Expose:

Another Idiot Scammer

April 28, 2009 by Kyle Brady
Tags: Craigslist, Ebay, Owned, PayPal, Phishing, Scam, Scammer
As required by the FTC, a Full Disclosure is available - this piece adheres to the Code of Ethics

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I've already pointed out that most scammers aren't that intelligent, and it's easy to avoid being "caught" by them.  But I got another email thread that started just a day after the last one, with an entirely different person... this one pretends to be more legitimate for awhile, and ends up being amusing.  This one got reported to PayPal as well.

There were a few main differences between the last scammer and this one, so here's the highlights:

• a different address (potentially the equivalent of a P.O. Box?)... here it is for all you search engines:
  ADEBAYO ADEOLA
  C.A.C OKE-AYO AKURO IBADAN
  CITY: IBADAN
  STATE: OYO
  COUNTRY: NIGERIA WEST AFRICA


• After telling "her" that I'm not going to fall for a retarded scam attempt, she replies "okay am not like that am a  beautiful lady/////"... I'm not sure what all the slashes are for.

• I then call her out on how that's not even relevant, receiving a reply of "okay but when are you going to ship the gods when i do the transfer now"... as if she's afraid I won't send her the laptop.

• I reply that I will ship as soon as my PayPal account has the correct balance...

And don't hear from her again.

A day later, I decide to poke her another time and see if I can get a rise out of it (to no avail):

What, you're not interested anymore?

Maybe because you're not a real buyer, and are, in fact, a scammer from Nigeria?

Oh, surprise.  I bet the fact that you can barely speak English and told me you were in Nigeria didn't give it away at all...

I should sell on Craigslist more often, so I get more of these emails - they're very entertaining!

I've provided a ZIP file of the emails for your amusement.

Expose pieces are irregular posts attempting to hold people and organizations accountable for their actions.
Kyle can be found on Twitter and MySpace, or reached via email.