talkmagic.co.uk

Thanks for the tip!

Thanks.

Who has it happened to?

Another new avatar - the fount of creativity will ne'er cease!

That got that out of my system for a month or so...

Kati

katrielalex wrote:Another new avatar - the fount of creativity will ne'er cease!

That got that out of my system for a month or so...

Kati

Thats what you get when you add boredom and computers

Yeah, BEWARE!!! I recentley put an add for a guitar i wanted to sell on a couple of sites. Quite soon after i recieved this e-mail and soon after that i recieved another e-mail from a another person along the same lines as this. I'm guessing it was the same person on both occassions. After a few challenging questions from me they both dissapeared. They wouldn't tell me their address or phone number, and i asked 3 times! Just thought you would find it of interest. (notice the bad english).

"Thanks for the mail , the price is okay by me and i am
ready to from you immediately, i am ok with £680,for
the (Rickenbacker 620) and i wantou to delete the ad
from the website, i have a reputable shipper that will
take care of shipping from your end i want to let
you know i have a client in the state that is oweing
me a sum of £5500,i will instruct him to issue you a
certified cashier's cheque on my behalf and as soon
as cheque arrives, you hold out your amount and send
the difference to my shipper for the pick up in your
place, i hope i can trust you for my balance and also
you will be contacting my shipper with all neccesary
formation needed for pickup in your place i.e the
actual weight and exact mension of the (Rickenbacker
620) if this terms are okay by you, do get back to me
with the following details which payment be made out
to you like this
Home Address...
Full Name on cheque...
State...Zipcode...
Country...
Telephone Number... Mobilephone number...
Fax Number... Do get back to me asap with this
details for payment to be made out to you mmediately
Waiting to hearing from you. thanks"


£5500 cheque for a £680 guitar! Pretty dodgy sounding eh?

Dan

It's easy to see why some folks would fall for this and the crims only need to find one or two mugs every so often to be on easy street. I'd like to think that Magicians would be naturally sceptical 'cos we know a bit about trickery but I suppose even we'd fall for some scams. What a world we live in!

Mandrake wrote:I'd like to think that Magicians would be naturally sceptical 'cos we know a bit about trickery

Every one of us magicians can be well prepared for such scams by watching the great R. Paul Wilson's show on tv called the Real Hustle, it shows all the cons currently being used throughout the UK. The way his team pull them off is so very convincing too!

I am not sure if the show has finished now, but it was a damn good program, maybe someone can confirm if it is still on or if repeats are available.

It's nice that you reported us about this scam.I really appreciate taht you warned us about it.Now I'm a little bit smarter too now.

That's the classic 419 scam. There are people that work (for fun) as scambaiters. They play along with the mugu (the scammer) and even try to scam him back. There are several webs on this but you can have a look here: http://www.thescambaiter.com/ There are some moral issues in all this thing and it's up to you to decide what you think about scambaiting.

Was this sort of thing not describe on The real hustle by Paul wilson just recently?

This happened to my girlfrind recently on eBay

She was selling a sony Mobile phone and the buyer clicked 'but-it-now' for £125 and she got an email from 'paypal' saying 'the buyer has sent you a pre-approved payment of £125, you then send the postage number to an email address in the 'paypal' email. THEN you post the item and when the itemis delivered, they clear the money.

Its been tried to me a few times so we knew not to send the item and report it - I would have posted something about it on TM, but never even thought people would try it with magic tricks... its a crazy world we live in

Dan

There's a lot of it on eBay.
1 Good rule to follow: NEVER SHIP TO NIGERIA. NO EXCEPTIONS.

I've put strict anti-fraud measures into Wizmo to avoid the wide range of scams out there, it certainly pays to be educated on the latest scams.

More advice from Mr Seige...

Another scam lately is the 'items lost in the post' scam.

COUNTLESS people are claiming lost items at the minute... it's costing me a fortune. So much so, I am now paying extra (out of NUMS profits) to have larger items/parcels SIGNED for at the other end.

Yes... I'm cynical... but it's definately happening out there... the motive is that by claiming your item is lost/didn't arrive to the sender, the sender is forced to either re-ship or refund.

(of course, the customer is always right)

Now... a less-than-honest person would be more than happy to receive their item, claim they HAVE NOT, and receive a second item or indeed a cash refund for 'items not received'.

I bring this up because a client of ours (who owns a local courier company) said that they call it the 'Catalogue's scam', where people claim to mail-order catalogues that they've never received things when in reality they have.

I hate to think that NUMS customers would be that dishonest, and I am sure that Royal Mail's admitted backlog of parcels due to recent strikes were to blame... but either way, I am sick and tired of being 'the honest, fair and accomodating trader who puts the customer first'.

I know all about that mr Seige, i have to process a lot of those claims, if you use Parcel Force I can track them all and see if they have been delievered or not. If you send a lot you could get a contract with PF and claiming for lates/delays/loss/damage is easy as pi!

i had to deal with a few people today who'd sold something over eBay then the recipient had claimed they'd never recieved the item and asked for a refund. My advice, ring parcel force FIRST; you get some muppets who pay out straight away then file a claim with us, dear dear.

but on that note, i now see how stupidly easy it is to actually scam postal services! it's mad! i could earn loads if i was a criminal!