After the success that I’ve had with selling my old iPod nano on craig’s list, I thought I’d post my old Fuji digital camera up for sale as well, and see if I can get a decent price for my two-year old camera. I got some offers for my camera for less than $80, so I really wasn’t willing to part with it until I received an offer for my asking price of $100 from a Kenneth Decker. He mentioned to me via email that he would need the product shipped and payment made through paypal. I was ok with shipping the camera to him as long as he paid me the shipping costs, so I didn’t think too much of it and replied to let him know that I would ship it out once he made his payment. Here’s my first mistake! craig’s list is a local classified listing and is meant to save the sellers and buyers the fees and troubles that mediums like ebay and paypal can incur. Something smells fishy…

Kenneth (bishopkenwalker@gmail.com) even went as far as chatting with me via google talk to confirm that he wanted the product for his “bella”. The next morning I received two emails from paypal saying that a payment of $190 has been made to my account but the funds are on-hold until I confirm the tracking number for the shipment. Mistake number two! Paypal does not work like that and will not hold your funds from your account. Plus, who would pay $190 for a two-year old digital camera?

I was on my way to the airport so I just skimmed the email quickly at first and didn’t even think twice about it. Mistake number three! I didn’t even read the email carefully or check the sender’s address! I did make a mental note to check my paypal account later though.

At this point, I was pretty happy about my soon-to-be-completed sale. I even bragged about it to crazyC and crazyPyxo, until crazyC sends me this link about Nigerian internet scammers! Good thing no harm was done and we all got a good laugh out of it, thanks to crazyC and his worldliness.

Damn you scammers!! I’ll get you back one day! I have your address!

Latest Update:

The Nigerian scammers are at it again and have sent me an FBI warning from paypal because I did not ship out their item. The email is funny because all the names are wrong, the grammer is wrong, and they even put their fake email address!

Dear crazyDiva

We are contacting you regarding the payment that as been made on your behalf to your provided account/payment information by the Naine Henry that is the buyer of your items, the transfer has been make and you have been notified of its approval and confirmation, but before we can send to you the full needed information about your money and the information to be able to claim your full payment, we will need to be sure that you have shipped out the buyer’s order to protect the buyer’s side also.

We are doing all this because, we have in the past received cases about the sellers not shipping their buyer’s order after which PayPal will have transfer the money to the seller’s account.

So, before your money transfer information will be mail out to you, we need to verify the shipment by shipping out the order and send the tracking number to the operator in charge of your payment in our agent department for shipment verification and you can secured your item by sending the tracking number to us alone and not to the buyer because the goods will not be delivered to the buyer without the tracking number with him/her.

As soon as you send the Tracking Number, agent will verified the shipment with the body of courrier you used for the shipping and we will send out the fully information needed to cash your money to you immediately. You have been notified immediately your money was approved and since then we’ve not read from you till when the payee contact us again that you are not understandable.

Please send the tracking number and all your inquiries to us at: verifiedshipmentcomfirmation@officeemail.net
Please note that we shall assume that any seller that received the fully PayPal Money notification from our Banks and intends not to ship out the buyer’s package is a fraud and we will be reporting the seller to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC) which works hand in hand with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In order to abstain yourself from this type of embarrassment, we urge that you to go out and make the shipment of the item immediately and send us the tracking number for shipment verification.

As soon as we are true with the shipment verification, you will receive another email from PayPal which enclosed with all the proper information you need to cash your money.

NOTE: YOUR ADDRESS IS WITH PAYPAL SO YOU MUST FACE FBI LAW

Thank you for using PayPal®. We Look Forward Serving Your Money Transfer More Better In The Nearest Future Time.