think this is a new one...I received this message this morning via my Artfire store front.
Subject: [name of two art pieces here]
Hello seller,
Am Nimota Brown by name i locate in west valley city Utah.i saw your item for sale and am so much interested in buying the item for you.Do you still have the item available for sale,Do you accept PayPal for mode of payment?I will like to ask you the following questions.
1)Are you the real owner?
2)What is the present condition?
3)How much is the final asking price?
4)Do you have PayPal ID which payment can be make?
5)Where is the exact location for the pick up?
kindly email me direct to my personal email.nimotabrown123@yahoo.com
and then after the artist replied and said they can buy those pieces through their artfire store, the scammer wrote this reply, so all the usual crap they give:
Thank for your swift mail.........am very happy to see your mail i just want to inform you that i have little problem with my artfire mail that is the reason why i told you in my first mail that you should mail me direct to my personal email so kindly get back to me with your final price of the item and your paypal invoice and also u you don't need to bother your self about the shipping i have my shipper that i will come for the pick up in your location since i have some item to pick up in the state you item was the last item i brought so i will be waiting to read for you asap
thanks,
ReplyDeletea friend of mine just received a similar mail with some different locations etc...
does she need to protect her self in any way? what is he trying to get? - he was just a step before his paypal payment...so i guess we will never know.
and again thank you very much for your fight!
y.
They don't end up ever paying with paypal. Some will have some story as to why paypal "doesn't work" and some will send some faked paypal confirmation screen that isn't real.
ReplyDeleteThe scam is based on this: they end up paying with either a fraudulent check or a stolen credit card (which often isn't reported yet so it will clear at first and then become a chargeback) and overpay by a lot, telling some story about that amount being for their shipper (who also doesn't exist) and asking you, the victim, to forward that amount to the non-existent shipper for them, via Western Union. Who is at the other end of Western Union? The scammer, and once the money is picked up, it is untraceable.
So we hope, by posting as many of these as possible publicly on the internet - and educating people to search online suspicious "buyers" like this BEFORE they send any money, that we can reduce the success numbers for the scammers.
Glad your friend did not become a victim!
thank you very much, i love your work :)
ReplyDeleteit was pure luck that she told me the story the other day and of course i got suspicious and lucky for us we found you!
by the way he used the "im sailing...and im buying this for my son etc.." if you want i cant ask her for the original mail.
Hi!!! I think I have also been a victim of a scammer...or almost. He has been sending me emails and asked me for my physical address. I am wondering what to do now. Shall i email him telling that the art is unavailable?
ReplyDeleteYou are not obligated to tell them ANYTHING. You do not have to reply to a scammer. Scammers will most certainly ignore YOU once they have your money. So treat these emails as spam and just delete them and eventually the scammer will move on. They are in a numbers game and so will quickly move on to focus on people who are still potential victims.
ReplyDeleteThank you kindly for this warning. My mom and I nearly fell victim to this scam; the western union comment red-flagged her and she had me (her paranoid son) take a look at things.
ReplyDelete