Reptile & Amphibian Forums

are these guys for real or what?

Greetings, My name is Micheal Amson, I am highly interested in buying your SOUTHERN HOGNOSE 05 CBB from you, I will like you to give me the ASKING price and also scan the pics for me for proper verifycation. As for the shipping, I have a liable shipper that takes goods care of all my shipping . international money order cheque or cashier cheque is the payment method. So pls email me back so that we can conclude about it. and i will like you to feed me out of this info

OR,

Hello Seller,
I'm Jeff,i'm reside in Oregon,I'm intrested in the immedaite purchase of your particular reptile to my reserve in UK.Okay?I'm gonna take care of the shipment to UK.

The money order that would be issue will include the sale of your reptile and the shipping cost to UK.Okay? I've private shipper would will take very good care of that.Okay?

You're require to cash the money order soon as you recieved and deduct your money and wire the extra funds to the shipper via western union inorder to pick -up the reptile in your house.Okay?

Kindly forward your fullname ,contact address and phone# for immedaite payment.Okay?

thanks tom

Tom,

Yeah this is a scam. What they do is agree to pay for shipping and your animals via money order. They send you the money order and you deposit it. Of course you think everything is good and you send them the animals and pay for the shipping which you supposedly got reimbursed for in the MO. Long story short the MO is a really good fake. Sometimes takes the bank weeks to realize it but they will realize it. You get a call from the bank saying its fake and you don't get the money. By this time your money and animals are gone. Sad part is many times these people are not after the animals they often discard them. They want as much money as they can get from you. Not sure if this one is listed but similar Nigerian type scams are on www.scambusters.com

Scott

It works like this. You agree to sell them the animals (which they don't want). Then they tell you that in order to get them, there are complicated shipping restrictions, but they are willing to pay for all the complications.
They will send you a money order, you are supposed to cash the money order, take your asking price and send the rest of the cash to their "shipping agent" to cover the costs.

So your asking price is $100. They send you a money order for $1000 and you are supposed to send the extra $900 to their "shipping agent". When the bank comes back and says the money order is fake, you are out $900.

If you feel like having some fun and getting back at these SOBs, try this. Email back and accept the offer. They will then have to produce the fake money order and pay to fedex it to you (Which costs them $20-30). Then email back and tell them you will send them the "shipping cost" as soon as the money order completely clears your bank (which could take 2-3 weeks). The panicked emails you will get in response are worth the reading! They will send you emails explaining why you MUST send the money today, not wait for the check to clear. As soon as you tire of their BS, just send an email back telling them you are sending the bad check and all their emails to the FBI, which investigates these scams. Suddenly they will dissappear.

The net result is they are out the cost of sending the check to you by courier and they get nothing in return. Scamming the scammers. You have done nothing wrong, you just refused to send them anything until the check cleared, which it won't.

There is a great website somewhere that shows the interactions with people who have played these people in regard to a horse that was for sale.
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Chris Harrison
Central Texas

Sounds like fun. Thanks all for the help.

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