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Posted by jrbd99 on June 29, 2009, 2:38 pm
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I am a manufacturer's rep in the security industry (turnstile
products) and received a very generic email quote request for one of
our products. I replied with some questions and he called with a very
thick African accent and informed me that these are shiping to Ghana.
Long-story short, I quoted him full price and within minutes he
accepted and said that he'll use his credit card to pay. This was
after I made it clear that payment was due 10 business days PRIOR to
shipping.
This smells VERY fishy, but I can't figure out the scam (other than a
stolen credit card) if he pays in advance.
Any ideas?
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Posted by Robert L Bass on June 29, 2009, 4:00 pm
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"jrbd99" wrote:
>
> This smells VERY fishy, but I can't figure out the scam (other than a stolen
> credit card) if he pays in advance.
The odds that this is a scam are around 99.9%, friend. The card will pass OK
and you will ship the merchandise. The owner of the card can wait months
before complaining that this was not an authorized sale. When he does the
credit card processor will immediately withdraw the funds directly from your
bank and then send you a printed "chargeback" form. You will have no way to
recover the funds since the products will already have left the country and
the "buyer" is almost certainly not the owner of the credit card.
--
Regards,
Robert L Bass
==============================>
Bass Home Electronics
DIY Alarm and Home Automation Store
http://www.bassburglaralarms.com
Sales & Service 941-870-2310
Fax 941-870-3252
==============================>
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Posted by Bob La Londe on June 29, 2009, 4:18 pm
If you were Registered and logged in, you could reply and use other advanced thread options > "jrbd99" wrote:
>>
>> This smells VERY fishy, but I can't figure out the scam (other than a
>> stolen credit card) if he pays in advance.
>
> The odds that this is a scam are around 99.9%, friend. The card will pass
> OK and you will ship the merchandise. The owner of the card can wait
> months before complaining that this was not an authorized sale. When he
> does the credit card processor will immediately withdraw the funds
> directly from your bank and then send you a printed "chargeback" form.
> You will have no way to recover the funds since the products will already
> have left the country and the "buyer" is almost certainly not the owner of
> the credit card.
I used to use a second bank account and only accept wire transfers for out
of country shipments. Still had some risks, but I would remove the funds
when cleared and deposit them in an accoun in a different bank. Kind of a
pain, but my risk of loss was only the couple hundred I kept in that account
to keep it open.
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Posted by jrbd99 on June 29, 2009, 6:38 pm
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>>
>> The odds that this is a scam are around 99.9%, friend. The card will pass
>> OK and you will ship the merchandise. The owner of the card can wait
>> months before complaining that this was not an authorized sale. When he
>> does the credit card processor will immediately withdraw the funds
>> directly from your bank and then send you a printed "chargeback" form.
>> You will have no way to recover the funds since the products will already
>> have left the country and the "buyer" is almost certainly not the owner of
>> the credit card.
>
I figured out the scam. It has to do with shipping fees, since the
turnstiles are shipped via freight. He wanted to use his own shipper,
but then (in an email after I posted my question) told me that I would
have to contact the shipper to make arrangements. Keep in mind that
all of the email addresses so far are Gmail.
The scam will be in bogus advance shipping fee deposits, customs fees,
bribes, etc. There would never be any shipment of product, since the
shipping "company" is probably the same guy, so we would never be out
any product, just however much in fees.
I was originally thinking stolen credit card, as well, but given our
product cost, I doubt many credit cards would get an approval. Fun
stuff.
Thanks for the input.
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Posted by Robert L Bass on June 30, 2009, 10:29 pm
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>
> I figured out the scam. It has to do with shipping fees, since
> the turnstiles are shipped via freight. He wanted to use his
> own shipper, but then (in an email after I posted my question)
> told me that I would have to contact the shipper to make
> arrangements. Keep in mind that all of the email addresses
> so far are Gmail.
Good catch. A lot of scammers use free, untreaceable email accounts such as
Gmail. I hadn't considered the "shipping fees" angle since we routinely
ignore these RFQ's. We get a fair number of email requests for quotes of 200,
300 or more smoke detectors to be shipped to one or another sub-saharan
African countries.
We occasionally get "Internet Relay" calls where a US telco operator speaks to
us as the "customer" types on a TTY device. These invariably involve a large,
international order. The perp insists he needs it fulfilled immediately and
wants to use a credit card. These rip-offs are so common that Verizon's
software, which monitors IR calls for key phrases, causes another operator to
cut in on the call and warn the US merchant that this appears to be a fraud.
They then ask if you wish to continue the conversation. After the first few
such calls we made it a policy to tell IR operators that if the caller wants
to do an international order we are not interested.
> I was originally thinking stolen credit card, as well, but given
> our product cost, I doubt many credit cards would get an
> approval. Fun stuff.
I don't know how many turnstiles the supposed order was to involve, but it
certainly sounded like a scam. We occasionally take credit cards orders in
excess of $10K. Within certain boundaries you can set your own limits for
online orders. With commercial account "check cards" the limits can be very
high. The bad guys are always looking for a new way to separate you from your
hard-earned bucks. Ah, well...
--
Regards,
Robert L Bass
==============================>
Bass Home Electronics
DIY Alarm and Home Automation Store
http://www.bassburglaralarms.com
Sales & Service 941-870-2310
Fax 941-870-3252
==============================>
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