Scam scam scam Knifemakers beware

Joined
Jul 2, 2005
Messages
763
Got an email to buy knives in quantities.
After sending price for the knives I got this response;

Thank you for email, am okay with the $5800. And i will recommend a freight company for, the pick up of the items to (The Netherlands). Now i want you to contact them with the total weight of the items find out the freight quote to The Netherlands for me .The delivery address is below :

1. The pick-up address
2. The delivery Address below
3. The total weight on this shipment


Shipping Address
C&M Ventures Inc
Johan Huizingalaan 765
11020 GP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

Shipping Company Contact Info.
Contact Person Name: Mr. Jerome Brower
Freight Company Email Address: SPEEDWAYCARGOFREIGHT@GMAIL.COM
Try and CC me a copy of what you will be sending to the freight company. And including the pick-up location and they will surely get you a freight quote .As soon as you her from them let me know so that i can proceed with the transaction.I will make payment with my Credit Card.

Thanks and Best Regards

Then I started searching online and found this;
http://coffeeany1.wordpress.com/201...-if-youre-in-business-on-the-net/#comment-105

Word for word.
Be Carefull
 
This was the 1st. e-mail I received from him;


Hello my name is (I'm blanking it out) and will like to know if you sell Handcrafted Knives ? if yes then kindly get back to me with the prices you have......hope to hear from you soon.
Best Regards
Blank Blank Blank

I should have caught it with the question if I make handcrafted knives or not. If he's contacting me as a result of seeing my posts
he'd know the answer.
I'm not too sure exactly what they were hoping to do. I guess they would have requested that I pay the shipping co. in advance.

Hope this saves someone some aggravation.
Mike
 
Jeez... If I didn't see good people do good things all the time I'd have lost my faith in mankind entirely by now.

Good on ya for checking. :thumbup:
 
I had a friend who almost fell for this scam on Craigs list. Same thing with freight company. He happened to tell me because I do a lot of selling on CL. Once I saw it I told him immediately it was a scam. Glad you didn't fall for it.
 
I've sold large orders in the past but never have been asked
to contact a shipping co.
If they were smart they would have bought one 1st. to get some
trust going and then tried to screw me ;)
 
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I get this kind of email regularly, and I don't make knives, or buy electrical equipment, or have relatives with money in third world countries.

I don't get to read the email though because I delete as spam immediately. There are some mean, miserable people out there.
 
He put "Order Request" as subject in his e-mail.
Norton listed it as "safe" to open.
I guess they sit around thinking of ways to screw
others out of anything they can.
It's a shame.....
 
I got the exact same email. My reply was that I needed much more info. regarding materials and designs before I could quote a price. I haven't heard any more from him/them. I never ship before recieving payment anyway. Thanks for posting this.
 
If it smells like dead fish, it no doubt is dead fish. I get half a dozen of these every month.
 
Typically these guys are the customer and tbe shipping company. They pay you with a bogus cashier's check, and ask that you pay shipping from that total. (Why wouldn't they just pay the shipoing company themselves, right?) By the time your bank finds out it is bogus, you have already paid.

They prey on the fact that most banks will credit your account with the funds as long as the routing number checks out. They trust that a cashier's check is as good as cash... It isn't until the funds are requested to satisfy that check that it is discovered to be bogus. The bad part is the bank leaves you holding the bag...

I work several of these a month, usually elderly victims, and hate these fools. They send out thousands on the odds that 1% will be suckered in. If that amounts to two people a week for $1k each they earn a nice $104k a year salary... Chances are they get many more than two a week.
 
There's also a variant where they will use a fake cheque to "overpay" you and ask you to transfer the change back to them electronically. The supposed overpayment can be quite large. A lot of these sorts of scams target people advertising online or small businesses. I don't know if there is a US-based scam alert website (I'm assuming there is). The Aussie one is linked below. Scams and victims aren't limited by borders. Well worth looking at:

http://www.scamwatch.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/693900
 
I never realized Nigeria had more than one prince.

Thought it was just Eddie Murphy... or was that Zamunda?
 
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