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As many people have figured out, scammers love to troll people who post in the WTB forum. It's usually some variant of a message which says "Hello, you should contact (name) at (email address), he has (whatever you posted a WTB for) available in good shape."
Well, I'm damned curious to see how one of these scams plays out. I'm assuming it's something along the lines of "I send them money, and they either vanish or ship me some random bullshit object."
So I'm going to start playing along. I already have an email account which I use for this sort of thing. It's an AOL account, no less, (they're free these days) so for anyone who knows some internet history, that should make me look like a gullible rube.
Two days ago, I replied to "Mitch" (now banned and nuked) who had posted in the WTB 1994 airbag module thread. Mitch's email is mitchellsteve071@gmail.com, and the post containing that info came from a user named JackjonaParts004 whose IP address is 102.88.36.29. A quick WhoIs lookup tells me that IP address belongs to Chukwuebuka Ani (phone +234-803-200-0490) who works at the Yello Drome MTN building located at 1612 Adeola Hopewell St, Victoria Island, 06104, in (wait for it...) Lagos, Nigeria.
Mitch, a fellow over on the forum gave me your email address, said you could hook me up with an airbag module for a '94 NA. Is this a part you have available?
On Thursday, September 19, 2024 at 08:44:53 AM CDT, Mitchell Steven <mitchellsteve071@gmail.com> wrote:
Good morning [redacted];
Thanks for reaching out to me. Sorry for not quick response earlier as i was so busy all through yesterday and i just get chance to check my email now. Yes i still have the Airbag module for 1994 Miata available for sale and it’s in excellent condition.
Thanks. Steve.
A quick search for “Lowa” on Apple Maps would only correct me to Iowa. Switching to google brought up the location of Lowa Boots HQ and some of their retailers, so maybe that’s a clue?
I remember reading somewhere that a lot of these scammers/scambots attempt to sound a little inauthentic to weed out everyone except the absolute most naive from messaging them back. What makes me scratch my head, though, is how they find their way to such a little niche forum somewhat regularly.
Good luck. I tried ******* with an eBay scammer after I sold a RTX3060. After the sale I got 3 or 4 “I need you to send the card to a different address than the one in the auction that I won” from non winners. I decided to play along with one of them saying things like ok I will etc. After a few back and forth I said I had already shipped and they got super aggressive and angry in the messaging. It was kind of funny, but also I don’t need that kind of aggression towards me, so won’t be doing that again. If I was a single guy without a house and family I could see playing that game all day long though.
How are you going from IP to specific person? In my experience, that's usually not possible...
I'm all for toying with them, surprised they'd use a Nigerian IP. In the ecommerce fraud world, they use a proxy from the correct country. The better fraudsters use an IP within 100 miles or so of the cardholders last known address. I guess the forum scammers assume there's little oversight on the forum admin side, so no need for "good" IPs.
I helped once with FB fraud, a vendor semi-related to the Miata world got scammed. Couldn't get his money back, but it was interesting seeing all the messages between them. The scammers went so far as to send tracking numbers, from a nonstandard (fake) shipping company. The tracking numbers "worked" and showed a delay at the port or w/e. The sites had legitimate sounding domain names, about us pages, etcetc. The content of course is the same on all their scam shipping sites, so it was trivial to find related fake ones. Shockingly, an email to their registrar/host, NameCheap, actually resulted in action and they were all shut down within a day. Probably only cost them $50 and half an hour of work though.
How are you going from IP to specific person? In my experience, that's usually not possible...
By looking at the domain registration. Sometimes the listed registrant is some big company which specializes in anonymizing domain registration. Other times it reveals the name, address and phone number of an individual person.
Anyway, making some progress:
On Tue, Sep 24, 2024, 6:20 AM [Joe's fake account] wrote:
Would you take $60 shipped to zip code 60613 (Chicago, IL)?
Also, can I safely assume that the module is known to be working?
On Tue, Sep 24, 2024, 6:32 AM Mitchell Steven (mitchellsteve071@gmail.com) wrote:
Yes, working perfectly. But $60 is not the right price at is in excellent condition however since i don't have any others contact for it for now, I will go for $96 plus shipping. Let me know if that works for you. Thanks.
What do you guys think? Is $96 a good price, or do I haggle?
I say split the difference and knock off some for the shipping. Then ask them where they are shipping from so that you can "Check around for a better shipping cost". Keep them on the line for as long as possible. Waste their time...
09-20-2024, 09:34 AM
Scamming the Scammers
7
