MG,
This person is either severely disabled or a scammer and you already know where my vote goes. Follow it through to the bitter end if you must, but I suggest you ask for a copy of his CA Drivers License to be attached to the bottom of the contract before it is returned. Also, I appreciate you may have already sent bank details, but suggest you require payment by credit card in this situation in future. Giving out bank details or accepting a check is plain risky unless you have a proper ID on a person.
<slightly-off-topic> By the way, my friends son just had his ID stolen last week. They had his name, address, phone number, cell phone number, date of birth, social security number, 3 credit card details and email address. His mother said even she didn't know the password to his email account, but they did. They ordered up 20 MP3 players online for delivery to an address in Brooklyn. He found out when he received the emails with tracking numbers for the delivery. They beefed up the security on his PC (previously Norton), but another suspect is his health insurance company. They are sending out free credit monitoring for a year to all customers having been hacked/ lost their customer database files. </off-topic>
Joannas just reminded me. .
Those of you who hire Cars
..Look carefully at your agreement document[thats given to you when you pick up the car] They normally have all your details and Credit Card details in full on them
...and I know people would probably just put them in the dashboard in case it was needed to be seen by police...[after an accident etc...]
we felt tip the Credit card details out after a friend told us after noticing it on his
Let us know whether this is a genuine enquiry or a 'no-show'
Early days of course, but 'James' has disappeared into thin air, clutching our (useless, I hope) bank details.
Joanna - I still feel, perhaps incorrectly, that giving a guy like this details of a one-way bank account is risk-free. What can he* do? 7 months to go - why lose the c/card commission?
MG
* are there any female scammers? It does seem a boy thing.
You were all right on the nail with this one; the owner of the listing site involved traced the e-mail and it came from the Maroad Cybercafe in Ikenne, Nigeria:
I feel a complete dork for sending this bloke our deposit account details, but as it's only got 5 quid in it he's welcome(ish). Are they getting better or am I getting worse?
Yes, I think they must be, and I am wondering whether the Scam email enquiries forum should have the same security as the members-only section??? Don't want them to know the sorts of things that ring our alarm bells do we?
There are thousands of public websites offering detailed info on how to avoid scams (of all types), yet there is a new scam and more unfortunately new victims appearing each minute.
I'm more in favour of protecting the victims (or should I say "dorks" ) than hiding our ideas from scammers.
Your having a laugh
..Ive got confused and confusing people down to an art form
...Im going for the Turner prize in it next year
what dyathink of my chances
{Im relying on you lot to support my nomination must have confused all of you at one time or another... }