sending part...voted that you should run...and then finished reading. I'm not sure how it would work but I would say it's some kind of money washing skem. I had the exact same situation happen when I was trying to sell a 40$ cd changer. Why the fxck would someone send me $3000 to return $2860 and then send someone to pick it up??? Heres what you could do... 1. Open another checking account at a different bank with $25.00 2. Wait for check and if it comes deposit into said account and wait to clear. 3. If check clears close account and buy me a roof vent
Contact your post office, police and your bank. What's worse is the bank will hold you responsible for the check amount if you did go through with this. And with contacting the authorities, there might be break in the case and lead to arrests.
Scam. Same thing happened to us selling some funriture on Craigslist. Its not a real certified check. The good news is they probably won't pick up the furniture so you won't loose that too. They are just looking for the wire transfer.
and it's a scam, cash the check, send the money, check bounces, you get stuck paying the bank back 3K and no furniture.
Its is possible that the check will clear, then weeks later it will bounce, then YOU will be the one the bank come after - for some reason checks can work that way. 100% SCAM, tell them cash or walk
It's so easy to fake a "cerified" cheque that I wouldn't take one, unless I could validate the buyers home, place of work, blood-type, etc. Otherwise I'd look into a reputable escrow service or meet the buyer at their bank if it's a local transaction.
FYI, the last 4 out of 5 times I've tried to buy or sell on craiglist it has been a SCAM. Everyone else saying this is a scam is correct. If you can get a real phone number you're doing better than most. And don't expect anything to happen when you go to the cops. However! Since they sent you a check thru the mail the post office is better at kicking ass and taking names on scammers.
the exact same this happened to me with when selling my truck, i mean word for word. tell him to call you and he wont ever contact you again. thats what i did.
No, they did not use the word Item. They referred to the item as both a Sofa and a Sectional. I received an email this morning again saying that the check should arrive today via UPS something. The buyer emailed me the Movers information and asked that I Western Union the extra money back. I replied that I would email them once I received the check, but that I would not be contacting the movers until the check cleared in my bank account. I also told them that if this is unacceptable to them, I could just destroy the check, and they could Western Union my money to the Movers to hand me cash when they come to pick up the sofa. If they reply back upset about the situation, I will tell them it is their fault for making the entire deal seem shady and be done with it. I expect it to be a scam, kinda thought so from the beginning, so at least I am not going to get screwed. If they are a legit buyer, they should understand how shady everything seems and accept the delay to pick up.
I would have to agree here, take the tax deduction and no issues with scam. Either way, I would not go threw with this transaction.
It will clear the bank man. The problem is sometimes it takes months for the money order/check to come back as fake. Weeks down the road it will be returned and you will be held responsible. I am telling you don't do it. Think about it. Who the fuck accidently makes a money order out for thousands of dollars more than what you were selling for a few hundred? If you do it you will reimburse them $3K in real cash and be responsible for another $3K for the bad money order. Thats $6000 you will be out plus the possibility of having charges pressed against you from the bank for cashing a fake check. The money order will look legit and most of the time it is nearly impossible for it to be recognized as a fake. I have had people pay rent with fake money orders and 2 months later it come back as a fake.
If you get a check then notify authorities (FBI) and tell the entire story while handing over the check. You are out of nothing.
Well, I got home today and had mail sitting at my door. It came via UPS Priority mail. I opened the package, and got the check. On the check, the bank is listed as City National Bank 2101 Webster St, Oakland, CA 94612. I decided to google the bank and call them before proceeding any further. I called the number listed on the website, and a nice guy named Anthony answered. I started to explain that I was trying to sell an item, to which he interrupted me and asked if the check was from Animation Mentor, to which I replied Yes, and he said it is fraud. I have the Sent from address on the UPS package, I have the information for Western Unioning the additional funds back. Is there anything I can do with this information to help get this person stopped? At least it cost this person a few dollars to send the package Priority Mail to make it look legit. Interestingly, the emails are from Angela Vera, The package was sent from Brad Edmonds, and I am supposed to Western Union the extra money back to Autumn Burns. If that alone isn't enough to raise some questions, then I don't know what is.
Well glad you didn't fall into it. The bank would have cleared and you would have made your transaction thinking everything was fine and dandy then a couple of weeks later you would have gotten a call from the banks fraud investigator who would have informed you that you owe X amount of dollars back to the bank because of stolen monies. Ask me how it feels to have that X=$-25,000. It ain't fun.
they use women's names to make the scam more appealing in general. The addresses and names are throwaway, i'm sure. I'd call the local municipality detective and see if they want it.
X2, what if the bank teller didn't recognize the name as being a fake check? What would you have done?
Are you asking me? I kind of knew right off the bat that things seemed fishy, so I would not have gone through with it. At the most, I would have taken the check to my bank, explained and asked them what they thought. Now, if the buyer would have sent me a check for the correct amount, things might have been quite different. Once I got the email saying that the secretary messed up and made the check out for $3000 more than it was supposed to be, I knew it was a scam, but wanted to get other peoples opinions. If the check was for the correct amount, I may have cashed the check and contacted the buyer back to arrange for the movers. Who knows what would happen from there.