[Eug]

I just got a scam email for the 24" iMac I put up for sale:

My name is Mr Foreman John i live and work in USA .am interested in buying your item, I need someone i can trust to help me do the shipping to Africa.i ll offer you $1300usd including shipping fee .All i need from you is your paypal money request so i can make the payment out

How does this scam work? Do they pay with a cloned credit card or a fake cheque, and then the payment gets overturned later? I don't understand this "money request" thing.

P.S. This one seems particularly sloppy for 2009. His first name is Foreman, he lives in the USA, and yet he wants it shipped to Africa. Scam emails I've gotten in the recent past have had better punctuation and actually provide a reason to ship it to Africa.

[Dork.]

I think what they do is after you send them a legit Paypal money request, they create a fake Paypal payment notice with the information in the legit request, so their fake looks more legit. The fake notice may be enough to make you send the item.

[Eug]

Oh I see. However, the money would never show up in the account then. I was thinking they'd somehow fake the payment, so the deposit would show up in the account, but then when PayPal realized it was fake, they'd withdraw the money. I guess the scammers are counting on people not checking their accounts for 4-digit $ deposits.

I also wonder how legit-looking the email headers would be.

I'm almost tempted to send a paypal money request just to see what the result would look like, but I don't want to provide my contact information to the scammers.

[turtle777]

Fake a Paypal money request and send it to him.

Should be fun

-t