Don’t be Fooled by the Scammers!

By Staale on March 21st, 2008 Share

Alright, I think this is an important issue that all bloggers need to know about. Lately a new form of scam has been used to take the hard earn money from honest people. This time it’s not regular people, but bloggers. It works like this:

You as an blog owner get an enquiry about advertising on your blog. The subject are usually something like Partnership Enquiry and Website Partnership Enquiry. The names of the senders include Richard Thompson, Edward Johnson, Daniel Lee, Jason Miller, George Nelson, etc.
If you response they will start to negotiate the price. Usually they are paying way over market price, and as a website owner you should not be blended by the high amount of dollars they offer.
If you get to an agreement they will send you a check with an amount above the sum you agreed to. (ex. if you agreed to $2000 they send you a check for $3000)
The people behind the scam will then claim that a mistake was made and ask that you refund $1000 via money transfer.
If you send the money before the check clears you cannot stop the transfer and you will find out that you have lost your money since the check is fake.

This could possibly work, but since bloggers are quite good to keep contact with each other, and of course they use their blog to tell other people about this scams it shouldn’t take of like other scams. Have you got an email like this? Please leave a comment.

BTW; after reading about this I think they have tried to scam Darren over at Problogger.

What Other Bloggers Write About the Subject:

Beware of possible ‘Nigerian*’ Online Advertising Fraud
Bloggers Beware – Phishing and Scams
Bloggers Beware: Nigerian Fraud Has Evolved Into Display and Text Link Ad Solicitations

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26 Responses to “Don’t be Fooled by the Scammers!”

Chetan on Mar 21st, 2008 at 9:19 am

Had read about the same scam in quite a few blogs. Anyways thanks for mentioning about it here Staale

btw wanna join a new blog forum? check my blog’s last post for that (haha i love spamming)

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Staale on Mar 21st, 2008 at 9:35 am

Hehe, right now I don’t have time to join another forum, but I will keep an eye on it!

Good luck with it!

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Hugo Santos on Mar 21st, 2008 at 9:40 am

didn’t know this… glad i have read it. now im more aware of this

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udkl on Mar 21st, 2008 at 10:33 am

Thanks for the Heads-up Staale !!

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Jason on Mar 21st, 2008 at 10:14 pm

You’d have to be a pretty dumb blogger to fall for something like that, no offense…

Payment through Paypal, no other option w/ TUK

Sadly, there are a lot of them out there

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Philip Gamble on Mar 22nd, 2008 at 5:50 am

This is quite a common scam although I’ve never heard of it being done via blog advertising.

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Paddy Wallbouncer on Mar 22nd, 2008 at 8:03 am

Same old scam.

“I’ll send you 1000 check since this is what my agency is paying me. I know it is only 200 for you service/product. We can both make money! I’ll send you the check and you keep 300 extra and I’ll take 500.”

Depending on the ads we’re running, about three of these show up in the email box each day.

When you get 60-70k emails a month, you’ve seen everything.

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Mayank Rocks on Mar 23rd, 2008 at 5:49 am

Thanks!

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Jim on Mar 23rd, 2008 at 8:15 am

Wow. That’s a pretty elaborate hoax, I really wouldn’t have expected it honestly… thanks for the heads up.

I would probably be honored if somebody wasted that much time on me

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marc on Mar 23rd, 2008 at 9:31 am

Yeah, I got a couple of emails like that.. the huge $$$ really drew my interest as first. Fortunately, my girlfriend is smarter than I am, so..

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Thomas Flight on Mar 23rd, 2008 at 12:42 pm

I’ve had this happen. They offered me $12,000 for my domain names.

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Cash Get on Mar 23rd, 2008 at 1:43 pm

I’ve been scammed once, so I know how bad it is to be scammed, and I do not recommend anybody deal with completely unknown or suspicious dealers.

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wisdom on Mar 23rd, 2008 at 10:49 pm

Have not heard about this. Thanks.

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B Carter on Mar 24th, 2008 at 5:51 am

The old “Nigerian” scam. These people are obviously really intelligent, if they spent half the time making money online legitimately they would be extremely successful.

How do they really sleep at night?

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James Lee on Mar 25th, 2008 at 10:25 am

I got an email like that a little while ago, now that you mention it

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Mattaw on Mar 25th, 2008 at 11:17 am

They sleep at night with other peoples money obivously. Ha ha.

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Living on Adsense on Mar 25th, 2008 at 11:24 am

I have seen this one a few times. The fact is that if your are going to be a blogger or an internet marketer you need to be intelligent enough to ’sniff’ out the scams.

IMO if you get caught by one of these scammers you should really rethink whether you should be trying to make money online. You just may not be smart enough

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George on Mar 26th, 2008 at 4:34 am

Nobody wants to advertise on my blog, so i’m sorted :p
Moneybookers and Paypal only, nothing else, and all is good

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wisdom on Mar 26th, 2008 at 1:28 pm

I wonder how many people have fallen for this.

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Andrew Pavelski on Mar 27th, 2008 at 4:40 pm

Thanks for sharing this Staale… Some real shady tactics being used!

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Mike on Apr 21st, 2008 at 4:39 am

heard abt it too…..its just that bloggers have to be very careful

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Ruby on Apr 22nd, 2008 at 1:21 am

I don’t think many bloggers will fall for this but still they need to be careful

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Mauritius on Apr 28th, 2008 at 4:36 am

Some people easily get fooled by scammers specially those who are completely unaware about them. Thanks for informing

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Mauritius on May 15th, 2008 at 2:52 am

Thanks for letting us aware of it

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Chidren on May 22nd, 2008 at 4:23 am

Thanks for this sharing this information. My friend mentioned it once, but didn’t really take it seriously, but now i think i gonna be alert!!

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