GUNDOG CENTRAL - HUNTING DOGS FOR SALE

A centralized place to find your next hunting dog - since 2006.

Jeff Davis. | https://gundogcentral.com | All Hunting Articles

Posted 01/30/2022

If you place a Classified ad on Gundog Central, as sure as the sun rises, you'll eventually be contacted by a scammer trying to get you to bite on a money order scam. It might sound frightening, but you have nothing to worry about if you know that to look for. I've been dealing with these scams on Gundog Central for over a decade now. These scams aren't isolated to Gundog Central but every classified website on the internet were members list items for sale. There will always be some lazy idiot out there trying to trick you out of your hard-earned money. Unfortunately, when someone does fall for these scams, it's not only the anonymous con artist that looks bad, but also the website where the transaction took place. I do everything I can to monitor, block and report these people to the right authorizes. That alone isn't enough, so I want to make sure everyone knows what to look out for and how to deal with these people

So, what is a money order scam and how does it work? Let's say you're asking $1500 for a dog that you posted in the classified ad section. The scammer will contact you by text message or email and ask you questions about your ad, even though most of the information they ask about is already included in your ad. Like "What's your final asking price", "What color", "What breed", "Where are you located". They'll offer to pay you $1000 or more than your asking price, claiming the extra money is for shipping, to be given to the courier when they arrive to pick up your dog. They will send you a money order or fake check, which you deposit. As soon as you let them know, they'll ask for a portion of the money back in the hopes that you will wire it back to them before their money order clears your bank. By the time your bank lets you know about the bad transaction, you've wired them money out of your account.

Over the years, these scammers have changed the way that they try to contact you. In the past they would contact you through email, these days it's mostly through SMS text messages. Why through SMS messages? Because those messages are harder to track. They can browse the website, collecting people's information, but because they aren't contacting you directly from the website, it's harder to trace, unless you report it me where I can go back and look at log files.

When you receive a text message from someone, always try to look up their phone number on the internet. Do a search in Google, Yahoo or Bing for that telephone number. If the number start with 1-410-100-XXXX or has an email address, it's probably because someone is using email to send a message to your cell phone number. Blocking these numbers on your device can be difficult because the number is always changing. You can however make it more difficult on these scammers by reporting the message(s) to your cell phone provider. To report spam/scams to AT&T and Verizon, just forward the message to 7726 (SPAM). For more information on blocking these scammers check out these articles.
https://www.att.com/support/article/wireless/KM1009412
https://www.verizon.com/about/account-security/smishing-and-spam-text-messages

Anytime someone offers you more than your asking price, this should immediately set off some red flags. If you do continue dealing with this person, call the person on the phone to find out who you're dealing with! Never exclusively deal with someone through emails or text, unless you know them. Emails and text might be a convenient way to communicate with someone, but always, always, always close the deal over a phone call. Generally, these scammers won't answer the phone or will get very aggravated with you if they do pick up the phone, telling you that they can't take calls and that text messages are better. If the person's name doesn't match their accent and they've offered you more money than you're asking, that might be another red flag.

If you can, encourage the spammer to correspond with you by email. They'll most likely be using a free email account from Google or Yahoo. If you can get their email address, you can report these to their service provider, where they can shut down their account. Granted this won't stop them, because they'll just create another free account, but it does make it more difficult for them. You can report an fraudulent Gmail address here:
https://support.google.com/mail/contact/abuse?hl=en and Yahoo accounts here:
https://io.help.yahoo.com/contact/index?page=contactform&locale=en_MY&token=Zh%2FBBVqXzLHlIbokbUqVWTUbuuQeXGkGnZzhKR2JQ4O6mMQdy9JSWfJCJWvc4C3%2F4ml2UKrHQ0nko7rLtSR524NwvUtZOo0Gj805mARbzr9GTT%2B5sXSzJme8Jz2OXgKe&selectedChannel=email-icon

There are a few government agencies you can report these scams and scammers to, and I encourage you to do so. You can report to FTC by phone at 1-877-382-4357 or by visiting https://reportfraud.ftc.gov. If you're a victim of these money order scams you can report it to the Internet Crime Complaint Center ( IC3 ) here: https://www.ic3.gov

Here are a few of names these scammers have used over the years. If you have another name, send it to me and I'll add it to this list :
Jones White - [email protected]
Michael Stewart - [email protected]
Thompson James - [email protected]
Williams Baker

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