We're having a bit of a clear out at Chez clueless and I thought I'd try listing some of the bulkier items on CL. Aside from folks who can't read, I've already had a couple of replies from scammers, asking about "the item". Naturally, I use a separate email address for CL posts - think of it as a sandbox, if you will.

The first sent a blank email, with "Still for sale?" as the signature. I replied "Sadly not. It was destroyed in a skirmish between the Maquis and the Cardassians, during the battle for Terok Nor and since the industrial replicators were off-line they were unable to repair it."

The second said "Let me know if the items you posted on craigslist still for sale?" To which I replied "I'm sorry, but when Godzilla fought King Kong the items were underfoot and got trampled."

Does anybody else bother replying to these crooks?

false info.

"Sadly not. It was destroyed in a skirmish between the Maquis and the Cardassians, during the battle for Terok Nor"

The cardassians never fought the maquis at terok nor.

bill

Of course not! It's disinformation - you don't think I'm going to divulge classified Starfleet intel to a bunch of scammers, do you?

That's pretty much what I do. If a responder doesn't actually mention the item in question in his or her's text, I automatically treat it as a scammer.

Whenever I respond to any Craigslist ad, I always mention the item that's being sold, the city where I live, even my web page address. This gives the seller the confidence that I'm a legitimate and serious responder and I always get a response back.

I think I always have said, "Is your radio still for sale?" or something like that. Is that OK ?

I write in the description, "If you still see it here on CL its still for sale". Call *********, NO Emails.
Problem solved.

IMHO, any reply that references whatever it is that's being offered for sale is fine. It's a particular (and well known) trait of scammers that they don't want to invest the time in doing so, hence the generic term "the item".


Do scammers really respect "No emails" notices? Or do you just ignore them?

Let me just say.... I have had more than my share of absent-minded sellers that forget to take down their listings or don't seem to have a clue how to do so..

"Hi, I will take XXXXX"
"Excuse me, I don't know what you're talking about. Can you explain?"
"-le item link-"
"Oh, I'm sorry, it's been sold"

*facepalm*

I awoke to another email enquiring about "the items". I replied:

Thank you for your email.

Yesterday, I was visited by the Men in Black. I suspect that they may have warned me that you are on a watch list and that I should therefore have no dealings with you. However, I cannot say for sure, since they used their flashy thing to erase my memory of the incident.

Sometimes I wonder if those generic emails are being generated and sent out by software that scans Craigslist for newly posted ads. Can anybody verify this?

Do scammers really respect "No emails" notices? Or do you just ignore them?[/quote]

Emails are few and I don't get anymore asking "is it still for sale?"

Hi - I am truly clueless here. So what winds up being the scam?

Do they come to your house and hold you up for the dusty old $900 console you were trying to sell on CL?

Interesting. I've always held the view that the scam emails are automated, but hoffies experience would seem to be at odds with that.


They ask you to ship it and "pay" with a check for more than the total, asking you to send the change by Western Union. Then the check turns out to be a forgery.

Here's today's reply, to an email from "helpmegod2345" asking if "the item" is still available:

It is, but you wouldn't want it. It's possessed by a demon that escaped from Raymond E Feist's Demonwar Saga and is thoroughly foul mouthed and unpleasant.

They ask you to ship it and "pay" with a check for more than the total, asking you to send the change by Western Union. Then the check turns out to be a forgery.[/quote]



Gotcha - Thanks. Tell them it originally belonged to Don Rickles and when turned on, it taunts you unmercifully.

Thanks for the idea - I'll use that for the next one.

The way I see it, every silly reply I send uses up a few seconds of a crook's time in reading it. If we all did that, it could really cut into their productivity...

I think most are just bots , mining your EM... No response is the best course .

That's certainly possible, since I've yet to receive a reply. But, it's a burnable email address and I'm having fun...

A couple of years back I went through a phase of replying to scam job ads in the persona of Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, founder of the NKVD. That gave me a few laughs.

I spoke too soon! At least one of them isn't a bot, because I just got this reply (I took a break from my silly replies and sent a straight one, simply asking "Do you want it?") :

"Thanks for getting back to me, anyway i am ok with all the details i have gotten, please kindly withdraw the advert, i don't mind adding
$50 for you to withdraw the advert from Craigslist to avoid disturbance also to be informed that i will pay you with a certified check and once you have the check cashed at your bank then i will arrange for the pick up by engaging the services of a mover,which will be picking it up at your location..I will need the following details to mail the payment as soon as possible."

Any suggestions as to how I should reply to this?

H*ll... Tell 'em "I would never sell something to people who buy things from people like me."

As it happens, I told him "I don't have a bank account." He replied "you can cash it at any cash store okay so get back to me with your
full information so that the check can be send out"

Now, that doesn't sound like a typical overpayment with a fake check scam, because those rely upon the bank reversing the transaction and clawing back the funds from the victim's account (see also a recent paper from Microsoft Research arguing that the real victims of money mule operations are the mules themselves - but I'm too lazy to reference it properly).

So, perhaps David is right and it is a data mining effort, albeit one that's after more than just email addresses.

At the moment, I'm thinking of replying with something like "We only have one check cashing place in town and unfortunately I'm banned from there after a regrettable misunderstanding with the manager's sister. Is there any other way that you could pay for it?"

Unless somebody has a better idea?