!!! Scam Alert !!!

[chevman-67]

Hello everyone this is a SCAM ALERT I received this email yesterday.PLEASE BE CARFULL!!!!!Quote below.
GOOD DAY
MY NAME IS MR.Wood,I AM AN AMERICAN BASED IN LONDON AND OUR COMPANY
FLASHYRIDES INC,LOCATED AT 17 EAST ROAD,FINCHLEY,LONDON,N3 3QE.WE
SPECIALIZE IN THE PURCHASE AND SHIPPING OF USEDCARS & MOTORCYCLES,TO OUR
NUMEROUS CUSTOMERS WORLDWIDE.WE CURRENTLY HAVE A CUSTOMER THAT WANTS TO BUY YOUR 1967 CHEVY STEP SIDE. PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE THE OFFER AND WE WILL INSTRUCT THE BUYER TO PROCEED WITH THE PAYMENT PROCEDURES IMMEDIATELY......
LOOKING FORWARD TO HEAR FROM YOU.........
THANKS,
ADRIAN WOOD
FOR MANAGEMENT.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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[COBALT]

Uh....are you trying to sell your truck online by any chance? If so then welcome to the internet. I wouldn't be too surprised on this. Makes me curious how the semantics of this would even work out to benefit the scammers.

[bouncytruck]

There are many scams when you are selling/buying a vehicle online. Don't accept cashiers checks unless their bank verifys the funds or ship vehicles before all the moneys have been verified.

[Zumo]

Man that's weird. If I ever sell a car on the internet/ebay I will not deliver the car until payment has been recieved. If they really want the car they come up with the cash. I don't care who you are. You could be the Pope, you slap the cash in my hand/bank account and it's yours. You wouldn't go to a dealership and be able to get a car with out some sort of payment in full or financing. Either way the dealer gets it's money on the spot at the time of delivery. So sell to this guy if he pay in full before delivery, if not, F'em.

[72C203503ONTHETREE]

Haha, I have a cashiers check for $9,000 that one of those scammers sent me. I knew he was a scammer so I went along with him and got the check. I know its fake, but its cool to have one for that much. I had a 76 BMW 2002 that I was selling on different online classifieds, got a bunch of them to reply to me. Got one last week and the car was sold over three months ago, they search for all the ads and contact uou no matter how long its been posted. Had a guy do that with my old Volvo 240, thats where I found out about these guys. Do not ever deal with any foreigners unless they have the cash in hand and you meet them in person.

[Lippyp]

Can't say that I've heard of Flashyrides Inc or seen any ads in the UK motoring mags for them, however that doesn't mean they don't exist, what causes me some suspicion is the Flashyrides Inc bit we don't use Inc as a company title in the UK, Ltd, PLC, & son, maybe Corp if it's an american company but not Inc. I also can't find them listed on Yellow Pages or a couple of other phone books sites either so I would steer clear.

[72C203503ONTHETREE]

It takes up to a month to clear a cashiers check, so be ready to sit on the vehicle that long at least. That is what the FBI told me when I was dealing with the Volvo and the Nigerian guy. Cash only deal and make sure the cash isn't counterfeit.

[chevman-67]

I thought I would try to find out some info to see if it was legit but I'm not that good at this internet selling so I replied and this is what I received it sounds like a scam to me but with all the internet scams out there it makes you suspicious.I'm just trying to warn and help everyone buy posting this and making people aware of the dangers involed.I only posted my truck on
GMC PAULS web site for sale if they seen it there I don't know?This is the reply I got from them!!

Dear CHRIS,

Thanks for the mail and information.My clients name is Mr GORDON SMITH from DERBY COUNTY and two others .state your last asking price so that,We will intsruct the buyer to proceed with the payment procedures immediately the required information is provided.STATE the present condition of the CHEVY and it's present location.send recent pictures if any for my clients viewing.Hope to hear from you as soon as possible.

THE VERY BEST.

ADRIAN WOOD.
FOR MANAGEMENT.







Chris & Annette <annette.keller@sympatico.ca> wrote:
Hello I am the owner of the 1967 Chevrolet Shortbox Stepside pickup.I would like to have more information regarding the sale of my truck.Who is interested in the sale of my truck. where is it going etc. If u can send me all of the information I would be happy to read it over, and give u any info that u may need in regards to this truck. .
Thanks for your time
----- Original Message -----
From: adrian wood
To: annette.keller@sympatico.ca
Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 12:46 AM
Subject: INTERESTED IN YOUR 1967 CHEVYSTEP SIDE


GOOD DAY
MY NAME IS MR.Wood,I AM AN AMERICAN BASED IN LONDON AND OUR COMPANY
FLASHYRIDES INC,LOCATED AT 17 EAST ROAD,FINCHLEY,LONDON,N3 3QE.WE
SPECIALIZE IN THE PURCHASE AND SHIPPING OF USEDCARS & MOTORCYCLES,TO OUR
NUMEROUS CUSTOMERS WORLDWIDE.WE CURRENTLY HAVE A CUSTOMER THAT WANTS TO BUY YOUR 1967 CHEVY STEP SIDE. PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE THE OFFER AND WE WILL INSTRUCT THE BUYER TO PROCEED WITH THE PAYMENT PROCEDURES IMMEDIATELY......
LOOKING FORWARD TO HEAR FROM YOU.........
THANKS,
ADRIAN WOOD
FOR MANAGEMENT.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com



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[Hunter]

I have a fake BofA Cashier's check on my frig for $18,500! These scumbags are in Lagos, Nigeria and here's how the scam is supposed to work: They tell you they want your auto (mine was an awesome TBI Chevy/700R4 Toyota FJ60 wagon) for a client in Canada or England or Antarctica, whatever, and don't ask for images or info or a deal - Nothing. Then they tell you that they are sending the cashier's check fed ex, which they did. Then YOU are supposed to be so excited about jamming them on the sale that YOU Western Union them the excess $$ for "shipping" WITHOUT CASHING THE CASHIER'S CHECK! Get it? You'd have to be a freakin' idiot (I guess they are out there!) to not cash the check. I went down to my local BofA where I bank and the lady was gone with the check a loooong time then came back and said this is not real. We both had a laugh because I'm not out anything. This was the second one they had in a month in my little town of 10,000.
I think it was W.C. Fields who said: "You can't cheat an honest man". I called the Federal BI and they never even returned my call as they know ALL about it. Can't get 'em in Nigeria I guess. Stay SMART, stay HONEST. H.

[barn9]

If "Nigeria" shows up on anything, RUN away from it as fast as possible.

[Stano]

We got the same thing going on here in our little ol town of 16,000+. Its on our online classified thingy. People trying to pull the same scam. Now half of the classified ads on it are BEWARE SCAM ALERT!! Sucks that some a$$hole thieves ruin stuff for other people who are honest and tryin to sell their stuff for some extra cash to pay bills. I say get a real short rope and a tall,tall tree. Get me drift

[Lippyp]

Originally Posted by chevman-67

Dear CHRIS,

Thanks for the mail and information.My clients name is Mr GORDON SMITH from DERBY COUNTY and two others .state your last asking price so that,We will intsruct the buyer to proceed with the payment procedures immediately the required information is provided.STATE the present condition of the CHEVY and it's present location.send recent pictures if any for my clients viewing.Hope to hear from you as soon as possible.

THE VERY BEST.

ADRIAN WOOD.
FOR MANAGEMENT.

It is possible the guy is legit, but to my ears as an Englishman he sounds more and more dodgy. I would ask him for some references that you can follow up, a UK phone number and a web address and be up-front tell him you are concerned about some of the recent internet scams. If he is legit he will proivide you with the right info, but I doubt it, any company that approaches me and doesn't provide a phone number or website sets alarm bells ringing, remember email can come from anywhere in the world. As I said before, I can find no reference to them on Yellow Pages etc so if he is legit he's someone working out of his home without a proper business phone line. The format of the email with the information in capitals looks like a standard form type email and is even more suggestive of a scam to me.

If he is an American in the UK he hasn't been here long as no one would say Derby County, it's called Derbyshire. Most UK import companies will have an agent in the USA that will handle that end of things or make personal trips over to find stock themselves. I know this because I use a restoration company in the UK and that's precisely what they do, every few months the owner takes a trip to the US, travels around to see a list of trucks (they specialise in 40-50's trucks and do some fantastic work) and load a couple of shipping containers. Any spare space they fill with engines and transmissions.

[Lippyp]

Oh and this may help, that address doesn't exist, there is no East Road in Finchley with that postal code, in fact there is no east road in Finchley at all. You can check that on here: http://www.mapquest.co.uk/cgi-bin/ia...9wa:25dz7xgzyg and I've also looked it up in my A-Z street map of London and it ain't there.

Three words for you......It's a SCAM!

[Lippyp]

OK, so I've spoken to the Trading Standards Officer for Barnet and Finchley and he can find no record of the company, there is no East Road in Finchley, the closest is East End Road and number 17 East End road is a listed building owned by a charitable trust and houses a museum, so does not have any commercial companies based there. They are unaware of the this as a scam but agree that it's almost certainly likely to be a scam.

If you use the following from to report this to them they can advise future recipients appropriately http://www.barnet.gov.uk/business/tr...aint_form.php3

Hope this helps

[Gary]

Yep this is a common scam, they do the same thing for things like laptops and other high dollar items.

I have a simple rule - I do not even think of doing business for big items outside Canada or the US, it might cost me a sale or a purchase of an item I want (to buy or sell) but I've yet to be scammed online and I'd like to keep it that way!

Another common one is for example "oh you want $8000 for that car? My client can send you $10000 and you send him $1000 back via Western Union and keep $1000 for shipping/handling/whatever" basically they're turning a worthless piece of paper into $1000.

Another is the fake escrow companies. I was looking around for a good used or new Apple laptop, found one for a REALLY good price (too good but I figured why not humor the guy) on Amazon's marketplace. He emailed me back saying to make it safe yada yada escrow service. The domain in question? Was 4 days old, yeah a legit escrow service that is 4 days old? The site looked halfway legit with Verisign this and Secure that everywhere, but when you loaded the secure page it was secured by an Instant-SSL certificate (free) and not a Verisign cert at all (among other crap that was so obvious). I humored him, emailed his provider and got the web site pulled for the fake escrow site.

3 weeks later he apparently was up and running again and blanket emailed everyone who contacted him earlier and I got another reply, word for word the same as the first, and the fake escrow site was back online with a new web host. I figured screw it, blocked him from emailing me and didn't even bother reporting the scammer a second time, they just move around to a new host and keep trucking.

[RShaips]

I just had a honda 200 trials bike listed on ebay and had 5 different scammers try to get me to respond. Finally one of them bought it with the "Buy it now" price and screwed up my auction. I had to relist it and file a complaint to get my selling fees back.What a pain in the a$$. Its pretty easy to tell which ones are scammers in my opinion, most have mispelled words and just don't look right !