African scams

[jedimistress]

How do they work? The ones where they email you to say they are interested in the house / car / whatever it is you have for sale, then tell you they are relocating from Africa, then I'm not sure what happens next as I've never proceeded, but I believe thay ask you to cash a cheque for them then clear your account. How does this work??

[Loosehead]

they send you a cheque for significantly more than the asking price and then ask you to give them the change. They usually have some plausable reason. The cheque they give you will take a lot longer than the normal UK cheque to bounce so you may think it's cleared after waiting a reasonable time and you may well then pay them the "change" and bang it bounces, this is because foriegn cheques can take a lot longer to clear. Don't touch with a barge pole.

[mormess]

We had what seemed a genuine interest in a booking at our studio. We offered dates, but he didn't phone us, only email us. He did provide a phone number but we preferred him to call us. He then sent an obviously faked international money order in euros as a "downpayment" which I never asked for, then asked me to send the rest to the "artistes" (con artistes!) to an address in Nigeria for their air fares!! Added to which, he thought we were in Germany, not the UK! Needless to say, as soon as we smelled a rat, we stopped emailing him and reported him to the police and to his ISP. Haven't heard from him for a while now, thank goodness.

Problem with these is because you're selling something, you're genuinely pleased that someone is interested in buying it! I have heard of other studios being targetted this way.

The IMO had the name "Damien Thorn" on it too, which I was to discover was the name of the kid in the Omen!! I've kept it for posterity.

[themas]

Some of them send you a bankers draft rather than an ordinary cheque. You are then supposed to think it is safe to send them whatever money they ask for, but the draft turns out to be forged or stolen. I've known a case where the bank actually told the seller that the draft had cleared and then reversed that a few days later. Nothing like this is secure - these things can turn out to be invalid quite a long time after they've been paid into the bank.