Scam

My Lovely almost fell for a scam. I wasn't going to write about it, but she insisted because she wanted to make sure nobody else fell for it.

The scam is called a "Nigerian Scam," I believe. It came into our lives when we put the Expedition up for sale.

Seems the scammers of this sort look for something being sold, and if they determine that there is some sort of desperation, they start in with the emails that involve out-of-country buyers, agents picking up the car, agents receiving payment, an overpayment with a cashier's check and so forth.

Nobody would actually pick up the car. No agent would actually show up. The scam is in the casheier's check. It is a counterfeit.

What they do is send a cashier's check for over the amount. The reason can vary to whatever their creativity affords. In this case, they told Mama that it had to do with reimbursement. The idea was that they would pay twice the amount for the car, and we'd send the over 1/2 to the agent, who then applies it to something and ultimately it all comes out in the wash. Mama read the emails closely, so she was believing the story. I didn't, however, since I'd read something about such a scam recently.

Meanwhile, I was to be checking the mailbox regularly for the cashier's check. If the scam holds true to form, the scammers won't send it for awhile to create desperation on the part of the seller. Eventually they expect that the seller will pester the scammer with "Where's the check" and so forth. At that point, they have you.

In this case, they were going to send a cashier's check, we would deposit it, and the bank would show that the money (in this case, $18,000) was in the account. Then we'd cut a check to the agent to speed up the process, since "the agent can't pick up the car until..." (or something like that).

But the thing is (here's the lesson), just because the bank shows the money in your account and says it has "cleared" doesn't mean it really has. It takes 10 days or so for a cashier's check to actually clear, but since your account shows the money deposited, you feel safe in writing the check. Meanwhile, the bank would learn that it was a counterfeit, but we would have already paid "the agent" the overage. Nobody would have picked up the car, but since it was a counterfeit check, the bank deducts the "deposit." But now you are out the money you paid to the agent.

When this whole "deal" stressed me out too much to sleep, I started looking for information online about the scams. At that point, Mama sent me the email dialogue with these folks, and we were able to sort out that this indeed was such a scam.

I want to thank Mama for listening to me on this one.


This scam is pulled not just on cars, but on anything. It is most often seen on eBay and the like. It can be for small items or big ones. When I went looking for information, I found that most of the time the scammed won't say anything out of embarassment for falling for such a thing. But it turns out that the scam has been pulled for "items" as small as a $10 DVD and as big as $60K Mercedes and $300K houses.