I thought those of you who have been scammed or have been attempted on would enjoy this. It was posted on the "Best of Craigslist."

Dear Mr. Scammer
I owe you a few apologies:
I am sorry for responding and saying sure I am happy to engage in a bizarre business deal with you knowing full well it isnt real.
I am sorry you wasted time to print a horrible fake check.
I am sorry you spent $4.90 UPSing it to me overnight.
I am sorry for taking a few days to get back to you after I got the check and ask you for your phone number which you cant give me. I knew that and still I emailed you for the phone number.
I am sorry that I lied to you and said I could not find a western union office near me, making you look them up, emailing me a list and me telling you those two liquor stores are shut down.
I am sorry that I lied to you about getting pissed at the western union office because they wanted $1.75 to cut a check and that I said thats robbery and left in a huff. The truth is I never went there in the first place. Sorry for wasting your time that day.
Im sorry I lied the next day after you threaten to call the FBI and local police on me because I cashed your check and would not pay you. I knew you would not, but I wrote you an email begging you not to call the police and that I would pay you tomorrow after I cashed the check.
Im sorry that I lied the next day and said the western union office girl was rude to me so I left in anger, again delaying your money by another day.
Im sorry I lied about sending the money to western union in your name vs the shipper so you could not pick it up. I realize this cost you a day or so.
I am really sorry that I lied and said that the money order was at your western union, but off by 1 zip code making you drive 30 minutes to find out I am a liar.
Your last email to me was justified. Obviously from your language you were upset. The fact that as you "YELLED and your grasp of the English language seemed to fade away like my Moms when she is livid showed me what a bad person I am.
Your phone call from Africa? was upsetting because as you were trying to explain to me how to go down to western union and pay the $1.75 and you would pick up the fee, I realized how frustrated you were getting. I also lied about being hard of hearing and asking you to yell. Sorry.
All in all, I am sorry for sucking up your bandwidth. I realize that my actions probably sucked up 6-10 hours of your time and kept you from fleecing some gullible person in America.
Please forgive me. Go ahead and send me another forged check and I will send you my cash to your shipper. Please try me again. Even though I lied you to about 15 times I wont do it again.
Your friendly computer person.

That's hysterical! Thanks for sharing!

Theresa

Oh I love this! Someone on another thread is leading them on and this would be a good response for them to use.

Too cute!

Sooo funny! Thanks for sharing!

Just a reminder to everyone:

Please please please DONT respond to a scam email! You mark yourself as "live" and invite more scamming email. Scammers sell lists of "live" email addresses to other scammers. It's their second way to make money.

Just an FYI

haha that was hysterical. and excellent. made my day.

Yeah, I have several fake email addresses I use for the purposes of messing with scammers.

LOL!!!!!!!!!!! Did you REALLY do all that? You are much better then me at messing with them. I applaud you, you are the master!

This is brilliant!! I keep my old e-mail address for just this reason.

I didn't do it. I reposted it from Craigslist. I don't know if the person actually did it either, but I thought it was funny.

This was too funny.

I work for a college and we've been affected by this scam as the scammers use our ABA routing and checking account number on the fake check! What a nightmare!

Hundreds & hundreds of checks were issued trying to buy things like horses to renting apartments. Some people ran right out and cashed them and some were a bit more savvy and called us right away. Weeks & weeks of my time's been wasted on this one.

Thanks for the laugh!

Tha's awesome...I'm one of the ones messing with a scammer on the other thread. I thought about the "live email" issue, but they know it's a real email that they're using because it's all over my website anyway, so I figured, what the heck. I wish that I had the time and energy to follow through like the person who wrote the post from Craigslist (which is a hotbed of scammers anyway. You really have to watch out there...)

If I remember correctly, it was Melvira who posted a link on the other thread that's a website devoted to scamming scammers, it's pretty funny. Everyone has to have a hobby!

Agh, just what I needed a good hard laugh!

Agh, just what I needed a good hard laugh!

I too am so upset by these scammers, they did this to my friend. She was on a dating site and it happened to her twice in a week. Both guys fell for her hard, telling her how beautiful she was, how they were in love with her. They were both out of the country and world travelers. Had similar jobs, antique dealers, making big plans with her. Then it happened, he was traveling to Africa and lost his credit card, needed money right away, even told her where the closest western union offices were. She believed it, she was going to send him money, I had to talk her out of it. It was definitely a scam. I think some people are so lonely, which she is, and she attracted these guys. After she turned him down, she never heard from him again. I told her to report it on the dating site, more should be done to check out these guys. She was only a member for a month and she had 2 scammers.

That was me that posted the link to scambaiters!

Here it is again. It is not receommnded for novices, you do have to be careful about information you put out there.

http://thescambaiter.com/forum/

I am one of the people on the other thread that is baiting the scammer...and having a great deal of fun I might add. I haven't actually lied to them yet...except for the toejam and twinkleberry thing...and I guess the toejam is real enough. I've just never actually used the twinkleberry/sparkleberry recipe yet....They would make great test subjects.

Did they reply to you yet? I'm still waiting, but I think they figured out I was on to them somehow Ahhahahahha!

And Jamie, I apologize for forgetting it was you who posted that awesome link! I like to give credit where it's due, and I thank you most sincerely for bringing my attention to such a fun website. I'll send you some twinkeberry jam the next time I make some!

LOLOLOL....I love that site. Love love love it!!

I just had to get in on this thread...

I unfortunately had someone hack into my hotmail and sent the following to all my contacts ie friends and family :

I NEED YOUR URGENT HELPþ
From: Tracy unsworth ([email protected])
You may not know this sender.Mark as safe|Mark as junk
Sent: Saturday, 21 March 2009 11:54:33 a.m.
To:

Hello,

How are you doing? hope all is well with you and family,i am sorry that i didn't inform you about my traveling to England for a program called Empowering youth to fight racism, Hiv/Aids,

I need a favour from you as soon as you recieve this e-mail because i misplaced my wallet on my way to the hotel where my money,and other valuable things were kept iwill like you to assist me with a soft loan urgently with the sum of $2,5OO US Dollars to sort-out my hotel bills and get myself back home.

i will appreciate whatever you can afford and i'll pay you back as soon as i return,Kindly let me know if you can be of help? so that i can send you the Details to use when sending the money through western union.

Regards,
Tracy

Unfortunately for the hacker he sent it to my hubbys email too... after a day of not realising this is what had happened and not being able to access my hotmail account i reported it to Microsoft and in return using my hubbys hotmail i sent this replyto the hacker :

Hi there,

just wondered if you still have the password you are using for this email account as you have made it very difficult for my wife to access her account with the above address you have used.. it pays in future that when you try to run a scam that you dont email their husband or wife using their accounts.....

We have reported you to microsoft and have informed all those in tracy's email address list of your scam.. good thing they all know that we are NOT in england...

I do however look forward to your reply with my wifes new password that you obviously have changed...

thanks so much

Tracy

and you wouldnt guess i havent had a reply how disappointing hehe

I've seen that this same scam is being used by hackers getting hold of facebook accounts and sending the message to people on your friends list. I guess all it takes is one person who doesn't know it's a scam to respond in order to give these guys a reason to keep doing it...

Where's this other thread people are speaking of?
Tracy, I'm so glad that worked out okay for you.

so am i hehe... luckily i was able to answer all the questions microsoft wanted to prove the account was mine so for all of you just in case it ever happens to you try to remember all your contacts incl email addys, any folders you have set up, any msn contacts you chat with and their email addys, any headings of possible emails still in your account.. just to name a few. although i couldnt remember all of mine i had enough detail in info to prove it yay... so now i am up and running again with a new password..

That scambaiter site is the funniest. I think I've wasted a few hours on it now just reading.

LOL!!! I hope Mr.Scammer is reading this...yeah!!!!!

CakeMakar, the other thread is on the Cake Decorating Business forum under Another Variation of the Happy Married Life Email Scam.

Costumeczar, I no hear back from them already LOL. I asked them if they had those little plastic pedestal thingys in the picture because I didn't carry those. If they get back to me I will be sure and ask them if they have enough reticulating styroplosion plastic and self-freezing boxes for the cakes....

I've got to stop doing this, I'm not getting any work done!!!

i was reading through this thread last night, and low and behold, i've discovered the sam type of scam was about to happen to me, i replied via email to a add in our local newspaper, about a puppy for free to good home, (english bulldog) so i sent an inquiry , and guess what, the man and puppy are currently in africa, will ship puppy via petco, must pay delivery man 350.00 but pup is free, blah blah blah, why are all these guys in africa, thank god i read this post
once again thank you cc'ers,

OMG tjrobin that happened to me only it was for TWO mini (dang can't remember what they were) but they were EXPENSIVE if you bought them. Of course I replied to the newspaper ad, because I live in a VERY SMALL town and knew that the girls at the newspaper office wouldn't have taken an ad for something crazy. Turns out that the crazy old lady (haha) that works there part time took the ad OVER THE PHONE!!! When I recieved the SAME EXACT email for responses to two of my emails I knew right then it was a SCAM and had my father call the Office and report it. I then looked it up on line and there seems to be ALOT of ad's in papers for these types of things. MAN I wish I could remember what those puppies were. They were really cute, but should have been VERY expensive.

Man, scammers are everywhere aren't they!?

I get them at work allll the time. They alwasy use the phone assist, you know, for hearing impaired people w/ a relay person speaking as the middle person. This way you never have "real" contact with them.

Then they always want my email (i give them company address of course) so that they can "communicate" with me more directly & easily.

Then they want to order 10 trailer hitches (that's what I do at my J.O.B.) & they want to give me a CC # and have a 3rd party shipper pick up the order.

I shut them down so fast they don't even respond to my emails.

I inform them that I can not & will not accept a CC# with out a faxed photo copy of the card, front & back (must be legible) & a photo copy of thier valid US drivers license front & back and a hand written note authorizing us to use the card with their permission without either them or the card being present for the requested transaction & agreed upon price. I make them hand write out the CC# too.

...
Gee, I never seem to hear back from any of them!!