[meteorite-list] Scam Alert

From: Adam Hupe <raremeteorites_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat Oct 22 14:21:00 2005
Message-ID: <013701c5d735$945ba640$6401a8c0_at_c1720188a>

Dear IMCA and List Members,

I was approached by a fellow calling himself Tim Trepagnier who claimed he
was representing a client who was interested in one of my specimens that did
not sell on ebay. He stipulated that the client would send me a money order
in an amount greater than the asking price. The excess amount was supposed
to be his commission and he wanted me to wire the difference to him
immediately after cashing the check. This raised some suspicion with me but
I did not want to think the worse. I have been involved in some pretty
awkward international transactions before so I gave the benefit of the doubt
to the deal until the money orders arrived.

The first thing I noticed was that the envelope came from Spain and that no
return address was on it. I opened the envelope and found that instead of a
single money order, there were four totaling $3,600.00. The cost of the item
he was pretending to be interested in was only $449.00 so I suspected he was
trying to launder money through me. I called Travelers Express Company, the
bank in which the money orders were drawn and waited on hold for 40 minutes.
The scam artist(s) thought that most people would not tolerate the long hold
times and assumed victims would think the checks were good since a real
phone number was on the back of the check. After waiting on hold I found
that the checks were counterfeits and that unbelievably several people have
fallen for this scam.

The way the scam was supposed to work is that I would have gone to my bank
and received cash for the excess amount ($3,151.00) thinking the checks were
good and then send it Western Union to the scam artist. He would get the
good money right away realizing that my bank would latter find out the
checks were counterfeit. I would have been out the full $3,600.00 and
suffered the humiliation it would have caused. Not only that, I would have
sent the specimen to a bogus address, maybe never getting it back.

It would seem pretty obvious to most that a scam was about to be perpetrated
in these circumstances but most like to think the best of people and might
have fallen for it. This is what the scam artist(s) is counting on and I
hate to see somebody get burned.

Take Care,

------------------------------------
Adam Hupe
The Hupe Collection
Team LunarRock
IMCA 2185
raremeteorites_at_comcast.net
Received on Sat 22 Oct 2005 02:22:36 PM PDT