For all of you who have a website out there, whether you are big time or just starting out, I keep getting these annoying people contacting me and my gutt tells me it's a scam. My girlfriend (who also has a site) had the same thing happen to her, that's what made me think when I got this bogus e-mail. I'm just curious if anyone has had the wool pulled over their eyes with these scammers. UGH!!!! Makes me so mad!

This is the deal....They send you an email that looks legitimate inquiring about an order for a cake. They always need it within a week or two and it's from someone who is out of the area. They have terrible grammer for one but that's a whole other issue. They insist on ordering a huge cake and paying by credit card....The catch....they want to add more money on to their transaction and have someone pick up the overcharged amount. WHAT ARE THEY THINKING!!! Then what I assume will happen is your credit card company [if you have one] will charge it back and you get dupped for the whole order plus the overage you handed them when the come to you for the cake....Oh...and you are out on the cake because they never wanted it in the first place. I don't know, I'm just putting this out there to both vent and also share the warning. These people are seriously scammers! Guess they are running out of ideas.

Unfortunately, there are some really bad people out there! Thanks for sharing the message! By sharing your experience, you help everyone out!!

I have seen this scam reported on CC in numerous threads. I know in one thread they mentioned seeing the scam perpetrated on different industries, so you are unfortunately not the only person to get hit by this. Kudos to you for recognizing its true nature right away. Another variation of the scam has been to use that phone service for the deaf to place the order, the idea being that you would "never suspect" that someone using that service would be a scammer, and also that you'd assume the grammatical errors were a result of the translating service. Ugh.

Oh yes, that has been around for years

"Happy Marriage Life"

This happened to my BFF !!!! We live in Canada, Ontario.... This guy calls orders a wedding cake , gives here the cc info tacks on a couple of hundred dollars to the order for some reason can't remember why then wants her to western union him the difference or somthing like that, does not show up to pick up the cake then gets a call from a woman flippin' out because she has a 2500 dollar charge on her cc and she did not authorize it! Soooooo now my BFF is fighting w/ the cc company about it....Geeze some ppl will do anything to get a few bucks... all in all the guy walk off w/ somthing like 500 dollars??!!! All that for 500 bucks???!!! NUTZZZZZZZ

Lost count how many times Ive heard this one...jeez some people have no fear!

The "Happy Married Life" cake scammer tried to get me yesterday. It started with an inquiry through the TTY relay service for the hearing impaired. The caller then emailed me a ridiculous request on short notice for a 5-tiered cake for "300 or more" that he would pick up and assemble onsite himself! The letter was full of grammar, punctuation and spelling errors. I had this niggling feeling that I had read about this on Cake Central, and confirmed my suspicions when I found this thread.

I declined to work with him, so we never got far enough in our communication to discuss payment, but I am certain this is the same scammer others have been talking about.

i know it seems like all this fuss for $500 but could you add that up over however many people did end up losing out on that money?! i'm sure it adds up fast. thank goodness for the people on cc who share their stories

Same scam has been going on for quite some time. I had them try to con me back in the spring....but I knew what it was....and our local newspaper did a whole article about me and the scam to warn others in our areas. Not only do they try to scam small cake business's.....but all types of SMALL business. They will target t-shirt print shops, small bakeries, small frame business's.....any place they can try to get a much larger order than normal. They prey on thinking you will get a large sum of $$$ and hit your pride, etc. Like my Momma always told me....IF IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE....IT PROBABLY ISN'T! These people try to tweek the names, etc....but it's the same old scam!!!

Just a warning about this scam too... I received one about 6 months ago and it had a virus attached to it. Completely shut down my computer. Just FYI if it says Inquiry on a Cake... dont open unless you have a good virus detecting software.

EXACTLY what Pinkbox said..."Inquiry on an cake" and the guy that emailed me was named "MIKE WILLIAMS" as soon as I opened it I was suspicious-scanned for "Happy Married Life" and BAM! There is was I never even responded, but LOL About a week later he contacted me saying he was in Canada and was wanting to be a quality control taster LOL! He said he's on a fixed income and would like me to send him my cake scraps...a new scam?? LOL! I was going to ask him how I would make cake balls-but that would be too hard to explain!

He asked you to send him cake scraps???!

Well, our friend Mike Williams certainly is certainly persistent. I found another email from him this morning. This time he wanted to know if I make muffins. Of course, I didn't reply. Then, about an hour later, he tried to get me again through the TTY relay. I refused to take the call. Maybe he will take the hint this time!

You should tell him you are reporting him to the FBI (and then do it!)