Picture it - Sicily, 1922.
No wait, scratch that. Let's rewind a month to CK's last week in the States. A very hectic week, as he was busy trying to dump all his
crap stuff on Craigslist. One of the pieces of
crap inventory was an old-school monitor....I mean, we're talking 2002 old school.
Anyway, within hours of posting the ad, a lovely woman named Kate Smith replied and offered to buy it for $500. CK was very excited. I remember it vividly because he said, "Guys, I'm really very excited about this!". They exchanged an email or two and all was cool. He even went to the store, got a cardboard box, some peanuts and got it ready for shipping. Oh wait, he actually had Gavin and I do that. Oh wait, I watched Gavin do it. Regardless, it was ready for her shipper to come get it.
And then....silence. Crickets.
And then....a FedEx package came the following week, during my week-long solitary confinement. The package's return address listed a financial firm from Baltimore, MD, and inside the envelope were three separate money orders for $880 each. And nothing else. No letter of correspondence, or invoice, or receipt, or anything other than three checks. The checks themselves were busy-looking but devoid of any real information. Gordon Giffin was listed on the check, as was the Bank of Toronto, but nothing that really made any sense.
I assumed CK was involved in some off-shore tomfoolery anyway, so it wasn't too much of a concern for me. I let him know about it over IM and he was completely confused as to where it came from. We Googled the name that was on the envelope and there wasn't a single hit for it. As an aside, remember a few years ago when you'd Google someone and you were afraid if their name came up? Nowadays you're more concerned if they don't show up.
CK wondered if the checks came from the lovely Kate Smith, so he shot her an email. She replied back with something like:
Yes, that was me. My financial manager Gordon Giffin mistakenly cut the wrong checks. Please cash those and then send me the difference and we'll be all set. Otherwise, I will have to fire Gordon for his incompetence.
Well even we're not silly enough to fall for that one.....so CK emailed her back and told her he'd throw away those checks and she can send the correct amount, at which point he'll send the monitor.
Silence for about a week, and then she wrote back with:
Sorry, I've been in the hospital and just got out.
And that was the last of the lovely Kate Smith.
I searched Google for "Kate Smith scammer" and discovered that it's been used as an alias before. CK then found a link that describes this type of scam that's going around online buy/sell sites.....namely, scammer offers to buy items, then sends fraudulent checks to seller. Seller sends the item and the difference in cash back to the scammer. Pretty brilliant scam if you ask me.
In fact, I have a bunch of delicious chocolate chip cookies here. I'm looking to sell them. But first, please send me some delicious chocolate chip cookies and five bucks. I'll then send you my cookies and ten bucks. But I really need your cookies first.
April 2007
October 2003
