ScamVictimsUnited.com

edroux,
Maybe English is not Latest Vic's first language . . . maybe they have had a run of bad luck . . . we don't know all of the facts.

I know that I personally have terrible spelling myself . . . thank goodness for spell checker.

Could scammers be coming to this, or other sites, to learn ways to make their scams harder to detect? Yes, they could, and I am pretty sure that they have.

And if anyone from this site ever asks anyone for money, on the message board or off of it, I would hope that this information would be brought to our attention right away. This WOULD be a reason to ban a user.

Hi,

I'm sorry to hear about the loss. I myself just recently became a victim of the Nigerian payment processing scam. I didn't even know that there was such a scam - I wasn't very worldly and never had a habit of reading the news and such.

I just thought I'd share my story now. I'm an undergraduate student at Duke University. I had wanted to teach piano as a side position for myself to earn some extra cash even tho I currently have been working a full time lab position during the summer. I had posted an ad on Craigslist.com. In almost no time I receive three emails from what seemed like three different people named Carl Johnson, Vivi Brandon and Chris Anderson. They were all supposedly from the UK and had sons of various ages who they'd like to have learn piano while vacationing in the US. Carl Johnson and Vivi Brandon's initial emails were more suspicious than that of Chris Anderson. Their "To:" line contained several weird emails for like tutoring and piano lesson institutions and didn't really contain my email address. It could very well have been spam. However, as I'd also been contacting established studios hoping to have them add me as a potential teacher, I was not as suspicious as I should have been. Furthermore, I was so happy about the idea of getting students and being able to earn lots of extra cash that I let that cloud my better judgment and essentially ignored my own gut feelings of potential problems. I emailed all three people back to confirm piano lessons for the kids.

This started email correspondences that spammed several weeks. "Chris Anderson" told me that his associate in the US owed him money and would I accept a check from him. The money would be 3000 dollars mean to cover his son's piano lessons and accommodations while in the US. "Carl Johnson" and "Vivi Brandon" told me that their associates/accountants would just be sending me a salary check that would be covering the lesson payments and accommodations as well. Three people asking for the same thing should have struck me as strange but I just thought that maybe that's how things were done. I had been hesitant about accepting the money and told them so. They reassured me saying that its only because the nannies aren't able to cash US checks easily - not all the nannies were even in the US!! They asked me to cash the check and transfer the rest of the money after I deducted my payment to the nannies via Western Union.

I received 2 checks at first and deposited them in my bank account. The next day the amount was available in my available balance in the online statement of my bank. I thought the checks had been cleared/verified. With the scammers telling me to hurry up and send off the money so that the kids can get to the US, I thought I was being helpful - which I'm sure I was for them. I sent off two transfers via Western Union of 2700 and 2505 dollars using their money in minutes service - one to some place in Connecticut and another to UK. Everything seemed ok until 4-5 days later when I'd been asked to transfer some more money to a "Ginger Anderson" for the amount of 100 dollars. I found out then that my debit card was declined cuz the bank had essentially frozen my account. They told me that hte checks I'd put in before had bounced and were counterfeit. I'd already put in the third check but luckily for me I'd taken my time with the transfer for that so that money just left my account as soon as it returned.

However the bank is holding me responsible for the 5300 dollars i'd already transferred/return fees and such. I've already told the local police and they'd done an investigation - I'm currently awaiting further information. I was told that the IP addresses of the email of these three people had come from Nigeria as well.

So now, I'm left with trying figure out how to pay the bank back 4300 dollars since they'd seized the approx 1000 dollars I'd had from my actual earnings from my lab position.

I'd like to at this point, ask for some advice as to how any of you who might have ended up in debt due to this scam have managed to figure out how to pay it off. I'd like to avoid messing up my credit so early on since I haven't even graduated yet. I have one year left.

Thanks.

I am sorry to hear that you have become a victim of this scam. Most people do end up setting up a payment plan with thier bank to pay back the money. If you have any direct deposits or payments that go into or out of that account get them turned off NOW! If you do not turn off a direct deposit, the bank will just keep taking that as "payment" on your debt, and you will not have any money to live off of. Open an account at another bank right away and use that as your main account until this is resolved.

When your bank made the funds available to you, they basically gave you a provisional loan. Now, some people have been able to get out of this by proving that if they walked in off the street the bank would not approve them for a loan in that amount . . . in your case, $4300 . . . so why would they give you a provisional loan for an amount like that? The people at FraudAid.com are VERY good with dealing with situations like this. I would contact them at once and tell them Shawn sent you to them.

http://fraudaid.com/processing.htm#sentmoney