Potential Scam...

I was wondering if anyone else has run into this. We rencently posted a few snakes on craigslist and received an email from a person claiming to be in the UK. They want me to ship the snakes to their broker service for transport to the UK. It seemed odd to me because I posted the snakes in OKC. Has anyone else encountered anything like this?

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Originally Posted by Kevin_Hornby

I was wondering if anyone else has run into this. We rencently posted a few snakes on craigslist and received an email from a person claiming to be in the UK. They want me to ship the snakes to their broker service for transport to the UK. It seemed odd to me because I posted the snakes in OKC. Has anyone else encountered anything like this?

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Stuff like this always comes up on craigslist.

Ignore it. And tell them you know a prince in africa too. :rofl:

Yep...

Scam.

If you want to play around with them tell them to pay you first.

that prince in africa is my uncle man, they want me to send 1000 bux so i can get his money when he dies lol

Scizzam

My advice is to always get paid first. Also avoid "cheap" under priced snakes,etc. from the UK,etc.. They really do want your money and will gladly take it. I responded to such an ad before. to make the purchase, I was supposed to send money to a third party(in someone else's bank account), then the person that gets paid would tell the one with the merchandise to ship. SCAM!!!!!!!! Jason Bowden

No, this person is trying to buy my snakes. He says he does business with a brokerage service so he will cover all shipping responsibilities and once payment is made and received the brokerage will contact me.

Righttttt..

And he is going to make sure CITES is covered as well?

That's another 2-6 months of paperwork right there...

A lot of Nigerian scams actually come out of the UK. I wouldn't ship live over seas anyway.

He could be serious if he's offering to pay first.

I ran into something like this once.
I was trying to sell some stained glass.
The guy said she would send me a check and then have his mover call me, he was out of state. The cost to send all of that HEAVY (over 100lb), FRAGILE stuff would cost an incredible amount..
It was so weird I didn't respond. He didn't even ask any questions about the items I had.
IMO,
I would delete the message and move on, especially when it comes to these little lives....

They may offer to send you a check for the payment of the animals and the shipment fees that their 'broker' would charge (you would in-turn keep the money for the snakes and forward the shipment fees to the 'broker'). That check would look legitimate, but after you cash it, the bank would end up having it bounce because it's fraudulent, and guess who's on the hook for the whole amount....you. Meanwhile your snakes are gone.
Be careful!

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Originally Posted by FragginDragon

They may offer to send you a check for the payment of the animals and the shipment fees that their 'broker' would charge (you would in-turn keep the money for the snakes and forward the shipment fees to the 'broker'). That check would look legitimate, but after you cash it, the bank would end up having it bounce because it's fraudulent, and guess who's on the hook for the whole amount....you. Meanwhile your snakes are gone.
Be careful!

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Precisely. :colbert:

SCAM RUN NOW :gj:

Hi,

Just to point out ball python morphs are considerably more expensive over here in the UK than they are in the US.

There are fees involved in importing as well that are far from insignificant. :(

But Cites needs to be arranged both sides of the transaction and as mentioned before tend to take a fair bit of time.

It is possible for someone to be putting together a large shipment from various dealers for export but I definately wouldn't ship anything anywhere till you had the actual money free and cleared and probably moved to a different account.


dr del

***UPDATE***

So the scam part finally came out. Apparently he has a friend that owes him money in state so he'll get that friend to give me a money order to cash. I am then supposed to take what is owed to me and give the snakes w/ the rest of the cash to the broker. Almost sounds tempting heh but not really.