JasonW Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Eh, maybe he will, let's see what happens to those who respond to the emails..... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
vince14 Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Meh, old news. 401 scams have been going for well over a decade now, if not longer. I'm amazed that anyone still falls for them. Vince Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Phantom ordie Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 The latest is you receive a bunch of legitimate looking money orders in an envelope and are asked to test buy items at Wal-Mart. After cashing the MO and buying these items you keep the item and send the remaining change to an address. Then the police come looking for you for fraud. The MO were made out to you so you take the rap for a fake MO. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
MHaz Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 The latest is you receive a bunch of legitimate looking money orders in an envelope and are asked to test buy items at Wal-Mart. After cashing the MO and buying these items you keep the item and send the remaining change to an address. Then the police come looking for you for fraud. The MO were made out to you so you take the rap for a fake MO. There's a very profitable way to bust scammers who try this one. My wife *almost* fell victim to a variant (craigslist version). Scammer tried to pay for a craigslist sale we had with MO's, and when they arrived, they were for about 5x the price she'd agreed to. I took the envelope, MO's and his letter to the local MoneyGram office, and had the manager verify them. Of course, they were fake, but I gave him photocopies of the envelope and included letter, plus the original MO's. Moneygram sent me a $500 reward check about 2 weeks later for helping them investigate a scam. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Litvyak Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 What's even better are the scammer-scams... there's a whole "scambusting" subculture out there that's a bit nuts and absolutely fascinating... they reply to these guys and string them along... some extreme results have been to get the scammer to /verifiedly/ travel to Abeche, Chad, expecting to pick up $250,000 from a church doing humanitarian work in Darfur region... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Dndieje Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 What's even better are the scammer-scams... there's a whole "scambusting" subculture out there that's a bit nuts and absolutely fascinating... they reply to these guys and string them along... some extreme results have been to get the scammer to /verifiedly/ travel to Abeche, Chad, expecting to pick up $250,000 from a church doing humanitarian work in Darfur region... Some classics here: http://www.419eater.com/ Quote Link to post Share on other sites
MHaz Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 What's even better are the scammer-scams... there's a whole "scambusting" subculture out there that's a bit nuts and absolutely fascinating... they reply to these guys and string them along... some extreme results have been to get the scammer to /verifiedly/ travel to Abeche, Chad, expecting to pick up $250,000 from a church doing humanitarian work in Darfur region... Some classics here: http://www.419eater.com/ That site is one of my favorite reads when I have some down time. The stuff these scammers will do in the name of greed is just flat out funny. I think one of my favorites is when the site's owner got a scammer to read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy into an mp3 file. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
pastafarian Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 I did that once, didn't get too far with them though. we went back and forth a few times with me playing dumb as a rock and that guy eventually stopped emailing me. John Quote Link to post Share on other sites
JasonW Posted January 14, 2012 Author Share Posted January 14, 2012 Meh, old news. 401 scams have been going for well over a decade now, if not longer. I'm amazed that anyone still falls for them. Vince Not old news if you read the article. Sure 401 scams are old news, but the individuals in question who fell for this one not only corresponded with the scammers via email, they also agreed to fly to South Africa and meet the scammers and were kidnapped and held for ransom. Upon landing in SA they were kidnapped. Fortunately for them they were rescued. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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