[Spridgets] A creative Craigslist scam hits close to home...

[David Booker]

A couple of days ago, my friend Dwight in Tennessee told me about some
troubles 
he's having from a Craigslist scam. I guess this would be considered
a form of 
identity theft. The tale goes like this:

A week or so ago my
friend gets a call at his house asking when the caller can 
come pick up his
new truck. Dwight tells the guy he must have the wrong number - 
he has not
truck for sale. Caller says this is Dwight XXX at XXX address in 
Franklin,
TN, right - OK, where's my truck?   A day or so later, he began 
getting
similar calls and letters from other individuals wanting to pick up 
their
truck. He even got a call from some gov't agency in Oklahoma saying they 
had
a complaint about his business (Dwight doesn't have a business).

Turns out
what happened is some thief put a 2009 F-Series pickup with enough 
options to
make it a $40K truck on Craigslist and "sold" it for $19K. Apparently 
he
"sold" it multiple times to people too, all of which had these traits in
common:

A - They didn't have enough sense to have a red flag go up when they
see a new 
truck being sold for less than half price.
B - They were all silly
enough to send either part or all of the asking price to 
a PayPal account
sight unseen and without speaking to anyone on the phone.

The ad only
provided an email address, a PayPal account, and Dwight's name and 
address.
The hopeful buyers got his phone number by Googling him. They had 
enough
sense to find him, but not enough to smell a rat?

I think most of us here (me
included, I hope) are savvy enough to not fall for 
these scams, but thought
I'd pass it along anyway. Poor Dwight has to deal with 
this for a while now
while PayPal and CraigsList and Police and who knows who 
else gets involved.
David Booker
Long Island