Lindsey DeLaney wasn’t immediately suspicious of the man who wanted to buy her 2002 Ford Escort, which she listed on an Internet auto sale site in April.
Nor did the 20-year-old Peninsula College student think she would be the target of an international scam.
Calling himself Chris Margo, the buyer wanted to ship the car overseas, but DeLaney couldn’t determine exactly where.
“I just wanted to sell it,” she said. “I didn’t care what they did with it.”
Over the course of a few e-mails — which included several grammatical errors — and a phone call or two, they agreed on a price: $6,900. He even haggled the price down a little.
DeLaney started to wonder if the heavily accented man on the phone was really interested in her car when she received an e-mail giving her strange instructions for shipping it.
“It started to seem a little bit fishy,” said DeLaney, a Port Angeles resident.
In the e-mail message, Margo told her to look in the mail for a check for $7,000 over the amount. She was expected to wire the difference to an intermediary to pay for shipping costs.
Cashier’s check arrives
Naturally curious, DeLaney began attempting to verify the details of the would-be buyer’s story.
Then she received what appeared to be a cashier’s check in the mail from Shore Bank in Chicago in an envelope postmarked from the United Kingdom.
“I didn’t even bother putting it in the bank,” she said. “They didn’t want the car, they wanted the money.”
She called the bank and was told the check was counterfeit.
Juanita Johnson, an investigator for ShoreBank, said the rash of bad checks started coming to the attention of the bank about two months ago. One telltale sign the check was bogus was the real ShoreBank spells its name as one word.
“I have hundreds of them,” Johnson said during a telephone interview.
The scam works by playing on the goodwill of the victim. Checks can take up to weeks to completely clear an account.
The victim deposits the check and then withdraws the amount over the agreed price. To complete the swindle they then wire the money into oblivion.
DeLaney wasn’t biting, though.
No such flight to Seattle
The more unusual demands Margo made, the more DeLaney practiced her sleuth skills.
Margo sent her the flight information for the intermediary who would be picking up the car. There was no such flight from London to Seattle, she found.
“You’d think they would be smarter about it,” she said.
Convinced she had been picked by a flimflam man, DeLaney decided to string him along and attempted to contact law enforcement agencies.
“We haven’t lost anything, but other people could,” she said.
She didn’t have much luck getting law enforcement officials to track down the fly-by-night car buyers, she said.
Law enforcement officials have a difficult time tracking the culprits because they cover their tracks well and hatch their plots from foreign countries, outside the jurisdiction of state attorneys general, said Kristin Alexander, spokeswoman for the Washington state attorney general’s consumer protection division.
“If they say they are in London, there is no reason to believe they are in London,” Alexander said.
The phone number that registered on DeLaney’s caller ID had a Washington, D.C. area code. Attempts by the Penninsula Daily News to reach Margo failed, as the number was not in service.
Complaints across state
Complaints about check overpayment scams have been popping up across the state, from Spokane to Seattle, Alexander said.
The Better Business Bureau in Spokane even released a tip sheet last month to help consumers avoid falling prey to the trick.
If a person does fall for the scam, or believes he or she is being targeted, Alexander said the person should notify local law enforcement, the state Attorney General’s Office, the U.S. Secret Service and the Federal Trade Commission.
DeLaney’s story came to an abrupt end about a week ago when Margo called to complain that she had given him a false confirmation number for the wire transfer — a transaction she never completed, or planned to complete.
“He told me, ‘Have a nice day, sucker,”‘ DeLaney said with a laugh.
“I’m not a sucker — I didn’t fall for it. I mean, really, they didn’t seem that smart.”
