attempted scam - buyer wanted to use paypal

[George R. Young]

Recently, I listed my little EX250 for sale on our local kijiji. Here's the first alleged buyer with the lovely name of Michelle:

-------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for the response Does it need anything to be replace or repair?if theirs please specify,i will take it for the listed price,Payment will be sent using PayPal and i will handle the PayPal surcharge as well.I will arrange with someone to have this picked up for your location once i have paid as i am out of town at the moment. I would appreciate if you email me with more pictures (if available) too,since i won't be be able to see this in person,what's the PayPal email to send funds to in order for me to pay you ASAP.

Regards,
Michelle.
---------------------------------------------------
Hello Michelle,

The motorcyle does not need anything repaired or replaced. After I bought it, I examined it carefully, and replaced the clutch lever, rotors, fork seals, clutch, water pump, petcock gasket and diaphragm O-ring, fan
switch, battery, suspension and knuckle/bushings.

Not willing to use paypal, I prefer cash. You could always paypal the money to the person picking up the motorcycle and they could bring it to me as cash.

I don't have any more pictures but you're welcome to come and see it when you're in town.

Regards,
George.
-------------------------------------------------------
K…… but insisted on paypal because i don't have access to my bank account online as i don't have internet banking and i can't go to the bank due to the nature of my job, but i can pay from my PayPal account, as i have my bank a/c attached to it, i will need you to give me your PayPal email address so i can make the payments asap for the item and pls if you don't have PayPal account yet, it is very easy to set up, go to www.PayPal.com and get it set up , after you have set it up i will only need the e-mail address you use for registration with PayPal so as to put the money through

Regards,
Michelle.
---------------------------------------------------------
Sorry, I don't think this is going anywhere.

Regards,
George.
---------------------------------------------------------

Silly me, thinking this is a scam just because of her poor spelling and grammar. She was willing to pay the full asking price without seeing it, except for photos. The next step would probably have been adding in the shipping charges and getting me to pay the shipper, for some convoluted reason.

[Canada-Dan]

That's funny stuff. I got the exact same Michelle email when I was selling my KLR last year.   
That's exactly where it went with asking to pay the shipper out of the included paypal payment.

Knowing that scam as a popular one, which by the way police will not investigate....I wanted to see exactly how this one played out.  The "buyer" sent an email,, fraudulent of course appearing as if sent to me from paypal.  Rather a good fraudulent email notifying of a payment made and the money in my paypal account   

So I asked the " buyer" as a good will gesture of good faith would "Michelle" be willing to send me $100 cash by UPS overnight delivery and I would be more than happy to send the $720 to her shipping company.  Several records checks revealing the address provided for the "shipping company" was in fact a USA post office box in a small pharmacy in New York City. 
Have the means to do so,,,,Further checks revealed that this well organized team appears to be based out of The Congo and they scam 10's of $$$millions every year.  And there's no local investigation for them and domestic police don't investigate the scam because its one of thousands received every year and quite frankly,,,ya Otta know better
Oh...end result,,,,there were a few emails back and forth but I was never able to defraud the defrauders out of $100.  I thought that would be stuff of legend if I could pull it off hahahaha

[ManWorkinghere]

Here is the classic gag pulled on a scammer:

The Powerbook prank

By now this is well known across the Internet. It seems some scammer in England decided to buy (or at least try) an Apple Powerbook from a legitimate seller in the US. Recognising an obvious scam, Jeff (the seller), decided to have a bit of fun with the help of some fellow Internet users. I’ll let you read it for yourselves. The full story is available in PDF format on a mirror I’m hosting here. 
Jeff’s original site is www.p-p-p-powerbook.com. If the site is down, it’s probably because he’s exceeded his bandwidth limit.

The Powerbook Prank. I laughed, I cried, I even snorted. Found originally on Zug.com

[Bosco]

I read through it. WOW justice doesn't have to go through the court system I see.