Used Wedding Dress Buyer - Is this a scam?

My gut is telling me this is a scammer, but I need help determining if it is.

I am selling my wedding dress online, and this person contacted me with the following email:
"Hello, I am writting to enquire whether your wedding gown is still available for sale. I saw your advert on oncewed.com and I would like to know if it is possible for me to ask a few questions and I would be grateful if you could answer and provide more information needed regarding your advert. Please , do not hesitate to to contact me, you can e-mail me at [email protected] for further discussion.Thank you very much for your kind assistance. Felicia."

We've gone back and forth for a month, agreed on a price and I received a business check via FedEx today, but the amount was way more than we agreed to sell the dress for. I asked her about it and she said this:

"I just got your e-mail, I am happy the payment got to you at last. I am sorry for all the delay that seemed to be like "there was never a check coming/mailed for my dress" but all the same, I appreciate your honesty. Yes, that's the payment I told you about.What I was explaining in my previous e-mail is that , the check was made for a wrong amount . Apparently , he was suppose to also make payment to my vendor regarding my wedding arrangement so he wrote the check all together with the payment agreed for my dress in a single check . He thought you are the same as the vendor so wrote the check with the vendor's fund inclusive in the payment sent to you. I believe we are on the same page now? Because I am not around now, what I want you to do as is kindly go ahead and calculate the agreed price for my dress ($200 + $30 extra for the shipping materials = $230.00) out of the payment and the excess balance i want you to kindly send it via money gram to my vendor to get them started with my wedding plan and all Asap. I've also informed them "vendor" about the mix up which ought to have gotten them started with the arrangement, so as soon as you send the money gram they can just go ahead with the plan. I am sorry for all delays and misunderstanding regarding this transaction.I appreciate your understanding, patience and support regarding all the arrangement to get me the dress . Kindly let me know so that I can forward the information for the shipping and money gram detail so as to proceed from here and get everything done as soon as possible.Thanks."

Is this a scam?

Hello frygurl!
YES this is a scam! The check is fake. If you deposit it later you would find out from your bank it was fake. You would be responsible for paying back the money including the money you sent to the scammer. Just stop communicating with them and they will go away.

Glad you got suspicious!

Justin

Thanks for your help!

I am curious though...in this situation does the check actually clear the bank, only to later discover it's a fake? Or if I deposited the check, would it be discovered right away?

I thought it would be okay to accept a check if the check cleared the bank before I shipped the item I was selling.

Also, do scammers like this usually invest a lot of time into one scam? Me and this person have been going back and forth for a month.

The check was sent to me via FedEx. FedEx is expensive. Is it possible the scammer used someone else's account to ship the check?

I am curious though...in this situation does the check actually clear the bank, only to later discover it's a fake? Or if I deposited the check, would it be discovered right away?

Legally the bank has to give you the funds. It is nor until later when the checks go to the clearing house is it typically discovered they were written from a stollen or compromised account.

I thought it would be okay to accept a check if the check cleared the bank before I shipped the item I was selling.

As stated above this would be incorrect it can take up to a couple weeks for the bank to find out and notify you.

Also, do scammers like this usually invest a lot of time into one scam? Me and this person have been going back and forth for a month.

It's not unheard of but not common either. They are usual pretty fast in this particular scam. Oddly enough I seem to remember almost an identical story about selling a wedding dress here on the site. 

The check was sent to me via FedEx. FedEx is expensive. Is it possible the scammer used someone else's account to ship the check?

Yes. They usually use a stollen or phished Fedex or Ups account. 

Thanks for your help!

I am curious though...in this situation does the check actually clear the bank, only to later discover it's a fake? Or if I deposited the check, would it be discovered right away?

It depends. Some times the tellers can spot a fake. More often it takes a little time for the forgery to be found out. This is what the scammers count on.

I thought it would be okay to accept a check if the check cleared the bank before I shipped the item I was selling.

The banking system can take months to actually have the check "totally" cleared, so this would be an unwise thing to do. You will be the one the bank and probably the police come after, not the scammer.

Also, do scammers like this usually invest a lot of time into one scam? Me and this person have been going back and forth for a month.

Scammers do invest time, but they also get a machine going once they have their technique. At that point, they only have to keep the machine going.

The check was sent to me via FedEx. FedEx is expensive. Is it possible the scammer used someone else's account to ship the check?

Absolutely, scammers do not part with the money they have easily. Often it is a stolen account, or a stolen credit card which is used to pay the bill. Scammers are nasty, thieves and liars. NOTHING they say is true.

You are best to just stop all communication with this scammer. No real person would send a check for more than is being asked for an item and "hope" the seller would send the overage. It is just not the way real people do things. Think about going to the market. You want your change right then, you don't want to wait days to get the change.


Ninja'd by Gus!

I thought it would be okay to accept a check if the check cleared the bank before I shipped the item I was selling.

The common misconception of our check clearing process is what the scammers use to their advantage.

There are many internal steps in the clearing of a check, including multiple bank-to-bank interactions. Completing those steps can take anywhere from a day or two to several weeks, even months in some cases. If it were up to the banks, they would hold the money for as long as possible, as that means money for them. But, imagine what that would do to the average person. If you deposited your paycheck, for example, and the money was held for weeks, the effects could be disastrous to you and your creditors too. In order to prevent this, the government has established laws limiting how long the bank can hold your money. If they haven't established that the check is a fake, they have to allow you access to the funds within a certain number of days (depending on the type of check). Most people think that if they can take the cash out, it means the check has cleared. Scammers encourage that belief because it gets them what they want. In reality, the check hasn't cleared--the bank is just following the law.

BUT--once they give you the money...if the bank later discovers that the check is fraudulent, they have the right to take that money back. This can happen any time during that clearing process mentioned above. They also have the right to charge you fees for the bad deposit, and to bounce any checks written on that money (and charge bounced check fees too).

So--when you go to deposit the check, the bank will start the clearing process. In some cases, they may discover the fake immediately (for example, if the account it is written on has already been flagged for fraud). But in others (for example, if it is the first check the scammer has tried to draw on a phished account) the check will pass all the early clearing steps, and the bank will give you the money as required by law. Later, though (for example, when the real account owner is reconciling his statement and discovers checks he didn't write), the check will be proved fraudulent, and the information above applies.

Also, do scammers like this usually invest a lot of time into one scam? Me and this person have been going back and forth for a month.

Sometimes they do spend quite a bit of time before pulling the scam. Most of their emails are probably pre-written, and will be reused on similar victims anyway.

The check was sent to me via FedEx. FedEx is expensive. Is it possible the scammer used someone else's account to ship the check?

It is almost a guarantee that they did. Shipping account numbers are phished/hacked routinely, and they are bought and sold on the internet just like stolen credit cards. Business shipping accounts are often targeted, because a few extra shipments are likely to go unnoticed for a long time.

Wow, thanks for all this information. I will never offer to accept a check for an online purchase again. I'm glad I trusted my instincts on this one.

Hi,

We run a wedding classifieds website similar to oncewed and a few of our users encountered this type of inquiry a couple years ago. We immediately implemented a safe and secure e-mail system (with several different checks) for inquiries that weeds out any fraudulent inquiries and protects our sellers from receiving messages like this in the first place. Since then, no one has reported this on our website.

I will say that the written english in the e-mails you've copied here is much better than most we see. Typically, they copy and paste the same inquiry and contact 100 different items in the span of 15 minutes. Secondly, in our experience, once a scammer has put quite a bit of time into baiting a seller, they get a bit angry and aggressive once you say you are not continuing. It's their way of attempting to pressure you into the sale. Our advice is just to stop all communications all together. You don't owe them an explanation.

We recommend to sell locally when ever you can. Buyers on our site narrow their search by city so they can come to your house and try it on, then pay in cash. If you are selling/shipping your dress, it's best to use a service like escrow.com for your protection.

Also, never put your e-mail address or phone number right in your dress listing because a scammer can circumvent the security system and e-mail you directly.

If you have any questions specifically about how to stay safe when selling your wedding dress, we'd be more than happy to help! Contact us at:
email address removed... For safety reasons, please keep it to the forum. Thanks. CW

Welcome to Scamwarners, smartbride!
That's very good advice.
Thanks for posting!

I had the exact same interaction with someone. I want to thank you for posting your experience because it saved me $2,000. There is something wrong with this world when people are doing this. I got the same email, almost verbatim. I had the same feeling as you; I could tell in my gut that it was a scam but there were aspects of the ongoing interactions that seemed legitimate and I had the same confusion around how it could be a scam if I waited for the check to clear. I had no idea until I read all the postings about the fact that checks could take up to two months to clear.

Thanks.

I have received a different message from a potential buyer of my wedding dress on ebay. I have googled the name of the person and the only thing that came up was a FB profile of a person with only 2 friends. The message reads like this, is it a scam?
From: Danielle Lobont
I am Satisfied and i will offer you £800 for it, the payment will be made via PayPal for the safety of both.so i will like to have your PayPal email address and the name on the paypal account in which to make the instant payment where the funds will be sent to. And also the address where it will be picked up because am arranging for a pick up. I may not be able to come check it myself because I'm currently
out of the country but my pick up agent will be doing the rest after payment cleared. So i'll need it to get home before me. So as soon as the funds is cleared in your account, they will come for the pick up with paper document that you will sing on to show that you have delivered the item safely.

Please write me back asap.

yes, its a scam. Read this entire thread from top to bottom to see why.

Do not sell it to anyone that is not face to face with you, inspects the item, and pays in cash for it. Those are the only ways to insure your security.

I'd even recommend a sales contract that states "used and in "as is" condition are the conditions of sale", and both of you sign it. It would also be a good idea to meet somewhere close to your home, not at your home when you show prospective buyers the item. Just in case that person is not the nicest person in the world, you don't want them to know where you live.

"Danielle Lobont" writes like a West African, not an Englishwoman. The PayPal message is fake.