Possible scam

[tubaman5150]

As many of you may or may not know, I currently have a F tuba for sale for 5000 USD. As with any tuba I've sold, I always get plenty of strange offers. The following emails take the cake. I left the names out for privacy. I swear I'm not making this up or editing them other than the names!
Here's first couple of messages:

"Hello,
My name is xxxx from Spain,and I'm highly interested in your advert.
Really,I stay at Barcelona,Spain and I'm a Business Traveller.
I hope everything is still in good condition,and okay.
My mode of payment is a Usa Certified cashier's check,
I'll love to handle shipping after payment.
Pls,do send me good pics,as i await it,
What's your last price ??

Pls reply today,"

Here's the next one from this guy:

"Hello,
Thanks for the urgent reply,you'll recieve payment
latest by next week.
But right now,I'm in Russia for Business urgency for
3 months.And,I do not have much money with me right
now.
My partner is in Usa,who's owing me $10,000,i'll
instruct him to send the cheque to you in your name.
I'll want you to clear the cheque into your
account,and deduct your payment,plus i'm giving you an
extra $200 for your efforts.
After deducting your payment,I'll want you to pls
send the balance to my shipper in west africa via
western union,so that my shipper can quickly organise
for the shipping arrangement at your location.
As soon as the cheque gets to you,I'll surely send
you my shipper's address for you to send him the
balance via western union,once the cheque clears.
I hope everything is okay by you,
Pls,send your datas...for recieveing cheque,via fed
ex.

NAME....FULL PHYSICAL ADDRESS...PHONE NUMBERS....
I trust so much easily,
Pls reply today,"

As you may have guessed, I wasn't too keen on this. I replied and told him I wanted only the 5000 USD. After it cleared, I would send him the tuba.
The next set of emails I got were from a different email address and a different name was signed to the email. Here they are:

"Good Day,
My name is Mr.yyyy I am presently located in isreal and i have
companies in some west africa countries,am intreseted in buying your
Miraphone 181 6 valve F tuba kindlytell me the present condition of it
and thelast offer price and also i
will take care of the shipping my self,so hope to read you back
soonest...............

best regards...."

And the latest one:

"okay fine since you said the [Miraphone 181 6 valve F tuba] is working fine but now am presnetly located in isreal bcos am there for one business transaction ,so all i want you to do is that i will to conact my one of my client to kindly issued you ckeck of $8500 while you will deduct your $5000 out of the funds and while another $100 should be endorse to you as a compensation for give you a stress to send the funds to the shipper's company who is capable for the shipping,so all you need to do now is just send the remaining balance to the shipper's for the pick up of the [Miraphone 181 6 valve F tuba] down in your place,so i will be looking forward to read you back with your full contact name,address and phone number so that i can forward it to my client for the payment,so hope to raed you back from this asap today!!!

thanks......."

Coincidence? Neither of the gentelmen claimed to know each other. Plus, check out the mock garbled English. What do you folks think? Scam or no?

[imperialbari]

This is not a possible scam!

It is a scam!

The on-line horn community some time ago discussed this scheme thorougly. The "Usa Certified cashier's check" invariably is a high quality fake, which may be honoured in your own bank, but which will be refused by the emitting bank.

By that time you are out of your instrument and a considerable amount of cash. And no police action will get anything back to you.


I strongly endorse, that forums like this one are used to warn its members/users off from schemes of suspect natures.

But I will not abstain from telling an unlikely positive story, which I experienced within the last month.

I am not collecting recorders as intensively, as I collect brasses, yet I had 21 samples in 7 sizes from Garklein to Great Bass.

Searching for brasses on an Austrian site, I found this one:



12 cm long, which is just about an octave above the sopranino in F and a fourth above the Garklein.

I bid the opening bid of 1.99 Euro for the fun of it. And won.

The seller quoted a shipping price of 3.00 Euro.

To save bank costs I do my smaller buys by sending Euro notes in plain letters (I haven't been burned on that one yet).

I told the seller, a professional auction seller of gift items, that I would send him 10 Euros because I didn't beleive he could make a sound business out of his quoted 4.99 Euros.

The small recorder was a bit slow to arrive, but when it came, it was followed by one of my own original 5 Euro bills.

Of course the little recorder is a joke. But even with my huge fingers I can play the tetrachord of F#, G#, A#, and B natural in tune. Albeit with fingerings expected to give C, D, E, and F. There only are 6 holes over the normal 8. And the holes are offset compared to the expected root scale of F. But who cares about that with a 5 Euro joke, which even comes in flamed maple like used in some good guitars.

Klaus

[imperialbari]

Scam (short for: Surely crushed all my .....)

Said by the true expert:

Schleppy, your avatar indicates, that you don't look sleepy because you have been exposed to one of these two obvious scams:

Your new Lederhosen were cut from at least one cowhide lesser, than the measurements taken by your local land surveyor indicated.

Or you have been sold one of these old Besson, Hawkes, or Boosey tubas without the appropriate stand following it.

Klaus

[Joe Baker]

Why is it that whenever something suspicious arrives by e-mail, you can always find the straight dope on SNOPES.COM?

Here is a page that describes a virtually identical scam:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/carsale.asp

and another that describes the precursor scam, known as the Nigeria Scam:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/nigeria.asp

I heartily agree with Klaus, we really need to spread the word about these scams to other folks. In the best case, you could be an unwitting accomplice to money laundering; in the worst, you could lose your money and your merchandise.
__________________________________________
Joe Baker, who is glad 'tubaman' was suspicious.

[Louis]

Scam
____________________________________
Isaiah 53

I don't think Isaiah 53 is a scam...

Louis

[sinfonian]

I tired to sell my wife's flute early this year and I got the same type of message at least 50 times. I ended up adding a comment to the online add that said I was not interested in any arrangement that included any kind of deal where the seller gives me more then I asked for and I send him the flute and the change. That slowed it some but I still got the scam messages sometime.

My thought is, not only could these be a scam to separate you from your instrument and extra cash but also could be money laundering scheme. In my case I was asking 1K for the flute and they were offering to send me a check for 5K. So even if they did not scam me, they would end up with a flute and 4K in clean US cash. This could be drug money or a way to get US cash to a third world country where it could be used for weapons or other devious things that could harm our allies or us.

I know you might think that 4K won't go far but if someone pulled this scheme 25 times this month he now has 100K in clean US cash. If you look at the amount that they are going to send you and/or you send back it is small enough to be under the radar for banks to check up on for money laundering.

One mans opinion.

[tubaman5150]

I had the same idea about money laundering. Also, could be his "certified" check is fake as Klaus suggested. Why else would he be willing to have me deposit it first.
Just for FYI, I told the guy I was going report him to the authorites if he emailed again. Haven't heard from him since.

[MaryAnn]

This has been discussed at length on the horn list; the scam is to get the "change" from the fake cashier's check, which will initially clear your own bank but which will not clear the buyer's bank because it is bogus. I guess it works on some people because they keep trying it. I presume Ebay takes no action.

Someone I know, who is both naive and greedy, almost bit on a query from someone in Nigeria wanting to use his bank account to deposit money to. It took some convincing to get him to believe all they wanted was his account number so they could drain it of all his $$.

MA

[imperialbari]

Our well known mayhem?

Klaus

[tubathig]

Stay the hell away from it. If it is a good horn it will sell eventually.

[TMurphy]

Definitely a fake check. The fake check will easily clear at your bank, because the tellers won't pick it up (unlike counterfeit bills, which are pretty easy to pick up, a good fake check is extremely difficult, unless you check with the bank of origin). It will get sent to its bank of origin, who will turn it down. At this point, because it was a cashier's check, the money will have already cleared in your account (cashier's checks are guaranteed, so they usually only get held for 1 business day). You will have sent your horn out. Since you sent the cash western union they pocket your horn (which they will either sell or throw out), and an extra 4 grand (which there is no way they can get back from you), and your bank will come looking for their money from you. You end up owing money to the bank, and you lose out entirely on the sale of your horn.

Money laundering is possible, but I'm 99% certain this is a fake.