I got a feeling this could be scam

Hello there! I recently found a very good deal (almost too good to be true) on a piece of professional audio equipment on a small German classified site. There was no indication how long it's been there, but it seemed still available, and the description was written in very good German.

I contacted the seller via the form, and got a reply in very broken and bad German. Basically he said that he moved from Germany to England, and is still able to sell me the goods, will cover all the import charges and shipping fees to my country, and will use a company to handle everything because he has little time. That company will hold onto the item until I paid for it, then sends it to me, and then I have 5 days time to check it and see if I want to keep it, and if I return it within that time I get my money back.

I asked what payment methods would be possible, and didn't get a reply for that. Then I got an invoice by mail from a company called SD West Couriers, and the name on the invoice did not match the name from the mails I received before (A yahoo mail address). By googling the company, I could find the website at http://www.sdwestcouriers.co.uk - but the mail was sent from "[email protected]". Then I went to shipping-ltd.com and found just a blank website with two folders, a cgi-bin and another one containing a second website similar to the first one, but with different information on it. It does not look really professional, but entering the tracking number I got by mail resulted in showing me the information about the parcel that the seller allegedly shipped there. What also struck me was that the registered Ltd. number on both these sites was completely different.

What really made me wonder if this is a scam is that the only method allowed seems to be Western Union. I informed myself after seeing this, and found out that it's a method commonly used by scammers, and that I should only pay people over Western Union if I know them personally. I also read that I should cease all contact to the scammer once I found out about the scam, so what would be the best things I can do now? He has my street address, mail address and the company sent me an invoice by mail. Should I just ignore all that and be safe or are there possible problems if I do not pay the invoice? I'm really looking for some help here, so thanks for any replies in advance!

Do not pay the invoice. Just ignore the scammer.

Buy local or pay with a Credit Card.

shipping-ltd.com was registered for one year with a Chinese registrar by hidden, yet it shows a certificate dated January 2004. It is fake and is in the process of being reported for fraud.

Please post the email in all its mangled Germanness. We can probably tell something by analyzing the errors. Do not use Google Translate or any other automatic translator. Also other targets of the scammer may be looking for text in the message.

ETA: I checked the Spanish translation of the website. It was machine translated by a program that messed up the character encoding and was not checked by anyone, not even someone who doesn't know Spanish. (Spanish is my last (semi-)native language; German is my first non-native language.)

Here is the first mail I got from the scammer:

Hallo, Danke für Ihr Interesse . die Einheit bin verfügbar, mein letzter Preis bin € 1000 (die Versandgebühren eingeschlossen). Ich muss Sie informieren, dass ich in England bin. Ich nehme an, dass dieses keine Unannehmlichkeit für Sie ist. Dieses ist kein Problem, weil ich das Einzelteil direkt an Ihren Platz liefere. Die Versandsteuern werden von mir, Sie brauchen nicht, alle Extrasteuern zu zahlen behandelt. Wenn Sie zu diesem Kauf bereit sind, emailen Sie mir Ihren vollständigen Namen bitte und Ihre Versand Adresse und ich
beginnen das Verfahren. Nachdem ich das Verfahren beginne, schicke ich Ihnen alle Zahlungs- und Versanddetails.
Wartung Ihre Antwort.
Ich schätze. Mit freundlichen Grüßen.

Header is as follows (I removed my mail address completely from it by using XXXX)

John Rog <[email protected]>
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Re: Anfrage zu Ihrer Anzeige - KL726781


I'm just wondering if I should contact the classified site so they remove the user, because I don't want anyone else to run into these problems.

Thank you for sharing the information, this may help warn others.

You can report the ad to the website, but the scammer will just put more ads up. That's what they do. The best thing you can do, and have already done, is to report his information here for other potential victims to find.

You were very smart to pick up on the red flags. Always do your homework before making online purchases, never pay through money transfer services like Western Union or Moneygram.

My best guess as to his location is Namibia. There is a sign of Sub-Saharan Africa outside the word choice, and no one in eastern Europe, whether Slavic, Baltic, Turkic, or Finnic, would mangle verb conjugations like that. The German does not (to my Romance eyes) look machine-translated, and in most African countries one would be unlikely to know German, but in Namibia it is likely.

It is also obvious that the scammer has placed many ads for various kinds of items. "Thank you for your interest . the unit am available," — if he were offering only an amplifier, he'd say "the amplifier". Scammers who don't care what they're pretending to buy or sell call it "the item".

Yes, he had multiple (I think 3) different audio-related items for sale on that site. I wonder how he got access to the German text because it is flawless. Of course it's good to have things about him posted around here, but I can understand not all people would check back here to see if it was a fraud, not even if they feel like it, because they need to research a lot more before finding this site. But if you say he will just add more of these ads, it will not be possible to stop him from doing so.

I then switched to English in my next reply to his mail, because I thought "let's see if he can at least speak flawless English", but even that is not 100% good, although better than his German. Here is his second reply:

Hi,
Look I lived in Germany with my wife . Now I am in divorce with her and this is why I moved back to England .
Because I am quite busy I found out a company which will help me to sell the item easily .
They will handle shipping , payment and everything else .
The shipping taxes are included in the final price.
If you are not satisfied with your purchase, you may return it within 5 days of receiving it, in the condition that you received it in for a refund. I guarantee the item is as described .

The transaction will go through an shipping payment service like this:
1.I send the product .
2.You send the money to the company and they hold the money
3.You receive and check the item and decide if you keep it or return it and get a refund from the company.
4.I receive the payment from the shipping company or I receive the item back, if you decide not to keep it.
This is the best way to send an item from Uk to Switzerland .Is fast and cheap .The shipping will take 5 days .

Now that I know the delivery address and full name where to ship the item , please tell me everything is ok I can start this ?

I just hope nothing happens now because they have my street address.

If that's all the scammer has is your address, there's not much they will do with it. Scammers won't go through the expense or trouble to visit you at home. They are lazy and will just move on to the next victim. The most they may do is use your address in other scams to make their scam more convincing. You can set up a Google alert to monitor it.

I actually don't think the scammer will visit me personally, but they might take further actions because I didn't pay their invoice, like trying to force the money out of me with another fake company or other stuff, but I really hope they won't try anything like that. At least I have never agreed to pay by Western Union going for me.

I don't think that you'll have to worry too much, I mean, now that he has your email address I'm sure you'll start getting loads of scam emails, but there's nothing the scammer can do to force you to pay. What is he going to do, tell a cop that you refused to pay him money in his scam? He'll just move on to the next victim.

I hope your mind is eased a little. It was a good catch on your part and you've helped warn others by posting here at Scamwarners. Stick around!

an invoice is not really an invoice until after goods have been received. No one can bill you for goods you have not received, that is ridiculous.

If anything, the most you have to worry about is them impersonating you. Not stealing your identity, an impersonation of you.

Chances are good your scammer is not sophisticated enough to steal your ID, they only wanted your money.

You should create some "Google alerts" for all of the personal information given to these scammers. Go to www.google.com/alerts and set up one each for “complete address" , ”bldg # street name" "Drivers license #" "SSN" "FirstName LastName" and "LastName FirstName", “email address”, and what ever other data you have given. be sure to use only one alert per quotation query.

use the quotes " " as above for each one of the alerts they set up with Google. It is not likely the ID will be compromised, but I think its better to err on the side of safe, rather than sorry in this case. If the alerts ever show results, address them at that time.

If it is a passport # then contact homeland security (USA) ( Department of State) and report it compromised to be issued a new passport #. If a different country then contact the issuing authority of that country, and be sure to report it as compromised so you can be issued a new PP #. If they do try anything stupid, you do not want it coming back to haunt you in any way.

Just in addition to all good don't worry points stated above, I would like to point out that absolute majority of the individuals choosing the fraud as their business are cowards. Yes they are criminals, but this is most cowardly type of criminals. I used to face different sorts of scammers and swindlers several times. Some of them were in my country and my city. They can try to push you in some way, if they see that they're loosing you as a victim. Which is unlikely as a rule. But if it happens, it is enough a small pressure from your side to convince them to leave you alone. You can just ask them a couple of questions they would not like to answer: "Excuse me, who you are, actually? Honestly I do not trust you. What guarrantee you give? What's you home address? What's your landline phone number? Can you present me your tax payer ID or licence for your business?" Believe me that's gonna work. Scammers do not want to raise noise. They prfer to do their business quitely. Relax and stay cheery.