Scams on Craigslist.Com

Craigslist.com is a phenomenal web site. It allows you to promote yourself, sell your items, connect with people, and even snag a criminal or two.

Here is how some craigslist (and other) scam artists operate:

After sifting through the services section, they locate their target. Day care is a good example. Ready to begin the hunt, scammers send an email. Some master planner obviously created a form letter for scammers to fill out, because in spots where they are supposed to fill in "your location," some of them write simply, "your location." The email looks as if it were created with a defective translation program filled with misplaced commas, randomly placed apostrophes, and capitalized letters strewn throughout.

Some scammers appear to understand simple English, because they attempt to clean up their email form letters with what they think is correct grammar. They are, however, in love with conjunctions --"and" and "because" provide numerous links in sentences that run on, paragraph after paragraph, asking you to provide care for their beloved son or daughter.

The scammers claim they are "renowned" artists, models, or actors or that they belong to some legitimate relief or international organization that is so worthy of your money, your heartstrings will break because of their great love for children and all of humanity. When you contact the organization to which they supposedly belong, the people who run it are surprisingly unfamiliar with your scam artist.

Sometimes these pseudo-parents go to great lengths to assure you that their made-up child is real. And they emphasize how "serious" they are. To demonstrate how attentive and caring they are, they include a checklist asking for personal information that will supposedly assure you of their honesty. Some of them exonerate themselves from anything illegal simply by claiming they are legal.

They never handle the money themselves and have a sponsor or boss set up to mail the money to you. Their contracts, along with their need for care, last anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months.

When you respond to their emails, they send another email informing you that you will receive an extraordinary amount of money, usually far more than your going rate and beyond your expectations.

The part that should make your brow furrow is when they tell you to cash the checks they send to you and then, for reasons they attempt to make very clear and which they expect you to overlook (because they are hoping the money will blind you to their deception), request you to send US currency back to them. What they fail to mention is that while your money is real, theirs, in the form of money orders or cashier's checks, are fraudulent.

The bottom line is this: no matter which web site you visit, if you are purchasing a product, you pay the seller; if you are providing a service, the recipients of the service pay you. People asking you to send YOUR money back to them while asking you to consider it part of THEIR money should cause blasts of sound to go off in your head and flashing red lights to appear before your eyes to alert you to the fact that you have just come in contact with a criminal.

Of course, I still place ads on craigslist, because THEY are a reputable service. However, I now have a form letter I send to the scammers. It goes like this:

"I charge $6500 per hour. 10 am to 4 pm puts the fee at $195,000 per week or approximately $780,000 total for one month. The first week's fee must be paid 6 months prior to my watching your daughter/son to assure me that you are not running a scam. You must agree to fingerprinting and a background check as I have other children in my care worthy of only the most legitimate people in their lives. I'm very happy that you are 'serious' about your intent. I look forward to hearing from you soon."

I wonder why I haven't received any checks.