Lessons almost learned the hard way
Probably one of the most common thoughts when we here of someone making any sort of tragic mistake is that "well that won't happen to me". We tend to think that we're somehow smarter, and somehow a bit more streetwise then the avereage person, and therefore able to spot scams and fakes more the the gullible average. At least that's how I used to think until last week.
About a month ago I decided to sell my laptop. I had had it for about 3 or so years, it was still in fairly good shape, but the hard drive was insufficient for my music - and I really wanted a Mac (truth be told). So I made an ad for Craigslist, and waited to see if anyone would be interested. After a month of no replies, I was pleased to get an email with someone inquiring about my laptop. After a couple emails this person indicated that they were in New York, and wanted to send a laptop to a friend of theirs in Africa. That should have been a red flag ... but I didn't really think much of it.
So I got an email from Paypal indicating that I had money waiting for me, I clicked the link in the email: saw that everything looked legit, however the shipping address wasn't New York, but Nigeria Africa (second red flag missed) ... well no matter I had received enough extra money for shipping that it should be covered. Thankfully, I was heading out of town for a while, so I emailed the buyer and told him I wouldn't be able to ship the laptop till later, he replied that that was fine but I needed to send it very quickly. (Third red flag missed)
Once I got home I tranferred my data off my laptop, reformatted it, and got it ready for shipping. I phoned UPS to get an estimate on how much it would cost to ship my computer to Africa, and they said they would call me back. (thankfully they didn't). While waiting for their call I printed off the Paypal email to make sure I had the shipping address right, and that's when I noticed something odd. The email said I was to ship the laptop by March 3, as it was now March 7th I wondered if this might be a problem. After checking with my friend Trevor, and checking my Paypal account which showed that I had no money, and had zero transactions, I emailed the fraud section of Paypal, and learned that the email I received was a fake! I was literally minutes from shipping my laptop to Africa for nothing, plus paying a bunch for shipping.
Looking back at my craigslist email, it warns that you should not do business with people outside of your local area to advoid getting scammed ... guess I missed that part ... lesson learned!
posted by Jesse @ 11:27 a.m.
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