How different scams work

Hi,

I thought I would write a post detailing how the scam was supposed to work each time someone tried, but luckily, due to sites like this, didn't succeed.

First scam was the usual romance scam - some random good looking soldier contacted me on Myspace, within days I knew his fake life story. My daughter was the one who told me about these scam artists, manly in Nigeria, I just thought this guy who was proclaiming his love for me after one brief email, was a loon. I went and googled about the scam, came across a forum with hundreds of stories from manly women, some who had given so much money and their heart to these people, it was so terrible to read. People who profit off by worming their way into peoples emotions and hearts are beyond scum. The main scam seemed to be that the guy was a single dad, stationed where ever and the money scam begins usually by using some reason to do with the child, such as an emergency where money is needed asap and they can't get it there because they are on patrol, or something like that. Now, my scammer had already told me he had no children so for about 3 seconds I thought, maybe he isn't.... then kept reading till I found the other big scam, the phone thing. He asked you to pay for his phone account to be connected so you can talk on the phone, then i remembered in his first email he said how much he would love to hear my voice......

Second scam - someone wanted to buy my car i had advertised on Gumtree, this one was good, almost got me. Guy emailed me, wanted to buy my car for his son to do up, he was working on a oil rig out at sea for 6 weeks but would arrange for it to be freighted up to broome. Now, this is where it got good and extremely clever, he of course needed to pay the person picking up the car and freighting it to his son, so asked if he transferred by paypal the amount for my car and the $1500 needed to freight it, would I pay the freight company when they came to pick up the car. Very trusting of the guy I thought, but hey not a problem.. No alarm bells had gone off at this stage. He was paying by paypal, trusted site, and he was actually trusting me to do the right thing with his cash. So, price agreed on car, he said great, I'll get on my paypal and transfer the money over now. That is when things went odd. I received an email from Paypal, saying this man had placed x amount into my paypal account and it was in my account, just on hold, until I submitted proof of payment to the freight company. I just had to pay the company BY WESTERN UNION and forward that payment slip to have my money released. This email from Paypal looked legit, if they (paypal) hadn't asked me to use their competition to transfer the money, I may have fallen for it. Thank god the "NEVER PAY BY WESTERN UNION EVER" had been drummed into me by friends.

Third scam - puppy, free to good home, you just pay for air freight costs. This one, again, very well done, had a whole very professional website devoted to animal freighting that this person directed me too to pay for the freight of the puppy to my state. Again, western union tipped me off.

I despise these people and hope they are been caught and punished for what they are doing to innocent trusting people. My friend's ex husband got caught up in some huge scam a few years ago, and lost their house and their business. It is just not fair and should be stopped

That was a good spot, the message from 'Paypal' was spoofed, as you said, looks like the real thing, but if you dig deeper you'll find the real sender in the header information.
It is worth forwarding the so-called Paypal message to : [email protected]