Craigslist Scam: Cheque and Western Union For More Than Amount

I'm glad I found this site because the same thing has happened to me!!!
I was selling something and they sent me a check and told me there delivers were going
to pick it up!!! I went to bank of America to cash the check.. They wanted to call the police and I had no idea what was going on then the bank manager has told me that it was fraud check!!! I emailed the sender back and told them Its not real and they continued to lie and there was a company name on the check that I looked up on the Internet which is s huge coffee company and called them direct and let them know!!!

I got an email from h.harekrishna004@gmail.com in reply to a post for furniture I was selling on craigslist. Here is the exact email I received:

Hi,

I have gone through your ad once again on craigslist and i am interested in purchasing the above mentioned. I am buying the item for my step son and his wife to be. They are the ones that contacted you at first to know if you still have it. I am paying Via Money Order and it will get to you within few days. Please get back to me with your full information for payment to be sent out immediately i receive it through Ups or Fedex Next Delivery Service.

Full Name:
Address :
City :
States :
Zip/Postal Code:
Phone number :

I will like us to get this transaction done with as soon as possible. I will be offering you $50 extra to hold the item in my favour because i am sure that there will be other interested people. As per Pick Up, I will make arrangement with my shipping company to come for the pick-up after payment has been received by you.

I want you to take the posting off craigslist today and consider it sold to me. If you have any question, Please ask me Via email because i can not Call or receive calls for now due to the fact that i am out of town for a seminar and i am out of network service.

Best Regards.
Harera Harekrishna
Have a Blessed Day!

--
Harera Harekrishna
General Manager
Capital Heating & Cooling
1218 Carpenter Road Southeast
Lacey, WA 98503

These people should be caught and put in jail.

I was selling an item on Ebay for $750. This is the email I received.

The payment would be sent by UPS courier company and the item will be
picked up as soon as you receive my payment,I will wait for the
payment to get cashed before I'd send my mover for the pick up.I will
like to tell you that i would be sending a cheque worth of $3,000 to
cover the moving of the item and the money for the item As soon as the
cheque reaches you,have it cashed and remove your money for the item
and send the remaining fund to my mover by via western union money
transfer.My mover is also picking some of my other items up for me in
the same city of yours so that is why i need to give him that amount.I
will like you to remove $100 for your running around in getting the
cheque cashed.I will send you the tracking# and shipper information to
use for sending the rest funds via western union.Please let me know
if i can trust you on this so we can move forward from here. Regards

I did received the "cheque", however, it appeared to be a payroll type check from a NY based computer company. I asked for a phone number so that I could speak with him about this odd situation. He did finally provide a number, one that was out of service. This particular person was obviously fairly new to the scam or was scamming many people simultaneously as he kept using different, but similar names in various correspondence. He went by Rich Bessing, Sol Blessing, and finally Peter Paul.

Below is an email I received several days later from him (or her, whoever, using one of the above names). This is after I responded saying that I believed this was a scam and would not be doing anything with the check other than holding it for the police. This is the first time I'd heard anything of this Andrea person or this address, state, etc.

Hello ,
Am very happy to hear back from you and i will love to tell you that
the shipper information i provide to you :Andrea smith and Marizol
Ramirez: My company Secure payment provide to you there all the same
from shipping company kindly make sure that you get the funds wire to
the shipper Andrea smith becos my shipping company will be at your
location for the pick up tomorrow by 2;30 pm so i want you to make
everything done today and get back to me with the Western Union
details for me to have the scanning copy receipt of the western union
so that i can forward the details to the shipper today as the
confirmation that there shipping funds is ready and they can prepare
for the pick up as soon as possible.....all you just need to do is to
deduct your money for the (item) and also deduct extra $100 for your
runnings around and wire the rest funds to the shipper information My
shipper provide to you (Andrea smith) by tomorrow and also make sure
that you pay the western union charges in any amount they charged you
and get back to me with the total amount sent after the deduction of
the Western Union and all the rest western union details i will be
waiting to read back from you now as soon as you make things done stay
bless.

Here Is the shipper Information my shipper provide To you to Wire The
Rest Of The Money western union....

NAME..............Andrea smith
ADDRESS............526 denham st
CITY..................iverdale
STATE.......................GA
ZIPCODE........................30274

Such As ;
1)The Full Sender's Name And Address
2)The WU Mtcn #
3)Actual Amount sent After deducting Transfer Charges

NOTE....

Please do get back to me as soon as you get my message now so as to
know how you gonna Handle everything asap today Thanks and i would be
waiting to hear from you.Regards to all your Family.

--
still available for sale??

This was also sent to me later on:

Hello,
how are you doing this is just a reminder from the payment verifier department that we have been waiting to read from you and we need to know what is delaying you ...why you havent send the remaining money to the information given to you ...
We need to read from you today because we need a copy of the transfer details here as well for us to record it down ..
Regards
Payment Verifier department

Give me a break....I would go ahead and contact this link http://complaint.ic3.gov/update
and at least report it to the fraud squad so if these types of things can be verified on a number of occasions maybe something can be done. Thanks for listening.

I too was almost scammed by Harera Harikrishna. Good thing I decided to google the name before I replied and this site came up. The following is the email I got in response to an ad I had on Craigslist:

Hi,

I have gone through your ad once again on craigslist and i am interested in purchasing the above mentioned. I am buying the item for my step son and his wife to be. They are the ones that contacted you at first to know if you still have it. I am paying Via Money Order and it will get to you within few days. Please get back to me with your full information for payment to be sent out immediately i receive it through Ups or Fedex Next Delivery Service.

Full Name:
Address :
City :
States :
Zip/Postal Code:
Phone number :

I will like us to get this transaction done with as soon as possible. I will be offering you $50 extra to hold the item in my favour because i am sure that there will be other interested people. As per Pick Up, I will make arrangement with my shipping company to come for the pick-up after payment has been received by you.

I want you to take the posting off craigslist today and consider it sold to me. If you have any question, Please ask me Via email because i can not Call or receive calls for now due to the fact that i am out of town for a seminar and i am out of network service.

Best Regards.
Harera Harekrishna
Have a Blessed Day!

I had someone try this scam on me, heres what i did. I strung them on for a week telling them i needed 100$ to get my checking account active. I told him that once i got an account in good standing that the bank would clear the check same day. the item im selling was 100 guitar, so i am not stealing, but of course the "mover" never did show up. HAHA I win!

I was looking to buy a blackberry bold 9700 from someone on Kijiji. I came across an ad on Kijiji and it was for a brand new blackberry bold 9700 in box, never used for only $300. I emailed them back to get more information on the blackberry. He told me :

“The phone is still available,brand new,never opened,sealed in box,comes with 12 months international warranty and 3 months return policy after purchase.I am located in Oregon USA.The phone is only $300 including shipping and we deliver in 24 hours as soon as payment is confirmed and the phone has its original receipt and still in its original box.

Below are the Contents:

1. Complete accessories (Well packed and sealed in original company box)
2. Unlocked / Sim free.
3. Brand new (original manufacturer) box - no copies
4. The phones have English language as default
5. All material (software, manual) - car chargers - home chargers - USB
data cables -holsters/belt clips - wireless headsets (blue tooth) - leather and non-leather
carrying cases - batteries.

The phone works well and it also works with all carrier such as Rogers, Telus, AT&T, Cingular One, Wind, Fido, Bell, Vodafone,T mobile, Sprint and lots more.It also works in the USA, CANADA, AUSTRALIA, GERMANY,Finland, Russia and across the continent.”

He also gave me a phone number.
I was still unsure about this, and asked more questions. He said I would be provided with a tracking number after the payment was confirmed. I also asked if $300 was the final price and that it includes shipping and nothing else would be added on or owed.
I trusted him, and fell for this. I paid the $300 through moneygram, and then began asking for the tracking number and then said I owe’d $190 for a new fee that was recently added to the shipping company for TAX, VAT, Insurance. I was so upset. He agreed to pay for $90 of it… so I paid the $100. He promised me there would not be anything else. Two days late after me sending a million emails asking for the tracking number he says, there was $70 added on for inconvienence… I was sooo mad.

This is obviously a scam, he answers the phone sometimes and just keeps saying “hello” pretending he cant hear me. I found an AD he posted regarding an IPHONE and emailed it from another email and I got the exact same message back saying “The phone is still available,brand new,never opened,sealed in box,comes with 12 months international warranty and 3 months return policy after purchase.I am located in Oregon USA…”
Obviously this is a SCAM. So mad, because I thought I was being careful.

Who can help me get this guy caught? Please help? I have quite a bit information on him!!

He has a bunch of posts for IPHONES, Blackberry BOLDS 9700 on KIJIJI and Craigslist so beware. If it only costs $300, reportt! or email and if you get an email saying the same stuff as I got above, REPORT! SCAM SCAM SCAM!

Thank you for this web site. I also reieved a check today and was going to cash it in the morning. I decided to look into this and realized it was such a scam. I am SO glad that I didnot cash the check. I will be contacting the authorities.

I was scammed. These guys are fuckers. I hope they dont get away with any of this. stay away from ralph.martins02@yahoo.com or terry kerr jr

My husband and I were selling an item on ebay and a similar thing happened...When the buyer said they were mailing a check for 3.5 times what were asking, and that his secretary wrote out the wrong amount on the check, requesting a refund via Western Union, we got suspicious... We thought perhaps we were going to be laundering money for drug dealers... We replied that we were not interested in following thru with his transaction. The buyer in this instence was robert bratt and his email is robertbratt05@googlemail.com