Monday, October 6, 2008

Not today buddy!!



For the past few weeks I have been emailing "Edward" at edward_andrew101@ymail.com about his wedding. Initially he seemed on the up and up, of course hindsight makes me see some things I overlooked.

Well, he finally decides he needs to lock in the date with a deposit and I gave him my information. A few days later I receive an email saying that he needs to pay for some other vendors, and he asks if he can make the check out for more than the amount needed so I could help make the payments for him. I told him I was not comfortable with that idea because it is a common scam, but if he needed help he could send separate checks that I would deliver for him. I quickly caught on that the "wedding" was just a reason to send a check. At this point I also thought saying scam to a scammer would stop the tricks.

After a few days without response, I was surprised to see a package on my door, it was his check. Because I wasn't born yesterday, I called the individual listed on the check to confirm my assumption. No surprise, it was fraudulent, and they had received three more calls about other bad checks already that day.

I am insulted that these scams are so common and they still tried to pull it off on me. Atleast be more creative with your tricks, geez!!

To my new friend "Edward" you've got to do much better than that young man. PS - The photograph of your fake check is on the house, thank you for choosing DeWitt Photos.

For everyone else, don't think that these tired old scams have run their course. Bad people are still doing bad things, always do your homework! I was a success story, don't be their success!

For anyone interested in any of the information on the individual, I am including it below:

Bad guy: Edward Andrew email: edward_andrew101@ymail.com

Package was mailed from Honolulu, Hawaii, not Indiana. Check was from a New York firm, "Edward" claimed to be living in London, and he wanted me to transfer money to Trinidad.  As you can see they couldn't have made it any easier to see the scam coming unless they titled their emails "scam".

UPDATE:  I never let on to "Edward" that I found out about his plot or that I put his info on my website.  Since Monday he has continued to email and call asking me when I was going to wire transfer the money back to him.  Technically speaking that means I am scamming the scammer...it's great therapy actually!  We've effectively scammed each other out of some time, but I hope that's time that he doesn't have to scam someone else...that makes me the winner.  Sorry "Edward" you lose!

4 comments:

Nannette said...

You're mama didn't raise no dummies!! Go Chris!

Chris said...

Thats right, now if we could just employ some of your "family" connections to take care this problem...

DJ Jaceman said...

Chris,

Thank you for posting this as it helped me link a bogus email I just received inquiring about my DJ services for Mr. Andrew's "wedding" he is supposedly having here in Maine. He filled out an inquiry using a web form, and I thought things were a little unusual as his source IP puts him somewhere in Africa though he says he is from London.

Again, thank you as matching his email address made this much easier.

Jason

Chris said...

Jason,

I am so happy this has been helpful to you. I was a little surprised to see the scammers had moved from trying to get over on people who were selling things to the service industry.