Nigerian Email Scammers and my computer listed on Craigslist.

Alright, now I'm gonna try to make this funny for you guys, but here's what happened.

Listed my computer on eBay, and it didn't sell. So, went for Craigslist. I listed it at like $1000 OBO, which I know is way too high, but soon I got a few emails saying the person was interested. I replied, and got nothing back, but this last guy was peculiar.

He seemed to be in a rush, his english was hard to understand, and he was motivated. I could tell from his typing. He said he would give me $1000 and $100 for shipping through paypal. I told him it would be easy to meet up and exchange, but he ignored that and pretended to send me money to my PP addy. I got a sequence of emails from what looked like fake PP emails saying I had gotten money and that it was being held until I entered the tracking number to PP. I was already skeptical, so I clicked the PP link in the email, and went to the regular PP site. I looked at my activity, and saw nothing saying I'd been sent funds that were being held from "Kelvin Collins". Now I was nearly certain.

After telling him that I wanted the money first, he said just to do what he had wanted before, and gave me his address in.............wait for it..................Nigeria.

Name:Tosin Oduyebo
> Address:# Plot 4 Subaru Streets off Alakia
> Isebo road,
> State:Oyo state
> City:Ibadan
> Country:Nigeria
> Zip code:23402

The above is what I was sent. A quick check on google maps prove it exists. Thing is, I know I'm not getting any money, and he is certainly not getting my desktop.

Only thing I'm worried about is that he has my PP addy.....he cant do anything can he?

Since he has ur PP addy i guess the worst he could do is actually send you money...

Why are 90% of scammers from nigeria...?

sandyduff said:

...Why are 90% of scammers from nigeria...?

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Lax laws for prosecution of such activity? I dunno.

jamesman32 said:

I was already skeptical, so I clicked the PP link in the email, and went to the regular PP site. I looked at my activity, and saw nothing saying I'd been sent funds that were being held from "Kelvin Collins". Now I was nearly certain.

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You're kidding right? You clicked a link in an email and signed on to 'paypal' through it? That's just asking for trouble..

ratbuddy said:

You're kidding right? You clicked a link in an email and signed on to 'paypal' through it? That's just asking for trouble..

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The link in the fake email took me to the real paypal. I know that because FireFox saves my login email for PP, and my email was in the box when I got the site. For extra measure I went to PP as well in another tab, and the web addresses were identical. So yeah, it was stupid in the first place, but I made sure it was the real site.

On another note, even more people are trying to scam me with similar stories now. The last guy's english was ok, but he still wanted me to ship to another country to his son in college.

Sigh....

What's up with CraigsList these days?

jamesman32 said:

The link in the fake email took me to the real paypal. I know that because FireFox saves my login email for PP, and my email was in the box when I got the site. For extra measure I went to PP as well in another tab, and the web addresses were identical. So yeah, it was stupid in the first place, but I made sure it was the real site.

On another note, even more people are trying to scam me with similar stories now. The last guy's english was ok, but he still wanted me to ship to another country to his son in college.

Sigh....

What's up with CraigsList these days?

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There have been plenty of exploits in the past that made it look like you were going to a legit site. Never ever click a link from an untrusted source, no exceptions.

ratbuddy said:

There have been plenty of exploits in the past that made it look like you were going to a legit site. Never ever click a link from an untrusted source, no exceptions.

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Yup. Like using international characters for web addresses. Web browsers can't process the international character correctly so à becomes a, so someone could make a site that is actually www.pàypàl.com but firefox/internet exploder/opera/etc. will show www.paypal.com.

Although I feel like a total noob, all of this info is quite helpful, so thanks guys.

Twigglish said:

Lax laws for prosecution of such activity? I dunno.

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No government therefore no law enforcement.

Next question?

Web browsers can't process the international character correctly so à becomes a, so someone could make a site that is actually www.pàypàl.com but firefox/internet exploder/opera/etc. will show www.paypal.com.

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ARGH, DEATH TO PEOPLE WHO DON'T DO UNICODE STRINGS PROPERLY.

Never ever click a link from an untrusted source, no exceptions.

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Best advice ever.

Every single time I get a paypal payment I always open my browser and TYPE IN : paypal.com. After I get the email notice, I always do this. Even after getting a payment from someone here in the classifieds. And this is the safest place to buy things on the internet!

jamesman32 said:

Although I feel like a total noob, all of this info is quite helpful, so thanks guys.

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If you haven't yet, change your Paypal password, and don't use the link in the email

Friend put his PSP on craigslist and got an email from Nigeria saying that it was for the guy's fiance, that she always wanted on. He was selling for $100 and the guy wanted to pay $100 extra to handle shipping Needless to say I told him there was a 99% chance it was a scammer.

sobe said:

Friend put his PSP on craigslist and got an email from Nigeria saying that it was for the guy's fiance, that she always wanted on. He was selling for $100 and the guy wanted to pay $100 extra to handle shipping Needless to say I told him there was a 99% chance it was a scammer.

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First guy offered me full price + $100 shipping sight unseen, and second offered full price + $200 shipping.

Captain Newbie said:

ARGH, DEATH TO PEOPLE WHO DON'T DO UNICODE STRINGS PROPERLY.

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Is that pointed at me or the scammers/domain name registars?

Just bolstering..NEVER! click links in email. I do not even tab protected sites with secured sites in the same browser session. There was a proof of concept I read about. Where just having an open tab was good enough to swipe data from other sites. So I find it safer to do secure browsing in it's own browser session.

This is why having a browser you never use is nice to have. I use Opera as my secondary browser. If I do not trust a site. I open that up and forage with that. Which the brower itself is pretty good security wise. Plus it is obscure, and not much of a target.. So I try and keep nothing important going on in it. No cookies or passwords and such, pretty much a blank browser. Even though I use Linux, it is not 100% safe covering a browser.. So a few precautions are in order. I can chill and not worry as much.

First one is.. Do not trust links in email
Second, do not parse html in your mail. Until you give it trust.
Know what defects are in the browser and mail cleint. Before you play with fire.

jamesman32 said:

The link in the fake email took me to the real paypal. I know that because FireFox saves my login email for PP, and my email was in the box when I got the site. For extra measure I went to PP as well in another tab, and the web addresses were identical. So yeah, it was stupid in the first place, but I made sure it was the real site.

On another note, even more people are trying to scam me with similar stories now. The last guy's english was ok, but he still wanted me to ship to another country to his son in college.

Sigh....

What's up with CraigsList these days?

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BE VERY CAREFUL HERE, as pointed out. These scammers are not morons, they are not idiots, they are professionals, and they make a fortune scamming people (americans and western europeans) out of their money.

They speak broken english for you to do just what you did: and thats say "lol this idiot trying to scam he can barely talk- let me have some fun with this guy and click on the link"

That link is GUARANTEED to be a fake paypal, i recommend you change all changable paypal info you have and dont take these scammers lightly.

nigerian 419 scammers are NOTHING NEW, anyone that posts anything on CL will get this email, your best bet is to delete the email and move on, or disable emails from craigslist and sell your stuff phone number only.

Making them waste their time will only waste your time, time wasters are built into their systems, and some smart guy every day will try to get them to mail an empty box and do all the work of setting you up -

the bad part is their prepaid shipping fees are usually paid for by stolen creditcards or hijacked paypal (or ebay) accounts



Every thing these guys do is thought out and preplanned, from the way they type, to the emails they use to the ip internet trail everything they do leads on., They even have efficient ways of scamming people for only the top selling items.

Just my warning.