How can I resist redux

Trust me

This PM I received a rather thoughtful email from a young female who indicated strongly that she wanted to be my friend. My close friend. My close personal friend.

I never knew that my magnetic personality was so strong that it reached through the ether and bits and bytes and cause female swooning and deep rapid breathing.

But now I have evidence that it can.

Just as I recently had evidence that I was a person so trustworthy I could receive thousands, nay millions, of an unclaimed inheritance and distribute it to its rightful owners.

But why do I get the feeling that after a few emails back and forth "she" will want to give me a present, and all I need to is accept the International Money Order and, to show her my love, return a mere 10% or so via an USPS money order to a friend in the US? Of course the International Money Order will be fake and the USPS one will be real, paid for with my money. Out of the same pocket that the bank will demand I refund them the money they gave me from the International Money Order.

The question is, how do they get your email address?

I think in my case it goes back about three years ago when I placed a first edition of a book of poetry for sale on Ebay. Since it was one of only around 800 copies printed I put a healthy price on the rare copy.

And received an order for it almost immediately. I was so pleased I failed to note that the purchaser was a "Guest" member.

And when the email said he was in Scotland, I didn't mind. We traded some triva, established overseas shipping costs and established that since he wasn't a PayPal member, an International Money Order (IMO)would be fine.

Then the plot thickened. It was revealed that he was not the real purchaser but merely the agent for the purchaser who lived in Niger. And since hard currency was difficult to obtain he had, by some unstated means, managed to obtain an IMO payable in US funds, but the amount was quite a bit more than the purchase price of the book.

Would I mind accepting the IMO, cashing it, mailing the book and, keeping a suitable fee of my naming, mail the remaining cash to a friend in the US who would use the funds to purchase things for the person in Niger? Or if I didn't like that I could just purchase a USPS money order, or whatever.....

Somewhere in there I decided I wasn't really as stupid as they thought I was. I asked my bank what would be my position if the IMO was fake. It took'em about 30 seconds to say, "Responsible." Which mneant the bank got their money back, the thief got the book and since they wanted the USPS MO overnighted, it would be cashed and the thief long gone with the money.

When I emailed my dear chum in Scotland that the deal was off, he insisted that he had just sent me the IMO with a prepaid UPS envelope for me to use to send the USPS money order to his friend... and to please hurry because the funds were to be used to purchase cancer drugs to be sent to his mother in Niger.

And yes, the UPS pachage showed up and I refused it which caused the UPS folks quite a bit of concern.

I also reported all this to Ebay security who basically said, "Let the seller beware."

But once you get on the sucker list you never get off.




On Twitter I am Lesabre1