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[Brenda B.]

Maybe someone here can find some reasoning behind this, but I'm still baffled.

Come in to work Monday and there's a message on my voice mail from someone inquiring about puppies for sale. (For those that don't know, I work in a church.) There's also a message from some woman in Texas who says she has something I need to know and I should call her back.

Well the lady from Texas calls me back before I have a chance to call her. She informs me that someone stole photos off dog breeder web sites and posted them on web pages at puppyfind.com. This unknown person (X) listed themself as the seller of these puppies, but listed my place of business as the contact phone number. X stated they lived in CT, their area code isn't anything close to ours here in VA. I did a reverse check and if you put the CT area code with our phone number you get an unlisted cell phone.

Will someone explain the point of all this? If you're going to try and rip someone off by selling something you don't have why put the wrong phone number down?

And yes, we took steps to remedy the situation. Notified the web site, the police and even X. I'm still geting inquiries, but it appears the pages I know about are gone.

Brenda B

[Elena]

One way this makes sense if it's personal.  If X were angry at someone and wanted to scare them, or show them that X has power over them.  Well, that's the same thing.

The other reason that occurs to me is that X is among the many half-smart who conceived the scam and in the 'excitement' of doing it messed up the area code.  Sort of like the guy who held up a bank by giving the teller a note that had identifying information on the back.  The cops were happily waiting for him when he came home with the loot.

It has come to my attention many times that the people who think of doing these things are definitely not logical and detailed oriented 

Elena

[Jay Hartzler]

It looks like a bothced attempt at a scam. 

Incidentally, my coworker breeds and sells horses (Andalusians and Friesians) and uses various web sites to sell them.  It never fails that she'll receive an email from someone interested in buying one of the colts sight unseen and offering to send her a certified check.  The scam goes that the check will be made out for an amount far above the selling price. The buyer claims that a mistake was made at the bank and can she send her the difference. The certified check is bogus yet it takes several days for that to be found out. In the meantime, the seller is out the money if they fall for the scam.

Fortunately, my coworker has never fallen for it. The email has too many red flags in it like misspelled words and strange wording.

[Chase]

Brenda, this thread is fascinating to me.  Two of my siblings and I are totally deaf.  For the most part, the much-touted TTY is a joke to the greater deaf community as a means of everyday communications, and many of us depend heavily on e-mail.

Jay, I know what you mean by misspellings and strange wording being red flags.  My sister claims I'm just being an English teacher snob (which may be true enough), but she sure seems to fall for some peculiar scams.  Not all of them are to take her money.  Some are nothing more than hoaxes for the sake of hoaxing, breathlessly urging us to perpetuate the fraud on friends.

"If it's too good to be true, it isn't" is too cynical and doesn't hold up, as there are lots of goods and truths out there on the internet.  Any other red flags to help signal the bad from the good?

Chase

[dhparker]

  Any other red flags to help signal the bad from the good?

Chase

Bad: SCREAMING SUBJECT LINES and a jillion exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Elena]

Chase,

Many of the hoax emails that sound plausible wind up on various Urban Myth sites.  My favorite for checking out the things some of my more gulible acquaintences send me is http://www.snopes.com/snopes.asp

However you can find more by googling on urban myths.
The most recent one I received from someone who I think should have known better was a plea to write to one of the big news magazines and tell them to run 'this'.   This was a doctored photo without a trace of truth to it and had been wandering around the net for several years.

Another suspicious circumstance is something forwarded that when you open it has been forwarded a zillion times.  Also look when an email is going after your righteous indignation or pulling your heart strings for exact information about when and where this happened (usually missing or strange if a hoax), and specifically where it was reported.

One more type hoax are petitions.  According to the urban legend sites there are no useful petitions floating around the web.  The problem is lack of control for both duplicate signers and in bringing the petition to a close.  From my own knowlege, legislators in DC treat email petitions as spam.

The above is all about people I know who do sometimes send me emails I want to read hence I open them.  I don't bother with the ones I don't recognize.   

Perhaps your sister will go to the Snopes website and get familiar with the various scams wandering around.  That could help her be more selective about which emails she accepts.

Elena
PS - to honor your position as an English teacher I apologize for any misspellings.  Unfortunately the Forum's spell checker is not working for me.  I've checked everything I suspect might be misspelled, but then there are the others 

[Chase]

Donna and Elena,

Good ones.  Thanks.  Of course I'll pass them on to my sister, but since she's my big sis, I doubt if she'll pay any attention.  Ha ha ha, in fifty years I've yet to convince her that "alot" isn't a real word.

As for honor as an English teacher, believe me there's very little . . . for good reason, I'm sure.  I need electronic spell checking and live proofreaders for every line.  Speaking of not putting all our trust into computer-generated stuff, don't forget the poem beginning:

Eye half a spell ling Czech her;
Its their on my pea sea. . . .

All of the above except "alot" made it through our spell check option.

Chase

[krisneri]

The big bookstore scam is that someone emails that he wants to order fifty copies of some book that cost a hundred bucks each (a law or medical textbook). He doesn't live anywhere close, so he will send a messenger service to pick up the copies, along with his money order. We just delete them, so I don't know what the point of this scam is, or what happens after the request. But it's happened a lot, and the wording is always similar. You can tell the scammers really know nothing about the book operation because while this scam would result in a huge sale, the books are always ones offered at a 5% discount, which, with all the packaging and work that would be involved, means we would have to do it at a loss.

Kris

[penny]

I think a lot of these scams are by people who have nothing better to do. I'm referring to the ones that don't involve money. They enjoy the power.

Brenda, it does seem like your puppy people made a stupid, unintentional mistake when they entered their number. But all is for the best, so their mistake was the "victims' " gain! How symbolic that their failure went through a church...

Penny

[penny]

Oh, I feel so bad!

I've just reread my last post, and I see I phrased it very badly. I apologize if I've offended anyone here (probably have), especially you, dear Brenda.

What I meant to say was: The bad intentions of a bad person were cancelled out through a church - a spiritual house.(The scam (to cheat people out of their money) didn't work out because they gave the wrong number, Brenda's workplace number, which is in a church if I recall correctly. That way the spiritual house corrected the wrong.)

Please accept my apology. I should learn to be more careful with what I write, especially in English which is my second language.

Penny

[jnichols]

When we talk about poorly worded emails, I've been collecting examples of the Nigerian "Please Help Me Get My Millions Out Of The Country" scams. Sometimes, you have to wonder how they can possibly believe anyone would fall for their con, as in this example, supposedly written by Marine stationed in Iraq:

"With a very desperate need for assistance, I have summed up courage tocontact you.

"I am presently in Iraq with the USmarine and i have served deligently for the millitary; I found your contact particulars in an address journal.

"I am seeking your assistance to evacuate the sum of $5,000,000.00 (Five million USdollars) to the states, as far as I can be assured that my share will be safe in
yourcare until I complete my service here.

"This is no stolen money, and there are no dangers involved..."

Sounds exactly like an US  Marine born and bred in the heartland of America, doesn't it?

Judy Nichols
CAVIAR DREAMS
www.judy5cents.com