Originally Posted by IO540
It's obvious it must be a con but I do sometimes wonder how it works. For example I get a lot of African "potential customers" wanting to buy my (fairly specialised) electronic products. What the hell can they do with them? About as useful to them as a machine for making bra straps would be to me.
I had a guy offering to buy a dive computer from me for £4200. The catch is he'll send me a cashier's cheque and once the cheque's cleared I'm supposed to deduct the payment for the dive computer and send him the balance as well as the computer.....Riiiight.
So, this brain surgeon thinks I'm going to fall for that one. Apparantly the cheque does clear somehow but within a day or two the bank calls to inform you that the cheque is actually a forgery and they won't be honouring it. So you've then not only sent whatever you were trying to flog off to this crook, but to add insult to injury you've even paid him!
My advice when dealing with stuff like this: Don't give anyone your personal details, not even a mobile number. Use PayPal or some similar service. Don't meet anyone to accept money or hand over goods, use Royal Mail - that's what they're there for. Don't respond to unsolicited emails, it just tells the scumbags that your address works and they then pass it along to their little cronies so you can receive loads more of the same. Don't give anyone any money - if they need to ask for money in order to 'process your ticket numbers' or whatever it's because there is no money in the pot and they're hoping you will be dumb enough to put some in.
Lastly, the Good Lord gave you a brain: use it!
Please feel free to add to this list of rules.