I have a customer who wants a wedding cake in two weeks and all the details seem kind of fishy to me...how do I know if its for real or not? what kind of scams have you had or seen out there that happen to us cake decorators?

Reading this and your other question about the refrigerated vans, I think you probably have someone trying to scam you. There's an email a few people have gotten where they want the cake made and ready for pickup with "Happy Marriage Life" on it (kind of distinctive).

You would really have to wonder, unless this is a repeat customer of yours, who in the world would pick a baker at random hundreds or thousands of miles from where the wedding was going to be...there's enough bakeries and cake decorators in every city that I'm sure they could buy one locally.

Be careful.

oh this is it...because they want that written on it...

so my question is...why do these people want to scam us...what would they get out of it? what happened to the situations where this happened before because it sounds just like the one that is happening to me!

April )

There are versions of that scam for all sorts of different things...childcare, items sold on craigslist, etc...

What they would do if you kept communicating with them is to mail you a check that was for more than the amount agreed on, pretend it was a bank error, and ask you to send them the difference back, minus a little bit for your trouble. For example, say that your cake was $800 and they sent you a check for $5000 and asked you to cash it and send them $3500...someone who didn't know that it was a scam would figure they were making an extra $700 and they'd probably do it. That's how it works for the ones where someone is purchasing an item, or arranging for childcare. With the cake one, it might be that they were sending the extra to supposedly cover shipping, and they were going to have you give the money to the refrigerated van company...sometimes the same scam is done for cars and then the excess is supposed to be for shipping the car to another country.

The way the scam works is, you cash the check at your bank and then send them the money, or give it to whoever they ask you to. Then the check bounces after you've already sent them the money, and you're out whatever money you sent them.

as far as i know, i was the first one on CC to get the "happy marriage life" email.

i thought it was a handicapped girl and almost got scammed...i bought the boxes and everything, my gut started to tell me something was wrong.

if they are saying an agent is coming to get the cakes in a refridgerated van...that is a tip off...

they will send you a huge overpayment, OR charge a bogus credit with an overpayment, and want you to send them the difference western union.

request your payment western union...see what they say....

2 weeks away huh?...that sounds about right...could you share more details?

here is what he wrote...

Hello , thanks for the swift reply to my order request, and you concern as well, i want you to know that am very grateful and am really inspired ever since the first time I tasted your cake in an occasion that is why I will prefer you bake for me..or i rather not bake a cake for my wedding.

I will like you to bake for me a chocolate and strawberry flavor cake , and it should be decorated with roses as seen in the picture i attached, let the flower be made of sugar flower.( in the picture what you see on the side on the cake is a polka dot, dot, and i will like the color of the polka dot to be shade of pink color) . And you should also have the cake covered in fondant or butter cream ( I believe the fondant should make the journey), let inscription be writing on one as âHappy Married Lifeâ and you will packaged in different cake boxes for pick up once its ready for pick up .

And i want you to have it ready for pick up time 2 O'clock PM 16Th Sept 2008..and a shipper will be coming to pick them up...to delivery to my wedding reception in Canada and i dont want you to be worried about the safety delivery of the cake. Regarding the shipping ,I have a shipping agent that will be take good care of pick up and the delivery consignments. The Shipping company will come for the pickup arrangement of the Cake at your place, at the pick up date and time.

And as I have told you donât have anything to be worry about on the shipping of the cake it will be well secure and in a good condition on arriving the location of my wedding reception in Toronto Canada, the shipper will be coming with there refrigerator Van for the pick up and it will be ship under the fragile shipping insurance scheme, a friend of mine has use them before for a shipping consignment of this such and they are well secure reliable and dependableâ¦..

So I want you to calculate for me what will be the total cost of the cake order including the decoration plus tax if included, and also I want you to add $700 for the cost of the pick up and the shipping, so once I have your reply for the total I will remit my credit card for you to charge for the total costâ¦so that you can have the order book right away. And once you have the order in progress, I will provide you the shipper information,and how you will get the shipping fee to the shipper as to confirm the pickup arrangement of the cake. I will offer you an extra $100 for taking care of my order properly and for any less stress you will go through for completing the transaction for me due to my absence.

So please do calculate altogether the total cost of the cake + decoration and tax + $700 for shipping charges, including the $100 am offering you.And get back to me with the total for all, so once i have the total cost i will remit my credit card for you to charge. And you should let me know the type of CC you accept Visa or Master.
I will be waiting to have your reply for the total cost.
Thanks and God bless.
Mike Williams.

I got one of these too a while back, my reply went something this:

First off, I DON"T SHIP MY CAKES VIA A REFRIDGERATED VAN!!!!!

SHOW UP ON MY DOOR STEP WITH CASH IN HAND OR PISS OFF!!!!!!


Haven't gotten another one since. DH said to add the piss off part.

Donna

WOW is this scary or what? I'm glad that you were able to tell that it is a scam. I've also heard about people who have fallen for similar schemes on the news and Judge Judy. I hope that this puts the word out there to fellow CCr's to be on the lookout!

Since when does a man named Mike Williams talk like that? Barely coherent English?

That's def. the same one that's been making the rounds, but yours was more in detailed-maybe because you replied.

Also, the God Bless part is also a good tip off. I had some scammers last year with a Craigs List thing, and every one of them said that.

Wow, that is horrible that scammers are even hitting bakeries!
I have been sent something similar through craigslist, but a baker!
Gosh, what is the world coming too!

*hint: bogus "clients" or emails usually have horrible grammer!!

Yep, here is the email I got a few months ago:


I will like you to bake for me a chocolate or strawberry flavor cake, and it should be decorated with roses as seen in the picture i attached ( in the picture what you see on the side on the cake is a polka dot, and i will like the color of the polka dot to be pink color). And you should also have the cake covered in fondant or butter cream to feed 250 people ( I believe the fondant should make the journey), let inscription be writing on one as *Happy Married Life* and you will packaged in different cake boxes for pick up once its ready for pick up.
And i want you to have it ready for pick up time 11 o clock A.M 29th of August 2008. and a shipper will be coming to pick them up. to delivery to my wedding reception in Kansas and i don't want you to be worried about the safety delivery of the cake. Regarding the shipping, I have a shipping agent that will be take good care of pick up and the delivery consignments. The Shipping company will come for the pickup arrangement of the Cake at your place, at the pick up date and time.And as I have told you donât have anything to be worry about on the shipping of the cake it will be well secure and in a good condition on arriving the location of my wedding reception, the shipper will be coming with there refrigerator Van for the pick up and it will be ship under the fragile shipping insurance scheme, a friend of mine has use them before for a shipping consignment of this such and they are well secure reliable and dependable. So I want you to calculate for me what will be the total cost of the cake order including the decoration plus tax if included, and also I want you to add $800 for the cost of the pick up and the shipping, so once I have your reply for the total I will remit my credit card for you to charge for the total cost. so that you can have the order book right away.
And once you have the order in progress, I will provide you the shipper information, and how you will get the shipping fee to the shipper as to confirm the pickup arrangement of the cake. I will offer you an extra $100 for taking care of my order properly and for any less stress you will go through for completing the transaction for me due to my absence. So plus do calculate altogether the total cost of the cake + decoration and tax + $800 for shipping charges, including the $100 am offering you.And get back to me with the total for all, so once i have the total cost i will remit my credit card for you to charge. And you should let me know the type of CC you accept Visa or Master.
I will be waiting to have your reply for the total cost.

yeah that's the letter...

it's so great that we have this forum to warm each other.

I received the same scam early this year, but before they sent the email, they called me on the service for the hearing impared first. It's sad that they use this service to run their scams. Unfortunatly, now when I get one of those calls, I immediately ask for them to contact me by email. Then I can see if it's a scam or a real customer looking for a party cake or a legitimate bride in my area.

I get the happy married life email about twice a month...

oh, I got the hearing impaired services once too! They left a voicemail and email address and I responded and then never heard anything. it all sounded fishy, so it wasn't a big deal.

I got the Happy Marriage Life one once and I replied telling them my date was already booked full but that I knew someone who wanted to speak with them and enclosed the link to the FBI's fraud/scam department for the Internet.

I have never gotten another scam spam since and for awhile was being bombarded with them.

Here is a possible "scam" that I have had...read my post below.

http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=599682&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=0

To update, I havent heard anything back from the wedding planner. I have asked her twice for the bride's number/email to get a final pic of the cake, as I cannot display the cake AS a wedding cake on my portfolio, since it was requested to be so plain (they were adding ribbon and a flower arrangement on top, on site).
When I emailed the wedding planner and asked her what the deal with the chargeback was, she simply said that the bride didnt recognize the paypal payment and didnt know I made the cake, so she requested the chargeback. (communication error between wedding planner and bride) But paypal still hasnt settled it.

Poor Mike Williams -

He's still seeking someone to bake his strawberry and chocolate wedding cake for him. Looks like the bride's got a long wait ahead!

Duh, you would think he would have changed the flavors by now.


Theresa

EVERYONE PLEASE READ THIS!!!

I got a scam email recently, but it went a step further. Someone emailed me asking that I help them pay for some items they had ordered off of ebay AND THEY WERE POSING AS MY SISTER-IN-LAW!!! They had set up an email address as similar to hers as they could get. They put her name in the signature line just as she does so when I logged onto my email it looked exactly like it was from her with "Hi" in the subject line. And the email was signed "Love ya, SIL"! I could tell by the wording and the fact that I know my SIL would never ask me for money, especially by email, that it was not her. Just an hour before she had sent me a cake picture that she forwarded from CC and we thought someone had hacked into her email through CC until we found out they had also sent the same email to two of her sisters!! My SIL had to cancel her credit cards, put a warning on her bank accounts, contact the credit bureaus!


HERE IS THE IMPORTANT PART:

My SIL contacted a detective and after a little investigation he determined that the person had gotten our email addresses from an email that my SIL had forwarded to me, and her two sisters and had signed that email "Love ya, SIL". The email was then apparently forwarded on to someone else by one of us, and then on, and on, and on, until it reached this person in UK! They scrolled back through the email and found the message sent to us by her...I think you get the idea. Anyway, although she, and I, felt better knowing her IP address had not been hacked into, it was still a very creepy experience and from now on I will not forward any emails without erasing all of the prior personal messages!! AND NEVER RESPOND TO ANY EMAIL FROM ANYONE ASKING FOR MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!

BTW, call your internet provider and they can give you an email address or a phone number to report these scams to. They are hard to trace and it probably doesn't do much good, but they can't do anything about it if it isn't reported and according to my email provider they do have a task force that works with law enforcement to investigate cyber scams that are reported. Sorry this was so long!

Just a suggestion....don't reply to those e-mails! When you do, they know they have a legitimate e-mail address. It will be sold to other SPAMers and scammers.

Good idea Jodi

Got this in my email this a.m. What a bunch of crap!!

Quote:

Quote:

I NEED YOUR ASSISTANCE TO TRANSFER ($50,000,000 Into your country)
  
I am in the Engineering military unit in Iraq,we have about $50,000,000USD.
Kindly contact me via my private Email[email protected]) Regards, Sgt.
Jarvis Reeves.

Oh, yeah, and I suppose that the good Sgt. Reeves is working for Microsoft over in Iraq? www.live.com is a search engine ofdivision of Microsoft.

Theresa

I got one from some chic in Minnesota who wanted to buy wedding things to ship to a country in Africa for her wedding. She needed 200 of everything ... including 200 tuxes, 200 pairs of shoes, 200 ring bearer pillows, etc.

I knew it was a scam thing, but just wanting to screw around with 'em, I replied, "I don't sell those things."

She came back and asked, "what things do you sell?"

I said, "My items are not shippable."

She said, "I would still like to know."

I said, "Cakes ... not shippable."

Never heard back from her.

So are you all telling me my brand new Nigerian friend really isn't my friend? He promised me 50,000,000. I was hoping to use part of that money for my other newest best friend, the one that promises to grow certain parts of an anatomy. Well, my dreams have just come crashing to the floor. Oh the tradgedy of it all.

mike

Oh Mike, seems we have the same friend in Nigeria and I've also been named as sole beneficiary to a millionaire's estate in London. All I have to do is send them all of my personal information along with my bank account numbers so they can deposit my millions in it. Oh, if it was only that easy! LOL Some people have too much time on their hands!!!

Sorry, Mike, that fella is MY best friend and *I* am the one who's gonna be rich! (oh no! Dont' tell me he's scamming and I'm not REALLY his newest best friend!! OMG he's two-timing me!!!! )

That is insane! I'm really glad that I was able to hear about this on here. There is always a scam somewhere. You can't be too careful!

You people are a bunch of naysayers. I replied to a very friendly Sgt General whom I'd never met before, and helped him with a rather difficult family inheritance issue that he had, and I am now $75,000 richer!! Wheee!!! I'll treat you all to some cake. (Just wire me the shipping fee).

p.s. my favorite part of that letter has got to be:

RIGHT!!

And I LOVE THIS!!!

The news here carried a story on the latest tactics by email scammers, claiming they have been hired to kill you, but will not, if you pay them $XXXXX. It seems they include just enough personal info to make it seem real. And while people in other parts of the country would be more likely to notice it's fake, people here in El Paso, and other border communities, are more likely to fall for it, given the current drug cartel war taking place across the border.

Well I haven't gotten them about cakes yet, but I always seem to get them regarding wedding planning for people in far away places. Like we're moving to City X but right now we're in Country B and would like for you to help us make our wedding blah blah blah...

People just try to get you anyway they can.