419-like scams in US?

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 19 May 2010 Posts: 10

Does anything count if the scammer that you are baiting possibly lives in the US?

By the way, can someone look up this email address for me and send me a PM? [email protected]

Posted: Wed May 26, 2010 12:29 pm

There definitely are 419 scammers operating in the US, often in tandem with scammers in other countries. Does it count? Depends who's counting - if your question is "are they more likely to be arrested due to baiting activities", sadly the answer is "probably not".

It's also possible that your scammer is merely pretending to be located in the US to try and make his deal seem more real / less scammy.

The email address - I tried looking up glen.edward01 up to 20 (often scammers register a series of numbered addresses like that), and also glenedward variants (gmail addresses without the . go to the same place) and didn't see anything.

Master Baiter Joined: 27 Jun 2009 Posts: 181

Did you try and locate this scammer through his IP? Because he is using gmail, and it blocks his IP from you. All you're getting is the gmail server location (USA)

Posted: Wed May 26, 2010 1:21 pm

Hi archbaiter,

Please can you provide a copy of the email that came from that address? I don't suppose for one minute that you have published your ex-friend's address, just to annoy them - but it would reassure everyone else!

Header information too, would be great (remove the recipient details first) - and would also enable us to also look up the IP address, maybe on different IP-Locator sites.

Thanks. Very Happy

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 18 Aug 2013 Posts: 1

I recently posted an ad to sell something on a website. This guy [email protected] replied. 1st he asked me if I was willing to sell him that watch but I had not posted the ad for a watch so I replied if he was mistaken and he said no he was looking for the phone I wanted to sell and asked me final price. I replied and he emailed back asking to give my address and he will send me a cashier check or money order, also he asked for the pictures of phone but I already posted those. I am not sure whether to deal with him or not. Is he a scammer?

Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 4:26 am

Welcome to 419eater. But please take a minute to read our FAQs, specifically about "necro-ing" threads like this which are 3 years old:

Quote:

Please avoid thread necromancy (that is: posting in a thread that has been inactive for several months to bump it back to the top again). Old threads have usually little relevance anymore. Also, members that posted in it may not be around anymore. If you really want to bring up an old discussion again because you have something of value to add, post a new thread and put a link in it to the old thread. That way people do not have to read through all the old posts to see what is new.

As for your specific question, it's hard to say for sure based on limited info but it definitely smells like a check scam. The fact that he couldn't even keep the product straight is typical of Craigslist scammers, who couldn't care less about the actual item for sale, they only want to send a fake check and then have you pay the "shipper" or refund an "overpayment".

Be very, very wary of cashier's checks and money orders, especially if there's any request to send any excess to anyone else by Western Union. That is a sure sign of a scam.

Unfortunately, Craigslist is a hot-bed of scammers, as is Gumtree in the UK. As they post very prominently on Craigslist: buy and sell locally, and avoid any long distance orders.

If a purported buyer doesn't even care what you're selling, it's a scam.