SCAMS

The other morning I received an intriguing email from someone wanting price lists, if I shipped overseas, and if I took credit cards. We startup manufacturers love to get emails like these, but this one just did not seem right. Here is the text:

Hello Sales,

I am interested in purchasing some of your products, I will like to know if you can ship directly to Australia, I also want you to know my mode of payment for this order is via Credit Card. Get back to me if you can ship to that destination and also if you accept the payment type I indicated. Kindly return this email with your price list of your products..

I await your quick response.

Kind Regards.

Mario Hernandez

Addresss

3M SUPPLY AU

184 Darley Street

Mona Vale,NSW 2103

Australia

Phone: +61 243 607 865

FAX: +61 243 636 6785

I put the email address in Google, and not much popped up, but on Mr. Pinball's site, this address was listed on the scammers page. Thank you Mr. Pinball! I emailed Mr. Pinball, thanking him for taking the time to keep up the scammers page, and he sent back some very helpful information:

Hi Gretchen.

I'm glad you found out about this thief. We are contacted daily by people like yourself who discovered our list of scammers and are grateful they found us.

If you run across any more of these types of scammers, please forward their emails to us and we'll post their information for all to see.

These scams are primarily from outside the USA and as such, little can be done about them. If they have a confederate inside the US (such as someone sending a counterfeit check) then that US-based person can be prosecuted.

I recommend any of the following courses of action.

1. Ignore any further contact from the scammer. They will just go away because they will realize that they are getting nowhere with you.

2. Lead them on and let them believe you are interested. If they want to pay you with a credit card, then let them send you the credit card information.
Report the credit card information to the credit card company as stolen.
Then tell them the credit card number is bad. They will often volunteer another card. Repeat until they run out of numbers or lose interest.

3. If they want you to pay them for something, then just ignore them. Do NOT educate them as to how you found out they are a scammer. Educating them just makes them better at fooling the next person.

4. Report them to their email provider at the designated abuse address, which should be something like abuse@yahoo.com and get them to terminate the account. Be sure to include full headers so they can verify that the account is being used for fraud. Terminating an account will stop all the scams in progress with that account and so will probably be the most helpful. The main problem with doing this is that it may take several days for the provider to get around to verifying and terminating the account. Although I can't recommend this, sending lots of email to the account can fill up their mailbox and prevent them from getting mail. Doing this sort of action may violate your email provider's Terms of Service and may get you in trouble--that's why I don't recommend this--but be aware that it is probably the *most* effective action that can be taken once you report them to the appropriate abuse account.

Whatever you do, DO NOT cash the check they may send or send them money.
Attempting to cash a known counterfeit check is a felony. Sending them money means you will NEVER get the money back. These countries where they want you to wire the money do not require a government ID to pick up money, so any money you send will be lost with no recourse.

Regards,

Daina

I will know what to look for when something does not quite feel right from now on. I am sure as we grow, we will be the target of more types of scams having to do with manufacturing. I will post them as they happen.

For now, please do be careful and if you have been caught in a scam, please post a comment.