Is This A Scam Or Is It Trustworthy?

[Vinicios Cunha]

I posted my laptop on craigslist and a man responded saying he'll pay 200 more than I had originally asked. Once I got the address to send the computer to him, I realized that I would have to ship it to Nigeria. I've heard about Nigerian scams and does this sound like one?

[Wan2help]

SCAM!

[Lucy]

You can never be sure. But I suggest you don't.
It's more safe if you don't take risky chances like this.

[Jake]

Absolute scam, most commonly they overpay with a bad check asking you to return a portion to them or a "shipping service" they often don't actually care about the item for sale.

There's a site that guides you on how to waste the scam artists time, leaving them less time to do real harm. There was an investigation TV show that got a scammer to fly to a different country with the promise of a payoff.
http://www.419eater.com/

Here's an information site on this sort of scam
http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/

Some have said fraud is the 3rd largest Nigerian national product.
The Nigerian pop song "I go chop your dollar" celebrating such scams.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJOuvEcarNs

[wilson]

Ask him/her for payment first.

[083]

100% scam.

There is no buyer.

There is only a scammer trying to steal your laptop.

The scammer isn't interested in your identity or bank account only in convincing you to ship your possession to him without him sending you a penny. He will continue to send urgent and harassing emails demanding that you send the item asap. Ignore this fake buyer.

The next email will be from another of the scammer's fake names and free email addresses pretending to be "Paypal" saying "kindly send the tracking number and we will release the funds".

Paypal does NOT send such emails, ever. Paypal does NOT have escrow or money holding services like that scammer describes. Paypal does NOT demand you send a tracking number before money is sent. EVER. No exceptions.

Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his 'potential sucker' list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of being the perfect buyer, great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram.

You could post up the email address and the emails themselves that the scammer is using, it will help make your post more googlable for other suspicious potential victims to find when looking for information.

Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don't bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn't worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash.

Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer.

If you google "cragislist buyer scam", "fake paypal email scam", "ebay buyer paypal scam" or something similar you will find hundreds of posts from victims and near victims of this type of scam.

Check out the one and only official paypal website, read up on what paypal does and how it really works.

[Kittysue]

SCAM
This article explains how this Nigerian scam works
http://www.el-jefe.org/2009/12/lesson-1-...-your.html
ONLY a scammer offers MORE money and Craiglist is ONLY for face to face CASH transactions or you will always be scammed
Any time you post a laptop or anything electronic the Nigerian scammers will target you