To defraud or not to defraud

To defraud or not to defraud

Right i am selling my car and it is currently in autotrader.

I recieved this e mail on Monday in response;

Subject: 2001 CITROEN SAXO 1.6i £3,700
From: "william robert" <wrobert1900@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Mon, January 29, 2007 9:28 am
To: ellio_me@blueyonder.co.uk
Priority: Normal
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Hello
I read your ads concerning the car you listed for sale .
I will like to know if the car is still for sale.
And pls let me know the last price and also send the pic to me .
Are you the first owner?
Not to forget about the conditions of the car

to which i replied;

Hi William, i am the 2nd owner of the car. The first owner only used it at
weekends hence the low mileage. My asking price is £3700 ono (i'm open to
offers)

The car is in excellent condition and has been looked after!!!

All other details of the car are on the auto trader website.

Regards

Marc

His reply;

Hello
Am so excited you could mail me back concerning the car you listed for sale and i will love
to puschase the car from you .
Main look at the pic at the site it's very lovely car and the condition you states for me, i may conclude
the car is very good.
Really this kind of car have been looking for some days now.
Am trying to puschase the Car for myself used .I will be glad if you can sell the Car to me.I believe by now
Car is SOLD to me .
Now i want you to move the advert so that other buyer will not bother you over this Car .
Really i want you to please send pics of the Car if available .
Also concerning you asking price am okay with it (£3,700) for the Car.
Please as for the shippment i will handle that myself i shall contact my private shipping company to handle
the shippment from you location to mine.
Likewise,the payment am paying with is UK BANK DRAFT which i believe is okay.Me paying you with UK bankdaft
am not requiring any bank details from you cause is not good to give out bank details on internet.The payment uk (bankdraft) will take 2 to3 working days for the payment to FULLY CLEARED and CONFIRM the money is your bank account, pls get back to me today so that we could conclude on the payment.
I reside in Canada and i will be glad if i can purchase the Car from you .
Please remember that i have committed myself to puschase the Car for self used .
Thanks awaiting your e-mail today..
Regards

Now at this point alarm bells started to ring, naturally. So i replied;

Hi William, thanks for your reply, i must say i am very shocked that the
buyer is in Canada, or anywhere outside of the UK to be honest!

Ref you asking for more photos, did you not receive the 2nd e mail i sent? (because i did)
With the rest of the photos?

UK bankers draft is fine with me.

Give me a call, +44772***8311 and we can discuss things further, it is now
1753 UK time, i will be contactable till about midnight tonight or all day
tomorrow as i have the day off work,

regards

Marc

He didn't call but replied with this ;

Hello
Thanks for your mail and i really appreciate your concern about the Car.I want to assure that payment (bankdraft) will cleared 2&3 working days into your bank account.
Right now am going to instruct my client to issue the UK BANKDRAFT of £8,000 the certified UK BANKDRAFT can be deposited into your bank account and it's will take 2 to 3 working days for the bankdraft to FULLY CLEARED and CONFIRM the money is in your bank account and before the given date you might aswell check your bank account online regularly to see if the payment has FULLY CLEADED and CONFIRM the money is in your bank account, hope you understand and from there i can take possession of the Car Now, i will ask him to issued you the above amount inyour name and you'll wired (send) the excess funds to my shipper via western union,for the shippment of the Car to enable him come for the pick up of the Car at your location,I' ll give you my shipping agent's datas as soon as the UKBANKDRAFT FULLY CLEARED into your bank account,i will gets to you my shipper data for the wired (send) of the fund throungh nearby western union arround you so that he can receive the balance after 2&3 days it's will be at your location for the pick up.
I will be giving £300 for your (efforts).I really want the Car urgently,and am highly earger to see it. I'll need your details inorder for you to received the UK BANKDRAFT soonest.And if you can email your details today probably this week you receive the payment.
NAME..
ADDRESS..
POST CODE.
CITY..
STATE...
COUNTRY..
PHONE NUMBER
MOBILE NUMBER
OFFICE, NUMBER
HOME NUMBER
Awaiting your mail today,to let me know what's good..
Best Regard

I gave him the address which i didn't see as a problem, he never asked for any bank details, so what harm could be done?
It still seemed dodgy as hell and too good to be true so i rang the bank. They say that a bankers draft is able to be drawn upon after 3 working days but, like a cheque, can still bounce anything up to 10 working days later. So i sent this; (at this point i hadn't called the police, i just said it to add a bit of clout to the e mail )

Under advice from my bank/the police i will be waiting 10 working days
before arranging any shipping for you William. They have advised that
although the funds can clear in my account after 2-3 working days, they
could then be withdrawn (ie the cheque can bounce) anything up to 10
working days after.

If that is a problem please call me +447724788311 or alternatively you
could do a normal bank transfer, thus eliminating any possibility of a
cheque bouncing,

i await your response.

Marc

I then decided to ask the police if they had heard of anything like this and they say someone almost fell for it off the back of an autotrader ad aswell...

what the scumbags do is send 'an agent' to your door with a fake bankers draft and say they want to take the car there and then, which i would never have done!

If they try i'll break their legs!!! :evil:

Some people will try anything

The spelling would have been enough for me

Dodgy as fuck that like mate!

Blatantly some Nigerian somewhere trying his luck

Not necessarily, given some of the spelling on this site!

true, sorry Nigeria

its been through a online translator, you can tell!

100% fraud

It's worrying how many idiots fall for these scams though...

Funny because Nigeria as a country is an intellectual hotbed.. and English is also the first language..

however it does say on the article thats these scams are coming form africa, ands they also speak french there

Cheeky twats!

It's not been translated from French like.

Twats :evil:

They also speak Flemish, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic as official non cognate languages.. what's your point

Nigeria is usually the most victimised country, and is English speaking, not French, as above..

I've had people try it with me as well, once you're looking for it, you'll spot it every time but I almost sent a phone off once. (to Nigeria)

I can imagine my elderly relatives just sending it though

We have had them trying to sell us gold befor WTF

You should get the phoney bank draft floosy to come round, tie him up and dump him off the end of the breakers at Tynemouth...

I wish

Marc this is too good an opportunity to miss out on. Set the deal up and let the fella come around to a fake addresss and we'll wait for him. I'm not exactly sure what we should do to him but with your miltary backround I'm sure you could think of something.