Is this a nigerian scam?

[Egotistical EvilN]

Hello Ceninant,

Good day, thanks for the mail and i content is well noted,and sorry for the late response, so in regards to your mail I wil like to make you an offer of $465.00 for the shipping and handling cost to Western Africa, i am buying it for my daughther who is in school there and i hope she will like it very much, also let me know if this item is well presentable as a birthday gift and if you are ok with my offer,kindly get back to me with your full names and address so that payment can be sent or if you will like to be paid via PayPal you can send your paypal email ID and i can assure you that payment will be sent as soon as i hear from you. Hope to read from you soon.

Regards
Belinda.

[SlammedNiss]

Do you really have to ask that?

[MulletMan13]

Nope.

It's a Western African scam.

[JellyWarrior]

Regards
Belinda.

Yes, Belinda is a common name for West Africans (not to mention a very generic name).
If you get scammed in then it is your own fault!

[melancholy]

As a person that has never used Ebay before, I don't quite understand how these scams work. I mean, wouldn't you have to get the money first before you send the product? Do they somehow send you a Paypal payment but then retract it or something after they receive the product?

[SlammedNiss]

As a person that has never used Ebay before, I don't quite understand how these scams work. I mean, wouldn't you have to get the money first before you send the product? Do they somehow send you a Paypal payment but then retract it or something after they receive the product?

they send you "payment" in the form of an email stating the funds are in your acct. If you actually check though, the funds wont be there. They want you to ship the item(s) immediately after you recieve their "payment" in the hopes you wont find out until it's too late.

[|darc|]

Regards
Belinda.

Yes, Belinda is a common name for West Africans (not to mention a very generic name).
If you get scammed in then it is your own fault!

If you could read, you'd notice this "Belinda" has a daughter who is going to school in western Africa.

[ace]

What is it?

[Roofus]

Regards
Belinda.

Yes, Belinda is a common name for West Africans (not to mention a very generic name).
If you get scammed in then it is your own fault!

If you could read, you'd notice this "Belinda" has a daughter who is going to school in western Africa.

That was unnecessary.

[Veggita2099]

As a person that has never used Ebay before, I don't quite understand how these scams work. I mean, wouldn't you have to get the money first before you send the product? Do they somehow send you a Paypal payment but then retract it or something after they receive the product?

they send you "payment" in the form of an email stating the funds are in your acct. If you actually check though, the funds wont be there. They want you to ship the item(s) immediately after you recieve their "payment" in the hopes you wont find out until it's too late.

Yea I had one of these once on ebay. They hi-jacked somebody elses ebay account to bid on it. They send you a email basically saying something along the lines of what you got (in my case it was for her boyfriend going to school). Then 1 day later you get a e-mail supposedly from paypal that says you have been paid when you actually have not.

[melancholy]

As a person that has never used Ebay before, I don't quite understand how these scams work. I mean, wouldn't you have to get the money first before you send the product? Do they somehow send you a Paypal payment but then retract it or something after they receive the product?

they send you "payment" in the form of an email stating the funds are in your acct. If you actually check though, the funds wont be there. They want you to ship the item(s) immediately after you recieve their "payment" in the hopes you wont find out until it's too late.

Yea I had one of these once on ebay. They hi-jacked somebody elses ebay account to bid on it. They send you a email basically saying something along the lines of what you got (in my case it was for her boyfriend going to school). Then 1 day later you get a e-mail supposedly from paypal that says you have been paid when you actually have not.

I see. So they use a cloned Paypal email to try to trick you into thinking the money went through. I could see how some people would fall for that, but I always withdraw the shipping amount out of my Paypal before shipping anything, so I would definitely catch on before the product was actually shipped.

[JellyWarrior]

If you could read, you'd notice this "Belinda" has a daughter who is going to school in western Africa.

I can read just fine, the problem is that I never ever bother to read scam emails properly.

[Egotistical EvilN]

Hmm, I'm going to pull a p-p-p-powerbook, I think. I'm replying with my paypal address. We'll see what happens.

http://www.metafilter.com/33088/PPPPowerbook

[|darc|]

If you could read, you'd notice this "Belinda" has a daughter who is going to school in western Africa.

I can read just fine, the problem is that I never ever bother to read scam emails properly.

Well before you point out logical problems with a text you should read it.

[Egotistical EvilN]

Hi Ceninant,
Payment of $465.00 as been sent to your paypal email id :ceninant@gmail.com
, i will need your effectiveness on the shipment as i am quite sure that paypal must have notify you with payment confirmation, i will like to let you know that i confirm shipping address with paypal before i make the payment, so you will ave to ship to a verify address which paypal include in the payment notification.
I will be waiting for you to egt back to me as soon as you are back from the p.o.
Nice doing business with you.

Waiting to read back from you
Malik.

Who's Malik?

Hi. I got the notification, but the money doesn't show up in my
account. Do you want me to call Paypal?

Hi, if you want to call no problem, but all i know is that your account will be credited as soon as you mail out the item and forward the shipment tracking number to paypal at tracking-provider@post.com and your account will be credited without any delay. Waiting to read back from you.

Malik.

Now I can either go along with the scam, or keep asking questions.

[melancholy]

Your account will be credited as soon as he receives the tracking number? Right...

[ace]

Well that's the thing right? They're predators. But they only prey on the weak. They aren't like some predators, not like T-rex. See, Tyrannosaurus Rex was king of the jungle. He could prey on whatever he liked, and it didn't really matter. But these guys are like Velociraptor. They prey on a lot of things in the jungle, but they aren't really king. Actually, funnily enough, velociraptor probably could have been king, if it wanted to - it's pretty well known that a pack of velociraptors could take a T-rex to the ground.

So these people prey on the weak; those who don't really know the internet, don't really know all this pay pal mumbo jumbo.

Fuck, Firefox has an issue with my spelling of velociraptor but "mumbo jumbo" is fine. That really pisses me off. I have to remember to write an angry letter to Mozilla about this tomorrow.

So they expect you not know what to do in this situation. They expect Mom or dad to be sending a care package to your older brother Ricky, who is overseas fighting the war. They expect you to be sitting the front porch with your grandfather, listening to the ball game on the radio - because television hadn't made it to this part of the world yet. They expect the wind to be flowing through the wheat, and the weather to be turning. From summer, to fall, and finally to winter. It would be last, more than likely. But then. when you think of it, we humans don't last very long at all, do we? In terms of things that we know have been around since the time of the percieved day of our world's existance.

That's a whole different story though. We think we were the first things here and we will be the last to leave. I mean, just read the wikipedia article on the earth.

"The Earth is the first planet known to have liquid water on the surface and is the only place in the universe known to harbour life. Earth has a magnetic field that, together with a primarily nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, protects the surface from radiation that is harmful to life. The atmosphere also serves as a shield that causes smaller meteors to burn up before they strike the surface."

As if they really know. As if any of us know.

And that's what they hope. They sit there, in the hopes that someone will be too ignorant to understand the scam. Too ignorant to realize that they should actually physically receive payment before sending the item.


But no one ever looks at it that way, do they? No one ever looks at it that way.

[melancholy]

[DuffMan]

Anyone have a link to P-P-P-Powerbook? All the PDF mirrors are down.

[AuroEdge]

But I thought a laptop only cost $100 per child?