What do you get when you cross a Scammer from Nigeria and a TechiTeen? A busted Scammer.

Like a lot of other companies, we post our services on a number of online classified websites. Our main one- Craigs List. As a company, TechiTeens has been using Craigs List extensively for over a year. We’re had our good times and bad. People contacting us for odd jobs but recently we received this odd request:

    Hello,

Thanks for the response, I will like to know if you an expert in Laptop Upgrades and the following upgrade’s needed for 6 Dual core Dell Inspiron Laptop.

1 Format Hard Drive
2 Install Windows 7 with Service Pack 1
3 Install Microsoft Office Package
4 Norton Virus Software
5 Adobe Acrobat Reader
6 diagnose Hardware. Hard drive, video card, processor.

If you can do what i have listed about then you got the job,i have all necessary software and license Key needed for the service installations and all the laptops are in good conditions except from the upgrades listed above.Let me know the charges for the 6 laptops and how soon can you get the work done on the laptops..  Once i have the price the payment will be send to you in advance mean while i will need your Details,
Full Name :
Full Mailing address :
City :
State :
Zipcode :
Phone Number :

The payment will be sent to you once i have all this details. The payment mode will be a company certified check. Let me know if you are okay with that…. i will make a proper arrangement on how the laptop will be deliver to you and also pickup once you are through upgrading the laptops. although i have a reliable shipping company that will Handle that anyway.

I will be expecting your email
Best Regards

First I was ecstatic, SIX computers? No way, that’s great! Like all good things, it came to a {quick} end. Soon my favorite customer had some weird suggestions. They offered to pay us in whole for the repairs, we just had to cover shipping and wire the “necessary” funds to their shipper. Okay cool- I shot them an email back, letting them know I estimated the price of shipping to be $1,500. Within a few hours I had a reply, asking me to wire them exactly $1,500 to cover shipping. What are the chances I nail the exact cost of shipping of six computers that i’ have never seen with a shipper i’ve never heard of? I must be good.

I am a good geek. Sensing something fishy, I checked the e-mail header and found something interesting:

What’s weird here? Well for starters the senders IP is from Google, secondly when a trace was performed on the senders IP, guess where it originates from? Perform your own IP trace using this tool.

NIGERIA?
My customer was located not in San Francisco where they claimed but in Nigeria! So what do I do? Give up? Tell them I know its a scam and let them on their way? Absolutely not, I went in for more information. I offered more money for ‘shipping’ if he called me to discuss, sure enough he called me and I captured his phone number.

Finally, I may have signed him up for a few newsletters but most importantly I shot him an email letting him know I knew the deal. As well and CC’ing the Federal Trade Commission, their ISP, Hosting Provider and the FBI (why not?). Scamming honest hard working Americans, much less Teenagers should not be a career choice for anyone.

What to do if he responds?