Scam Alert:

Cody Havel

PR Addict
First off, I'm not exactly sure where I should put something like this, so I'm posting it here where I think the most traffic is. If my post is in the wrong area, I'm sorry Pit, and please move to where it should be.

So I've been trying to sell my bike, I had a listing on Craigslist. I got an email from a gentleman (being really nice with that one) that he was interested in my bike, and that he wanted to pay me via PayPal. So I thought this was pretty safe. Turned out this guy has some fake PayPal emails that he can send out.

The man that contacted me, goes by the name Kyle William. His email he used to contact me is: kyle.kyle889@gmail.com

I got a couple of emails from what looked to be pretty good PayPal emails, saying I was payed ''X'' amount. I keep checking my PayPal account and still no money in there, nothing pending. The way the guy made up the reciept was he made a payment of ''$X,xxx'', and then an additional ''$xxx'' for shipping and handling charges. And before I could have access to all my funds, I needed to Western Union the shipping charges to a Diane Williams of Flordia. I thought better of all of that, mostly because when I went to my PayPal account, no payment was made. I called customer support, and they were saying there was no payment made of any kind. So I forwarded the two fake emails to PayPal customer support, and they confirmed they were fraudulent. They called it ''phishing.''

The fake PayPal email address came was this: customerservice.information@consultant.com

It's hard telling if Diane was a part of this sceme or not. She is supposedly a part of ''Aspen Transportation'' out of St. Petersburg Florida.

Furthermore the phone number that I got from the guy, the area code was from Illinois. And it was really hit and miss to find a name and address associated with the phone number. Some reverse directories even said that there is no such thing as the number. I have his ''phone number'' but not sure if I should post that too.

I'm just passing this information along to try to help all of you guys from potentially getting scammed. Keep your eyes peeled!

That's about all the info I feel I need to disclose here, but if anyone would like more information on what I recieved, feel free to send me a private message.
 
When selling a bike/car on craigslist, 9 times out of 10 you will get "people" e-mailing you attempting to buy it sight unseen. They will want to paypal you $xxxxx and usually that amount is more than you are asking.
 
Ive listed my bike twice now on craigslist and those kinda emails are always the first ones i get. You know they are a scam cause who in there right mind would buy a used bike site unseen,and pay more in shipping then it would cost them just to pick it up. I always like to email em back messing with them.
 
I get those people making offers all the time. It's frustrating. Generally, on craigslist my policy is meet in person with cash, or no deal. Thanks Cody for the heads up tho, I always wondered why they were pushing getting my paypal email so much
 
yes. never let these jokers come to your house. meet them at walmart with cash (and your concealed pistol + counterfeit money marker). Forget shipping unless they mail you a box of cash. lol


Also, create an email account at gmail for when you sell bikes. that way you can just ignore that spam crap and sift through the real emails without compromising your own. Then you really can e-mail them back and string them along without fear of them seeing your true email.
 
I sold a bike to a guy in California about 6 months ago. I was extremely nervous about the whole deal, but it worked out in the end. He was able to wire the money from his bank drectly to mine. Once all the funds were there and confirmed, I loaded the bike up and took it to the shipping terminal. He was a lot more trusting than I would have been in that same situation. There's a good chance I could have gotten away with keeping the money and just sending him a box of used parts.
 
I posted my bike and I must have gotten 20 scam email over the weekend so far. I've seen enough that I can spot`m right off the bat. If I talk to someone on the phone and they sound legit and know about the bike already, or if I have a friend that knows them or know someone who knows them, i`ll let`m come to my house. Otherwise i`ll meet them somewhere in the manner Baker described.
 
My Craigslist add does have an email with a hotmail.com attached to it. So I watched myself there, the only thing is that he does have the email for my PayPal account, but I have since changed it. It's to bad that there is so much of this going around. Totally stupid. And very frustrating. Glad to hear you guys didn't get scammed by anyone, and I hope this helps others to keep from getting scammed.
 
Had same thing a few years ago. had old 2001 rm125 at 1200.00 on CL. Guy offered like 1800 or something 1200 for bike 500 for shipping and the rest for my troubles. He would send a check then I was to Immediately upon depositing the check, wire transfer the money to the shipping company so they could pick it up.
My responds in an Email was, Since we are all honest people just send Cash money in an envelope, (Make sure it is a security envelope) this will save a trip to the bank and be even that much faster. Thank you and I will wait for your payment. Oddly enough I never heard from him again.

I never even put my Email on CL adds anymore all you get is these type of jokers and spam.
 
something i've done to help cut down on a lot of crap/spam on craigslist...

Choose to HIDE your email. That way any kind of spam bots programmed to just automatically find that "mailto" link on the page and fire off emails to that craigslist email... can't.

I sitll like to include my email in my ad, but my email (mxkid23@yahoo.com) I will list as mxkid23@ yahoo . com or something... just to make it a little harder to auto detect it. since ive started doing those 2 things I get WAY less crap when I post CL ads.
 
I always reply with "I am a federal agent, with the fradulent service department" LOL... For some reason I never hear back lol
 
I use CL all the time, and I never put my email in the ad either. Always mention face to face, and cash only transaction. Doesn't stop the scammers, but they are much easier to detect. Just be careful, and it can still be a great place to advertise.
 
Damn scammers, i have sold countless bikes and cars on craigslist. I dont have to read but half of the first scentence in a reply to see its spam, so i delete it before i waste my time. **** gets old.
 
I registered to post this, I just listed a bike for sale in the boston area and was contacted by kyle.kyle889@gmail.com

His scam attempt was:

Hi There,


Thank you for getting back to me.Can you assure me that it's in
good state and that i will not be disappointed with it.I'm ready to
pay your asking price and to be honest, i wanted to buy this for my
son, but the issue is i am an oceanographer and i do have a contract
to go for which starts tomorrow and am leaving any moment from now.The
contract is strictly no call due to the lack of reception on the sea
area. But I'm able to access email anytime as we will make use of
laptop so my only quickest payment option is PayPal as i can send
money via PayPal anytime.Since I'm requesting this transaction to be
done via PayPal, i will be responsible for all the paypal fee/charges
on this transaction and if you don't have an account with paypal, its
pretty easy, safe and secured to open one. Just log on to
www.paypal.com. I hope we can make the purchase as fast as possible? I
have a mover that will come for it once payment clears and they will
take care of very necessary paper for me. So i look forward to hear
from you soon.


Many Thanks

As my username suggest, I wasn't born yesterday. I just hope people google his email address and finds this thread like I did.

Always cash, always in-person.

-n
 
I have got an email from people that looked like a legit paypal saying i had funds, luckily i logged on paypal before i sent the stuff and seen there was no money..

they really need to start cracking down on these people.
 
So speaking of scams,i just had my bike listed on craigslist and this guy from california text me and said he'd send me a certified bank check. So i gave him my name and someone elses address. I got the check but it was issued from a company called warner power in new hampshire. when asked about it guy says his "client" sent the check. Then i told hime warner power has no idea about the check and told me not to cash it,and asked him who owned said company. At first he said he did,but when i asked him why he didnt just walk into the dealer and buy a new one, he then said he worked there. So i proceeded to ask him why a multi million dollar company would just give him money to buy a bike,and he says its cause he's on "rotation" I wish i could figure out how to put all the text on here i've recieved from this dude, cause im sure one of you guys would see the humor in it that i do. I cant believe how persistant this guy has been about me cashing this check and sending the money to a shipper that doesnt exist. The really funny part was when he said the money already came out of his account. All he could say when i told him he was full of it cause the check was still sitting on my desk was "proceed to send money to shipper".
 
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