Nigerian-based Web Scams

[SportsLegends 0]

Hello all-I am new here and attempting to gain enough posting credits to get a free website. This almost sounds too good to be true! I hope it's not!Speaking of too good to be true, the one thing that has anger me greatly over the last few weeks has been Nigerian-based web scams. I am a poor college student, and in an attempt to make some extra cash to pay some car bills, buy Christmas presents, and buy books, I waited in line for 34 hours at Target in the freezing cold to buy a Playstation3 with the intention of reselling it on ebay.I came home immediately and put my PS3 up for sale online for a 24 hour auction. It sold to a gentlemen who claimed he was living in the United States. When he won the item, he requested that I send the PS3 to his "grandson" in Nigeria. I thought that this was suspicious, so I asked my sister, who is a lot more ebay-savvy than myself. Apparently, Nigeria is a hot-bed for internet scams. She told me that many people steal credit cards and somehow con people into giving them money. I did not want to pass judgment immediately on the buyer of my item, but sure enough, the next day the buyer had five new feedback scores- all accusing him of conning them out of money!I can't believe that people can be callous enough to try to con people out of money like this. It really is disgusting. I know that there are going to be some good, honest buyers from Nigeria, but just to warn fellow ebayers ... look out for Nigerian (and all kinds of) scammers)!!! They took over ebay after the PS3 release. I wish that these people would be stopped- with all the technology we have today, law enforcement officials somewhere should be able to take them down.

[cangor 0]

That's really, really cheap. Scammers are just scum too lazy to earn money honestly... argh. Anyways, I can assure you that Xisto isn't a scam, so, good luck here.

[apurva 0]

oh man thats real sad. people these days are misusing the technology and money related sites like ebay,paypal are their main targets.i wish someday the cyber police would teach them a nice lesson..

[hts 0]

they are just too many scammers for "the cyber police to teach them a lesson"
the basic idea is that you must be aware of what you are doing on the internet, as you might get fooled by such people..
and it`s not only Nigeria - there are lots of scammers in other countries too...one good example is Romania (where I live ) - see here for example
and that`s the "latest" happening ...some frauds never come to "light" - that is, people never know of them...

anyway, always be careful

Edited December 10, 2006 by hts (see edit history)

[Saint_Michael 3]

Hopefully you reported this user to ebay and not give it him. Although I am shocked that you were not part of the 6000 bids of $50,000 or more on ps3. Since everyone who was every made sure no one could sell their PS3 for about $2500-$3000.Speaking of which Dr. Phil did an episode about these scames (love related) had to record it, had school that night but of course it never taped properly. go figure.but these scams have been going on since the 90s and they won't stop. Because some people are ignorant on the fact that they think these are legit.

[quakesand 0]

I really hate those people (hope they don't kill me)and relax, this site is 100% not scam..trust me, I swear I'm telling the truth.

[Kioku 0]

I remember an old Nigerian-based Web Scam. It was some email where a guy claimed he'd give you free money and he's the exiled prince of some country and he needs your bank account numbers. I'd usually play along, give the guy fake numbers or some thing like that and expect a funny reply. They never do reply, much to my dismay, though.

[darran 0]

The problem with these kind of services which requires finance transaction and things like that is being based on mutual trust, and with Ebay being a free service and all for people to sell their items, many people will abuse the usage for it to scam other naive people. Trust me when I say that there are a lot of naive people in this world who would fall trap to their scams. That is why I choose not to engage in such international sales, if I had to sell something, I would go on my local site where I can meet the person straight up and we will decide on the transaction straight up.

[slammer 0]

I have one of these scams emailed to me before. Some guy that has so much money and he needs you help to transfer the funds between two accounts. and you'll get a cut of the money. I knew straight away it was a scam, but i could see how easy it would be for someone who wasn't 'internet savvy' to fall for it.

[Avalon 1]

Unfortunately my daughter was caught by one of these scams and it cost her a cell phone she was selling on Ebay. She did not send the phone until she had confirmation of money being transferred to her account, or so she thought. As it turned out the confirmation email was fake, (she didn't look at it close enough) and sent the phone overseas, not exactly sure where. The fake email was fairly easy to spot, poor grammar, excessive use of punctuation marks and other things, had I seen the email before she sent the phone I would have told her not to send it.

 

An important lesson to be learned is that reputation on Ebay is very important. This buyer did not have any reputation because he was new. As soon we spotted the scam we posted negative responses, but it didn't matter as he was not to be seen again. No doubt he will just create a new username and scam some other poor person.

 

Ebay is a great tool for buying and selling, but you must be very careful, there are many people out there just waiting to rip you off.

[Dooga 0]

Why is it always Nigeria? Doesn't the Nigerian government care about all these scams?