This simply fascinates me because of how effective it is. I've been trying to sell a brand new Dell laptop online for some time now. Started on eBay, then Craig's list and so on, but it has been very difficult for some reason. Anyway, one thing I've received from every posting is at least one email from a person in Nigeria (West Africa) saying he'd gladly pay more than I was asking for my laptop if I'd give him my address and name so he could send me a cashier's check.

Of course being that I'm not dumb, this seemed odd and suspicious. But then I thought, well if he sends a cashier's check how can I be at risk? I just wait for the funds to clear my bank before shipping the goods, right? Apparently not. I did some research cause I thought I must be missing something. Here's what I found...

The scam works like this. They send you a cashier's check in an amount greater than what your item costs and ask you to cash their check, keep the cost of the item and then send the difference to a friend of theirs they owe money to. Smart people wait to hear their money has cleared before sending the difference and it does, so they do.

Two weeks later their bank detects that the check is a forgery and they take the money back. Meanwhile you've send them whatever the difference was and are out that money.

It seems that the FDIC requires banks to clear money for a cashier's check in 1 to 5 business days, but it can actually take the bank 2 to 3 weeks to verify the check and funds from the sending bank - especially if it's out of the country. So that's the basis for the scam. Pretty damn good and I must admit I thought waiting for the money to clear would be enough to protect me.

Keep an eye out for this if you're selling stuff online. The only way to be safe is to deposit the check and then wait until the bank where the check originated clears the outgoing funds - then you can consider it as good as cash.

Read more on it here

UPDATE: Apparently government agencies are finally catching on to this problem. Read this CNN Story for more on that.

Posted by ZeroLogik at 8:46 PM | Permalink

For all you Windows users out there, a new day is just around the corner. And by around the corner I mean about a year or two away. Since Windows XP was released (10/25/2001) Microsoft has been working on their next generation OS to follow it up. It was supposed to be released in 2004, but since Microsoft is known for delays it had to be pushed back... 2 years back. Now the next version of Windows is due out in late 2006 to early 2007.

Until now, the OS was going by its code name (Longhorn). But a few days ago Microsoft announced the official name for the next version of Windows. It's to be called Windows Vista.

There are a lot of theories on what the name means and why they chose it, but I like this theory from Tony Martin

VISTA is believed to be an acronym...

Viruses
Infections
Spyware
Trojans
Adware

Posted by ZeroLogik at 11:31 AM | Permalink

Legal online music sales from stores such as iTunes have tripled thus far in 2005 from last year. You may think this would be something attributed to the fact that there are 3 times as many online music stores as last year and that the whole "legal" download approach is becoming easier every day. Nope!

According to the recording industry, the reason legal online music purchases are up is because of their lawsuits filed against individual file traders. Yeah, that's what it is. Do these fools really expect people to buy that shit?

First of all, according to BigChampagne's stats, show two times as many P2P users in 6/2005 than in 2003. Also, just think about it - the iTunes music store that opened in Europe added over $800,000 in revenue in the first week alone. Maybe the continued success of such stores had something to do with it.

I find it frightening that the RIAA would claim that their Gestapo lawsuits actually convinced individuals to start purchasing legally. Will they ever learn?

Posted by ZeroLogik at 9:20 PM | Permalink