I just got an email telling me I’d been accepted as a part time Financial Forwarding Coordinator for a company called Mesam Art LLC.

Wow – it pays really well!

What I do is set up a personal bank account and wait until payments pop into it. Then without delay I deduct my commission and send the rest over to this company’s account.

The scam is this (I guess): The original deposits will have come from Western Union or Wells Fargo. I guess the first few will go through fine, but then when I’m feeling confident that everything’s hunky dory a big one will come in, and it will no doubt get reversed out just after I’ve sent the balance off to George Smith’s account in Grand Cayman.

Now I know I should just mark this as junk mail, but in a “Real Hustle” style, is there any way of scamming a scammer? Get him back at his own game without ending up under Blackfriars Bridge with bricks in my pocket?

… or, rather than a scam, Mesam Art LLC could be the ‘respectful’ front of a criminal money laundering operation.

Where’s the nearest Boris Bike docking station to Blackfriars Bridge?

I just got an email telling me I’d been accepted as a part time Financial Forwarding Coordinator for a company called Mesam Art LLC.

Ha that’s nothing I’ve been short list as one of the most Professional Women of the year.

http://www.419eater.com/html/baiting.htm

Friend of mine set up an elaborate 419 baiting exercise. He worked for a big national telco so was able to set up phone numbers and a po box to use as he needed. Ended up actually getting a little money from them (1 euro if I remember rightly).

it’s still stealing even if you steal from robbers 🙁

Ha that’s nothing I’ve been short list as one of the most Professional Women of the year.

and?

Thats a standard stolen cheque scam, they send you stolen or fake cheques, you bank them then send them the money via wester union minus your commission. Several weeks later your bank flags the cheques up as stolen and takes the money back, In the USA you also risk going to jail as its illegal to bank stolen cheques (even if you didn’t know they were stolen or fake).

I thought about it, but I settled on this response instead.

“Yes, I’m really really really really stupid.
But not stupid enough to fall for your criminal activities.

I bet your mum is really proud of you. Scum.”

Thats a standard stolen cheque scam, they send you stolen or fake cheques,

It looks a lot simpler than that
I’d guess all three parties are part o the scam, they send money to each other using the mark as the intermediary, then claim the “missing” money back. Neat trick

Back in about 03/04 I had a call from an African-sounding chap pretending to be a Director at a particular London hospital. He wanted to buy 50 laptops, so I asked him what spec/budget/etc – he said “You choose. Just deliver 50 laptops and I will pay you.” Eh, WTF?

So I asked for his contact number (which just so happened to include Nigerian codes), and his email (which was nothing like the proper schema used by the hospital) … and said I’d get back to him. I then called the hospital and asked to speak to this Director … blah blah … decided we’d set up a sting. Then arranged the (non-) delivery of said items to said address, at which point the plod picked up a dodgy little Nigerian.

What a knobber.

I have a friend who got drawn into a banking stolen cheques scam as she was very down on her financial luck at the time.

It ended up with some lengthy police interviews and a narrowly avoided court case!

I agree that scamming them back would be great but it is also very risky.

We hit a deer in the car recently and have an ongoing claim for the damages to the car. I now keep getting irritating recorded message phone calls telling me that I’m entitled to compensation from the other party (presumably the deer, who last time I saw her was looking in no fit state to pay out anything!). I’m assuming its part of this ridiculous situation of insurance companies selling your details on to these nasty w*nky ambulance chasing claims firms.

Today’s call was a real person. I managed to mention nothing about “the other party” being 4 legged and mostly dead – “yes, they came out of nowhere”, “I had no time to brake”, “I don’t think they looked before pulling out”. The silly girl kept inferring the other party was in a car, I just didn’t quite manage to disillusion her. Next step is to have someone come around to my house (from Brighton apparently – a nice 200mile round trip that) to interview me properly to assess what we should be able to claim against the other party. That’ll be nice.

Has anybody mentioned the P-P-P-P-P-Powerbook!!

http://www.zug.com/pranks/powerbook/

Had a great 15minute phone call about my injury. Well any injury i had had in the past 2 years. I settled on the cut i got packing a bike frame. Apparently i could claim £3200 from the responsible party. Even after i had explained that the only responsible parties could be me, stanley (for the knife) and Cube for the bike box which i had got from my LBS (so they were implicated too). Got handed to a senior consultant who confirmed the possible pay out but the only person i could claim from was the owner of the property.
That’ll be me then.
Managed not to be in when they came to discus it but they left a card which was nice.