Mid south shooter Facebook scam

Axis II said:

Just saw on a few Facebook groups that there is a fake mid south shooter supply page on Facebook that’s friend requesting people and trying to scam them. Be careful out there.

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Bunch of scammers on Armslist. More then usual.

I've had issues with ArmsList. I've advertised a couple of gun related items, like a hickory gun cabinet. I'm wondering if the word "gun" triggers a response. The gun cabinet got a response within the first few minutes. The response was "Are the item still available?". Two red flags; notice the grammar problem and the too quick response. Needless to say, I deleted the response immediately.

"Are the item still available?"

I've had several responses of that nature - who on earth would fall for that???

There is a theory—and it seems reasonable—that when you’re trying a low-effort hook for a scam, you actually do better if you use a hook only a naive person would be likely to fall for, because you don’t waste time on someone that is likely to back out when they see it’s too good to be true. It’s the work of a moment to send a poorly-written email, and everyone probably gets the same one. The one in a hundred (or ten thousand!) respondents are preselected as potential chumps.

If you "stack" the email clients right, you can get to about 10,000 email/minute.
Buy 10 computers and run them at the same time, and that's 100,000/minute.
Or 144,000,000 per day.
0.05% is 5000 "hits" per day.

It's not too hard to write a program to monitor sites with stuff for sale, to scrape the data, and automatically generate the inquiry.

If the scammer gets a bite, then you get a phony cashier's check in payment. You ship the goods, and later on find out that the check is phony. Your stuff is gone, and the bank takes the phony payment back out of your account.

Sometimes there will be a song and dance about being in the military, stationed outside the country, and sending a representative to pay you and pick up the goods.

I put a $575 ham transceiver on KSL.com, and within minutes had three inquiries, all with red flags. So later I added to my ad: I already have six offers to exchange this item for a phony cashier's check, and I don't need another one. That reduced the flow. Finally, I had to add: Face to face cash transaction only. That did the trick. Now a ham about 60 miles north of here is on the air with that transceiver.

I'll mess with the scammers to the point of wasting their time and energy to the point of their going apoplectic. They'll mail the phony money order to a non-existent address that I've provided. Then I'll say I've cashed it and they say their shipper will pick it up. Then I'll say I work for a shipping company and I'll ship to to them for free. They start getting all flustered at that point. . Dumb scammers!

Waveski said:

"Are the item still available?"

I've had several responses of that nature - who on earth would fall for that???

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I’ve talked to plenty of actual people on local sales sites that had just as poor of a grasp on the English language. That may be due to living in rural Tennessee though.

Waveski said:

"Are the item still available?"

I've had several responses of that nature - who on earth would fall for that???

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Somewhere out there a Nigerian prince is wondering why no one will take his money. lol

There was a fake face book page for my local gun shop. As far as buying scammers. I had some on Craig's list. Where they said the movers will stop and pick up the item. And give me a cashiers check. I had that one tried a few times. I always tell them green backs only. And local meet at walmart or the convenience store.

"Sniper66 said:

"Are the item still available?" /QUOTE]

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This is actually quite normal where I live, my parents and most of my family talks like this, and a ton of locals. English as a second language, or in my father's case, third language. My grandparents literally have this to people.

Sadly, I fell for this a few times.

Axis II said:

Just saw on a few Facebook groups that there is a fake mid south shooter supply page on Facebook that’s friend requesting people and trying to scam them. Be careful out there.

Click to expand...

A remedy for that which I subscribe to is stay off fakebook. People are extremely gullible about that site. Many will post their entire families photos, with little hints as to where they live. It still amazes me.

In addition to all the ‘regular’ scams, there are anti-2A ‘social justice warriors’ who feel gun owners are fair game for frauds. They specifically target gun enthusiasts and pretend to be pro-2A themselves to gain trust.
I won’t go into details, but I know this is true through personal experience.