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Friday, November 19, 2010

Scam Email: Louise Haynes

This scammer just demonstrated no signs of intelligent life on any level. They could not maintain the spelling of their fake name, which went from Louise (in the email signature) or Louis (in the FROM field) to "Loius", which makes no sense. And then you will see in the exchange below that was forwarded to me from an artist, this scammer - who probably sends out hundreds of thousands of these and just has no system for keeping track of what he is doing, signed one of the exchanges as "Robert" and when asked about it made up some lame story that it was his brother (and then proceeded to misspell his own name again as Loius). So ridiculous. Here is the exchange:
FROM: Louis Hayne [loiushaynes@yahoo.co.uk]
SUBJECT: Interest in your work

Dear
        I was going to come over to the United States for christmas holiday and was hoping i could purchase  some of your work in person and as it is i do not think i will be coming to USA  but am highly interested in purchasing some of your piece so am thinking the best thing to do is have you send me some images of the piece you have available or website to which i can see them and i select the one's that interest me and we can work out payment.I hope to read from you soon.
Regards
Louise

---------------------------------------

FROM: Loius Haynes [loiushaynes@yahoo.co.uk]
SUBJECT: Re: Interest in your work

Dear
     Thanks for the swift response  i was going through the website link you send to me and i came across the following work

[the name and sizes of 4 art pieces were inserted here]

I am interested in know more about the piece and the cost of each one of them i await to read from you soon.
Sincerely
Robert

---------------------------------------

FROM: Loius Haynes [loiushaynes@yahoo.co.uk]
SUBJECT: Re: Interest in your work

Dear
     yes am loius my brother Robert replied my previous mail i  am so pleased to be able to communicate with you well in such a little period of time,to be sincere with you i had never taught it was going to be easy getting across to you most of your work that have seen so far are attractive with a well defined statement and an artisitc's touch going through the piece you have sent to me i can afford to purchase the following

[2 pieces were inserted here]

I have learned through a friend that i can purchase a cashier cheque online from a United states bank  and have it linked to my account in the UK because a cheque from the United Kingdom will take month's to clear in your bank account the total i will be sending to you is $5300 to cover the cost of the piece and shipping am sure $1000 will cover the cost of shipping.
I will be needing your contact address and phone number to write and send the cheque to you.Hope to read from you soon.
Regards
Louis

Note My address for shipping
loius Haynes
123 Copeland Road,
Peckham Business Park,
SE15 3SN,
London.
+447023017686
And there was the hook, at the very end of this exchange. Sending a "cashiers check" for $5300 when the art would add up to $4300, saying $1000 should be sufficient for shipping. They send a check that is fraudulent, the artist sends the art worth $4300 and loses both the money and the art. Actually, the typical version of this scam runs with the scammer asking for the overpayment, after shipping costs to be wired to their third party shipper (who doesn't really exist, it's really wired to the scammer) and we really don't know if this particular scammer was still going to get to that part of the scam. I am assuming they were because it is not the art they are after, but the cash.

In any case, this artist realized something was not right, googled the name and found this blog and confirmed the request to purchase his art was not real. So I'm glad to say there was no money lost in this case. Yea!

2 comments:

  1. I too, received an email exactly like the one above. It sounded like a scam to me. Thanks for helping me to confirm it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I received same said e-mail. Thank you for putting this information out there! He used the same kind of emails and sent a check for 10,000 issued from a New Zeland branch of an Austrailian bank but posted from UK! Crazy

    ReplyDelete