Craigslist.com - One Example of How it's a Breeding Ground for Scammers

Craigslist.com is a global online classifieds listing that anyone can use. It is a great source for finding items and services in your local area as well as jobs and housing and everything else that appears in your local Sunday newspaper except at craigslist, it is Sunday every day. It is extremely easy to start an account and anyone can post their classified ads for free. But along with the thousands of legitimate postings, there are many scams in the making and scammers watching for opportunity to knock.

I've been looking for a job in the web development field since recently finishing classes at a technical college. Craigslist has been one of the many sources I have been routinely visiting in pursuit of my new career. I have acquired a couple of the many interviews I have secured through craigslist.com postings and I am currently tutoring PHP/MySQL to a person who was seeking a tutor on craigslist. Having no luck with the interviews and a full-time job yet, I decided to seek more tutoring gigs since that was the only way I had pulled in any income so far since finishing school.

I got myself a craigslist.com account and in a matter of minutes posted an ad stating my availability to tutor a few specific programming languages. My ad had not been live for an hour before I got my first email requesting information about my tutoring services.

He claimed he had a fourteen year-old son that was going to be in my area for the month of October and he was in the process of scheduling activities with the intention of keeping his son's time occupied and his mind busy. He asked for an estimate for three days a week, one hour each afternoon, for the entire month. I'm thinking, Great! There's half the rent! I sent him my estimate and waited for his reply.

This (copied and pasted) email was what I received the next morning.

Thank you for the email.My son is very briliant in Education and he will come soon that is why am wanna make all the arragment down,and he also tryin alittle so i want him to be very busy when he come to usa,you know children of this day so i want him to be very god in education that is why i wanna try all my effort to make himbe someone in the nearest future.And more so i am glad the way you have kept me posted on the (tutoring) and more so you have accepted your offer and its okay by me,I have make contacts with my son concerning the arrangement of the tutoring which he told me is ok by him and i want you to know that i am going to pay for 3 hours a week for a month which should be $280 like you said and i want you to teach him for and also i want you to know that my client who is in US will be sending you my salary payment which i want you to know that the rest of the money will be used to get accomodation beside your location and any other arrangement for thelesson,as soon as you get the check cash you will deduct cost and $100 for your runing around and of tutoring of the lesson and send remaing balance to my NANNY Via western union.
Regarding this kindly reconfirm your full information to receive the check so that payment can be able to made out intime.
Thanks and waiting to read from you.

Bally

It was obvious to me right away, but I wanted to show people an example of what to be aware of. He accepts my offer, offers me a little more than I am asking for my running around, and says he is sending me his salary check which is more than our agreement. I am to cash his check, deduct my fee and my bonus and wire the balance to the nanny that will be looking after his son.

Then a week later when the bank can't seem to retrieve any funds from the bogus salary check I cashed, I'm the one they look to for reimbursement. Bally will have discarded the email address and Dan will of course never show up.

This is a pretty obvious attempt, but many are much better hidden or more complex in design. What amazed me was how quickly someone took a stab at me after posting my service. Scammers are out there watching and waiting all the time. There are a few common sense rules one should always remind them self of before doing any business online.

1. Never wire money to anyone you don't know for any reason.

2. Try to do business with local companies that have an address you can visit.

3. If they are not local, get a phone number and address that can be confirmed.

4. Do they have a web site? Customer service?

5. Never give out any personal information.

Always do your research. Look for feedback from previous customers. Never trust anyone you haven't met in person.

There are endless legitimate businesses and services available at our fingertips on the Internet, everything you could ever need if you know the right places to look. It's convenient, fast, and many times even economical. But there are also a lot of people out there from all over the world watching and waiting for a chance to take advantage of anyone whose desires and hopes might temporarily blind them to the little clues that a scam is under way. I'm sure I wasn't the only one that received an email from Bally that day. Follow the basic rules above and you should be able to recognize and stop a scam before any harm is done. It is also strongly advisable to report any attempted scams to the appropriate authorities.