Warning: Scammer Using RFD Member's Identity

[Bleys007]

I just want to give everyone a heads up to a scammer. There is that tried (and failed) to scam me, pretending to be another RFD member. (Admin) Ryan advised me not to use names so that people don't get confused and get the wrong idea, but I'm going to make it very clear.

There is someone pretending to be Amourek (RFD member) and using his BST feedback to try to scam people. This is NOT, I repeat this is NOT Amourek trying to scam anyone. I received an e-mail from the scammer who said he was Amourek, and linked to Amourek's BST feedback trying to convince me to buy a sportchek gift card for 20% off, and send payment before I received the card.

I PM'd Amourek only to find out (as I suspected) that the scammer is using his identity to try to "prove" he can be trusted.

Be VERY careful when dealing with people who say they are from RFD but have not used the PM system. If someone says they are X from RFD and link to a BST feedback, always always always have them PM you using their RFD account, and check their feedback on the account they PM you with. Even if they link to their BST feedback through a PM, they could be linking to an external site set up to look like RFD BST feedback. Click on usernames and navigate your way to BST feedback that way.

And if possible, deal locally as has been emphasized before. Local is safer, but not necessarily scam free. The more info you have, the better. If it smells fishy, it's probably not because of a nearby sushi bar.

[JAC]

Post a link to the scammer's ad, and his email address.

[Bleys007]

The email address he used was amourek00@gmail.com (obviously to make it look like he was Amourek) and the name he went by was Arnold Leung.

He didn't have an add, he e-mailed me in response to a post I made in BST to purchase a Sportchek gift card. I'm a letter carrier and go through shoes like mad, so I try to save money on them where I can.

The interesting part is that I never put my e-mail address in the post. A few days before he e-mailed me, "nokiafanatic" PM'd me asking me for my e-mail saying he rarely logged on RFD and preferred to do things through e-mail. After I replied to him, he never responded back. I figure nokiafanatic is the person who impersonated Amourek, but don't have any proof of it. Circumstances seem to suggest it, though.

That being said, this scammer can easily set up another fake e-mail account in another person's name, so always be wary of people who reply to a BST post from RFD, but don't use PM's.

[JAC]

Hm. He calls himself Edward on RFD, and says he's from Vancouver.
Can you post the full headers from the email he sent you?

There's also a website, which I found interesting because the registrant is Canadian. Damned ICANN privacy regulations.

NOKIAFANATIC.COM
Registrant: Tyler Gomez, Canada

[Bleys007]

Header didn't contain his IP address. Here the header, with my e-mail address taken out of it.


Delivered-To: xxxxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com
Received: by 10.223.122.17 with SMTP id j17cs13308far;
Sun, 10 May 2009 16:28:13 -0700 (PDT)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Received: by 10.216.1.205 with SMTP id 55mr2929553wed.191.1241998092300; Sun,
10 May 2009 16:28:12 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 16:28:12 -0700
Message-ID: <975ec3370905101628j56cf33b5q7e95792e5705856c@mail. gmail.com>
Subject: $260 sport chek gift card
From: Arnold Leung <amourek00@gmail.com>
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=0016364d22931a9326046997370c

--0016364d22931a9326046997370c
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

[JAC]

Stupid Gmail. And I suppose it's too much to hope for that he turned on Google Latitude.

[ilusa]

This exact same thing actually happened to me on another forum i was on..

He took me for 500 dollars.... Sad really. As i forgot about it until now :( was about 6-7 yrs ago.. Seems like the same sort of things are still happening today..

BECAREFUL