Seller beware

Remember that relay call I got yesterday? Well I've come to the conclusion that it was part of a scam. William asked for details about our pups, so I supplied him with the general info most people want: age, shots, colors, papers, the name of the town closest to us. He sent me back this email (it's a bit long, but I wanted to share it in it's entirety):

I am interested in 1 male puppy,Thanks for getting back to me,i will like to inform you that am purchasing the Puppy as a birthday present for my son,i will be very much happy if you consider the Puppy sold to me.

The reason I am sending you this email is to make final reconfirmation of Puppy which is ok by me,and also to let you know that payment will be by certified cashier's check or money order. In view of this I need you to email me any information that may be required to send the payment as I do not want to send the check or money order to a wrong location lest they get into the wrong hands.

Regarding the shipping, I have a company that takes care of the pickup of my consignments for me and ship to my destination in new jersey anywhere in the U.S.A, you do not worry about shipping, the company will send down a representative to arrange the sales documentation and the pick up from your end for onward transfer to my destination.

I also want to alert you on the fact that you will be receiving an overdraft check, which will cover the money for the pickup (pickup and shipping to the final destination) as well as the money to be paid to the company that will take care of the pickup and the documentation with you. So please, as soon as you receive the payment, go and cash it immediately, deduct the money that accrues to you, and send the balance to the Head Office of the company that handles the shipment via Western union.The check will be in your name to make it easier for you to receive payment, please reconfirm your details one more time.I will give you the details of the company that will be shipping the Puppy as soon as we seal this deal.Once the money is received by the agent , the shipping agent will contact you immediately to arrange the documentation as well as the pick up immediately. So in view of the above, here are some of the details I will need for final issuance of the check or money orderto you.

(1) Full Name
(2) Mailing address, no p.o.box please
(3) your direct telephone number both home and cell.?
{4} Acceptance of my offer
(5} Final asking price

Once you get back to me with all the above, the check or money order will be issued out immediately and it will be sent to you .Hope to hear from you immediately.Looking forward to your swift response i will also be offering you extra $50 for keeping puppy. for me till the shipper comes for the pick up.., I will be looking forward to your swift response..
Regards
williams rothem


I was put off a bit by the grammar and word use in his email, but not everyone has fabulous grammar or edits what they write....and he seemed to have misspelled his own name. The thing that really seemed odd to me (as though misspelling your own name isn't odd enough) is that he never asked for pictures to be sent or specified what pup he would like from my descriptions. I responded to his email and said I needed to discuss the arrangement with my husband. After I hit send I decided I wanted to know how he found our ad as we've only placed it in local papers & their web sites.

As soon as I sent the emails to him, I tried to do a reverse email search on him & a people search for the stated of NJ because that's where he claimed to be from. I also sent his email on to my dear friend Ang to ask her opinion on it. She had the same gut feeling I did. She attempted to find him & had no luck either.

I told Husband about it as soon as he came home from town & he said, "Don't do it." His reasoning was it was too much trouble. I told him I wasn't planning on it, but for much different reasons.

Today I googled "Puppy buying scam" and found a site that spoke specifically about this type of scam. It even mentioned relay fraud & had a link to a second site that told how it's being used a great deal in Nigerian Fraud. Needless to say, I will not be contacting "Mr. Rothem" anytime soon.

I feel wiser for having listened to my instincts and sadder to think how many people must be getting scammed daily by people like this.

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I really should explain that I am normally a very trusting person. I do not lie and rarely think that others have lied (even when I know them to be very prone to lying...trust me, I know a few folks like that & I'm very slowly learning to take all they say with a grain of salt). I take most things at face value & am almost always shocked to find out things aren't how they seem. Naive? Probably. But it's just who I am. I know this leaves me wide open to people like "Mr. Rotham" but I don't want to live with suspision.