After switching to a Mac recently, I decided to put my old laptop up for sale to help recoup a little of the Mac cost. I received an email almost immediately from a girl named Rebecca and we had this email exchange…



From: Rebecca Nemanova (ramstar08@gmail.com)

To: Brad Carter

Date: Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 9:25 PM

Subject: Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop – 500 gig HD, 2 gig RAM – $350 (Albany, OR) i love this item is it available for sell?kindly get back to asap..



From: Brad Carter

To: Rebecca Nemanova

Date: Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 11:23 PM

Subject: Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop – 500 gig HD, 2 gig RAM – $350 (Albany, OR) Yep, it’s still available. If you’d like to come by, just let me know when. Brad



From: Rebecca Nemanova (ramstar08@gmail.com)

To: Brad Carter

Date: Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 6:48 AM

Subject: Re: Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop – 500 gig HD, 2 gig RAM – $350 (Albany, OR) Thanks for the mail….what is the present condition of this it $400

for the item i will also be paying for the shipping cost so get back

to me with your paypal email id or you can send me a money request to

ramstar08@gmail.com so i can proceed with the payment. i will be

waiting to hear from you asap. Thanks

Becca



From: Brad Carter

To: Rebecca Nemanova

Date: Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 9:29 AM

Subject: Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop – 500 gig HD, 2 gig RAM – $350 (Albany, OR) It’s 3 years old so it has normal wear and tear on it. It’s in fine

condition, just has a lot of stickers on it. There’s no damage to it.

If you’d like to PayPal, this email address is fine.



From: Rebecca Nemanova (ramstar08@gmail.com)

To: Brad Carter

Date: Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 6:48 AM

Subject: Re: Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop – 500 gig HD, 2 gig RAM – $350 (Albany, OR) Thanks for the mail….what is the present condition of this it $400

for the item i will also be paying for the shipping cost so get back

to me with your paypal email id or you can send me a money request to

ramstar08@gmail.com so i can proceed with the payment. i will be

waiting to hear from you asap. Thanks

Becca

After letting Becca (I can call her that cause we’re tight) know my PayPal email address, she immediately sent me the payment. But, as I expected, this was a Nigerian scam. The payment emailed looked very real, although the color scheme was a little off. Just to be sure, I checked my PayPal account to make sure there really wasn’t an extra $500 in it. There wasn’t. My dreams of receiving a bonus $100 for my old laptop were crushed.



From: Brad Carter

To: Rebecca Nemanova

Date: Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 10:05 AM

Subject: Re: Notification of Instant Payment Received from Rebecca Nemanova (Transaction ID: 5Y758872CS5628811) Thanks for your payment! I’m heading to the post office right now so I’ll get this shipped to you immediately. Thanks for the extra $100 too! It’s nice to see that you’re made of money and are willing to just throw extra $100 at people all willy nilly like. I will have this shipped to you in the fastest way possible. God bless,

Brad

The next day, I found an email from the FBI waiting for me. Except that it was another very obviously fake email.



From: postageconfirmationteam@representative.com

To: Brad Carter

Date: Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 7:22 AM

Subject: *** Collaboration Complaint From PayPal To FBI **Message From FBI Department***

Hello Brad Carter,

It is important we know the status of the item bought from you by Rebecca Nemanova otherwise, legal action may be taken against you since you have not provide the shipment information to the confirmation of the payment made to your account by our client via PayPal.We request for the Scanned Receipt and the Tracking Number to prove postage of the item in less than 24hours and we will fund the money into your account or face the consequences of LEGAL ACTION. We believed you entered into buying agreement by requesting money through PayPal, and by non response to the payment confirmation made to your account you have violate PayPal agreement. However the buyer has already contacted us in other to make report about your non response. We are ensuring to make PayPal a safer place, therefore we need to set confidence on our users. Therefore, your Money has been credit into your Account, that means the item must have been shipped to the Buyer. From IC3 we give you 24hours(1day) to ship the package to the Delivery Address given to you by your buyer, and also send the Shipment Tracking Number immediately to us to verify the shipment.Immediately we confirm the shipping.You will receive a confirmation e-mail that your account has been credited. We use proprietary technology and constantly innovate to help ensure your transactions are safe. In addition, Pay Pal has over 20,000 staffs worldwide dedicated to keeping Pay Pal accounts safe, and stopping online criminals. And we work with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) worldwide to shut off fraudulent websites as soon as possible. Pay Pal ‘s Fraud Investigation Team is highly experienced in fraud prevention. Several members of the team were former law enforcement officials with extensive experience in fighting online fraud. Pay Pal’s fraud investigation team focuses on: Identifying and preventing fraud before it occurs, Detecting fraud in process Mitigating loss, if fraud does occur, Delivering information to law enforcement around the world to help stop those committing online fraud. NOTE:

Failure to Abide to this means your Name and Address will be forward to the law enforcement Agency to get you Arrested, because you are practicing Scam, And your Account with PayPal will be BLOCKED, In order to free yourself from this” Ship the package within 24hours and send the Shipment Tracking to PayPal for them to Verify. If you have any comment on this issue do not hesitate to contact us.If the information you wish to provide pertains to an emergency situation contact our customer service helpline (postageconfirmationteam@representative.com). New York Field Office

Federal Bureau of Investigation Thanks for your co-operation.

Yours sincerely,

(there was a JPG of an illegible signature here)

Stuff like this puts me on the side of the Nigerian scammers. If people in the U.S. aren’t suspicious of free money, PayPal payments that look fake, the absence of a payment in their account, fake emails from PayPal’s FBI department or just Nigerians in general, then they deserve to have their money taken from them. If I hadn’t noticed this was a scam already, then this email would have let me know. I couldn’t believe they’d try to draw attention to themselves like this when a person otherwise might have gone ahead and mailed the laptop out.

I also got another email from Rebecca, accusing me of being a scammer.



From: Rebecca Nemanova (ramstar08@gmail.com)

To: Brad Carter

Date: Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 10:28 AM

Subject: WHY SILENT????????????????????????? Hello,

why silent?What,s Going on over there i have made the payment for the item and i haven’t hear anything back from you concerning the shipment of the package to my boss ,Please i will like to know what is going on because i am getting worried to know if this is not a scam please get back to me now to know what is going on waiting for your urgent Reply.



From: Brad Carter

To: Rebecca Nemanova

Date: Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 4:28 PM

Subject: Re: WHY SILENT????????????????????????? Hi Rebecca. I’m not being silent. I sent you two emails yesterday to

let you know that the laptop had been sent. It’s on its way and

you’ll have it in a week. I sent it fast shipping since you gave me

extra money. You can stop threatening me with the FBI now. Thanks,

Brad



From: Rebecca Nemanova (ramstar08@gmail.com)

To: Brad Carter

Date: Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 6:52 PM

Subject: WHY SILENT????????????????????????? so get back to me with the tracking number so i verify it



From: Brad Carter

To: Rebecca Nemanova

Date: Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 9:13 PM

Subject: Re: WHY SILENT????????????????????????? There is no tracking number. You should have told me you wanted one

before I mailed it. It’ll be there soon. Be patient.



From: Rebecca Nemanova (ramstar08@gmail.com)

To: Brad Carter

Date: Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 9:14 PM

Subject: WHY SILENT????????????????????????? what about the scan receipt.



From: Rebecca Nemanova (ramstar08@gmail.com)

To: Brad Carter

Date: Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 9:53 PM

Subject: WHY SILENT????????????????????????? what is the meaning of all this are you trying you scammed me or what?



From: Brad Carter

To: Rebecca Nemanova

Date: Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 9:54 PM

Subject: Re: WHY SILENT????????????????????????? I’m sorry, but I ran out of toilet paper so I ended up using the

receipt to wipe my bottom. You’ll just have to trust me that I sent

it to you. That’s what Jesus would do. Be more like Jesus.

At some point during this exchange, someone gave me the idea to mail them a fake laptop for my fake payment. It seemed only fair. I think it was Angela that came up with this, but it’s been so long (over a month!) that I don’t remember. Instead of doing it myself, I told my kids all about Nigerian scammers and asked if they would make me a fake laptop to mail to this guy. Er, I mean girl, because I’m sure she wasn’t lying to me about that.

I cut out pieces of cardboard, using my real laptop to make them the right size. Then Emily and Payton began drawing a laptop on the pieces. Emily quickly got bored with it, but Payton finished it all up, even copying the vents and screw holes on the bottom.

The last picture shows the top of the closed cardboard laptop. For hinges we used black electrical tape. It was Payton’s idea to make the screen show the Google homepage, but I had him write “Nigerian scammers” into the search box.

I shipped it the next morning at the cost of around $9.00, which almost made me feel bad about all the extra money she sent me for shipping. On the customs form, I put the value at $500 and the description said “cardboard art.” I’m not completely sure of this, but I think Nigerians have to pay a small percentage of the value to customs, so putting a high price on the customs form hopefully cost them a little money. Although the post office promised me that it would arrive in about 10 days, I didn’t hear back from Becca until this morning. As I was eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes, she begins messaging me.

9:25 AM: rebecca: you are stupid for what you did

9:26 AM: rebecca: you are crazy

9:27 AM: me: why do you think that?

9:27 AM: rebecca: what did you ship to my boss

9:28 AM: me: a Dell laptop, just like you ordered

9:28 AM: rebecca: is that a laptop

9:28 AM: me: of course

9:29 AM: rebecca: ypou are crazy

9:30 AM: me: what are you talking about? did the laptop not work?

9:32 AM: me: please tell me what’s wrong with it

9:35 AM: rebecca: suck my divck

9:35 AM: me: what’s a divck?

10:08 AM: me: please don’t be mad at me

10:18 AM: me: helllloooo?

10:18 AM: me: talk to me rebecca!

Soon after that chat, she tried to voice chat with me on Google, but I couldn’t do that since I was on the phone. I’ve tried talking to her a few more times, but she refuses to answer me now.

3:30 PM: me: sorry i can’t voice chat with you. i don’t have a microphone

3:32 PM: me: i really would like to work out any problems you might have with the laptop though

3:33 PM: me: maybe you could turn it on and i could help you troubleshoot from here

3:37 PM: me: let me know when you’re there and we’ll get started

3:48 PM: me: are you ready to troubleshoot yet, rebecca?

So that’s about it. Tee hee! Interesting that she said she has a boss. Guess she’s just a minion that does the scamming since she’s so good with her people skills and it gets sent to the boss. Kind of like a pimp/ho relationship. I’ll keep trying to chat with her and append anything else that happens to this post, but I doubt she’ll say anything more to me.

2 years later update: Jesus, people, I know this scammer was from Nigeria because I SENT THE PACKAGE TO NIGERIA. Quit accusing me of being racist and hating all Nigerians and teaching my kids to stereotype.