I decided to try and sell my old laptop on Craig’s List, I didn’t want to bother with eBay because it seems everyone on there is from another city/country and they all want things shipped.  This seems like a great way to get scammed, so I thought I’d just sell it locally.

Unfortunately the Nigerian scammers have taken over Craig’s List Toronto now too.  Oddly with all this money at stake for their scams, they never seem to realize how obvious it is.  Check out these emails.

I had three different email addresses email me basically the same bad spelling, which I didn’t find odd at first.

Example real email:
“s the items still for sell and i wanna know the condition and did you accept
paypal as your payment”

The PayPal question was what really helped me tie it together but here are two second emails which have so many similarities that it was just too odd.

“Thank for the mail, my name is john i should have come for the pickup
of the item but am presently out of state. am sending the item to my
son that is managing our store. do you accept paypal? all because i
have money in my paypal account, kindly get back to me with your
paypal email so i can transfer the money from my paypal account to
yours. i will be adding $150 for the shipping cost of it directly form
you to her. and i will be giving you $600 for the item”

And

“Thanks for your swift response,,,i could have love to come for the
face transaction but i just receive i transfer letter from my
company,,,while i want to make this big  surprise for my son who is
just out of college…..i will really appreciate you if you can kindly ship the item to him at MD 20720 United States,,why i will be paying you through Verdi PayPal Email Account and i will be adding an additional $80 for the shipping fee,,If you are wiling to sell kindly get back to me with your
PayPal Email Account so i will be able to make the payment
asap…Thanks”

I love that the first guy doesn’t realize his son isn’t a “her”.

The points to watch out for are:

1. Bad spelling in grammar including odd phrases normal people just don’t say like “I could have love to come for the face”.

2. Oddly fake names where the first and last name seem like phonetic spelling of North American names.

3. They want to have you ship the item and pay for it with PayPal, I’m not exactly sure how this scam works, either they are doing it for the chance to steal your PayPal account, or maybe they give you some money, get the item and claim they never got it so they get the money back.  It seems an odd scam all in all.

4. For some reason they are always too busy or are out of the country and can’t meet face to face.

Now the only thing I need to figure out is a quick way to get rid of scammers so they don’t waste too much of my time.  If you call them on the scam they will respond with something like “what you say?” as if they can get you back as a believer.

• Craig's List
• Scams