A couple of days ago, my friend Dwight in Tennessee told me about some
troubles
he's having from a Craigslist scam. I guess this would be considered
a form of
identity theft. The tale goes like this:
A week or so ago my
friend gets a call at his house asking when the caller can
come pick up his
new truck. Dwight tells the guy he must have the wrong number -
he has not
truck for sale. Caller says this is Dwight XXX at XXX address in
Franklin,
TN, right - OK, where's my truck? A day or so later, he began
getting
similar calls and letters from other individuals wanting to pick up
their
truck. He even got a call from some gov't agency in Oklahoma saying they
had
a complaint about his business (Dwight doesn't have a business).
Turns out
what happened is some thief put a 2009 F-Series pickup with enough
options to
make it a $40K truck on Craigslist and "sold" it for $19K. Apparently
he
"sold" it multiple times to people too, all of which had these traits in
common:
A - They didn't have enough sense to have a red flag go up when they
see a new
truck being sold for less than half price.
B - They were all silly
enough to send either part or all of the asking price to
a PayPal account
sight unseen and without speaking to anyone on the phone.
The ad only
provided an email address, a PayPal account, and Dwight's name and
address.
The hopeful buyers got his phone number by Googling him. They had
enough
sense to find him, but not enough to smell a rat?
I think most of us here (me
included, I hope) are savvy enough to not fall for
these scams, but thought
I'd pass it along anyway. Poor Dwight has to deal with
this for a while now
while PayPal and CraigsList and Police and who knows who
else gets involved.
David Booker
Long Island
_______________________________________________
Donate: http://www.team.net/donate.html
Suggested annual donation $12.75
Archive: http://www.team.net/archive
Forums: http://www.team.net/forums
|