Ask YC News: Ever had any luck catching a scam artist? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC News: Ever had any luck catching a scam artist?

4 pointsDaniFong5 comments

I'm being solicited to tutor 'someone's son' who is supposedly moving to the Berkeley area. The father is supposedly in Germany. I'm supposed to take payment for an entire month, and then wire the money to a nanny who's taking care of the kid.

Neat variation on the classic overpayment scheme.

http://www.scambusters.org/overpayment.html

But I want to catch this thief. I haven't lost any money, but since I was counting on the funds until I received more of an indication of this fraud (it's taken a while), I'm kind of in a hard place.

Has anyone ever had any luck counter scamming, or catching the scam artist?

View on HN

I've had some fun scam-baiting a few times, never really led to anything too significant, but I was just in it for the fun.

If you're read some of the various scam-baiter sites, then you'll see that the basic formula is some combination of convincing the scammer that you are totally bought in, without seeming overly anxious. Led THEM along, let THEM start to count on the money, and then throw a wrench into the mix. Get them to send you a small sum of money <$101, to cover postage for something. Get a real address to ship them something, verify the address and then alert the local authorities.

Not catching per se. I just let the scammer know that I was on to him. My account of it is at:

http://www.ideatagging.com/domain-name-scam/

My friend just got hired for a "job" that was an overpayment scam last week.

She was hired, given some work to do, and paid an advance. They then said a customer needed a refund, and they wanted her to wire her advance to Nigeria. The problem is...now she has a cheque, assumes its some sort of scam, but what if it clears?

Was someone else scammed and she is the middleman? Is it legit?

Advise her to contact a lawyer immediately, as well as her bank if she has already deposited the cheque.

You could always try these tactics:

http://www.419eater.com

Reply on news.ycombinator.com